The Empirical Empire: Spanish Colonial Rule and the Politics of Knowledge 9783110369847, 9783110375046

Table of contents :
Appreciations
Content
Illustrations
Introduction
I The king – all-seeing and blind
1 The spider in the web: Philip II and the Escorial
2 The center’s eyes and ears: cognition and communication
3 The idea and imagery of the watchful ruler
4 Observation and punishment: The inquisitorial legal culture
5 Observation and reward: Distributive justice
6 The blindness of the king and the corridors of power
II Knowledge as the ruler’s postulate
1 Integra informatio: Empirical methods in the Late Middle Ages
2 Ex certa scientia: The absolutist appeal to certain knowledge
3 Somos informados: Linking information to decisions
III Strolls through the world. The epistemic setting of the court
1 The Spanish court
2 Spaces of knowledge
3 Media of knowledge
4 Land recording projects in Spain
IV The authorities of colonial rule
1 The Casa de la Contratación: Nautical knowledge becomes political
2 The Council of the Indies
3 Institution-building in Spanish America
V Knowledge in the setting of colonial rule
1 The vigilant triangle
2 Beginnings of knowledge acquisition
3 Early initiatives: land recording, control, and participation
4 Objectivity as technique for control and exoneration
5 Listen, describe, and decide: the viceroy’s court
VI Entera noticia: Ovando’s project of complete knowledge
1 America cannot be understood: The path to reform
2 The Visitator’s work
3 Positions in the reform discourse
4 The Ovandian Reform’s measures
4.1 Compiling colonial law
4.2 The Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of America
4.3 The Law on the Permanent Description of America
VII Practices of knowledge acquisition
1 Mirror on the world
2 Traveling science
3 The permanent description of America
4 Interrogative methods
5 The questions
6 The answers
VIII Consulting: scenarios for the application of knowledge
1 Authorities without eyes: The dilemma of the court chronicler
2 Everyday decision-making: The epistemic setting of the Council
2.1 The little tools of colonial knowledge
2.2 The performance of media and mediators
IX Conclusions
Appendix
1 Abbreviations
2 Printed sources
3 Books, chapters, and journal articles
4 Index

Citation preview

Arndt Brendecke The Empirical Empire

Arndt Brendecke

The Empirical Empire Spanish Colonial Rule and the Politics of Knowledge

Revised and shortened version of Imperium und Empirie. Funktionen des Wissens in der spa­ nischen Kolonialherrschaft, Böhlau: Köln, Weimar, Wien 2009, translated by Jeremiah Riemer. The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association).

ISBN 978-3-11-037504-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-036984-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-039581-5 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.de. © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover Illustration: Diego Velázquez, Demócrite, Rouen, Musée des Beaux Arts, © Musées de la Ville de Rouen. Photography C. Lancien, C. Loisel. Typesetting: Michael Peschke, Berlin Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com



To María

Appreciations Without my wife, I would have written about France. Without my children, Mathilda and Nicolas (now joined by Olivia), the book would have become much too long. Winfried Schulze gave me the freedom, courage, and time I needed for a project that he himself called a “bit exotic” but which he supported with enormous sympathy and the most valuable kind of trust. From the very outset I asked Horst Pietschmann for counsel, and I would have just let everything be had he not given me the single most important piece of advice of all among his many suggestions (not all of which I could possibly have followed): You must definitely write this book! I am grateful to all of them and to many more for valuable conversations, serious questions, and important tips, most especially to Markus Friedrich, Susanne Friedrich, Benjamin Steiner, Helmut Zedelmaier, Cornel Zwierlein, Max Hering Torres, Jesús Bustamante García, Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, Alfredo Moreno Cebrián, Marta Guzmán, Annette Meyer, Margarita Gómez Gómez, Daniel Damler, Thomas Duve, Ricardo Fagoaga Hernández, Marc-André Grebe, and Robert Folger. I found extremely valuable my exchanges with Renate Pieper, Reinhard Liehr, and especially with Ursula Ewald (then already seriously ailing, now gone) and with Peer Schmidt (who also died much too soon). I am indebted to Sina Rauschenbach for her extremely thorough critique, and to Romedio Schmitz-Esser and Sascha Griebl for criticism that was always fundamental. I thank Kilian Harrer, Liza Soutschek, Florian Runschke, Michael Hahn, Marina Lehner, Leonard Horsch, Paula Ross, and Franz Huber for proofreading. I owe a great deal to Munich’s collaborative research center on “Pluralization and Authority”, its spokespersons, Jan-Dirk Müller, Andreas Höfele, and the late Wulf Oesterreicher, as well as to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, which supported a research visit to Spanish archives and then the completion of the manuscript with two generous grants. For the very abridged English edition I am indebted to the Börsenvereins des Deutschen Buchhandels (the German Publishers and Booksellers Association) for financing, as well as to Jeremiah Riemer’s patient and prudent work. Many valuable suggestions went into the English edition from Francisco Fernández López, Geoffrey Parker, María Ángeles Martín Romera, and (once again) Margarita Gómez Gómez. To all of them I am most grateful. ***

Content Appreciations 

 vii

Illustrations 

 xi

Introduction 

 1

I 1 2 3 4 5 6

 17 The king – all-seeing and blind  The spider in the web: Philip II and the Escorial   17 The center’s eyes and ears: cognition and communication   22 The idea and imagery of the watchful ruler   26 Observation and punishment: The inquisitorial legal culture   29 Observation and reward: Distributive justice   38 The blindness of the king and the corridors of power   42

II 1 2 3

 56 Knowledge as the ruler’s postulate  Integra informatio: Empirical methods in the Late Middle Ages   56 Ex certa scientia: The absolutist appeal to certain knowledge  Somos informados: Linking information to decisions   61

III 1 2 3 4

Strolls through the world. The epistemic setting of the court  The Spanish court   69 Spaces of knowledge   73 Media of knowledge   75 Land recording projects in Spain   81

IV 1 2 3

 87 The authorities of colonial rule  The Casa de la Contratación: Nautical knowledge becomes political   87 The Council of the Indies   93 Institution-building in Spanish America   102

V 1 2 3 4 5

 111 Knowledge in the setting of colonial rule  The vigilant triangle   111 Beginnings of knowledge acquisition   120 Early initiatives: land recording, control, and participation   125 Objectivity as technique for control and exoneration   135 Listen, describe, and decide: the viceroy’s court   141

 59

 68

x 

 Content

VI 1 2 3 4 4.1 4.2 4.3

Entera noticia: Ovando’s project of complete knowledge   151 America cannot be understood: The path to reform   155 The Visitator’s work   161 Positions in the reform discourse   169 The Ovandian Reform’s measures   178 Compiling colonial law   178 The Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of America   182 The Law on the Permanent Description of America   185

VII 1 2 3 4 5 6

 192 Practices of knowledge acquisition  Mirror on the world   192 Traveling science   208 The permanent description of America  Interrogative methods   216 The questions   219 The answers   226

VIII 1

 235 Consulting: scenarios for the application of knowledge  Authorities without eyes: The dilemma of the court chronicler   235 Everyday decision-making: The epistemic setting of the Council   252 The little tools of colonial knowledge   253 The performance of media and mediators   261

2 2.1 2.2

IX Conclusions  Appendix  1 2 3 4

 212

 279

 290 Abbreviations   290 Printed sources   290 Books, chapters, and journal articles  Index   310

 294

Illustrations Figure 1: Figure 2: Figure 3: Figure 4: Figure 5: Figure 6: Figure 7: Figure 8: Figure 9: Figure 10: Figure 11: Figure 12: Figure 13: Figure 14: Figure 15:

Frontispiece of Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna (London 1620) Frontispiece of Andrés García de Céspedes’s Regimiento de navegación (Madrid 1606) Frontispiece, detail, Ordenanzas del consejo real de las Indias (Madrid 1636) Solórzano Pereira, Emblemata centum, Emblem XIII (1653) Sketch of Madrid’s Alcázar, Anton van den Wyngaerde, 1569 (Vienna, Austrian National Library, Co. Min. 41, fol. 73) Earth Under the Protection of Jupiter and Juno, The Sphere, third tapestry, Bernart van Orley, Georg Wezeler (Palacio Real de La Granja de San Ildefonso) Sketch of the Council’s working rooms in the Alcázar of Madrid, 1598, AGI, MP Europa-Africa, 5 Schema of the vigilant triangle Questionnaire for pilots, Seville, April 1597, including the answer of Juan Sánchez de Ruisenada (AGI, Patronato 262, r. 2) Group of islands, detail from Juan Rodríguez Aguilero’s answer to the questionnaire shown in figure 9 (AGI, Patronato 262, r. 2) Printed interrogatory with fifty questions, sent in 1577 (AGI, Patr. 171, n. 2, r. 7) Example of a short dorsal note (brevete) (IVDJ, envío 88, doc. 542, 3, fol. 1v) Example of a more comprehensive dorsal note (IVDJ, envío 16, n. 115) Example of a consulta, 9 September 1578 (AGI, Indif. 739, n. 108) Detail of a consulta, 9 October 1590 (IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 523)

Introduction Let us begin with a scene that took place in 1518 at the Spanish court. Two Portuguese men, a cosmographer and a seafarer, requested an audience with the eighteen-year-old King Charles. They were initially admitted to see his grand chancellor, Jean Sauvage, and later to see the king himself. The seafarer had in his hands a “beautifully painted globe” on which he was using his fingers to trace the route he wanted to sail. The seaman was Ferdinand Magellan, and he wanted to convince the court and the Spanish king (the future Emperor Charles V) that the American continent could be penetrated via a navigable passage. Through this passage one could reach the Pacific, travel to the Molucca Islands, take possession of them for the Spanish king, and finally sail around the world. Only a short time later royal privileges were issued. The ships sailed under the Spanish flag. King Charles and his advisers had apparently been persuaded. And this was the case even though there was nothing that could be seen on the globe, for the cosmographer, Rui Faleiro, and Magellan had left the critical spot blank, marked only in white. Only the rest of the globe, the world already known, was “beautifully painted.”1 We cannot say what the king really knew and why he made the decision he did. But, precisely because he was a king, it is possible to reconstruct with relative precision how he became informed and to which media, people, and institutions he could resort in order to keep himself informed. In this book I take advantage of this circumstance as I attempt to observe tangible relations between information and the exercise of sovereignty. In so doing, however, we need to be aware of how contemporaries were already cognizant of knowledge as a political issue. None of these scenes is free of assessments. The anecdote about the scene at court, for example, is only known to us by way of Las Casas’s Historia de las Indias. And it is Las Casas who is playing the skeptic in this scene, while the king and his advisors (Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the king’s highest-ranking advisor on all matters American, was also present at one of the audiences) seemed to believe everything. Las Casas, by contrast, according to his own account, immediately asked Magellan a follow-up question: “What will happen if you don’t find any passage to get to the other ocean?” Magellan is said to have answered that he would then consider following the route of the Portuguese, that is, sail eastward. As this scene shows, the process of European expansion produced knowledge problems of a special kind. From now on, decisions had to be made at court about very distant, frequently unfamiliar territories. Only in exceptional cases was it acceptable to place full trust in men like Magellan, who maintained he 1 Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, vol. 3, 175; Sandman, “Cosmographers”, 70.

2 

 Introduction

was in possession of specific knowledge but was keeping it to himself for now. With the growth of the territories and the expansion of Spanish rule, there was growing interest at court in obtaining reliable descriptions of distant realities. There was a desire for techniques that could capture empirical matters systematically and process them using media that could lay the foundations for making decisions on the other side of the Atlantic. These tasks were usually taken care of neither by adventurers nor by scholars, but rather, and especially in the case of Spain, by royal officials, by “bureaucrats,” who controlled the business of authorizing information. Significant elements of this emerging, new colonial knowledge culture can therefore only be understood if they are viewed in the context of practices relating to sovereign rule and administration that took shape during the period of colonial expansion.2 Two of the Spanish king’s institutions in particular were entrusted with the task of mastering the strange reality of the Atlantic and the New World, including in an epistemic way. For one, there was the so-called Casa de la Contratación. It had already been founded in 1503 in Seville, and it was devoted to all questions of seafaring and the transport of goods, valuables, and people between Castile and the New World, including nautical cartography. For another, there was the Council of the Indies that had been established at court at the beginning of the 1520s. It was the conduit for almost all of the court’s correspondence with American officials. It served as the court of appeal for colonial courts and as the council body that prepared decisions for the ruler. In the Casa and the Council communication and writing took place continually, and information was collected and summarized in nautical charts or descriptions of the land. Yet contemporaries were always asking how much this actually accomplished, what people actually “knew,” and to what extent political decisions were really based on this knowledge. On these very questions the “visitator” Juan de Ovando, who subjected the Council of the Indies to an official examination (visita) in 1569, arrived at a very sobering conclusion. He told the king “that in the Council of the Indies, one neither has nor can have any intelligence (noticia) of American matters to which governance (gobernación) can and must relate.”3 The Council, in other words, lacked that kind of vital intelligence on which governance could rely. The king, according to Ovando, should order that the Council acquire this intelligence. Ovando himself suggested a series of concrete measures and had himself appointed President of the Council of the Indies. The question of what the Council should know is answered in an ordinance from 1573: 2 On this, see too: Barrera-Osorio, “Empiricism,” 178. 3 IVDJ, envío 88, 542, 2, fol. 1r.

Introduction 

 3

So that the persons to whom we have left the government of America (las indias) and its provinces can govern excellently and in compliance with their office, it is necessary that they possess full notice (entera notiçia).4

The discrepancy between a Council that knows nothing but should know everything raises questions. There has never been such a thing as omniscient governance. So why was it idealized? Two introductory chapters will deal with the question of why rulers claimed to be completely informed, evidenced as early as in late medieval documents. These chapters investigate the political language and contemporary basic principles underlying the assertion “to know something.” And they also help us envision one part of the long history of political speech about knowledge. It turns out that the assertion “to know” – or even “to know everything” – possesses a certain political power that is independent of actual knowledge. Indeed, it even frequently crops up in places where there is a need to compensate for a significant lack of knowledge. This is just one early indication of how important it is, when dealing with relations between power and knowledge, to distinguish between discourses and practices. The story to be told as this book proceeds is one that moves on two unequal legs. Occasionally I will return to such abstract considerations as the relationship between knowledge and power, but mainly I will be aiming for a high measure of sharp detail and concretization. That is, I will attempt to show, on the basis of selected areas, how information was collected and then either used or not used. A middle way, presenting a solid history of all knowledge related to colonial rule, would have its own advantages, so long as it did not succumb to the sheer magnitude of the subject and turn into a very lengthy listing of all the available maps, books, and archives. That is not the path chosen here. The main part of the book begins with an overview of the Spanish court, cartography, and early land recording projects in Spain. The institutions at court that were in charge of colonial rule are then introduced and two important functions of knowledge are highlighted: “communication” and “control.” That we are apparently not dealing with the most important claim of all knowledge, namely “to know” something, is a finding this section goes some way toward revealing.

4 AGI, Indif. 427, L. 29, fol. 5v–66v, fol. 5v–6r, Real Cédula, 3 July 1573. The term “entera noticia” is translated here as “full notice.” For reasons of style, there may be variations on the same term elsewhere in the book. “Full” could equally well be written as “complete,” “comprehensive,” “thorough,” “whole,” or “total”; while “notice” could be “knowledge,” “cognizance,” “intelligence,” or even “acquaintance” in other contexts. We avoid translating “noticia” as “information” so as not to confuse its meaning with the semantic history of another term, informatio/ información, discussed later in the book.

4 

 Introduction

The more one grapples with the knowledge techniques used by Spanish colonial rule, the more clearly certain secondary functions, like maintaining communication with distant territories and controlling colonial agents, stand out. Such functions of knowledge that merely appear to be secondary have a long tradition, in many cases going back to precolonial times. Even the Middle Ages availed itself of noteworthy knowledge techniques, such as visitations or dispatching lists of questions. This was still taking place, however, in cases where there was a (comparatively) close link between the act of recording information and that of making political decisions or issuing juridical sanctions. Information certainly was gathered, but it was then reapplied almost immediately in a comparatively tight cycle. If documents were produced by this process, they were not sent on to court so that the court would always “know” more; rather, the main reasons for dispatching these documents were, for one, in order to keep decisions made in the periphery or proposals formulated there controllable and, for another, to maintain political communication. The availability of “knowledge” at the center, to the extent it even existed, was more a side-effect of political mistrust than a protorationalist foundation for gobernación. Only with the reforms of Ovando at the beginning of the 1570s was systematically collecting knowledge and making it available at court designated as a goal at the Spanish court and in the Council of the Indies. Only then did “complete knowledge” become a program, indeed a spectacular program in comparison with what other European expansionary powers were doing. Under the banner of a claim to “complete knowledge,” several measures were undertaken in rapid succession: the office of Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of the Americas was established, the codification of laws in force in America was begun, and an ordinance was promulgated making the permanent description of these territories into a duty for every American officeholder, including every Castilian living there. In what way these measures took hold, to what extent they were modified on-site and adapted to local circumstances and interests – all this will be elaborated in the following pages. What contemporaries understood by “knowledge” (ciencia, noticia, información) requires a more precise definition. What Ovando himself had in mind was a broad, almost encyclopedic program about geography and demography, but also about knowledge concerning the native inhabitants, their languages and cultures, America’s flora, fauna, and climate, and not incidentally news in the sense of current events. It is not our intention here to anticipate how Ovando and his contemporaries imagined a political utilization of knowledge. But it is appropriate to form a picture of the fundamental options available to knowledge in the service of sovereign rule. One may distinguish among three basic forms that constitute knowledge for the sake of domination: The first basic form is the “survey.” Even under archaic

Introduction 

 5

social formations, and then again in classical antiquity and medieval times, statements from individual members of society could be canvassed one after the other on particular occasions. Since this was usually a matter of society’s more elevated members supplying a “service” to the ruler or the commonwealth, this obligation to provide advice was usually understood as an official duty in ancient Greek terms, as a “liturgy” (from the Greek λειτουργία, meaning public service), and in this sense it was also always an obligation that went beyond the mere provision of information.5 The knowledge yielded by these kinds of “rotating community services” had a dual function. For one thing, it brought together the information and experiences of many people, so that a decision that had to be made could be based on knowledge more comprehensive than would have been the case without a survey. But, at the same time, to the extent that members of society with greater seniority took part, they were included in the decision-making process and potentially also bound by it. The procedure, therefore, optimized not only knowledge in the run-up to a decision, but also social backing or support for the decision reached. From a medieval perspective, this amounted to the constitutive interaction of advice and assistance, of consilium and auxilium.6 Premodern provincial parliaments, assemblies representing the estates of the realm, and council committees are all examples of institutions belonging to this tradition, which is also why an institution like the Spanish Council of the Indies cannot be analyzed simply as a kind of processor of information or brain pool for the king, but must rather be understood as a group of persons whose duties included presenting political interests and cultivating political obligations. The second basic form constituting knowledge in the service of sovereign rule is fiscal in nature and based substantially on writing. List-like registers of goods, animals, as well as of places and officials are among the earliest of all written recordings. They constitute, for example, eighty-five percent of the texts that have come down to us from ancient Mesopotamia. As different as each individual occasion for writing down these lists might have been, the fundamental principle remains the same: entities are to be counted and recorded after they pass a certain threshold. The original site here is a customs station or a city gate, in other words, a deliberately narrow passageway that facilitates control and taxation. For the Spanish colonial empire, what comes to mind here is the monopoly port of Seville and its Casa de la Contratación. To the extent that this kind of knowledge serves the purpose of taxing or regulating social acts (acta), documents (data) 5 Stagl, Curiosity, 17–46; Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 211. 6 There are proverbs about this in both medieval Latin (“qui dedit consilium, ferat et auxilium”) and Spanish (“Pues me dais el consejo, dadme el vencejo”), see Thesaurus proverbiorum medii aevi, vol. 9, 199.

