The Enlightenment in Spain defies definition. In certain respects it was a viable force opening up new vistas of knowledge and understanding, while in others it was a mild breeze rustling some leaves of insight into the possibility of human equality. For certain of Spain's royal officials, the ideas of the eighteenth century philosophes were refreshing and undeniably sound; for others even the gathering of knowledge in the new encyclopedias was a dangerously democratic trend. In some areas of national life, reforms gained immediate acceptance, in others the old ways remained entrenched.

Spain has always been a country of extremes, of absolute alternatives. Spaniards strive to achieve impossible goals or they remain incredibly inert. With the discovery of America their ambitious undertakings excelled those of England or France, but subsequent neglect brought about failures of equal magnitude. In the sixteenth century they thought to conquer the world; in the next their weakened Hapsburg monarchs squandered the wealth of the New World while the country fell into economic ruin.

No one who is entitled to speak with authority has ever questioned the well-known story that relates how in his hour of affliction, on landing at Palos, Christopher Columbus was befriended by the Franciscans of the friary of Santa María de la Rábida; how a Franciscan encouraged him to present his maritime project at the Spanish court; how, when all hope of royal support vanished, the Franciscan guardian of La Rábida intervened and thus made possible the voyage that resulted in the discovery of America. While this much of the story has always been accepted as properly established, students of American history have long been in disagreement and partly also in ignorance concerning certain details that bear importantly on the friendship that existed between the Genoese navigator and the sons of Saint Francis.

A study of the capitation tax of 1735 in Minas Gerais is interesting since it illustrates the way in which the Crown of Portugal succeeded in enforcing its will through the machinery of colonial administration in a newly incorporated, frontier society. It also tells something about the men of that administration and the political process in which they were involved.

The collection of the tax on mineral wealth known as the quinto was one of the most enduring problems confronting Crown officials in Brazil during the eighteenth century. The king permitted his subjects to mine precious metals in his dominions in return for the payment of one fifth of the annual production. Rich alluvial gold deposits discovered in the closing years of the seventeenth century, lay beyond the territory effectively controlled by the governors of the littoral captaincies. Hidden in the shadows of Sabarabuçú, the shining mountain of Indian legends, the isolation of the mines and the tenuous control of the region by the royal administration made collection of the tax haphazard. As the eighteenth century progressed, the production of the gold mines increased, however the king's share failed to grow accordingly. The need for added revenue and the realization that the full amount due the Crown was not arriving at the customs house in Lisbon convinced the king that payment of the quinto should be rigorously enforced.

Once the two largest sugar colonies in the slave-owning Caribbean, Jamaica and Haiti trace their separate paths of development back to the revolutionary struggles of the 1790's. While the French colony of Saint Domingue was transformed in a way few societies have ever been, Jamaica remained seemingly untouched by the conflagration that consumed its neighbour. When the slaves and free coloureds of Saint Domingue rebelled in the autumn of 1791, Jamaican society faced the greatest challenge of its history. The dramatic spectacle of violent self-liberation was acted out almost before the eyes of its blacks and mulattoes, while the ruling white elite experienced a dilemma that seemed to oppose its prosperity to its survival. This paper looks at the reaction of different social groups in the island in an attempt to explain its continuing stability.

This article analyzes in depth the history of Petrona, an enslaved woman sold in Santa Fe (Argentina), sent to Buenos Aires and later possibly to Montevideo (Uruguay). By reconstructing her case, the article demonstrates how the legal status of enslaved persons was affected by the redefinitions of jurisdictions and by the forced or voluntary crossings between political units. This study also shows the circulation and uses of the Free Womb law in Argentina and Uruguay and traces legal experts’ debates over its meaning. At the same time, it reflects on the knowledge enslaved people had of those abolitionist norms and how they used them to resist forced relocations, attempt favorable migrations, or achieve full freedom. The article crosses analytical dimensions and historiographies—legal, social, and political— and articulates them by reflecting more broadly on these factors: the impact of the revolution of independence on enslaved persons’ lives, the scarce circulation of abolitionist public discourse in Río de la Plata, the gendered bias of the process, and the central yet untold uses of antislavery rhetoric in the national narratives.

The right of persons to marry without coercion and live their marriage freely was one of the foremost and frequently mentioned topics among synod and council fathers, moralists, and canon lawyers in colonial Spanish America. Within the territory of the viceroyalty of Peru, the recommendations of the Council of Trent in this regard took the form of a new set of ecclesiastical regulations, derived from synods and councils that occurred from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century.

“In Ecuador, the streets are paved with money. All you have to do is go there and pick it up.”

It was this rumor that lured Gabriel Manzur and Juan Adum into trying their luck in such a far-away, unknown land. Little did it matter that this meant a month-and-half journey by sea from Beirut with a stopover in Marseilles, then a train ride across Panama to get from the Caribbean to the Pacific because the Panama Canal did not yet exist. A sailor took pity on them and bought them a pineapple in one of the ports of call, and to Manzur and Adum, this strange fruit tasted like an orange.