6 

 Introduction

have a special function here. The written form is so decisive because it facilitates the objectification of decisions in a mediated way. It thus records beyond the moment and outside the minds of the participants. In this way it constitutes a medium-based reference which, in case of doubt, can be invoked to counter any memory or conjecture used by a concerned party in the matter at hand. It thereby underscores the fact-related aspect of decisions and is especially effective at countering suspicions of arbitrariness. Thirdly, it is important to mention forms of political curiosity. Curiosity is usually aimed at areas that evade the notice of rulers (owing to geographic distance, for example) yet must be regarded as politically relevant. Later, we will see what kinds of procedures were thought up in order to deal with this kind of information gap. In general, though, we can already say that in an expanding empire like that of Spain’s, information at the center never kept pace with the growth of the empire at the periphery. On the contrary: the share of what the ruler knew directly and personally kept shrinking, while the need to impart information kept growing. As a result, greater importance was attached to what was mediated (to “mediality”), that is, to procedures for communicating either through persons who intervened (officials, visitators, viceroys) or through media (expert reports, witness testimony, maps). These media promised, each in its own way, to make what was distant accessible, but they also produced a peculiar “mediatedness” that cut the ruler off from immediate knowledge about his empire. If only for this reason, one cannot assess these media solely under the rubric of “efficient transmission” or “objective information.” Rather, the media would have to be evaluated as a constitutive component of the ruling process. They are something that inserts itself in between the sovereign and his subjects, and in this way they determine the communicative and epistemic opportunities available to a ruler. The history of political curiosity is full of promises to provide the ruler with all-seeing powers, with a panoptic overview, and to place useful helpers, selfless advisers, and perfect media at his disposal. That it always turns out differently nonetheless – that the ruler and his thirst for knowledge can never be extricated from the structure of politics enveloping them – is extremely worthy of attention: in the course of this study, it will become clear that every initiative undertaken to acquire knowledge was recognized by contemporaries as an opportunity for bringing their own interests into play. The mere presence of so many mediators, these agents of sovereign curiosity, saw to it that the king was never supplied merely with information, but that this intelligence also came loaded with interests. It would therefore be methodologically misleading to declare these interests as a disruptive influence played off against a sphere of pure knowledge, countering something that – in the realm of the political – is extremely unlikely. The question of knowledge should rather be viewed in the context of political com-

Introduction 

 7

munication and social practice. Because of this broader context, we also need to include a wider field of actors: Efforts at describing the Spanish-American territory, for example, were not always initiated by the center. To some extent, it was the subjects themselves who took the initiative. For this reason a conscious decision was also made to forego focusing on some heroic thought or sustaining movement – like science or humanism. To be sure, certain techniques of the time, such as cosmography, are clearly projects of science and humanism. But this is, first of all, well-known and already well-researched.7 Secondly, to focus on these projects would bring into play a principal distinction that would inevitably marginalize other aspects: it therefore struck me as inappropriate to keep insisting that we must distinguish between the humanistic and nonhumanistic aspects of individual practices, projects, and persons, as if some of these contained something ideal and leading toward a higher goal while others harbored the countervailing forces of illiterateness and squalid everyday politics. This would bring us too close to the narrative of modernity, to its plot of goal attainment and its purifying attentiveness to the forces of resistance and the residues of yesteryear. Concerning the political power of this narrative I have no doubt; whereas I do have reservations about its suitability for scholarly analyses. We must really also bear in mind that our subject is “dirty” of necessity – or perhaps it is better to say that it is of a mixed nature, for we are dealing with political knowledge. And we are dealing with actors who only in exceptional cases see themselves wholly as scholars – and when they do, there is not much they are able to achieve. This has consequences for the descriptive model. In order to facilitate a better understanding of each specific situation and of the participating actors, and to integrate these into the descriptive narrative, an attempt will be made to reconstruct each one of the “communicative settings” and “epistemic settings.” The concept of the epistemic setting denotes the structure of conditions within which a specific person or office could “know something.” Analogously, a communicative setting designates the communicative structure of conditions facing the actors. Such a historical setting analysis places neither ideas, procedures, nor media at the start. It centers actors and describes the options these actors have for communicating, acting, or knowing. The media available to a person (or to an institution) thus represent only one part of the environment that must be taken into consideration; never do they constitute the entirety of this environment. The advantage of such an approach may therefore lie in the opportunity to discuss knowledge as a structure for opportunities to know. Whereas classic hermeneutics construes processes of understanding as a temporal sequence, an analysis 7 Portuondo, Secret Science.

8 

 Introduction

that invokes the concept of the setting has a different take on these interpretive processes: the historian using a setting analysis would be much more inclined to gauge actors’ opportunities for understanding as odds that are dependent on the actors’ social, institutional, and media-related vantage point, that is, to assess these chances spatially and circumstantially rather than temporally. This is not done in order to declare the personal foreknowledge of the actors as insignificant, but rather to obtain a better picture of the special conditions that make this knowledge up-to-date. That such an approach seems more appropriate especially when analyzing processes of court politics should be evident in the case of the young King Charles cited at the outset. His son, King Philip II, was later transfigured into a “great mind” into which all the knowledge of his empire was poured. But – quite independently of how intelligent or efficient the royal “mind” was – what can really be observed, reconstructed in concrete detail, and ultimately shown to be historically informative is the epistemic situation in which he found himself: the manifold ways in which the king was embedded in the structures of his court, the media-related and communicative opportunities and constraints facing this royal court. Much the same may be said about the Council of the Indies: it was the recipient of the entire official correspondence emanating from the Spanish-American territories. But its members also cultivated personal contacts by way of letters with friends and relatives in the New World, where a few of them had actually been themselves, and all of them also had meetings outside their offices with lobbyists for various interests, with claimants, plaintiffs, and defendants. Only when one has explained the network of relationships and communication opportunities within which an institution like the Council of the Indies operated, after one has clarified how people communicated there, can one approach the question of what one “knew” or “did not know” there. What must be included in the description of each specific epistemic setting, such as the setting for members of the Council of the Indies, are not only such things as the books, reports, maps, and globes at the disposal of the Council; also, and more importantly, the description needs to include the correspondence and conversations conducted there. The two settings frequently overlap; they yield a picture that can never be thought of as objective and is always in motion. Precisely for that reason, though, these settings recall how political knowledge is fundamentally fuzzy, mobile, and dependent on some particular constellation. In particular, by using the analysis of epistemic settings, we must try to describe the specific colonial character of knowledge as adequately as we possibly can; it is these settings, after all, that take into account the site and the environment of the relevant actors first and foremost. There are two classic and very stimulating studies on this subject, Tzvetan Todorov’s Conquête de l’Amérique and Stephen Greenblatt’s Marvelous Possessions. But these studies only appear to

Introduction 

 9

raise the question of how knowledge is determined by the vantage point of its site, since their chief interest lies in investigating texts about the encounter between indigenous and European epistemes. The actual site where things happen – for example, a seashore – serves merely as the stage (at best an empty one) on which the initial confrontation between cultures, a confrontation still untarnished by mutual preknowledge, may be presented. As a result, these and similar studies do not go beyond an elaboration of the difference in knowledge cultures between Europeans and indigenous peoples, at least not in the way that interests us here, which aims at the intricate connection between knowledge and the exercise of colonial rule.8 Even in instances where postcolonial motivations are deployed as methodological tools, the analysis frequently remains astonishingly blunt-edged. One could say: precisely because postcolonial research approaches are committed to unmasking imperialist power structures, they tend always to equate the production of knowledge about the colony with the generation of colonial power.9 Their achievement consists in having worked out how keeping records about the non-European “other” by the colonial nation, deploying lists of questions, and using other forms of written and cartographic appropriation (mapping) to capture the foreign land and its cultures, along with setting up information monopolies and archives in Europe corresponding to these objectives – how all these tasks constituted a hierarchical object-subject relationship between what was being described and who described it. These activities established a difference in knowledge, which persists to this day, between former motherlands and colonies, an epistemic Eurocentrism, so to speak. Thus (for example), a Filipino historian has to travel to Seville to do research on his own history, the prehistory of which he almost always has to read there – in the “Archive of the Indies” in Spain – through the lens of colonial documents. Yet all this is not enough to declare the Europeans’ desire for knowledge as an act of exercising power, to conflate “description” with “mastery” and enter it under the category of “epistemic power” (Gayatri Spivak).10 There is a great danger here that the historian will end up conserving a simplifying power-knowledge relationship and not even bother posing the question about how knowledge actually functioned in the hands of Europeans, since that question appears to be answered every time merely by alluding to “power through description.” To dissent against these postcolonial political interpretations is therefore by no means to register agreement with those interested in historical revisionism; instead, this study aims at investigating the power-knowledge relationship of 8 Todorov, Conquête; Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions. 9 Mignolo, Darker Side. 10 Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

10 

 Introduction

colonial rule. It is on heuristic grounds that our study must reject operating with prejudgments about the power of knowledge. For similar reasons, this study needs to reject yet another prejudgment. Since the Enlightenment, and in line with a trend that has been amplified even more by our current notions about the knowledge-based or information society, we are inclined to impute a high degree of functionality to the availability of knowledge. We are also inclined to see an aptitude for gaining access to knowledge as a yardstick measuring the effectiveness, rationality, and likelihood of success regarding both personal and social action. This attitude has also made its mark on historical accounts. It suggests rather forcefully that Spain’s systematic knowledge about the New World was accumulated in order to facilitate the home country’s exercise of power more effectively. Since evidence can be found in the sources for this view, as in the case of Juan de Ovando, it is easy to locate individual measures that can be quickly and persuasively fitted into a grand narrative about the rationalization of rule. But then why did so many of these measures that were undertaken fizzle out? Why can it almost never be shown that this accumulated knowledge really was employed, that political decisions were actually reached on the foundation laid by this body of knowledge? Was the idea available, but not yet the means? Was there a lack of technologies or media, or did the actors lack the proper mental dispositions, such as some kind of devotion to duty or scientific ethos? Such questions are understandable yet unsuited, on the whole, to adequately comprehending the logic employed by contemporaries. Adopting a kind of teleological “not yet” (or “not yet entirely”) stance, these questions suggest that the decisive function of knowledge really consisted in the streamlining or rationalization of sovereign rule, in achieving a link between information and decision-making. But what if Ovando was not really concerned about founding sovereign rule upon knowledge? What if he was only foregrounding this motive in order to cover up others? It is also conceivable that actors are pursuing several goals but that, under the rules of the prevailing discourse or the expectations of their office, they only articulate one goal while withholding others, and then carry along yet other goals in such a self-evident way that these other goals are neither consciously explicated nor concealed. Their aims were evident to contemporaries, yet in the sources they are barely visible. The only way to render this visible and describe it adequately is by working with a strong functionalist proviso. Research about knowledge should not, accordingly, be structured according to a distinction between “functioning” and “non-functioning” knowledge.11 And the main objective cannot be to determine 11 This is also something that distinguishes the present work from Bruno Latour’s models, which are helpful but an update of the functionalist approach. See Latour, “Centres.”

Introduction 

 11

whether the Council of the Indies was successful in forming a precise picture of America from afar that then put the Council in a position to make “correct” decisions. For in that case the modern historian would be acting on an assumption built into the central question guiding research to the effect that the collection, dispatching, stockpiling, or provisioning of knowledge was always oriented toward the single goal of streamlining decisions and thereby helping enhance the effectiveness of colonial rule. One would inevitably be reading a teleology of “rule by information” into the investigation, and one would constantly be forced to explain what it was that premodernity was still lacking before it could become truly “modern.” With regard to the subject we are exploring here, a far more adequate approach would be to proceed from the assumption that a plurality of interests and motives are involved, interests and motives that cannot always be clearly separated from each other even in the case of individual actors. Ovando, for example, designed his thoroughly modern program of using knowledge to prop up sovereign rule at the same time that he was a part of the clientele network headed by Cardinal Diego de Espinosa. He was, in other words, ostentatiously taking up the cause of rationalizing sovereign rule yet all the while, in the shadow of this very program, appointing Espinosa’s followers to the empire’s most important posts. To assert in retrospect that Ovando’s project failed because the goal of basing sovereign rule on information largely came to nothing would be to ignore how Ovando was also pursuing other goals that he certainly did attain. What makes the assertion of Ovando’s failure at this one goal very dubious methodologically is not so much what might be overlooked by neglecting his other goals – namely, that one will have missed the maneuvering involved in patronage politics. After all, something always gets left out of any historical account. Much more dubious is how this methodological oversight leads the historian to incorporate structural simplifications into his analytic design and narrative: it leads to the implication that people live in some kind of homologous relationship to their statements, and it leads to measuring life itself against a yardstick as under-complex and undifferentiated as people’s discourses. The sources, as a rule, facilitate this simplification, since the actors themselves are supplying us with rather slick narratives in order to emphasize their personal integrity, the objectivity of the way they conduct official business, and the transparency of their motives. Yet there is no good reason for us to accept these “tenders” at face value, for taking the discursive camouflage as the whole story, and for not at least attempting an analysis of a “reality” that is more complex (and frequently also more contradictory). This is only possible if one pays great attention to contemporary counterdiscourses and practices. The emphatically praxeological approach taken in this book is meant to prevent us from reconstructing the treatment of knowledge merely on the basis of the ideas and programs contemporaries made

12 

 Introduction

explicit while tacitly overlooking or marginalizing the conduct they actually practiced. Two issues still need to be addressed before the book can begin. These are the role of knowledge in state formation and the special nature of the Spanish case. Heretofore, astonishingly, there has not been much description of the connection between knowledge and state formation. Scholarly research is often content with asserting that knowledge in the service of sovereign rule was accumulated, but without having to show in detail how and whether the knowledge that was gathered found its way into processes of political-administrative decision-making. On the whole, these kinds of observations tend to see the utility of knowledge at the site where the allocation of knowledge occurs; as a rule, that place is central headquarters. For this reason, these approaches converge with other interpretations coming out of research on state formation. These interpretations, too, view the monopolization of resources, along with the concentration of these resources at the court of the sovereign prince, as an essential indicator of the degree to which “stateness” has been developed.12 Bacon’s suggestion that “scientia potestas est”13 makes this model, according to which power grows with the sum of knowledge, very plausible. The heuristic damage inflicted, however, is great, for the model obstructs our view of how knowledge can be dysfunctional or how power occasionally becomes disentangled from knowledge for good reason – for example, in order to facilitate decisions, to validate new arrangements, or to devalue old ones. And even more: If knowledge is something that the premodern territorial sovereign prince was starting to concentrate in the same way that he was consolidating, for example, money, art, or police and military power, then the decisive questions remains – What did he do with this concentrated knowledge? Only with the emergence of statistics and “bio-political” projects in the eighteenth century does knowledge come to be understood as a political steering mechanism of central importance to the state. Everything prior to that seems like mere protostatistics, like collecting data that nobody actually knew what to do with in any significant way.14 For that very reason, our study will have to go beyond the point where it is merely asserted that knowledge was drawn toward the royal court. We must ask about its concrete application. On the whole, the image that governs those research agendas that invoke processes of allocating and concentrating knowledge in order to argue their case is 12 An exception is Higgs, Information State, 28–63. 13 Bacon, “Meditationes Sacrae,” fol. 13v. 14 Given, Inquisition, 34; Casey, Early Modern Spain, 20; Reynié, “Le regard”; Bödeker, “Origins.”

Introduction 

 13

an image based on the opposition of center to periphery. This is an image that tempts us with a seductively persuasive interpretation of the relationship between power and knowledge. Yet this alluring picture has been called into question by a number of more recent developments and results from scholarly research. These include, in addition to the debate about the very concept of absolutism, analyses of communications and patronage networks, the concept of local knowledge derived from ethnological research, and the bottom-up interpretations of state formation that grew out of research on communalism.15 In each one of these areas, it has been demonstrated that processes of political centralization did not simply coincide with a kind of progressive increase in power at the center. These processes could also result in an expansion of the scope for local action, that is, in an enlargement of “on-site sovereignty,” especially since control from a distance always remained (structurally) indirect, incomplete, inefficient, and slow. To put the point more abstractly: information arriving via the periphery does not simply increase knowledge at the center; that information also shapes this knowledge, and not infrequently in the interest of the periphery, which is able to help shape what the center sees and does not see. With the aid of “centralization” as a concept, it is certainly possible for the historian to identify a political intention and designate certain measures, but not to provide an adequate description of the effects engendered by this process, effects that sometimes work in the opposite direction. What I wish to challenge here, in principle, is the notion that “power” and “knowledge” are, as it were, transportable, measurable, and stackable objects that, following the logic of a zero-sum game, are taken away from one site and reassembled at another.16 For this reason, to be sure, the court will be characterized in this work as the “center” and the colony as the “periphery” – contemporaries themselves worked with the argument of closeness or distance to the court. Yet we also draw the greatest attention to dynamics of knowledge that are not revealed by way of this distinction. But wherein lies the special relevance of the Spanish case? A few researchers involved in recent scholarship have started to view Spain as a kind of motherland for the systematic connection between sovereign rule and knowledge.17 The background to their (in some cases almost euphoric) assessments18 is constituted by certain special features of Spain, such as its long-established tradition of promoting science and scholarship at court, its paper-based administration, 15 Holenstein, “Introduction.” 16 Linz, “Warehouse Theory.” 17 Cañizares-Esguerra, “Iberian Science;” Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature; Vericat, “Organizatoriedad.” 18 Cañizares-Esguerra, “Iberian Science,” 117.