This essay is in large part inspired by Fr. Antonine Tibesar OFM, whom I had the privilege to meet in 1982 just after I returned from my doctoral research sojourn in Bolivia. Fr. Antonine was for many years the director of the Academy of Franciscan History when that institution had its beautiful campus in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. I had corresponded with Fr. Antonine earlier and during my visit enjoyed discussing with him the many facets of Franciscan missions in Latin America. He proudly showed me the large collection of books in the academy library. What impressed me about both Fr. Antonine and the friars I had met in Bolivia during my research was their selflessness and willingness to help a budding scholar—one who at that point had little of scholarship to show. These characteristics got me thinking about the Franciscans and their worldviews and how those must have affected the missions. Although I was determined to write mainly about the indigenous population on the missions (after all, they constituted the vast majority of the mission population and were the ones most profoundly affected by the mission experience), I realized that it was important not to ignore the missionaries. Though few in number—most missions had just one or perhaps two friars—it was their desires for the native population and the overall goals and local organization of the missions they founded that profoundly shaped the human settlements they supervised.

Through much of the history of the Americas, political life took place in two spheres: the colonial realm, in which a complex population of Indians, Africans, and Iberians interacted within the civic framework of European institutions; and the extra-colonial realm, in which largely indigenous populations beyond the reach of imperial authority maintained separate political systems. Encounters across this divide were sometimes peaceful and symbiotic, but at other times violent. Many historical discussions of interethnic conflict presume a general and persistent difference in power between these two groups. On Mexico's northern frontier of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the relative advantage enjoyed by colonial versus extra-colonial peoples shifted radically depending on the moment and place of encounter. This article proposes that differences in topography and ecology, often between places not far removed in absolute distance, produced inversions in the relative power enjoyed by indigenous and settler populations. The cultivation of maize was common to the refuge zones of settlers and northern Indians alike: unassimilated Indian bands concealed and protected their crops in difficult-to-find mountain valleys; settler communities, both Spanish and Indian, protected crops close to their respective concentrations of population and militiamen. Both colonial and extra-colonial peoples subsisted on cattle, and the demand for vast pasture spaces produced inevitable conflict. Thus, the geography of the north produced areas of security and vulnerability for all parties.

In 1843, two friends, one Scottish and one American, published books about Mexico which were to become essential reading for students of Mexican history. Much the better known of the two is William Hickling Prescott whose History of the Conquest of Mexico became an instant best-seller and remains to this day one of the classics of Mexican historiography. Less well-known but equally valuable to historians of nineteenth-century Mexico is Frances Calderón de la Barca's vivid account of Life in Mexico based on her experiences during the two years from 1840-1841 when she lived in the country as the wife of the first Spanish ambassador. By coincidence, Prescott and Sra. Calderón were close personal friends and regular correspondents and they gave each other much assistance in preparing their respective books for publication. Both their works were greeted with critical and public acclaim in the English-speaking world of Europe and North America but reactions in Mexico were markedly different. While Prescott's book was received with qualified enthusiasm, Life in Mexico was the subject of hostile reviews and its author much vitriolic, personal abuse.

Although Mexico City was the foremost cultural center in North America before 1800, the musical history of this capital has been strangely neglected. Not until 1946, when Lota M. Spell published a pioneer article on music in the Conquest century, was a first attempt made at bringing the viceregal music to international attention. Four years later Francisco Curt Lange translated her article into Spanish. In 1952 Jesús Bal y Gay handsomely edited what he hoped would be but the first in a series to match Monumentos de la Música Española. As unique source for the transcriptions of Mexican colonial chefs-d’oeuvres in this luxurious 235-page volume, Bal y Gay availed himself of a filmed codex. In April, 1961 Roger Wagner recorded approximately half of the Bal y Gay volume—including Juan de Lienas’ splendid Missa super fa re ut fa sol la (the identical cantus firmus used in Morales’s Missa cortilla and in Masses by Melchor Robledo and Ginés de Boluda), Francisco López [y] Capillas’ Magnificat secundi toni, Hernando Franco’s Peccantem me quotidie, Memento met Deus, and the Spanish Masses transcribed by Bal y Gay because they were in the source codex.

It Has Been Commonly stated for almost two centuries now that the reason why the celebrated Mexican Jesuit, Francisco Javier Clavigero, was unable to publish the Spanish original of his Storia antica del Messico (Ancient History of Mexico) in Madrid stemmed from the savage attack made on the Italian edition by a highly nationalistic Spanish Jesuit, Ramón Diosdado Caballero, who considered it highly insulting and injurious to Spain and who urged the Spanish Government not to allow its publication until the author publicly retracted his damaging statements. That his bitter criticism prevented immediate publication there is no doubt, but on the basis of newly gathered evidence in Spanish and Roman archives, it is by no means clear that it was the ultimate cause for its not appearing.