14 

 Introduction

and archiving. These features are usually associated with the names James I of Aragon (1239–1276) and Alfonso the Wise of Castile (1252–1284).19 Add to this a number of historians’ admiration for a series of political measures relating to the system of rule undertaken after the union of Castile and Aragon into a single sovereign territory and the completion of the Reconquista in 1492. These measures were influenced by Spanish humanists, though they were characterized above all by a systematic approach to procedures and organization. Spain thus developed a practical knowledge and empirical-related culture with close ties to the court and political duties. In Spain one can also see how, relatively early, some royal institutions and procedures were oriented around knowledge. Thus, it was under Emperor Charles V (King Charles I of Spain) that the very first centralized state archive was founded.20 Census surveys were also undertaken early on. The connection between empirical knowledge and royal rule in Spain was certainly stimulated by contact with Arabic and Jewish scholarly traditions as well as by the country’s early expansion, first in the Western Mediterranean and then in the Atlantic. Undoubtedly, both of these expansions entailed challenges that shaped the knowledge culture both of Spain and of its colonial empire.21 While the significance of the Spanish expansion for Europe’s empirical knowledge culture has already been acknowledged by scholarship, it has not yet found an unequivocal place in the general narrative about the history of knowledge. Here the dominant note, even in histories of science and knowledge as methodologically innovative as the work of Steven Shapin and Peter Dear, is to follow the tradition that omits or marginalizes Spain. By now the prevailing interpretations are those that declare Spain a basket case of Mediterranean-Catholic or superstitious backwardness and intellectual isolation. While these interpretations no longer consign Spain directly to this retrograde category, they do continue to demarcate the boundaries of scholarly attention. The landmarks are well-known: expulsion of the Jewish (1492), and later also of the Moorish (1609) population, prohibition against study abroad (1559), intensive censorship of books, attempts to shield commerce and trade against foreigners, the Inquisition, and the Counterreformation. To this is added the usual tableau of national stereotypes, in which Spaniards are accused of a certain ponderousness and, in part, even an inclination to superstition. The way contemporaries perceived the Spanish empire could not have been more different. We get a sense of this merely by taking a look at a picture that has become an icon of the Scientific Revolution, the title engraving of Francis Bacon’s 19 Burns, Society. 20 On Simancas, see: Grebe, Akten. 21 Goodman, Power; Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature.

Introduction 

 15

Instauratio Magna from 1620. The picture has been interpreted many times, yet the discussion about its imagery has frequently neglected what is most obvious about it: the picture refers quite clearly to Spain’s global empire.

Figure 1: Frontispiece of Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna (London 1620)

Figure 2: Frontispiece of Andrés García de Céspedes’ Regimiento de navegación (Madrid 1606)

Bacon, who had the inhabitants of his utopian New Atlantis speaking Spanish, was using the Pillars of Hercules here to picture elements of the Castilian coat of arms. To be sure, in the Castilian coat of arms itself the ship was typically missing. Yet in Spain, even earlier than this, one encounters pictures combining a ship with pillars or columns, as in the title page of a seafaring manual by the Spanish cosmographer Andrés García de Céspedes from 1606, which was probably the model for Bacon’s title motif.22 The Council of the Indies, too, illustrated its publications with the coat of arms of the king, and there, too, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the ship was repeatedly placed between the pillars of

22 Pimentel, “Iberian Vision,” 24; Cañizares-Esguerra, “Iberian Science,” 89–90.

the royal coat of arms. Bacon’s combination of ship and pillars is thus no abstract metaphor of empirical knowledge. It is a symbol of the Spanish empire.

Figure 3: Frontispiece, detail, Ordenanzas del consejo real de las Indias (Madrid 1636)

Let us follow the lead of Bacon’s picture and pose the question about the relationship between empirical information and imperial rule in the case of Spain.

I The king – all-seeing and blind The main part of this book concerns political institutions and the way political institutions of rule dealt practically with knowledge. But first it is important to clarify how the relationship between knowledge and power would appear if seen through the lens of the history of discourses. Juan de Ovando’s call for entera noticia showed that contemporaries had ideas about “complete cognizance.” But did this result in the aspiration that a ruler must base his decisions on knowledge? The idea of a linkage between knowledge and rule, which also shapes our understanding of politics today, was already starting to show up in pictures and texts during the early modern era. Yet it was not clearly delineated. Initially the notion was only present as a composite of very different expectations, postulates, and practices. In reconstructing this past, therefore, we should not rush to explain the idea – in the wake of modern concepts of rationality, so to speak – as a unified whole. In the following chapter, therefore, these fragmentary histories about the relationship between power and knowledge are also narrated separately, especially because this is a good way to become better acquainted with the different parts of an overall context that is highly complex, so that later we may refer back to these parts. Even under Charles V one repeatedly encounters the formulation that the ruler has issued an order “because he is informed.” It was repeatedly attributed to his son, Philip II, that he knew everything, in spite of the fact that his secluded lifestyle made him practically invisible to his contemporaries. Let us begin with this puzzle.

1 The spider in the web: Philip II and the Escorial We see Philip II standing before us with a severe gaze, and clad in black court attire. The sources describe him as taciturn and unsociable, which was interpreted either as political cleverness or personal insecurity. His reserved appearance contributed to the name given him by his contemporaries, el prudente, construed not only as “the clever one” and “the cautious one,” but also as “the hesitant one.”1 Yet the real fascination with Philip derives from the tension between his pronounced, almost monkish religiosity and that immense study of documents that earned him the nickname “paper king” (rey papelero). In March 1571 alone, the king is said to have personally handled more than 1,250 petitions. Between 1 Kagan characterizes him as a rey recatado (cautious, shy king), see Kagan, Rey; on the concept of prudentia, see Fernández Albaladejo, “Espejo.”

18 

 I The king – all-seeing and blind

August 1583 and December 1584 the number exceeded around 16,000. On March 30, 1576 he told his secretary Mateo Vázquez that he could not summon him today, since he had more than approximately four hundred signatures to transact. In April he was seized by doubt: 100,000 papers were waiting for him. He was unable to liberate himself from “these devils, my papers” even though he, as an Italian envoy noted, was constantly reading and writing, even when he sat in his carriage. Starting in the 1580s, he wore a reading glass and used a stamp that replaced his signature (yo, el Rey).2 He nonetheless regarded work that involved reading and writing as the lesser evil, for when oral presentations were made the king was unable to notice details. He then also lacked the time necessary to ponder what the correct answer should be. Finally, both procedures became too much for him: in April he told his secretary he had so many papers that he would never get around to reading them if he had to start receiving audiences. For this he needed time as well as peace and quiet, and when it came to audiences he had neither the one nor the other. Studying documents might have been turning into something even more important for an empire that was expanding enormously. But with his excessive attention to paper and renunciation of the world, Philip II became a figure who cannot easily be fit into the narrative of administrative rationalization. He presents instead a figure who combines a relatively modern method of governing with a pronounced personal religiosity and a sense of divine providence. Michael de Ferdinandy has pointedly expressed this contradiction by characterizing Philip II as a “Catholic Puritan.”3 As Philip’s biographers do not tire of emphasizing, one cannot do justice to the complex personality of the king if one only stresses his ascetic side; Philip was also a friend of the hunt, took delight in gardens, plants, and especially extra-marital escapades. He was by no means merely “lonely and anxious, busy as a bee and weary,” as the Protestant historian Erich Marcks wrote in 1893, who went on to deny him any “truly creative historical power.”4 There are also many features of his outward appearance that are not really suitable to be invoked as clues to the king’s specific character traits. Thus, for example, the black court attire goes back to a Burgundian fashion that came to Spain as early as Charles V. The comparatively withdrawn, concealed life of the king is also related to a specifically Spanish interpretation of the court etiquette introduced from Burgundy in 1548.5 But our 2 Riba García, Correspondencia, 36; Parker, Grand Strategy, 21, 28–29, and 44; Gómez Gómez, Forma, 174. 3 Riba García, Correspondencia, 394–395; Ferdinandy, Philipp II., 58. 4 Kamen, Philip, 178–210; Rodríguez-Salgado, “Court,” 216–219; Alonso-Fernández, “Breve autopsia psiquiátrica”; Marcks, “Philipp II.,” 591. 5 Feros, “Twin Souls,” 34–35; Rodríguez-Salgado, “Court,” 240–241.



1 The spider in the web: Philip II and the Escorial 

 19

subject here, in any event, is not a balanced biographical portrait of Philip; we are concerned, instead, with delineating an interpretive tradition that has elevated Philip II to a prototype of early Absolutist centralism and bureaucratism. These traditions portray Philip II as a downright anti-Baroque “master of his feelings” (L. Pfandl) and choreograph him to appear on a dark stage of renunciation: in the El Escorial. This monastic palace, characterized by Michael de Ferdinandy as the “large, stone-embodied allegory of Philip’s essence,” then becomes the place at which Spain’s geographic expansion can be imagined at the same time that we see the edifice as a site of retreat, of concentration.6 It is a place of an alarming loneliness of power. For while the kings at the courts of Europe were surrounded by the higher nobility, with advisors and diplomats, mistresses and servants in the social center of concentrated power, the El Escorial was conceived more as a place of withdrawal from the world and society. This entails (and this is what matters here) an alternative communicative setting in which the king, although he still remains the highest decision-maker, nonetheless could only be reached via a few channels involving written correspondence, personal secretaries, and councilors issuing reports. It is worth noting that an intensification of power and knowledge is imputed to this setting: the image of the king who withdraws to a monastic palace in order to guide the fortunes of his world empire from out of this cloistered environment may be historically erroneous, perhaps because Philip II was frequently to be found in other places, such as hunting lodges and summer residences, and because the El Escorial was not as deserted as imagined. Yet the image had contemporary roots and a lasting impact. It places the king under suspicion of having been one of the first European rulers to govern from out of a kind of “centre of calculation” (Bruno Latour). In a poem from 1580 we read this about Philip II: “And he is like the silkworm who spins a web that he can no longer escape.”7 Even shortly after Philips’ death, this metaphoric imagery entered into the biography of the king and was thus elevated into a characteristic feature of his governing style.8 Luis Cabrera de Córdoba described how Philip II, from out of his royal residence, “moves the world by means of papers” and how he “knew [all] his provinces, cities, villages, mountains, rivers, … that which he never actually set foot on was represented for him by painting.”9

6 Pfandl, Philipp II, 537; Ferdinandy, Philipp II., 147; also Schaub, France, 86–87. 7 CODOIN–E, vol. 7, 275. 8 Feros, Twin Souls. 9 Cabrera de Córdoba, Historia, vol. 1, 368; Cabrera de Córdoba, Filipe Segundo, 5.

20 

 I The king – all-seeing and blind

The image of a motionless but far-reaching power emerges even more clearly in accounts by the French chronicler Pierre Matthieu and by Lorenzo Vander Hammen (1632), who follows Matthieu on this score: He [Philip II] shut himself in at Madrid and in the Escorial, his headquarters, from which he, with admirable foresight and clarity, drew the lines of his rule into the periphery of his enormous kingdom, determined never more to leave and observe the waves and storms of the earth from there. His body was only active at one place, but the activity of his soul spread and stretched out across both continents and created with strokes of the pen as much as all his ancestors did with the point of their sword.10

When Carl Justi, the art historian, interpreted the El Escorial in the nineteenth century, he fell back on the image of world domination exercised from the refuge of the monastic cell. Justi discussed how the will of Philip II, “from out of a cell, with a quill and gold, sets in motion legions of spirits and bodies, holds a world captive in his net.”11 But it took Leopold von Ranke to elevate this into a proper model of rule: drawing on the reports of the Venetian ambassador, Ranke combines certain characteristics of Philip – seriousness, diligence, bureaucratism – in order to create a modernizing image of his governing style that recalls enlightened Absolutism avant la lettre: But we perceive how the business of his state was set up so that all the affairs of the wide-ranging empire were collected at his table … From out of here, occasionally supported by a submissive secretary, frequently in complete isolation, he governed the world that was subservient to him, and he also held the rest in a kind of supervision; from out of here he set in motion the secret gears of a good portion of the affairs [of state]. In this he was completely indefatigable.12

Ranke himself was fascinated by the model of an immobilized center of rule in which the ruler compensates for his lack of spatial movement by more intense engagement with the written form: his Philip “sat and read.” Fernand Braudel, by way of comparison, assessed this lack of movement on the part of Philip in more pragmatic terms, as the result of political circumstances. But, in a formulation using image-rich language, he discussed how Philip’s opponents saw him “as a spider, so to speak, motionless in the midst of his net.” In this way the king became a “figure énigmatique” whose very seclusion justifies his power.13 We owe 10 Vander Hammen y León, Don Filipe, fol. 129b. 11 Justi, Miscellaneen, 29. 12 Ranke, Fürsten, 118–119. 13 Ranke, Osmanen, 150; Braudel, Méditerranée, 523. On the French tradition of portraying Philip: Schaub, France, 56–66.



1 The spider in the web: Philip II and the Escorial 

 21

this tiny linguistic shift, from silkworm to spider, to the propaganda of Protestant writers from the seventeenth century. Braudel uses the metaphoric imagery of the spider in the net because he is interested in how structures of communication are built up and great distances overcome. Ranke places greater stress on the tension resulting from the qualities of this “motionless mover”14 who is lonely, all-seeing, and powerful. He described him as someone who lived “in complete isolation, and yet, as it were, personally acquainted with the entire world.” He was “in an almost motionless repose, yet at the same time the originator of movements that encompassed the world.”15 This seemed possible only on the basis of an insatiable thirst for knowledge: He wanted to know everything about his country. He saw to it that a general set of statistics on Spain was made available for his use … But he also wanted to know the individuals. In every parish he had his own correspondents who reported to him on how the clerics, the owners of benefices, were behaving. At the universities he always had a prelate who informed him about how well-versed in the sciences the members of the colleges were. He also knew those who applied for an office before they could introduce themselves, usually in person; he knew about their nature and about their idiosyncrasies.16

In this depiction, Ranke was relying on the Venetian emissary Leonardo Donato, who in 1573 had already described Philip II as an omniscient, all-seeing, and perpetually active king: He has all of his affairs in view and knows everything … He works with such diligence, without taking a rest, so that there is no official in the world who is as diligent as he also is, who stays in his office room as much as His Majesty … His ministers say that he is so intelligent, that there is nothing that he does not know and does not see.17

The image invented by contemporaries and sharpened by Ranke – of a ruling figure oscillating between expansion and retreat, world power and isolation, enthusiasm for work and the burden of conscience – continues to fascinate us even today. Already inherent in this image is the idea of a centralistic management of knowledge. But also built into this image of managing information is the kernel of its failure, since it is a system that depends on all the information and decisions used to run a world empire flowing through the head of the king. The history of Philip II, at least since Ranke, is therefore accompanied by reflection on the functionality of centralistic decision-making structures and the project of 14 On Philip’s immobilité, see Schaub, France, 246–247. 15 Ranke, Osmanen, 148–149. 16 Ranke, Fürsten, 118–119. 17 Firpo, Relazioni, vol. 8, 463–464.

22 

 I The king – all-seeing and blind

“complete cognizance.” Philip’s rule becomes emblematic for a constellation typically characterized as modern: In this constellation, on the one hand, decisions are based on knowledge of the world that is increasingly conveyed by media. On the other hand, a status of complete cognizance is idealized and begins to take hold as a precondition for making rational decisions. Both images (the importance of media and the status of complete cognizance) may be found in the contemporary discourse of the time. But where do they come from?

2 The center’s eyes and ears: cognition and communication In many early modern treatises on the art of government, it is recommended that the ruler have knowledge at his command. The kind of knowledge these theories have in mind, however, is simultaneously determined and restricted by the tasks of ruling.18 It includes above all the ability to distinguish between the correct and the erroneous, to surround oneself with the right advisors, exercise justice, and pursue forward-thinking policies. It does not involve acquiring as much knowledge as possible, in the sense of accumulating empirical information. Rather, it has to do with an integral concept of education and prudence, with normative models, and with experience, with everything that can lead to a reliable and correct decision. Accordingly, in the Christian medieval tradition that extends well into the modern era, wisdom (sapientia) and prudence (prudentia) are praised.19 Since Augustine, omniscience has been discussed as a divine attribute, but not one expected of kings. Also, as a rule, the “mirror-for-princes” literature just repeats the generalization that the prince is supposed to possess knowledge. Usually what they mean by this is genealogical and geographical knowledge that shapes the framework for princely dealings. In the sixteenth century, increasingly, this also comes to mean a summary knowledge of other states, their customs, laws, and peoples.20 What is desired, in addition, is a high degree of personal experience of the kind that may be acquired through travel, but also, for example, through hunting expeditions or riding out across the country. But this experience and experiential assuredness can also be acquired via the quest for adventures, opportunities to prove one’s mettle, and combat, that is, by way of a chivalrous ideal. Against this background it proved easy for French propaganda to mock Philip II as a “stay-at-home king” (roi casanier).21 18 Cicero, e.g., De re publica, V, 3. 19 With respect to Spain: Mínguez, “Rey.” 20 Viroli, Politics, 243; for Spain, see Aguilar-Adan, “L’institution.” 21 Bouza Álvarez, “Majestad,” 49



2 The center’s eyes and ears: cognition and communication 

 23

The idealization of the omniscient king is therefore not simply a fruit of the reception of classical texts or of the innovations made by individual theorists. On the contrary: this idealization is almost nowhere to be found in the premodern literature about the theory of statecraft and rule, which may be explained by that literature’s interest in a normative concept of rule. Even for Machiavelli the amount of reflection he devotes to this subject is small, since for him, after all, the art of government is all about extracting rules applicable to typical decision-making situations, not about the practical instruments of everyday rule. If, however, we turn to contemporary emblems, instructions, and less well-known treatises, we get a completely different picture. In these symbols and writings, omniscient administrators and even omniscient kings are indeed idealized, and not only in Spain, but also (for example) in France, where this is quite prominent. In the so-called Mémoirés of Louis XIV, a collection of texts from the 1660s meant to instruct the Dauphin, Louis XIV styles himself as a center for processing political information: [I] want to be informed about everything, to hear the pleas and appeals of my lowliest subjects, the number of my troops, as well as the condition of my appointments, to negotiate promptly with foreign ministers, receive dispatches, formulate one part of the replies, and prepare for my secretaries material for the other part.22

The text swells into metaphorical imagery about total overview, about pervading the world, human beings, and their interests. Louis XIV assures his son and successor that this way of conducting the affairs of state is not only necessary but even pleasant. It is the job of the king “to know absolutely everything,” “to keep open eyes on the entire world,” to know all the news and secrets of all countries and courts, and “to be informed [about an] infinite number of things of which one thinks that we do know them.” What also matters here is “to discover the most remote views of our own courtiers, their darkest interests.”23 Among the great mistakes that kings had made in the past, in Louis’ view, it would be hard to find one that was not attributable to being poorly informed (être mal informé). He himself would check, after a particular matter had been closed, whether there had been some concealed circumstance that might have led him, had he known about it, to take some other course of action. Being informed about everything, être informé de tout, thus becomes a condition of political rationality. How this knowledge might be acquired, to be sure, is not otherwise specified. There is a tendency among historians, therefore, to ascribe any regular program 22 Louis XIV, Mémoires, vol. 2, 392–393. 23 Louis XIV, Mémoires, vol. 2, 95–96 and 428–249.

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 I The king – all-seeing and blind

of information-gathering – such as the stockpiling of information in archives, libraries, and office rooms, or even by seeking information from correspondents – to Jean-Baptiste Colbert. But there is no need to go into the details of the French case here.24 For the sake of comparison, let us take a look at a Spanish speculum principum (mirror for princes), the Príncipe perfecto y ministros avisados. It was written by the Jesuit Andrés Mendo and was published, shortly before Louis’ Mémoires, first in Salamanca (1657) and then in Lyon (1662). Mendo’s work is seldom acknowledged in its own right, since it is a kind of plagiaristic compilation that took over portions of pictures and text from the emblem collection of Juan de Solórzano Pereira. But Mendo also wrote some passages himself, altered the combination of text and pictures, and thus created a particularly impressive picture of the perfect prince as an outstanding authority in charge of perception and judgment: The prince must be all eyes, sleepless [watching] over his subjects. Nothing dare escape his view, like the royal eagle who glimpses the fish in the depths of the water from way on high.25

While prudentia remains the highest virtue for a ruler, according to Mendo, it is now portrayed as dependent on the senses. Prudence is the watchful scout in the head, like a watchtower, paying attention to everything that happens on the enemy field of the vices. It steals a march on their subterfuges, warns about risks, sounds the alarm against dangers … Prudence consists of eyes, and without it the prince cannot take a step if he does not wish to go blind. Whoever rules must be an Argus, so that nothing is concealed from him ... They call the sun oculus mundi because it takes note of everything with its rays. The prince is the sun, and when he, like our Spanish king, embraces the four parts of the world, he must be the OCULUS MUNDI. It sees everything with the eye of recognition.26

With Mendo one discerns an exaggerated attentiveness, oscillating between the empirical and the spiritual, which is strongly tied to his Jesuit background and builds on doctrines of moral theology. It is not a political theory, yet it is a conception of all-seeing attentiveness that radiates political ideals. Tracing clear lineages in intellectual history here is not always easy, yet we can see these kinds of ideals gradually making their way into the rhetoric of rule between the High Middle Ages and the early modern era. In order to reconstruct this, we need to 24 King, Science; Soll, Information Master; on the king who knows all his subjects, see the discussion of François Fénelon in Senellart, Arts, 56. 25 Mendo, Principe, 48–49. 26 Mendo, Principe, 49–50.



2 The center’s eyes and ears: cognition and communication 

 25

run through four little stories that demonstrate, independently of each other, how the connection between knowledge and rule changed. These stories remind us that we are not dealing with a phenomenon where all the parts fit together. On the contrary: the idea of linking knowledge and decision-making first took shape in quite different fields. Individual stories are necessary in particular because Michel Foucault’s suggestive theses have contributed to the way we now think about relations of power to knowledge as something that develops in a tradition that is comparatively linear, leading from the Eye of God to Orwell’s Big Brother. Foucault himself, who actually strove to articulate a complex concept of power, cannot be accused of anything here, apart from breathing life into two ideas that have unduly dominated the way we interpret relations between power and knowledge. For one there is the image of the shepherd, and for the other there is that of the focal gaze, of panoptic surveillance, manifested most arrestingly in Jeremy Bentham’s plans for star-shaped prison buildings with central watchtowers. The shepherd is the model for pastoral rule, for a type of rule that Foucault described as a legacy of Egyptian-Hebraic traditions that ensconced themselves in European ideas about ruling by way of late Roman Christianity. According to Foucault, what is decisive about pastoral rule is the shepherd’s dual obligation to exercise care and watch over both the herd as a whole and each individual sheep. This obligation shaped the European understanding of rulership because it linked rule with a responsibility that suggests permanent watchfulness, immediate love and care, but also implies the necessity of a purging, disciplining, or correcting hold on the individual.27 Pastoral rule is more than a felicitous metaphor used by Foucault. It can be cited almost literally in the preambles (arengae) of late medieval papal charters. In these preambles there is an unequivocal connection drawn between the apostolic pastoral office and a universal monitoring task: “Like the tirelessly watchful shepherd, the Bishop of Rome directs his senses toward the herd entrusted to him,” it says, for example, in one arenga from 1430.28 In the background here we find argumentations from moral theology, especially of the kind shaped by Thomas Aquinas and passed on by Late Scholasticism. In these arguments, the question of responsibility for an action that is central to the concept of sinfulness becomes embedded in a broad concept of attentio and conscientia. This moral-theological stance calls for a kind of permanent attentiveness, a caring, reflective raising of awareness about one’s own deeds, a consciousness-raising that prevents false, sinful actions from even happening in the first place. In this way, ignorance (ignorantia) loses its exculpatory power, since it becomes apparent that there was a lack of watchful attentiveness 27 Foucault, Surveiller; Foucault, Eye; Foucault, Sécurité, 119–193. 28 Fink, “Arengen,” 210.

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 I The king – all-seeing and blind

in advance, so that ignorance as a sin of omission was paving the way for wrong conduct. This moral-theological duty of attentiveness applies even more strictly to the ruler. He has a duty of care toward all those placed under his trust, which is grounded in conscience and meant to be achieved through vigilance (custodia).29 The emphasis on the duties relating to this conception of watchfulness entered into the Spanish discourse on rulership via Late Scholasticism.30 Yet, as we shall soon see in the four little stories about the link between knowledge and rule, we would fall short of providing an explanation if we attributed this connection solely to the pastoral figure or to arguments about moral theology. The tie-in is always, in a more comprehensive sense, political: in all four cases it will become apparent that the phenomenon of observation by rulers cannot be separated from the phenomenon of political communication. And it will be seen that the king’s knowledge was not understood merely in instrumental terms, as a means toward asserting royal interests, but rather as a precondition for just rule. There were many people, however, who took part in communicating with the king, and almost all claimed to be interested in just rule. It is this inclusion of so many participants in royal communication that crops up everywhere in contemporary ideas about the link between knowledge and rule.

3 The idea and imagery of the watchful ruler In Spain, political language was influenced strongly by the legal texts of Alfonso the Wise of Castile. In these writings the court is described as a site of communicative exchange at which the king “speaks with people.”31 The metaphoric imagery of the Spanish state thus sees the king as the “head” in what is still a traditionally organological model, as the site in which all the body’s functions converge. But this imagery already has a tendency to elevate the king into an authority of constant communication and total awareness: this culminates in the emblematics of Solórzano Pereira and the commentaries of Andrés Mendo. Solórzano Pereira underscored his call for the office of the king to be understood as an office of the head (officium regis officium capitis) by introducing an image of the king’s head without its body. Mendo comments on this passage by writing: “The office of the

29 Moos, “Attentio,” 282–296. 30 Furió Ceriol, Concejo, 44; Nieto Soria, Fundamentos, 241. 31 Siete Partidas, Part. II, tít. 9, ley 29.



3 The idea and imagery of the watchful ruler 

 27

king is that of the head … He feels for all, sees, touches, tastes, feels pain and joy as the watchful head of his imperial body.”32 Wherever this motif of the “king as head” comes up, a frequent issue for discussion is the limitations on the natural capacity of the head to perceive and communicate: there is little the head can accomplish on its own; it is dependent on an environment of institutions and helpers to assist it. Aristotle is usually cited on this point, since he objected to monarchy on the grounds that “it is already the practice of kings to make to themselves many eyes and ears and hands and feet,” in that “they make colleagues of those who are the friends of themselves and their governments.” Yet medieval proverbs could also be adduced, like the one asserting that “great kings have many eyes and ears.”33

Figure 4: Solórzano Pereira, Emblemata centum, Emblem XIII (1653)

The all-seeing ruler was only seldom portrayed figuratively, and then usually by resorting to the motif of the divine eye or the hundred-eyed Argus. For England we may refer to the dress adorned with eyes, ears, and mouths that Elizabeth I is wearing in the so-called Rainbow Portrait. For Spain we may highlight Solórzano’s depiction of a prince who is wearing a cloak decorated with eyes and hands, as well as the title cover of Marcos Salmerón’s El príncipe escondido (1648). In the tradition of the deus absconditus motif, it shows a sun, half concealed by 32 Mendo, Principe, 48; with regard to Solórzano Pereira, Emblemas, Emblem XIII; also on this point, see Ayala, Ideas, 196. On organological ideas, see Guevara, Relox, 282–283. 33 Aristotle, Politics (Book 3, Ch. 16, 30); Thesaurus proverbiorum medii aevi, vol. 9, 38.

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clouds, that represents the “hidden” prince. Its rays permeate the picture down to its margins.34 In the “scepter with eyes,” finally, ruling and seeing are fused in a pictorial metaphor. Yet in this motif it is not the instrumental side of the all-seeing ruler that is dominant, but rather the parallel to divine providence.35 If one is looking for an office that unites these features of the all-seeing with protective foresight and rule, then what first comes to mind is the office of a bishop in the medieval Church. The bishop is, fully in line with Foucault’s pastoral model of rule, the shepherd who visits with the believers entrusted to him and shields them with a continuously watchful eye from external enemies, something to which the very etymology of episcopus refers. The word stands for one who “visits,” “looks toward,” “investigates.” The bishops who issued invitations to the Eighth Council of Toledo at the end of the seventh century explicitly ascribed to themselves the “Offices of the Eyes” (officia occulorum).36 Secondly, as a worldly profession, one would have to mention that of the physician. As early as Hippocrates, making precise observations and keeping written records was regarded as a precondition for successful healing. The step from empirical practice to authoritarian thirst for knowledge has not yet been taken within this Hippocratic tradition. But the step is suggested by the common root of the medical and priestly profession, a shared source that was ever-present in the Middle Ages by way of the Church Fathers. In the thirteenth century we find passages in which the appearance of a clerical visitor is likened to medical observance and healing.37 From Scholasticism through the early modern era, we find the image of the physician as a source of political metaphors. The image supplies a variation on the pastoral logic and has a legitimating effect because it dresses political observation and intervention in gestures of “medical care.” Thirdly, the office of the judge needs to be cited, an office that not only has to be impartial but must also possess comprehensive knowledge of a crime’s circumstances; at least, this was a requirement for the judge’s office ever since proof of the truth was upgraded as a criterion for the so-called inquisitorial procedure, about which more will be said shortly. This upgrading led to legal requirements like those demanded by the Spanish jurist Antonio Gómez, who in 1572 idealized a “perfecta cognitio facti, vel delicti per modos a iure diffinitos.”38 34 Pye, Regal Phantasm, 68; Solórzano Pereira, Emblemas, 172; Flor, “Cetro,” 76. 35 Arias Montano, Biblia, Frontispiece; Saavedra Fajardo, Idea, picture 60, 439. On the judges’ or shepherds’ staffs with eyes: Albertinus, Emblemata, 28; Flor, “Cetro,” 57–86. 36 Senellart, Arts, 94–95; on panoptical metaphors, see Moos, “Attentio,” 300. 37 Oberste, “Normierung,” 332. 38 Cited by Tomás y Valiente, Derecho penal, 172.



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The image of the perfectly informed judge points to the way toward a paradox that is fundamental for how objectivity has been construed in modernity: in order to be impartial, the judge as a person must have as little worldly contact as possible with the parties to adjudication, their families, and their friends. On professional grounds he has to maintain social distance. But then how can he obtain the best possible knowledge about the circumstances of the crime? The answer lies in the methods used to prepare information by third parties: investigating judges, interrogations of witnesses, but above all the transcripts of witness testimony become the basis for judicial knowledge. They are the “media” that bridge the hiatus between social detachment and intimate knowledge of details and thus are meant to guarantee the legitimacy of adjudication. Images and metaphors about shepherds, bishops, physicians, and judges committed to observation were, therefore, making the rounds. It stands to reason, though this is by no means conclusive, that these symbols had an impact on the shaping and self-representation of political or administrative decisions. We need to tighten the “ring” and see at what points these notions about the all-seeing were tied concretely with the exercise of rule. To this end we shall now show in which areas the ruler was confronted with the notion that he must be a permanent, all-penetrating observer.

4 Observation and punishment: The inquisitorial legal culture It is not self-evident that law is based on empirical observations. Its peacemaking function can also be rendered when the conflict between contesting parties is ended by a verdict and whatever has been experienced as injustice is regarded as having been atoned for. The contradictory structure of a dispute corresponds to the binary procedures for obtaining legal rulings in medieval times, such as the duel or the ordeal (but also to procedures favored even today, like the court settlement, arbitration, or plea bargaining). These procedures are optimized for conflict resolution, not for clarification of background details. In such cases empirical observations have at best a subsidiary function. But when and in what fields of law was the empirical approach upgraded? The new inquisitorial procedure (processus per inquisitionem) that was established at the beginning of the thirteenth century should not be confused with the institutions engaged in religious persecution (the medieval-Papal Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Roman Inquisition). But the legal procedure per inquisitionem also does not have a good reputation. Nineteenth-century criminal law reformers characterized it as a legal perversion so that they could introduce new trial procedures more quickly. And they emphasized how much the inqui-

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sitio served the power interests of the states that were emerging at the time.39 For Spain, in addition, there is the dark rhetoric of French and Protestant propaganda, which made the Inquisition into a metaphor for backwardness and organized denunciation. We need not place a value on the Inquisition as an institution here; we merely wish to clarify how and in what manner inquisitorial proceedings, which were indeed extremely formative for Spain, contributed to upgrading the status of “knowledge” or even of “complete knowledge.” We shall see that this was certainly the case, although the upgrading happened in a very indirect manner. It was not the information collections of the Inquisitorial courts themselves – their transcripts of interrogations, lists, and archives – that represented the decisive innovation. Rather, it was a new legal-political culture that emerged in tandem with legal proceedings of the inquisitorial type, an emerging culture of observing and transmitting observations to institutions of authority. For these new proceedings that used the inquisitorial form were responding to a structural information deficiency that characterized the premodern Church, judiciary, and political system. The new procedures stimulated ordinary people to report their observations. On top of that, they presented potential observer-informers with a dual offer: they offered those willing to observe and inform an open ear for denunciations (in the sense of “preferring charges”) and a strong hand that protected the denunciators and pursued the delinquents. Increasingly, thereby, what had been a diffuse flow of social knowledge was directed into official channels and across the wheels of the sovereign’s information mills. Not only did this more concentrated flow of knowledge result in upgrading the status of protogovernmental authorities; it also brought forth a specific relationship between knowledge and rule in which the decisive thing was not the contents of knowledge but rather the willingness of ordinary people to communicate such knowledge. In legal history studies, the inquisitorial procedure is defined as an officially driven proceeding that aims at determining the material truth.40 It was absorbed into canon law by Innocence III in the Fourth Lateran Council (1213–1215), since the usual accusatorial and infamatory procedures held until then were no longer doing their job of maintaining discipline within the Church. In the case of accusatorial procedures, a plaintiff would conduct the trial until there was proof of the guilt or innocence of the accused. This made conducting the trial difficult and kept the threshold of access to justice high. Above all, this procedure contributed to making it so that charges were hardly ever pressed against powerful persons – including, and especially, against clerical dignitaries. In the case of infamatory procedures, a clergyman whose mala fama had been witnessed 39 Schulz, Misstrauen, 165–168; Jerouschek, “Herausbildung,” 328–330. 40 Koch, Denunciatio, 38.



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 31

by a group of persons could easily get acquitted without there ever even being an investigation. He would simply need to take an oath and to find a sufficient number of compurgators swearing that this oath was true.41 In the new procedure per inquisitionem, indictments were made easier and acquittals harder. For this to succeed, an authority similar to a public prosecutor had to emerge, someone who could take on the job of prosecuting and establishing a defendant’s guilt in lieu of (potentially weaker) private accusers. This was the only way to lower the risk for the plaintiff and increase the possibility of gaining a hearing for a lawsuit. The price for this was a new institution that was entrusted with the job of pervasive investigation and was inevitably given strong authoritarian powers. The decisive innovation consisted in creating a procedure that promoted observation and denunciation by anyone (in principle) and coupled these with an authoritarian investigating authority operating independently. Both principles have a long prehistory: there is continuous evidence of calls to press charges, of investigations by authorities, and of serial questionings of witnesses (about rights, wrongs, or law-related empirical facts like the site of a bridge or a boundary), even if this evidence tends to be found in marginal areas of legal practice, in lower jurisdictions, and in unusual constellations, such as Sendgerichte (synodical courts). Even the concept of the “inquisitio” surfaces as early as the Carolingian era, like the principle of the “misdemeanor court” in which a parish member sworn in by the authorities would serve as the local interlocutor.42 Finally, one thing that should not be forgotten, even if very little research has been done about it, is the fact that there are repeated references, not only in ancient Rome (denunciatores), but also in the statutes and legal texts of the Middle Ages, to various auxiliary officers of urban justice and police supervision (syndici, consules locorum et villarum, ministrales, officiales, jurati contratarum, massarii villarum, etc.) who were obligated to report all offenses of which they had become aware. Their existence reminds us that, undoubtedly well before the introduction of the inquisitorial procedure, there was already a widespread, if locally varying, practice of authoritarian watchfulness and criminal persecution.43 In particular, an authoritarian investigative institution was always deemed necessary whenever the crime was aimed not against individual persons, but in a more diffuse way against the entire society, which was seen to be in need of a public prosecutor in order to defend its rights. This explains why inquisitorial procedures took hold not only in cases of high treason or crimes involving coins; ultimately, this type of trial also became operative in the legal domain that 41 Trusen, “Anfängen,” 40–41. 42 Holenstein, Huldigung, 127–138. 43 Esmein, Histoire, 291; Lepsius, Zweifeln, 10–11; Moeller, Julius Clarus, 150.