Belice, or British Honduras, has been the subject of dispute throughout its history. Although the Spanish claim to the Caribbean and Central America was clear in theory, the British distinguished between title by discovery and title by occupation. In their eyes this jungle terrain along the shores of the Caribbean Sea was “ res nullius ”—uninhabited territory, i.e., not occupied by Europeans—and hence subject to seizure by anyone who chose to effectively populate it. Spanish settlements in neighboring portions of Central America, in the British view, conveyed only dubious title to this area. Moreover, the original settlers of the town of Belize were freebooters who were not accustomed to paying heed to Spanish claims.

When Expelling the Jesuits from his realm in 1767, Charles III of Spain explained this extraordinary measure in only vague and mysterious terms. He said he was “moved by weighty reasons, conscious of his duty to uphold obedience, tranquility and justice among his people, and (was also acting) for other urgent, just, and compelling causes, which he was locking away in his royal breast.” Furthermore, the first part of the report of the committee preparing the expulsion, the Extraordinary Council of Castile, a report which must have contained the motivation, has been missing since at least 1815. The whole history of the expulsion has thus been shrouded in an air of mystery. Historians have not been satisfied with pointing to possible Jesuit implication in the so-called “Hat and Cloak Riots ” of 1766, which caused the Extraordinary Council to be set up to undertake the inquiry that less than a year later produced the royal decision to expel the Jesuits. Instead, they have suggested other explanations according to their gift of imagination and their religio-political orientation. Several theories of “conspiracy ” have been advanced. Either the Freemasons, impious Voltairians or the manteistas, that is, intellectuals of poor background, supposedly resentful of the snobbism of Jesuit education, have been held responsible for such “conspiracies ” against the Jesuits. Important documentation from the Extraordinary Council, which almost compensates for the lost piece, has been easily available since the 1890’s.

When the first European visitors arrived on the shores of California, they found the Indians to be poor and the country sparsely settled. The natives lived in semi-permanent villages of brush shelters and huts. Though hunters and gatherers, they sometimes practiced a form of protoagriculture. Social groups were fragmented by complex language differences. Often extremely hostile and suspicious of strangers, they were nonetheless attracted to the culture brought in by the newcomers.

In most cases the Europeans discovered that the Indians fit their own preconceptions. Missionaries found them eager for conversion. Sophisticates saw them as ignorant and brutish. Kindly people considered them to be warm and friendly. To soldiers they seemed fierce and hostile. Catholic visitors to the missions were frequently impressed with their piety. Protestants often thought their faith was but a thin veneer overlying an undiminished paganism. It is nearly impossible to generalize about the observations of Europeans. Indians in the same place were often described in totally contradictory ways by successive parties of visitors. And this same diversity of opinion exists among historians today.

Among the nations of the New World, Mexico is probably the country in which the Franciscans worked most intensively. Having been the first missionaries to arrive in Mexico, they covered most of its territory and worked with numerous native groups: Nahuas, Otomies, Mazahuas, Huastecas, Totonacas, Tarascans, Mayas. Their intense missionary activity is evident in the many indigenous languages the Franciscans learned, the grammars and vocabularies they wrote, the numerous Biblical texts they translated, and the catechisms they wrote with ideographical techniques quite alien to the European mind. This activity left an indelible mark in Mexico, a mark still alive in popular traditions, monumental constructions, popular devotions, and folk art. Without a doubt, in spite of the continuous growth of the Spanish and Mestizo populations during colonial times, the favorite concern of Franciscan pastoral activity was the indigenous population. Thus, Franciscan schools and colleges, hospitals, and publications were addressed to it. For their part, the native population showed the same preference for the Franciscans. To the eyes of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, Franciscans and natives appeared as an inseparable body, an association not always welcomed by the Spanish Crown. In fact, since the middle of the sixteenth century bishops and royal officials tried to separate them, assigning secular priests in the native towns and limiting the ecclesiastical authority of the friars.

Although the study of the liberal republic (1870-1936) could shed considerable light on the overall pattern of political development, this period has remained one of the most under-studied and undervalued of the already under-researched history of Paraguay. In an attempt to fill that lacuna—albeit partially—this article reexamines the available data, discusses new evidence, and reinterprets the period with different theoretical categories. In this manner, it seeks to answer the question of why, in spite of a relatively favorable ideological environment, liberal democracy failed to consolidate and how this failure eventually opened the doors to the authoritarian regime of General Alfredo Stroessner.

Henry Clay of Kentucky first offered his American System as a plan to guide the growth of the United States during the period of awakening nationalism that followed the Peace of Ghent in 1815. When asked just before his death in 1852 to make up a list of his most important public services for use by some friends who were having a medal struck to commemorate his career, Clay prepared a list of fourteen items which included the American System with the date, 1824. Thus, at the end of his long career, the Kentuckian identified this phrase with his most famous speech in support of the protective tariff. It may then seem surprising that his first recorded use of the term came on May 10, 1820, in a speech supporting recognition of the emerging nations of Spanish America. Clay’s use of “American System” in these two apparently different areas of discussion has led to two separate connotations for the phrase. The two meanings call for careful discrimination. Equally important, however, is the significant connection between them in the thought of Henry Clay.