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covered transgressions on matters of faith. And this use of the inquisitorial procedure also makes it clear that the position of investigative authorities working as public prosecutors was essentially always a political one (because legitimated by the defense of the common good). There are some constellations that are relevant and of interest for our purposes because of the way they clarify how the new legal practices modified the relationship linking observation to communication and sovereign rule: In inquisitorial procedures, laypersons were stimulated to inform the authorities about what they observed. They assisted those in power and, with each act of communication, practiced a kind of loyalty that was directed “upward” and oriented toward that very sovereign authority and its proceedings. There is an obvious structural similarity between this inquisitorial procedure and the obligatory confessional, which was introduced around the same time (1215). Here as there, a vertical transmission of information passed on from lay observers “upward” to higher authorities is constituted: The confession, to be sure, schools the penitent in self-observation, not observation of others. But it also rehearses a behavior in which the individual is supposed to assign his self-observations, in a kind of subsumption technique, to categories of right and wrong. In this way, moreover, the kind of mechanism that is responsible for conveying social attentiveness (attention to right and wrong behavior) ensconces itself in acts of communication to an authoritative “ear.” This is a mechanism highly characteristic of the inquisitorial legal culture, and it continues to underlie the rule of law today. The obligatory confession should therefore be understood, as should the inquisitorial trial procedure, as a proceeding that enhanced how far authority could penetrate deep down into society.44 The second decisive change brought about by the inquisitorial procedure concerns the way in which legal findings were obtained. As already indicated, previous legal procedures required clarification of whether the accused was guilty or not guilty with respect to the charge that was made. The inquisitorial procedure, by contrast, aims at ascertaining the “material truth.” It clarifies a fact or sequence of events related to the crime and only then assigns a sentence.45 The inquisitorial procedure was therefore designed more empirically: what needed to be ascertained was not, in the first instance, guilt or innocence, but rather “truth.” In order to discover this truth, the accused was interrogated, if need be under torture, and in addition witnesses were heard. In this way the inquisitorial procedure produced transcripts of the interrogation that were divulged to the parties after the actual interrogations and that affected the rest of the trial as it proceeded. With respect to these proceedings, one may say that the principle of “material truth” and of the 44 Moos, “Attentio,” 305. 45 Schmidt, Einführung, 86–87.



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“rational testimonial evidence” penetrated the process of obtaining legal findings. Yet it was correctly pointed out that witnesses are not the only ones charged with an obligation to tell the truth. It also needs to be assumed that the questioner and the judge are really interested in the “truth.” But the only verifiable thing is that an appropriate homogeneity of witness statements must be present, a consensus about what is truthful that is supported by social groups. In order to “convince” the judge, incontrovertible evidence was not necessary; what counted, rather, was whatever squadron of witnesses turned out to be stronger.46 The power potential of the relevant trial forms rests on this very ambivalence that is inherent in the inquisitorial concept of truth, a conception that oscillates between a category of social consensus and an officially established facticity: these forms of trial offer local societies an opportunity for objectifying their subjective sense of justice or injustice according to rules of a game that inevitably entails intervention by political authorities. This was a double-edged sword that replaced previous mechanisms of local legal and social regulation, broke up local cartels of silence, and thus contributed to verticalizing the structures of communication and loyalty.47 That testimonies about “truth” are constituted thereby is not simply a way to rationalize authorities’ methods for obtaining legal findings, but rather something rulers need in order to penetrate local societies. For there is a third entity that must be constituted, one that is “valid” beyond the contesting parties. This third entity is never merely truth; rather, it must always also be the same thing as validity, and it must therefore be political: it absorbs local instances of dissent and consent, legitimates intervention by political authority, and it can only create both the absorption of local (dis)agreement and the legitimation of sovereign intervention – and this is a pattern that will help underlie Spanish colonial rule – by institutionalizing procedural pathways that translate permanently interest-laden communication “from below” into ostentatiously interest-free claims to validity asserted “from above.” The use of torture may have been the Inquisitorial trials’ most impressive element as far as any history dealing with procedures used to establish the truth (and as far as the people affected by torture) were concerned. But if we are looking for something that had a more critical impact on society as a whole and on public attitudes, that would have to be the new ease with which denunciation was used, indeed encouraged. Denunciation did not arrive upon the scene at a single blow; quite the contrary. 46 On witness interrogations as early as the accusation trials, see Lepsius, Zweifeln, 10 and 62–66. On the practice of torture in Spain: Sabadell Da Silva, Tormenta; Schmidt, Einführung, 78; Jerouschek, “Herausbildung,” 345. 47 Koch, Denunciatio, 50–52, 54–55; Given, Inquisition, 141, 169; Jerouschek, “Denunziation,” 248–249.

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Because the main aim of the inquisitorial procedure introduced by Innocence III was still to create discipline inside the Church, this kind of trial also established relatively high thresholds for starting an inquisitio. Thus, for example, the mala fama of the accuser had to be established beforehand; this was a threshold that lapsed only when this type of trial was assigned to the persecution of heresy.48 In this field, then, new duties and incentives arose. In the case of persecuting heretics, there was a general obligation to report a charge, with mere silence regarded and punished as a form of aiding and abetting. In addition, the goods of those convicted were handed over to the investigating authorities, a confiscation from which (at least occasionally) denunciators also profited. These juristic responsibilities and penalties were based on an argument from analogy going back to late Roman times, to the effect that deviations from faith represented an insult to Christ and thus surpassed even the crimen laesae majestatis (the crime of lèse-majesté).49 Privately lodged complaints were already important in the accusatorial procedure. But it was in the inquisitorial procedure that the complainant could, for the first time, count on an authoritative mechanism to protect him and translate his complaint into an ex officio investigation. To some extent, the accuser could remain completely anonymous, as in Bologna toward the end of the thirteenth century. There they set up boxes into which one could throw a piece of paper alerting the judge to offenses worthy of prosecution. There is evidence of similar procedures in Venice, Florence, Pisa, Empoli, and Arezzo. If one includes not only the aforementioned, officially sworn-in denunciators but also the itinerant jurisdictions and the specific opportunities for reporting misbehavior peculiar to each of these, such as during royal court conventions or at synods and visitations,50 then one will have to assume that there was a broad palette of legal remedies and denunciatory forms of communication. The inquisitorial type of trial was set up at different speeds and through adaptation to local legal traditions. It may be found, for example, in the constitutions of Melfi, then also in the Siete Partidas of Alfonso the Wise. But we find it as a fundamental institution in the German Empire for the first time in 1532 by way of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, the Penal Code of Charles V.51 In Spain the inquisitorial procedure was able to build on prior forms of witness questioning by way of an official inquiry (pesquisa), antecedents for which we have evidence

48 Koch, Denunciatio, 44–50. 49 Trusen, “Anfängen,” 61–68; Alonso Romero, Alonso Romero, Proceso, 183. 50 Koch, Denunciatio, 55. 51 Koch, Denunciatio, 52–57; Lepsius, Zweifeln, 9–11; Langbein, Prosecuting, 129–139.



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going back to the eleventh century. Inquisition-like trials and the attendant investigating personnel (pesquisidores) were then set up in the thirteenth century.52 For Spain, a special kind of procedure per inquisitionem became more formative, namely the institution of the Spanish Inquisition implemented by the Catholic Kings in 1478. This involved – as in the case of the Papal Inquisition – a legal authority for persecuting heretics whose peculiar feature was that it was under the control of kings and used by them as an instrument for achieving the political goal of a denominationally homogenous society. Four peculiarities of the Spanish Inquisition need to be emphasized in connection with the question of how knowledge is related to rule. First, with the creation of the Inquisition in Spain there began a politics of presence. In 1493, the Spanish Inquisition already controlled over twenty-three local tribunals and thus stood as a presence throughout the entire country that, while not providing blanket coverage, was remarkably extensive. The extent of society’s penetration by Inquisitorial surveillance was heightened through a network of informal assistants, the so-called familiares and comisarios of the Inquisition.53 Surveillance or observation thus became a kind of borderless phenomenon in which the observers and potential denouncers, whose identity remained protected, were hardly recognized as such any more. Secondly, the Spanish Inquisition led to a kind of mutual surveillance that penetrated society and was sustained by a heightened attention to deviant forms of behavior and their consequences. Here we need to keep in mind a mechanism in which the act of pressing charges “from below” lent a hand to persecution “from above,” so that the exercise of prosecutorial rule could be activated by the supply of information. To the extent that the Inquisition persecuted heresy – an invisible crime – it faced the problem of how to make these transgressions visible. Thirdly, the Inquisition was dependent (and much more so than the judicial system in general) on procedures that “objectivized” the transgressions postulated. In Inquisitorial practice, trial procedures were rehearsed in such a way that they not only taught its practitioners empirical attentiveness, for example by getting them to observe the everyday actions of others in the most intense way and to scrutinize these actions for evidence of heresy. They also acted out the stages in which observations were objectified. These stages consisted of verbalizing the observation (in denunciations, confessions), then committing it to writing in a way that fit the proceeding and was precise and notarized (in transcripts), and finally guaranteeing the probative value of observations in individual cases so that all this could result in verdicts.54 This needs to be emphasized not only because these different stages in the legal formalities point structurally 52 Alonso Romer, Proceso penal, 7–8, 95–103, and 130–137. 53 Peyre, “L’inquisition,” 61–69; Contreras, Historia, 24; Contreras, “Infraestructura.” 54 Alfonso Romero, Proceso penal, ch. 7.

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toward the kind of inductive procedure characteristic of empirical demonstration in the sciences. They also command our attention because we will frequently encounter similar procedures of objectification in connection with the information culture of the Spanish colonial empire. Although it is hard to describe the attitudinal character of Spanish society entirely by way of the Spanish Inquisition, relatively concrete traces of a specifically Inquisitorial legal culture may be discerned, understood as a culturally self-evident way of questioning witnesses in order to ascertain empirical facts and then objectifying these facts through legal or administrative acts of writing, mostly performed by sworn notaries (escribanos). The role of the king remained ambivalent. On the one hand, the Spanish Inquisition was an instrument controlled by monarchs to which the Curia had little access. The Catholic kings also saw themselves as guardians of sound faith, responsible for punishing, redeeming, and fending off heretical forms of faith. To be sure, this side of the kings’ legal activity was not given intensive emphasis propagandistically. In terms of this chapter’s overarching guiding question, therefore, a fourth point needs to be reiterated: the Spanish kings did indeed use the instrument of the Inquisition to acquire new opportunities for “knowing” something about their subjects. Yet this aspect hardly radiated through to the contemporary self-image of a “knowing ruler.” The familiares and comisarios have been characterized as the eyes and ears of the ruler.55 This might fit in well with the clerical-pastoral rhetoric about the spiritual duty to take care of and supervise the flock, but it overplays the question of who really saw or heard something using the methods of the Inquisition. Initially, the only function of information was local and case-related. That function was to open up trials on the basis of incriminating testimony that had been collected, the so-called información sumaria. Only in the first half of the seventeenth century did the Spanish Inquisition construct centralized courts that then began to bring together individual pieces of information gathered from the trials. Starting around the middle of the century, local Inquisitors were obligated to send annual summaries of the cases on which sentence had been passed to the Council of the Inquisition at the royal court. These case reports (relaciones de causas) contained the most important data on the trials, the names of the accused, the relevant sites, witnesses, sentencing, etc., so that Madrid in the seventeenth century already had access to data on about 45,000 individual cases. But what looks like a spectacular instrument of surveillance for the times was not used by contemporaries to strengthen the Crown’s hold on the individual subject. This instrument of surveillance basically helped control be exercised over local Inquisition judges whose leeway was meant to be kept narrow by imposing on them a duty of perma55 Contreras, Historia, 71.



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nent reporting.56 Information was therefore not collected at central headquarters in order to evaluate it systematically and arrive at something like an overview about the distribution of heresies in the country. At least we lack any evidence that this was how the information collected was used. The real function of centralizing information appeared to lie in restricting unauthorized local conduct. It was very much the same in the case of the American territories. There, initially, the job of the Inquisition lay in the hands of the bishops, though after 1571 independent Inquisition tribunals were established in Mexico and Peru.57 There, too, it was chiefly judicial knowledge about individual cases that was produced, knowledge that was either not or very rarely evaluated politically in Madrid. Our brief survey of the Inquisitorial legal culture should have explained how the new judicial proceedings of the High and Late Middle Ages modified the relationship between knowledge and power. The change brought about by these new procedures should not be reduced to the image of a better-informed judge or prince whose power grew along with the amount of the information available to him. Inquisitorial incentives did make it easier for the sovereign to control the Inquisition’s own apparatus, as well as of sections of the population. The fact that the Inquisitorial legal culture’s offer to facilitate denunciation encountered comparatively wide acceptance demonstrates – positively speaking – how sovereign authority as an agency of justice was being permanently addressed by a population that had expectations corresponding to what the rulers asked of them. If, however, one looks at the knowledge produced in this manner, one cannot overlook its political ambivalence: it always remained strongly influenced by the interests of the complainants. The authorities could only motivate the communication of local knowledge by simultaneously upgrading its status. They needed to make a greater effort to give this local knowledge a hearing and also – and at least in part – to comply politically with local intelligence. A kind of knowledge built on lay participation that was local and partly spontaneous may have been comparatively effective in compensating for the absence of any thick network of official agencies matching local intelligence at the center. But any such effectiveness came at the price of a vertical conglomerate combining knowledge and interests that arose out of the permanent communication between “below” and “above.” Even if the authorities used elaborate procedures aimed at uncovering deceptions, exposing contradictions, and reinforcing “truth,” subjective interests could no longer be disconnected from objective information. Even worse: subjective interests and objective information were interlinked and fused in a way that 56 Contreras and Henningsen, “Forty-Four Thousand Cases,” 111; González de Caldas, Poder, 28–30. 57 Greenleaf, Inquisición, 168–202.

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inextricably interwove knowledge in the service of rule with the voices and interests of the ruled. For premodern times, therefore, we cannot arrive at an adequate understanding if we proceed from the assumption of an all-knowing, watchful ruler along the lines of Foucault’s panopticon. What transpired was much more like an altered kind of political communication within which the authorities increasingly became the recipient of information and interests. By offering this kind of communication to its subjects in the periphery, the central authorities bundled expectations of justice and stabilized the functions of sovereign rule. They exercised “power,” but without simultaneously being able to optimize their epistemic situation, as we were able to see in the case of the Inquisitorial trial and its ambivalent procedures. But a just ruler would be a ruler who not only punished, but also rewarded. And this, too, made it necessary, as we shall now see, to change the structure of opportunities that made communication with the ruler possible.

5 Observation and reward: Distributive justice In the Variae, a collection of letters from late Antiquity compiled by Cassiodorus, the Ostrogoth king Athalaric (d. 534) asserts that the services rendered by those who happened to be located at a great distance are meritorious deeds that he has seen and looked through with his spiritual eye. In the same document, his grandfather Theodoric (d. 526) assures a recently promoted civil servant that a scout (speculator) has gained insight into his abilities.58 In 1626, Pedro Fernández Navarrete, a secretary working under Philip III and Philip IV, picked up on these passages in order to dispel the suspicion that, in the overextended Spanish Empire, gaining access to favors bestowed by the Crown was only possible if one happened to be located directly at court. The kings, according to Fernández Navarrete, did not just have long arms; they also had a panoramic view. Indeed, their view had to be extensive … so as not to overlook one atom of the meritorious deeds and capabilities [of those in the kings’ service] … That is why the soldiers standing guard in the ice-encrusted moors of Flanders, those who are serving in the farthest reaches of America, and those in the Armada who are defying storms and enemies can be sure that everything will be registered by the watchful diligence of the king without [the king] neglecting to have complete cognizance (entera noticia) of those who are illuminating the universities with their erudition and the churches with their virtue.59

58 Cassiodor, Variae, IX, 22 and I, 22. 59 Fernández Navarrete, Conservacion, 204.



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In his idealization of the all-encompassing view, then, Fernández Navarrete is concerned not with surveillance in a disciplining sense, but with a kind of attentiveness that registers, that takes notice. This attentiveness was meant to guarantee that the king’s court knew about the accomplishments and services rendered by a subject or soldier, no matter how far away, so that their hopes to be rewarded for services rendered could be sustained. At the outset, it is important to clarify the significance of this phenomenon for the communicative setting of the royal court. Unlike the imagery suggested by the metaphor of the panoptic eye, here the initiative lay with those in the periphery. One wanted to inform the court in order to obtain advantages in the form of favors granted (rewards, allocation of offices, promotions in social rank and status, etc.). The royal court did not have an immediate interest in this flow of incoming information, since this outpouring of assertions brought along with it a constant stream of claims for participation in power and wealth. The center wanted to shut its eyes but could not do so, since the grants of favors that went along with this information constituted the reward for political loyalty. To reject this information would have been to upset the collective expectation of justice, weaken loyalty, and destabilize the king’s own rule. What are the background details behind this idea of justice?60 Following in the tradition of Aristotle as passed on by Thomas Aquinas, Spanish Late Scholasticism used the term distributive justice (iustitia distributiva) to mean the participation of the individual in the common good, but not in the sense of some kind of social justice aiming at offsetting excessive disparities. The subject of distributive justice was almost the opposite, i.e., a kind of redistribution that emphasized disparities. In this meaning of the term, for example, aristocrats are entitled to more because they are regarded as deserving and virtuous.61 But a claim to having a share is also earned by those who have served in an outstanding capacity, for example as an administrator, soldier, or conquistador. Distributive justice is therefore not merely a way of legitimating inequality in estate-based societies, but also an incentive to spur outstanding achievements. It opens up opportunities for social mobility, so that one may speak of a kind of premodern “rewards economy” 62 in which loyalty was exchanged for favors (sinecures, offices, other kinds of privileges). Awarding this kind of distributive justice had a primordial status; theoretically, it was a job the prince himself was meant to fulfill. He was personally sup60 Pérez, Norte, 48–49; Fernández Navarrete, Conservacion, 202. 61 Chafuen, Faith, 101–103. 62 Hespanha, widening the concept, discusses an “économie de la grâce”, see Hespanha, “Autres raisons.”

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posed to decide about the quality and services of each individual, which was, practically, impossible to do. In a tract from 1559, the Valencian scholar Fadrique Furió Ceriol proposed employing a “council of favors” (consejo de mercedes) to undertake this job. This council would then be assigned the task of operating as an authority registering everything, namely … hearing and knowing about the contributions and failings of everybody altogether, keeping itself well-informed about the life, the habits, the competence, and the deeds of those who, without demanding it, deserve to be rewarded for their rare and excellent virtues. And [this council will have to know about] those who demand that they be rewarded. For when there are penalties for the bad, it is only just that there are prizes for the good and the virtuous.63

Theoretically, the subject would not be able to base any claim based on his virtues or accomplishments. Yet, in practice, this hardly prevented him from calling the attention of the prince to services rendered and submitting suggestions for how his services and accomplishments (méritos y servicios) could be compensated by the granting of favors. The large number of such supplications, which in the form of “reports on merits and services” (relaciones de méritos y servicios) constitute an important group in the stock of material from the Spanish archives, testifies to the significance of this mechanism.64 Not only do these reports possess a high value as ego documents, since the supplicants reported at great length about their lives. They also illuminate the process for conveying information involving a symbiosis between private and public rulers’ interests as it had developed since the thirteenth century. The principle of distributing favors (repartimiento de mercedes) had already been established for Castile under Alfonso the Wise.65 Under the conditions of the trans-Atlantic expansion, it then acquired a special meaning; the chief protagonists of the wars of conquest, after all, were not typical representatives of the high nobility. This was all the more reason for them to attempt justifying their betterment on grounds of merit. For us the critical point is that this kind of rewards economy essentially obligated the princes to maintain constant observation of their subjects. Since this kind of observation was practically impossible, the system rested de facto on the self-initiative of those affected, that is, on bottom-up communication. Under the circumstances the Crown had to develop control mechanisms, to which we shall return. First of all, however, it had to facilitate bottom-up communication, that is, provide paths of communication and uphold its subjects’ belief in just reward. We are looking at a phenomenon that cannot be adequately described either with 63 Furió Ceriol, Concejo, 23. 64 Rodríguez-Moñino, Catálogo, 18; Grunberg, “Universo.” 65 Dios, Gracia; Millet, Suppliques; Nieto Soria, Fundamentos, 237.



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Foucault’s panopticon nor with the metaphoric imagery of the body politic and its organs. The allocation of favors for services triggered a process of competition for attention, for the goodwill of the “head.” The individual parts of the “body” entered into competition with each other, and each one wanted to be seen, since this was the only way to safeguard one’s chances for a royal dispensation. Even more: one felt an entitlement to be seen directly by the sovereign, to immediate communication. Unlike what may be suggested by the stable configuration of the polity-as-body metaphor, more happened to the individual parts than their being set in motion: the various parts of society required both equidistance and equal access to power. This did indeed remain, by and large, a utopia: communication took place, as a rule, via a multitude of mediating authorities that congealed around the court, yet we will need to address a number of cases in which subjects turned directly to the king. Communication took place by letter but was, above all, personal as well: At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the pressure of supplicants on the court and the number of pretenders residing in Madrid had grown so much that this had turned into a problem affecting the social welfare of the capital city. Fernández Navarrete, accordingly, commented on it this way: Since the vigilance of kings is obligated to capture with a sharp eye the achievements and abilities of those who are located in the most remote villages of the monarchy, one can certainly order that claimants not come to court and consume its wealth in this greedy endeavor.66

The fact remains that distributive justice idealizes permanent observation by political authorities: it turns this ideal of constant observation into a precondition for airtight inspection of subjects’ achievements and loyalties, for their adequate award, and thus for just rule. In practice, the Crown had neither an interest in nor opportunities for guaranteeing this kind of comprehensive observation. The rewards economy therefore rested de facto on bottom-up communication, on self-descriptions sent by claimants. Once again, therefore, justice as dispensed by rulers did not rest solely on how “all-seeing” these rulers were, but rather on communicative openness, that is, on guaranteeing opportunities for subjects to communicate their own interests to the royal court. Where these opportunities dwindled, the ideal of an all-seeing, all-reading, listening-to-everyone (and therefore just) king collapsed, and there emerged a critical discourse about the “blindness” of the king.

66 Fernández Navarrete, Conservacion, 204–205 and 83–86, 171–179; see also Bouza Álvarez, “Majestad,” 66.

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6 The blindness of the king and the corridors of power In 1599 the Spanish Late Scholastic Juan de Mariana wrote down something that many people were thinking: What blindness, what ignorance on the part of the prince who, cooped up his palace as if in a cave, cannot view the details with his own eyes? … Who should be able to recognize the truth, amidst the constant applause of the courtiers, amidst the lying and cheating of the servants, who adjust everything to their personal interests? ... But who would want to place a man without light, without ears and eyes, at the head of the state?67

When Philip III had ascended to the throne, he announced officially that he would rule from now on with the aid of a favorite. This favorite, the Duke of Lerma, would largely be in charge of political affairs through 1618. He was succeeded first by his son and then, under Philip IV, by the Conde-Duque de Olivares between 1622 and 1643. The image of the king and his opportunities for discernment suffered under the impression of permanent rule by favorites, so that ultimately there was this anonymous tract from the beginning of Philip IV’s reign saying: Thus, the princes suffer from this festering sore, that they seldom come by the truth, and they are constantly assisted by the lie, so that they never cease being blind, deaf, confused, and distressed. For they are attended by strange eyes, tongues, and ears.68

But blindness had already been imputed to the king before the times when favorites were exercising rule. Thus, Philip II could not avoid reading, in a 1565 letter from Jerónimo de Mendieta, that he, the king, was like a blind man who had to explain the world to the sighted.69 These “blindness discourses” are so interesting to us because the subject they discuss is the epistemic and communicative setting of the king. They deal not only with defects in the king’s cognition and knowledge, but also with possibilities for allowing him to know more. Over and over again in these discussions, a structural problem of centrally organized rule is broached, a kind of “blindness from overload” in which, although the ruler can see everything in theory, he is overwhelmed in light of the amount of information streaming in, the sheer volume of pending decisions. How should he know everything in detail and simultaneously keep an overview, how should he have names and dates on the tip of his tongue and be able to assess their relevance on a permanent basis? 67 Mariana, De rege, 28 (Book I, ch. 2). 68 RAH, Salazar K–19, fol.  63r–64v, “Advertencias para el príncipe que empieza a gobernar,” fol. 63v. 69 García Icazbalceta, Nueva colección, vol. 1, 38.



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“One [man] alone,” wrote Domingo de Soto, the Dominican confessor to Charles V in an argument against universal monarchy, “cannot know, improve, rectify, and arrange everything. He also cannot, even with the best of intentions, receive all the emissaries from every part of the world in a short time.”70 This argument taking aim at the limits of the human capacity for processing information could be canceled out by references to the quasi-divine qualities of monarchs. Reference was readily made to the Annals of Tacitus, where Emperor Tiberius does own up to the problems of governing a gigantic empire. But he also defines an exception: for only the mind of the divine Augustus was equal to the task of such a burden.71 The Popes of the High Middle Ages, by contrast, apparently lacked divine assistance, at least when it came to the everyday business of political communication. For in the twelfth century, i.e., as the Church was undergoing a process of centralization, their complaints about constant overemployment (occupatio nimia) accumulated. Pleading from supplicants forced the Church to grant pardons against its will and to write into the privileges they granted the grievances these claimants had been reciting to them. In 1187 Gregory VIII complained that he could no longer endure the “screaming and grumbling” of those who came by from everywhere. They would force him to occupy his time with nothing but trivialities and rob him of time for more important things.72 Similar complaints about the effects of overload on royalty have been noted in early modern Spain. Even God, according to Fernández Navarrete, was so short of time that He had to avail himself of help from angels, which is why even kings, with their angel-like spirit, should not hesitate to make use of their council bodies. If there was only a single minister or advisor available as an interlocutor – this was the gist of the typical sideswipe directed against the system of favoritism – the result would be a dangerous bottleneck: If one were to attempt conducting all the water from the ocean of this immense monarchy through a single pipe, this would inevitably burst, or the stream would slow down. It would damage the health of the minister and delay the transaction of business.73

The quote shows how the problem of overload was settled in classical fashion, namely by the notion that an apparatus be available to assist the individual head of the king. Members of this apparatus were to include the best minds of the land, the councilors, but also other officeholders at all levels of officialdom. This apparatus was the conduit for filtering, channeling, and supplying flows of 70 Soto, De iustitia & iure, 304 (Book IV, Art. 2). 71 Parker, Grand Strategy, 17; Tacitus, Annales I, 11, 1. 72 Hageneder, “Rechtskraft,” 406; Hageneder, “Probleme,” 62. 73 Fernández Navarrete, Conservacion, 30.

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information and communication to the king, who then, in the ideal case, only had to make a “pure” decision. The individual person’s narrowness of outlook thus calls for the formation of political council bodies and administrative institutions. There is already a discussion of this in the Siete Partidas of Alfonso the Wise, where it says: Since he [the king] can neither see nor take care of things alone, he is compelled to rely on the assistance of others in whom he trusts, who on his behalf execute what he cannot do on his own, in that they use the power he has lent them.74

Three elements are related to each other here: From the king’s problem of perception (no ver) contemporary thinkers about politics derive the necessity of leaving parts of power to third parties (usar poder). The decisive binding agent is trust (fiarse). Here trust is conceived in institutional terms. It means the permanent inclusion of advisors. Comparable sentiments are continuously repeated in the political tracts of the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period in order to demonstrate the limits of royal power and urge the inclusion of advisors, that is, of elites’ participation in power.75 En passant, these writings treat the communicative structures of the royal court. They ask how permeable the courtly structure must be so that information from outside can penetrate through to the king, and they discuss the role of those whose job it is to support this permeability, i.e., the inner circle of those close to the king. They surround the ruler like a ring, can advise him perfectly, but these same advisers can also isolate him completely. Their finding is correspondingly ambivalent: On the one hand, this “ring” is idealized as a necessary “expansion” of the king’s opportunities for perception and communication. On the other hand, the ring surrounding the king is also criticized, depending on whether priority is given to success in unburdening the center or to the flip side of the same phenomenon: the loss of the monarch’s independence and of unmediated perception, and the growing influence of so many mediators. There is a very old idea that officials of this kind represent a kind of prosthesis of those organs in the king’s natural body responsible for perception and execution. Only because of these officials would the king be able to act and to perceive in every corner of his kingdom. Even in the Egyptian and Assyrian empires, accordingly, royal officials were characterized as “eyes” and “ears.”76 Ancient authors refer specifically to these examples, even to the previously cited

74 “Leyes de Partida,” part. 2, tít. 1, ley 3. 75 Vincent-Cassy, “Don,” 184–188. 76 Stagl, Curiosity, 23; Flor, “Cetro,” 85.



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passage from Aristotle, and they welcome scenarios along these lines – in which the ruler, with the mediation of officials, hears and sees from afar – as signs that power is being exercised effectively. Cognitive designations of offices based on the model of the Papal Church, moreover, were common. The establishment of the Rota, which was the Papal court of justice, was based on the audientia litterarum contradictarum, or on the audientia publica, literally, that is, on the “hearing of rebuttal statements” or the “public hearing.” In addition, at the Papal judicial court there were (as in other areas of Curial administration) auditores (“listeners”) whose tasks included conducting hearings of the parties involved in a case. Finally, cardinals were also designated as “eyes and ears of the Holy Head” in the sixteenth century.77 Following the example of the Curial model, Spain was acquainted with the audiencias as the highest law courts, and the oidor as their judge. There was also a veedor and a relator, meaning a “viewer” and “reporter.” The veedor was a kind of royal overseer or tax inspector, if we might use a modern term to paraphrase the cognitive designation of office. The relator, like the Roman office after which it was modeled, was supposed to issue a report and, in addition, summarize the contents of longer documents point by point. His priorities, like those of the “expert” or “referee” today, are communicative tasks. That this cognitive and communicative side of the official designation was certainly on the minds of those who used the term is demonstrated by a complaint about conditions in the Audiencia Mexico of 1582. People were heard saying that “there is an oidor [there] who does not hear, a relator who does not read, and a secretary that does not write.”78 Operating in closer proximity to the ruler, finally, were the secretaries and councilors, whose roles were given a reorientation from the point of view of their communicative functions. In the case of the secretaries, their eponymous virtue, that of discretion, gets enhanced by a second virtue seemingly in conflict with the first: they need to be perfect communicators. They have to process what comes in from the outside in such a way that it can form the basis for a decision of the king. Conversely, they also have to forward his commands to the periphery. Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza formulated this in a 1620 tract on the secretario del rey: The more sovereign is the lord and the more powerful is the king, the more he needs secretaries, the channels through which his realms are supplied with what governs them.79

77 Herde, “Audientia”; Dolezalek, “Auditor”; Chenis, “Mecenatismo cardinalizio,” VIII. 78 AGS, Guerra Marina: Leg. 131.14, doc. 11, fol. 1r. 79 Bermúdez de Pedraza, Secretario, fol. 14b.

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Secretaries are therefore “channels” or “conduits,” they are the “neck,” the “throat” of the kings, as well as their “stomachs,” the “interpreters of his will,” and “the mover of his thoughts.”80 And therefore they are constantly at the side of the royal person assisting him, for the usual drafting of consultations, letters, and decrees … and for perfect reporting (noticia perfecta) on the events that have led to these.81

What clearly becomes quite discernable here is the idea that the king should be surrounded by helpers who must expand his opportunities for communication and ensure his knowledge in matters of everyday governing. It also becomes clear that this is understood as a service to the Crown. That “perfect knowledge” is promised in the provision of such services is a commitment that exonerates the secretary from any suspicion of leaving something out or keeping something to himself. It emphasizes his objectivity, his interest-free communicating, as if he were merely a “tube” that channels information. The councilor (consejero) has more he needs to accomplish. Although he has to set aside self-interest and view things with a “pure eye,” as Solórzano Pereira expressed this, he must also advise the king and, in so doing, comment on the plurality of information and opinions streaming in, which means: when in doubt, he also has to separate truth from lie. Fernández Navarrete recommended that the king surround himself constantly with his councilors, who can correct the twisted accounts of whisperers driven by self-interest. The councilors should “always accompany” the prince and “assist him” so that he can “ask for their opinion on every action.”82 Such recommendations go beyond the traditional model of king and counsel, for they emphasize that the secretaries and councilors have to stand by the ruler permanently. Specialized knowledge, political advice, and supportive counsel should therefore no longer be retrieved only in case of need; instead, they need be draped around the ruler like a kind of “intelligent sheath.” Viewed politically, there is an inestimable advantage in being close to the ear of the king. Even if one would not wish to exploit this advantage for one’s own goals, one is still put in the position of the gatekeeper who can block or open the way to the king’s ear. One portion of power thereby slips out of the center and into that ring of familiar advisors and functionaries who surround the center. The tracts cited here welcome this slippage, especially since they are from the 1620s and argue against the background of a greater evil – the recently ended

80 Saavedra Fajardo, Idea, 219; Bermúdez de Pedraza, Secretario, fol. 14b. 81 Bermúdez de Pedraza, Secretario, fol. 15b. 82 Fernández Navarrete, Conservacion, 25.



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rule by favoritism under the Duke of Lerma. As lord chamberlain (sumiller de corps), Lerma had succeeded in completely monopolizing access to the monarch. What the tracts from this time criticize about rule by favoritism is above all how it hinders access to the king and how, in place of a more or less permeable ring of councilors and confidants of the king, it substitutes the capriciousness of one individual. What the authors of these tracts wanted instead was a larger circle of courtly mediators, a circle whose heterogeneous makeup and networking in each particular case would multiply the number of interlocutors. Such an expansion in the number and variety of middlemen, while admittedly making opportunities for communication more diffuse, would also increase these opportunities overall. To quote Mendo: “There have to be a lot of ministers so that there are many doors through which the vassals can reach their prince.”83 This greater permeability for the ring of the consejeros was not preferred for the first time during the era of rule by favoritism; we find it even earlier in Furió Ceriol’s tract on the councils of the king from 1559. In his view, the ideal consejero needs to be incorruptible and impartial, but for that very reason also a mediator who is never dismissive and who is constantly communicating with everyone: “For the consejero is there for everyone, he has to listen to everyone, to favor everyone indiscriminately.”84 Only law and virtue should move him to turn his attention toward one person and away from another. So far, this still sounds like an anticipation of the virtues associated with civil servants, yet the communicative standards go even further: Day and night, the consejero has to keep his doors open for all kinds of people, his ears nicely patient, he discourages no one, he encourages all … he deals with all, communicates with each.85

These texts are not about how to optimize administrative procedures or political decision-making as such, things that would require narrowing, standardizing, and regulating channels of communication. Rather, the more important thing is shaping the environment around the king in a manner open to communication, since this is the only way to guarantee a kind of equality of opportunity for outsiders, or at least to keep alive belief in equal access (all are “encouraged” and no one is “discouraged”). What would be the advantage of this openness, which (after all) simultaneously signifies that official channels are softened, lines of

83 Feros, “Twin Souls,” 37 and 42; Río Barredo, Madrid, 131–133, Mendo, Principe, doc. LXVIII. 84 Furió Ceriol, Concejo, 46–47. 85 Furió Ceriol, Concejo, 54.

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authority are continuously blurred, and contradictory interests are permanently communicated to the king? What seems striking here, at first glance, is the parallel to modern organizational and administrative sociology. Modern organizational theory has explored the acceptance effects that a “listening bureaucrat” is supposed to achieve: even today, civil servants are supposed to show by way of demonstrative receptiveness to the concerns of citizens (for example by patient listening) that they are responsive to their needs and living conditions. Yet this is only meant to happen in moderation and not permanently. Otherwise, the administrative efficiency and aura of incorruptibility, which are also ideals of modern administration that help legitimate the bureaucratic apparatus, would suffer.86 Similar acceptance effects achieved by ostentatious listening may be critical when it comes to the direct contacts that take place between subjects and officials. They are part of a daily use of gesture by rulers allowing situational gains in legitimacy for their rule to be produced. But this cannot explain why, in addition, a permanent deviation from official channels, an uncontrolled variety in paths of communication, can have the effect of stabilizing rule. We may go some way toward solving this puzzle by invoking Niklas Luhmann’s concept of procedure. Luhmann understands “legitimation through procedure” as an effect that the implementation of a procedure exerts on the parties involved. The procedure – such as a civil action – integrates the affected parties, advises them to behave this way and not some other way, to commit to this or that role. One essential prerequisite for making this kind of integration successful is that the outcome of the procedure be open. As much as one may have to reckon with a defeat in taking a matter to court, one can also believe that one’s own side will prevail. Only because the outcome is open does one bring time, energy, and a bit of one’s own identity into the procedure. And in doing this, one involves oneself and starts developing one’s own future within the options specified by the procedure, so that one is simultaneously supporting the procedure and helping to legitimate it personally. If one now compares modern procedures of this kind with their premodern equivalents, it is the differences that seem striking at first: it is characteristic of the premodern era that, although legal proceedings or bureaucratic procedures (each with their own strict rules and routines) already existed, relatively often these procedures were circumvented, overturned from outside, suspended, accelerated, or influenced. They enjoyed, as a rule, too little autonomy even to be regarded in a strictly Luhmann-like sense as procedures, which need not bother us here any further. The crucial point is that a legitimating effect – meaning an effect that is binding and integrating for the individual – can result even in these 86 Stivers, “Listening Bureaucrat.”



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cases, at least when the procedural outcome remains open or the belief in its openness is maintained. But this is precisely what is accomplished by the open yet simultaneously opaque communication and decision-making structure of the royal court. Although the court, a network of rumors, hopes, relationships, and maneuvers, does allow for one’s chances to be assessed, it hardly makes it possible to predict the complete dynamic that results from the interventions of competing petitioners or parties, the vicissitudes of royal favor, etc. The long period of uncertainty, indeed the artificially drawn-out unveiling of the royal court’s actual decision, is also generated by courtly etiquette and the lengthy echelon of formal and informal authorities, since anyone pursuing his interest had to penetrate the ring of royal associates before his cause could even reach the king. But even in the rare case of a personal audience with the king, matters were not settled immediately, but at first merely registered and at best taken into consideration with a very general, decidedly polite response, entirely as if the king who was listening was not also the same person deciding.87 While the appointment of a favorite would diminish the likelihood of finding contact persons for each one of the individual claimants’ interests, the multiplicity of consejeros and courtiers actually increased that very same likelihood. Their mediating role, while informal, was constitutive for political communication in the royal court, regardless of whether or not we can identify autonomous procedures here in terms of systems theory: the royal court constituted a space of interaction whose open pathways of communication and half-transparent procedures had integrative effects. The court created this space to the extent that it appeared to offer the individual greater promise of success if he turned to the king by way of councilors and other confidants than if he acted outside the court or even against it. For the outsider, then, the royal court was opaque or at least never entirely transparent. But how did things stand with the view looking outward from the inside? Let us return to the perceptional situation of the king. Its dilemma may be illustrated by looking at the problem of how to select royal advisors. Furió Ceriol had already described this as an epistemic paradox, for the king needed to rely on third parties in order to evaluate candidates. At first Ceriol proposed a kind of regulated selection and application procedure. The prince should: inform himself extremely well about all possible [candidates] using every avenue, and in particular he should give the order that all his important governors in all the provinces arrange for a detailed examination of the best and most suitable men. And that they send him a list of three or four. Once he has seen the list, he can summon those who look good to him, at least those not known at court.88 87 Firpo, Relationi, vol. 8, 437 and 507. 88 Furió Ceriol, Concejo, 71–72.

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Even the travel costs should be reimbursed to the applicants. The only question that remained was: how should the king evaluate the candidates? The prince should listen attentively and gladly to all the information and accusations that are given him in favor or to the detriment of the nominees: but he should not believe any of these, but rather send everything back to be scrutinized. In case of defamations, the prince should consider that these could be true or false. He should consider that there are bad people, malicious, envious, ignorant, dumb, prejudiced, who can wrongly accuse [the candidate].89

Ceriol even rejects the usual line of argument about believing more highly placed personalities – such as bishops, cardinals, and nobility – more than others. All information is corrupted by interests: The prince should believe and know that all who provide this kind of information, be it positive or negative, are guided by their own advantage and interests … And so, in this matter, I want for him to … believe only what he sees with his own eyes or touches with his own hands.90

This is the dilemma of the center: “seeing with its own eyes” is something that the center can at best accomplish by looking at the individual person, but even then that person’s past history needs to be witnessed by third parties. Over and over again, premodern procedures, no matter how artfully they may be constructed, reflect back on their foundation: on “trust.” Even the problem of selecting advisors helps illustrate, in this way, the structurally inescapable blindness of the prince, his dependence on mediators and advisors who are assisting him even as they themselves are being selected. Three possible ways of breaking through this dependence on naked trust were permanently acted out by contemporaries, without any of these options really proving capable of solving the problem. The first was to encourage allowing the greatest possible plurality of opinions. Special interests would thus be neutralized in the aggregate.91 In this way, however, decisions were reoriented away from the criterion that described which candidate was best suited for the job to the criterion of maximizing that applicant’s ability to garner a consensus. Including many different opinions would also prove dysfunctional to the extent that this would increase the complexity of the procedure. There would be an enormous increase not only in the effort required for those at the center of power 89 Furió Ceriol, Concejo, 74. 90 Furió Ceriol, Concejo, 75. 91 Mendo, Principe, doc. LXX; Pérez, Norte, 51.



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to coordinate things but in their decision-making overload as well. Either more and more people would have to participate in the decision-making process, or one would have to employ yet another institution that cut the Gordian knot, and then even more decisions would have to be entrusted to this authority. Secondly, the attempt was made to instruct all the participants on how to make descriptions as objective and recommendations as substantive as possible by tying their activity to strict normative standards of administration and having them swear binding oaths. Control measures such as regular official inspections were then supposed to ensure that the participants’ fear of losing their existing privileges would outweigh any hope they might have for acquiring new ones through interest politics. Abstractly speaking, this meant placing alongside the observer or mediator a second observer, whose job it was to control the first one. But since this was only achievable under exceptional circumstances, for example in the course of an official inspection, the actual goal needed to be perpetuating trust by way of fixed role patterns, and to do so to the extent that one could also expect behavior conforming to official norms even when inspectors were not there to conduct their checks. Whether, where, and to what degree this succeeded or even led to the formation of a kind of civil service ethos is difficult to determine. It can be shown, however, that the participants quickly learned to code their own activity in conformity with their roles, for example, to insist ostentatiously on the substantive nature of their decisions. Thirdly, there was a vision about the possibility of replacing personal advising with perfect media that would maintain all necessary information so that it was available to the king. The kind of media promising to accomplish this included such things as lists, tables, charts, and globes, but also the kinds of institutional solutions used by contemporaries like the Jesuits. Diego de Saavedra Fajardo extolled their management of information: the Jesuits’ Superior General was kept routinely informed about the quality and career development of members of the order from every province. If princes would take possession of a comparable art of governing, they would no longer have to be dependent on their ministers.92 But Fajardo was also enthusiastic about the idea of the one book that summarizes all of the decisive data. The idea of the “one book” was already in evidence in the summae of the High Middle Ages and then in the delight that Humanists took in the thought of making the entire world accessible in a single room or book. That all knowledge relevant to rule could be summarized in a book for the king is a thought that Spanish authors first took up in the last third of the sixteenth century and then championed in the first half of the seventeenth century. It had, admittedly, been inspired by two ancient models. The first of these models was 92 Saavedra Fajardo, Idea, 225.

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a series of passages from Tacitus and Suetonius in which they tell of a supposed liber totius imperii. This book is said to have supplied Emperor Augustus with all the relevant data he needed to run his empire.93 Secondly, the imagination of the Humanists was fired by a reading of the late ancient work Notitia dignitatum, the manuscript of a text from the early fifth century discovered in 1525 by Beatus Rhenanus in Speyer and printed in 1552. The Notitia dignitatum gave an enormous stimulus to the Humanist debate about the organization of rule because it was believed that a kind of blueprint for the administrative structure of the late Roman empire had been discovered. Over and over again, individual comments made by Spanish authors testify to the enthusiasm lavished on this model. When, for example, Juan Díez de la Calle, a subaltern staff member of the Council of the Indies, attempted in the 1650s to compile a government handbook for all of America, he referred directly to this model of the Notitia dignitatum. He had seen the book and, in his own work, he was imitating the diligence with which the Roman emperor organized knowledge about his empire.94 As may be easily discerned, this third “way out” of the king’s dependency dilemma – royal recourse to perfected media – is also no solution to the problem. At best, it can only modify it. If one is not dependent on the ministers at court, then one is dependent on reports or books, and these are written by authors at court and supplied with information from the periphery. Neither the rule of the king nor his knowledge is truly unmediated, and for each medium or act of mediation the interests of the participants intervene. This effect intensifies with the size of the dominion and the number of participants, so that one inevitably arrives at a paradoxical conclusion. The greater the power of the prince, the more it gets divvied up, since it can only be exercised in a mediated way, and ever more mediators need to be included. The mediators, however, were pursuing interests of their own, even if sometimes only very small-scale ones. This not only had fatal consequences for the “eyesight” of the center, but also for the informational sovereignty of the sovereign as such. Carl Schmitt analyzed the paradoxical scissors movement of empowerment and loss of autonomy in a 1954 radio interview with the following words: In front of every room that is the site of direct power there is established an antechamber of indirect influences and powers, a portal to power, a corridor to the soul of the ruler … The more that power is concentrated at a specific place, among specific people or a group of people, as if in a point, the more the problem of the corridor and the question of access to the point intensifies. And then, too, the more severe, the more dogged, and the more muted 93 Tacitus, Annales I, 11 and Suetonius, De vita caesarum, 101, 4. On this, see Senellart, Arts, 54–55. 94 BNE, Ms. 3023, fol. 4v. On this, see also García-Gallo, “Información,” 373.



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becomes the struggle among those who occupy the antechamber and control the corridor ... In the same degree to which a power room is consolidated, an antechamber to this power immediately organizes itself ... The corridor cuts the room off from the ground and elevates it into a kind of stratosphere in which it only reaches those who dominate it indirectly.95

In this way, a prince can never decide and act in the way proposed by the discourses on being omniscient and all-seeing, namely as a “perfect falcon above the prey.”96 He always remains a dependent, secondary observer. As could be seen, referring to specific models – like that of pastoral rule, episcopal welfare, or that of the well-informed judge – is not enough if we wish to understand the depth of the contemporary discussion. The ability of the king to perceive and communicate was the subject of widely different kinds of reflections, it was assigned to specific social functions, and above all it was something that was discussed critically when it was seen to be waning. In cases like this, especially when it was suspected that the ruler was being isolated, there was concern about the loss of two closely related qualities of rule. One was the ruler’s ability to notice the services his subjects were rendering. The other was his ability to prosecute offenses. In short, it was feared that the ruler would lose the capacity to reward and punish. Both of these actions were based not on the idea of a “scopic regime” of centralized surveillance but rather, in essence, on communication. The “eyes” and “ears” of the king were not basically feared as efficient organs of surveillance; instead, they were idealized as a precondition allowing the subject to appear before these eyes and to speak through these ears in order to report an offense or a service rendered. In the Spanish case, accordingly, there was a specific concern that clearly emerged during the period of rule by favoritism. This was the worry that the flow of communication that acted like a transmission belt to guarantee the exchange of interests and gratifications between king and society could be cut off or controlled by the favorite. The underlying model of justice based on vertical communication opportunities also shaped discussions about the communicative organization of the court. It is easy to discern this if we look at the remarks made by the royal almsgiver (limosnero) Luis Manrique de Lara. As early as the end of the 1570s he was criticizing the personal inclination of Philip II to avoid audience situations and, in general, to isolate himself: God had put kings on earth “so that they would be public and accessible oracles to which all subjects might come in order to obtain answers and redress for their concerns, their works, and consolation in their distress.” Manrique warned the king against arrogant and ambitious courtiers who would claim everything for themselves and 95 Schmitt, Gespräch, 18–20. 96 Juan de Vega, quoted by Bouza Álvarez, “Leer,” 35.

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therefore be “no doors, but rather barriers.” They would only “serve to make sure that nobody other than themselves gains entrance.” In former times, the confessor of the king had represented a “crack” (resquicio) through which one could reach the king. It now appeared as if His Majesty “made himself completely inaccessible little by little, and placed himself in a tower without doors or windows in order to avoid seeing the people and being seen by them.”97 It is easy to understand the appeal of communicating with the court, since the court was, after all, the most important source for granting favors and awarding offices. The incentive mechanism of the Inquisition does, however, require a comment. There was, of course, no such thing as voluntary communication with the Inquisition – one need only mention the role played by torture – and there was also resistance, fear of observation, and organized silence. And yet the tremendous dynamic with which the Inquisition’s tribunals worked their way through the country and Spanish society is only explicable if one recalls the incentive structures that prompted laypeople to name suspects and provide incriminating testimony. What appeared to be little more than a new legal procedure turned out, however, to be highly political. Frequently, the Spanish Inquisition met with surprising acceptance when it showed up on-site, since the Inquisition offered to take up conflicts that had been dormant and solve them in its own manner.98 What made the inquisitorial procedure so political? Underlying all Inquisition-like proceedings was the principle of protected denunciation. This kind of bottom-up communication only functioned when the “top” could be made strong enough so that it really protected those pressing charges from below. To this extent, we are dealing with a “state-building” process in which both sides, the “Above” and the “Below” alike, profit from interacting with each other and emerge strengthened; we are dealing, that is, with an “empowering interaction” along the lines of André Holenstein.99 This process facilitated an enormous social and political dynamic and established new, vertical habits of communication.100 Interestingly, the mechanism prefigured in the inquisitorial procedure anticipates that separation of voting and executive power ascribed to the final stage of state-building. Even if this was only happening in small, micropolitical scenarios: social conflict resolution or “politics” could now be practiced as mere “vote”-casting, without anyone’s word having to be followed by a deed, without consilium (advice) having to be followed by auxilium (aid), without anyone having to stand 97 BNE, Ms. 18718 (55, fol. 99v. On the contest, see Montañéz Bermúdez, “Luis Manrique de Lara,” 105–106 and Feros, “Viejo monarca,” 12–13. 98 Given, Inquisition, 111–140; Jerouschek, “Herausbildung,” 338. 99 Holenstein, “Introduction;” Given, Inquisition, 23–24. 100 Jerouschek, “Herausbildung,” 338.



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up in person for what had been said. The mechanisms of the Inquisition had a wide-ranging impact because they were embedded in many (including extraclerical) procedures of control and administration. They have been examined here above all because they also shaped the exchange of information for colonial rule, to which we shall return. In practice, the detachment of someone’s vote or voice from his person occurred through a distinctive use of formalized “writtenness.” Notarial records of interrogations accomplished that translation of subjective statements into objective validity on which decisions by judges then based their claim to impartiality. In the colonial situation, too, we will repeatedly encounter this mode of shifting validity accompanied by “textualization,” this transformation of “interests” into “information.” Initially, however, what needs to be considered is the question of what status was claimed by documents in which the ruler explicitly asserted that he had comprehensive knowledge at his disposal.

II Knowledge as the ruler’s postulate It now remains to make a scholarly determination about the concrete function that an explicit reference to knowledge had in the language of the king and royal administration. Talk of entera noticia was certainly quite common in Spain at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It may be found above all in literature, as in Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina (first published 1499), in the picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554),1 and in Cervantes. Yet in these works entera noticia usually just denotes the “comprehensive knowledge” that somebody might have about another person or about some thing. Don Quixote, for example, brags to Sancho Panza that he knows everything about the stories of the knights when he says: “de cuyas historias yo tengo entera noticia.”2 And yet at no point does he say it is this knowledge itself that empowers him to reach a particular decision. Yet this is exactly what popes and kings did. They linked the assertion of knowing something with a directive. Let us now see when, and in what function, formulations along these lines started to appear. To do this we must first look at the Late Medieval career of the information concept, and then (consecutively) at the formulations ex certa scientia and somos informados that were typically employed in official documents and letters.

1 Integra informatio: Empirical methods in the Late Middle Ages Today, information is regarded as the precondition for a certain form of rationality. There are historical reasons for this attitude, which is why we shall briefly go into some detail here about the development of the semantic field informatio/ informare and some of the administrative procedures associated therewith. In classical Latin, informatio means the process of shaping or forming, which can be understood in concrete material (but also traditional pedagogical) terms, that is, in terms of “teaching” and “instructing.” As a legal concept, informatio is absent from ancient Roman law. But it does show up, interestingly enough, in Western Gothic law, composed in Latin, at the end of the seventh century. It appears in the form of a notice reporting on the outcome of a procedure, and then around 1140 in the Decretum Gratiani where, once again classically, it stands for “teaching” and “instructing.” Thus, it is hardly the case that a “modern” concept of information was being used in normative legal texts, but it was employed in connection with 1 Rojas, La Celestina, 262 [doceno auto]; La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, 89. 2 Cervantes Saavedra: Don Quijote, ch. XV, 164.



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rhetoric as far back as Late Antiquity. Cicero still understood informatio as a juridical legal definition, as the clarification of a word’s meaning. Cassiodorus then used informatio in the early sixth century CE in order to explain the Greek concept χαρακτηρισμός (charaktērismós). He was concerned with the rhetorical principle of evidentia, energeia, or hypotyposis, meaning the possibility of intellectually imagining a distant thing or person. What an informatio accomplishes medially is now apparent: it was understood as a means for presenting something remote as if it were present.3 But this special semantics of the word informatio was absent, once again, at the outset of the Middle Ages. Only in the fourteenth century, presumably buoyed by the tailwind of the inquisitorial procedure, did the semantics of informatio suddenly take on renewed meaning. This happened in Papal surroundings and in connection with two new procedures. Both procedures aimed at collecting “information” within the framework of an investigation, either about a specific territory or about candidates for clerical offices and ordinations. The first procedure, the informatio de statu, was political in nature and generated a status report. As the earliest evidence for this we may identify the investigation of the political situation in the March of Ancona ordered by the Cistercian Pope Benedict XII, the so-called Informatio super statu provincie Marchie Anconitane (1341). Here informatio represents, on the one hand, the procedure for interrogating local interlocutors from the Church that Benedict’s legate had carried out by means of a questionnaire (informationem facere, se informare); on the other hand, it also stands for the report that emerged from this procedure. The language used here signals the information’s high degree of reliability as well as its comprehensiveness. And we also find the entera noticia concept showing up in Latin: “vera pura et integra informatio.” That this investigation into the March of Ancona had been ordered by Benedict XII merits some more attention. As a Cistercian, Benedict was well acquainted with the visitation practices of his order: it was customary to send out legates and examine the facts of the case by serially interrogating witnesses.4 But Pope Benedict had yet a second prehistory that links him to these serial examination procedures. As Bishop of Pamier, when he was still using his civil name Jacques Fournier, he conducted investigations on behalf of the Roman Inquisition into the orthodoxy of the inhabitants of the southern French Albigensian territories. The comprehensive interrogation records from the village of Montaillou that came out

3 Capurro, Information, 16–93; Cicero, Partitiones oratoriae, XXIX, 102; Cassiodorus, Expositio Psalmorum, XX, 3; Lausberg, Handbuch, § 818. 4 Oberste, “Normierung,” 320–327.

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of this investigation were used by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in his fascinating and precise reconstruction of how people lived and thought in this village.5 For us the crucial fact is that Jacques Fournier, alias Benedict XII, took these kinds of procedures out of the narrow confines of monastic and dogmatic examinations (at the latest during the March of Ancona investigation) and transferred them into the realm of the political. This also entailed a change in the status of the report that was produced: ecclesiastical visitors and inquisitors still behaved as mobile tribunes who gathered information in order to pass judgment and issue immediate sanctions. In the case of the informationes de statu, by contrast, a report was produced that was presented to a third authority at a completely different site, where there was no compulsion to issue a decision. The reader of the report did not have to get involved in the logic of the shepherd or the judge in order to prevent damage or guarantee justice. He read furtively and with the interest of a politician who is able but not required to act. Here “information” was emerging in the sense of modern notions about political rationality, as a compilation of empirical data that does not immediately need to be overwritten by a verdict, but can be stored, processed, read, or ignored; in brief, a compilation potentially available for different applications. In spite of this detachment from the immediate constraints of sanctions, the concept of information remained closely tied to other functions. This may be illustrated in the case of a second type of procedure, the “informative process” (processus informativus). In informative processes, candidates for higher offices or ordinations were examined before any prospective nomination (e.g., to become a judge of the Rota or a bishop); this is a procedure for which we have evidence since the eleventh century in the milieu of the Curia, and which is amply attested in the Late Middle Ages. These early informative processes thus anticipate the basic structures of the inquisitorial procedure, since witnesses were asked, with the assistance of a questionnaire, about the background, training, life, and character of the candidates, and in cases of electing bishops also about the state of the dioceses. The examination of the candidates for major order affected not only living persons, but also (in the context of canonization and beatification procedures) decedents, for whom “information” had to be gathered about their lives and evidence of miracles.6 Unlike the de statu reports, then, the processus informativus is closely tied to a decision that has to be made. The act of “informing oneself” on site is meant to facilitate and legitimate a personnel decision at central headquarters. In all these cases, the comprehensive gathering of infor5 In the minutes of Inquisition, informatio plays no role as a concept, although se informare does, see Duvernoy, Registre, 21. 6 Wetzstein, Heilige, 122–132 and 544; Jerouschek, “Religiosität,” 513; Schulz, Misstrauen, 165.



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mation is explicitly ordered and emphasized as an indispensable foundation for decision-making.7 “Information” is thus closely tied in with the emergence of empirical procedures. The tie-in is so close that the word can designate several stages of an empirical procedure: its very start (the gathering of information), the resulting document (the report), and finally the more abstract goal of “being informed.” “Information” refers to the entire sequence between what is empirical (in the sense of observation) and knowledge (in the sense of reliable cognizance). This can be shown quite clearly by looking at early modern Spanish linguistic usage. On the one hand, información already stands for knowledge in the abstract, and informarse for seeking knowledge of this kind. On the other hand, an información also designates concrete intermediate steps undertaken in the course of administrative or forensic investigation procedures, e.g., interrogation records. A distinction was made between informaciones de oficio and informaciones de partes, depending on whether the initiative to conduct an investigation came from an official or a private party. In both cases these documents had an official character and a corresponding format, which was guaranteed by certified scribes. Typical components of informaciones are witness statements, even in the case of informaciones de estado, meaning status reports, perhaps about a specific region. Everything is aimed, in other words, at portraying a concrete person, sequence of events, or situation in a manner that not only underlines the truth character of the description as such, but that also uses a strict formal production process to keep open the possibility of using the description in legal proceedings. For the time being, it should be noted that the modern concept of information is closely tied in with the career of empirical investigative procedures, frequently with a legal form. Even today the concept continues to suggest the kind of reliability and functionality that promises to guarantee the systemic application of formalized procedures and the step-by-step conveyance of social knowledge into written minutes, though without the odor of the historically related inquisitio adhering to the term. In addition, an informatio refers to empirical observations, which raises anew the question: How could the ruler, in practice, invoke such knowledge?

2 Ex certa scientia: The absolutist appeal to certain knowledge In the Aristotelian tradition, scientia indicated a certain kind of knowledge, namely “knowledge for reasons.” Scientia thus initially becomes an antonym to 7 Fridensburg, “Informativprozesse,” 169, 175, 178, 182, 186.

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“empirical knowledge,” to “knowledge from observation,” even if the concept of scientia had already been expanded early on, for example to include a scientia experimentalis in the case of Roger Bacon. Here, however, we shall not be examining the usage of the term in the history of science, but rather its function in political language. In papal documents starting at the end of the twelfth century, there is a striking formulation saying that the Pope makes decisions ex certa scientia – “on the basis of secure knowledge.” The background to this noteworthy formula was provided by an intensifying problem of how to manage in-house knowledge. In the course of the Church’s centralization, more and more decisions were made at the Curia. But since the only functioning record-keeping that existed was highly incomplete, one quickly lost track of the decisions that had been reached. There were duplications and contradictions, for example, when one papal decision clashed with another made earlier. Benefices were awarded to several claimants, and legal cases delegated to different judges. Since all parties concerned in such cases could invoke a papal decree, there was a need to regulate which decree was valid. Under Pope Alexander  III (1159–1181), a determination was made in this matter that the last letter to be issued had validity, though only if that letter had a specific reference to previously issued documents in the form of a mentio specialis. If there was no such explicit mention, the documents issued earlier remained legally in force. Instead of explicitly mentioning earlier letters, however, one could also formulate a general statement that the Pope was acting ex certa scientia. A document introduced this way “stung” generally, since it deprived all documents that might have already been issued on the subject of their validity.8 Ex certa scientia is thus a derogation formula that suspends the validity of legal claims that might possibly exist. Making only a general reference to certain knowledge, instead of pointing very explicitly to previous decisions, tells us that the Pope himself had no complete knowledge of previous determinations and was therefore also not in a position to invoke them explicitly. What at first glance looks like an explicit tie to preexisting knowledge, therefore, basically means detachment from that knowledge and from all previously applicable law; it was, therefore, an act of “imperative-absolutist” arbitrariness on the part of the Pope.9 For the decisive thing here was not “certain knowledge,” but rather an “absolute will.” The “ex certa scientia” formula, accordingly, entered the ranks of those formulations that emphasized the sovereignty of decision-making by rulers, both in the clerical as well as (ultimately) in the worldly language of law and administration. In France, the king’s certa scientia was emphasized as early as 1303 8 Hageneder, “Probleme”; Hageneder, “Rechtskraft”; Erwin, Machtsprüche, 63–66. 9 Hageneder, “Probleme,” 72.



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in a royal ordonnance, and even in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise of 1694 the entry on science has a secondary reference to the formula of royal edicts “De nostre certaine science, pleine puissance & authorité Royalle.”10 The Castilian equivalent of the formula (propio motu, ciencia cierta y poderío real absoluto) has been attested since the second half of the fourteenth century. Significantly, it gained in importance under the weak rule of King Henry IV (1454–1474), who had relinquished the reins of power to his favorite, Álvaro de Luna. The Castilian estates, as it happened, vehemently resisted this formula. What is more, they articulated a kind of “counter-derogation”: orders of the king that included the “ex cierta ciencia” formula were basically to be regarded as null and void.11 While the formulation still showed up under Charles V, under Philip II it disappeared from royal letters.12

3 Somos informados: Linking information to decisions As we have seen, the empirical procedures for acquiring informatio that arose in the milieu of the Curia aimed either at making a status report available or reaching a personnel decision. Here information really was understood as a resource in operational contexts and conceived in sequential terms as a series of procedural steps. Informatio could designate the beginning of the process (gathering data), its interim result (the report), as well as the third and final aspect of the process, its stated objective (being informed). This explains not only the distinction between “information” and “knowledge” in the linguistic usage of premodern documents related to the exercise of rule, but also the different legitimizing potentials of these two semantic fields. Knowledge refers, in an Aristotelian sense, to reasons, information to a kind of acquaintance with empirical circumstances acquired through a technical procedure. Knowledge is thus referring to a (logical) conclusion, information to an (operational) sequence. But what function did the assertion that one was informed have within the framework of everyday political speech? Here we need to distinguish among four different functions. The first function has to do with a long tradition of responsive formulas in letters. Both in papal and royal correspondence during the Middle Ages, it was frequently stated that the king or Pope had recently had something reach his ears 10 Krynen, “Nostre certaine science,” 134; Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise (Paris 1694), vol. 2, 447. 11 Colmeiro, Constitución, 257 and 378–379; Examples: Dios, “Operation,” 293. 12 Sánchez Agesta, “Poderío,” 443; also: Nader, “The more communes,” 216.

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or come to his attention (ad aures nostras pervenit nuper, ad notitiam nostram pervenit …). Formulas like this could fulfill special legal functions. But they are also found as a rhetorical component of secular and clerical authorities whose job it was to let the reader think that a dialogue had taken place. By emphasizing possession of some concrete news or exact knowledge, one was not primarily asserting knowledge. Rather, the point was more to avoid any suspicion of interfering arbitrarily in local affairs. One was signaling the intent to react – to whatever local grievances or needs had been reported. What was implied, in other words, was a communicative loop in which headquarters is merely the processor of local problems. In the language of Spanish legal documents, this kind of responsiveness was frequently emphasized by having a “because” (por cuanto) followed first by a presentation of the relevant circumstances and then, after a “therefore” (por tanto), followed by the order issued in the document.13 This recalls once again the figure of the shepherd who had to intervene on grounds of pastoral diligence, but it can also be described in the language of modern political science as ostentatious responsiveness. Responsiveness is supposed to guarantee that the representatives of power appear legitimate in the eyes of citizens insofar as they are discernibly reacting to citizens’ interests. Interestingly, the concept of responsiveness, although developed for democratic forms of government, proves a telling way to describe individual participatory features and gestures also found in premodern forms of rule. It is a circumstance that elucidates how certain components of democratic culture are based on older expectations of just rule. A monarch may not exactly be representing the people in this fashion, but he does have to listen to the people on occasion. That is why premodern political culture recognizes hearing scenarios (audiences), in which very careful attention is paid to how the ruler lends his ear to the speaker. The act of listening could generate ties between ruler and ruled in the sense of a diligent ruler’s unavoidable duty of care, which is why one can understand these audiences as ever-recurring performative acts constitutive of legitimate rule.14 With respect to knowledge, the first thing that should be noted is that responsive formulas were meant to perform tasks of legitimation. These formulas do not anticipate some notion (of whatever kind) about bureaucratic disposability over the empirical realm. On the contrary: it is striking that, as a rule, it is not explicated through whom and in what way the pope or the king had received information. The epistolary formulas used by the royal chancellery in Castile now only envisioned naming the informant if he was the direct beneficiary of a royal decision, for example in a case where the informant himself had put in a request for 13 Gómez Gómez, Forma, 202–210. 14 On corresponding behavior, see Firpo, Relationi, vol. 8, 437 and 507.



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marriage and inheritance privileges or had asked permission to undertake a treasure hunt, for which a special epistolary formula exists dating from the 1530s. If, by contrast, this was about control procedures – such as to inspect how departing officials discharged their offices – no informant was supposed to be mentioned. In these cases, the formula books simply called for writing: “know that we have been informed that ….”15 The recipient of the letter was therefore only told that the king had been informed, but not told by whom. Not only did such practices shield possible denouncers. They also suggested a kind of informational asymmetry in favor of headquarters in that they hinted that the king always knew more, since there were multiple paths by which information could reach him. He thus appeared as an unpredictable observer who could potentially “see” or “hear” everything, while his on-site correspondent neither saw the king nor was able to identify his informants with absolute certainty. Here we find the de facto “blindness of the king” vis-à-vis local circumstances rhetorically inverted, in that the presence of a diffuse number of local observers who are there to “see in his stead” is implied. We shall later encounter this rhetoric as an instrument of colonial rule. We now come to the second function of bene-informatus postulates: although the formula ex certa scientia no longer shows up in the correspondence that has been researched about the Spanish kings’ colonial policy, the phrases somos informados or nos es fecha relación are enlisted in the expositio (statements) of the two highest-ranking letter forms (the real cédula and real provisión).16 In both formulations there is an allusion to a specific prior act of communication. If one adds the king’s wish, frequently expressed above all in the trans-Atlantic correspondence, “to be informed” (quiero ser informado), the result here, too, is a sequence of distinct stages in the conveyance of information. First the king wants to be informed, then he is informed, and finally he issues an order. In some letters we find allusions to these kinds of sequences, for example when it says something like “because I want to be informed, I order you to … inform me.”17 In a letter from 1534 about establishing the provincial boundaries of New Spain, Charles V expressly suspended arriving at the relevant decision until such time as he would be “completely informed.”18 Finally, there is a formulaic coupling between whatever state of being informed had been attained and the decision that was then made: in such cases the typical formulation reads “because I was informed, I order you” – porque soy informado, os/vos mando. 15 Arribas Arranz, “Fórmulas,” 60–101. 16 Lorenzo Cadarso, Documento, 44, 46, 48; Gómez Gómez, Forma, 216. 17 AGI, México 1088, L. 2, fol. 9r–9v: Real cédula from Queen Isabella, 29 Febr. 1532. 18 BME: Ms. &. II. 7, 65, 364b. Copy of a cédula of Charles V, 20 Febr. 1534.

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Examples of comparable expressions can be traced back to the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. They are found in the expositio, that is, directly ahead of the formulation for the actual order (the dispositio), which reveals that they are meant to contribute to legitimating the decision.19 That information – or, more precisely, that the assertion of being informed – should have a legitimating effect is something that has both a legal and a political background. In order to understand the third, legal function, we must recall the differences between scientia and informatio. We have seen that the “ex certa scientia” formula served the explicit purpose of releasing a decision from any preconditions, even if these were normative rather than empirical preconditions. While the “ex certa scientia” formulation aimed at cutting through existing ties qua power (an aim that was hardly concealed), the presence of información seems to suggest the opposite, namely that nothing arbitrary is happening, but that decisions are based on facts that were determined and recorded using a formal procedure. Here it is important to judge cautiously: as a rule, an información does not contain “objective descriptions” of empirical matters. It essentially consists of witness testimony and thus gives witnesses an opportunity to bring their own interests to bear on the case at hand. That this happens in a way that is legally and procedurally defined opens up the opportunity for participants to translate their subjective interests into written material that may be regarded as decidedly objective, and that is frequently notarized or officially certified. The kind of relationship that existed between sciencia and información is highlighted by a 1439 letter from John II of Castile. In that letter the king wanted to justify his right to ban persons from the royal court arbitrarily. He began with the formula that this was taking place “e cierta sciencia e poderio Real absoluto e de plenitudo meae potestatis” and then emphasized explicitly that he could make this decision “sin cognicion ni informacion.”20 The king was thus deciding at the same time “in complete knowledge” and “without information,” which is not a contradiction but instead represents a dual release from preconditions. At first he derogated older legal claims ex certa scientia, and then he repudiated newer claims to an orderly procedure, such as the procedures whereby the affected parties might be consulted (cognición) or the specific circumstances documented (información). He released himself, in other words, from general-normative and from concrete-personal claims. With both remarks he underscored that his will was being expressed independently and unconditionally, that his will had, as it were, absolutist validity. 19 Diplomatically, the somos-informados formulations fall into the narratio about the more detailed circumstances. In Spanish diplomacy, expositio is the term used. 20 Sánchez Agesta, “Poderío,” 446–447.



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As a fourth and quite specifically political function, finally, there is the potential of the “somos informados” postulate to enlarge the political authorities’ opportunities for seeing that their orders are implemented. The formula may be read as a non-obstantibus formula, which announces that the king made his decision in awareness of the circumstances on-site. He emphasizes this in order to avoid the danger of having his order only symbolically obeyed, but not carried out in fact. In accordance with the Late Medieval Castilian legal principle obedézcase, pero no se cumpla (“one obeys but does not carry out”), a distinction was drawn between the act of ceremonially and ritually recognizing an order (obedecer) and the order’s actual implementation (cumplir). Carrying out an order could be suspended if it could be assumed that the order contravened local law or its implementation would cause damage. Underlying the clause was the thought that the king could not possibly want any damage relating to his order or wish for a break with prevailing law. The king, in other words, must have made decisions unaware of local circumstances or rights.21 Only if one had drawn the king’s attention to these circumstances and he repeated his order in full awareness of them could the order be implemented. In order to avoid carrying out a royal order, the recipient would therefore have to impute ignorance of the circumstances to the king. The Crown, however, could forestall this imputation of ignorance though an ostentatious assertion of “being informed” and thereby enhance the chances for implementing an order.22 A real cédula from King Ferdinand in 1508 shows that the Crown itself kept alive this principle of a linkage between cognizance and the claim to validity. In this letter addressed to Diego Colón, the son of Christopher Columbus and governor of Cuba, Ferdinand explicitly emphasized his own ignorance, which he understood as a reason for ignoring the order. Here it is important to pay attention to the distinction between “obeying” (obedecer) and “executing” (cumplir). The king wrote: Because it could be that I, because I was not well-informed, ordered some letters to be issued for las Indias: Should some damage to your service ensue therefrom, I order that you look at these letters and obey (obedezcais) them. With respect to the implementation (cumplimiento), let us know later, so that I can send notice about what is to be done. But as soon as you receive the second order, obey (obedecedlas) and comply (complidlas) with it completely, just as I have sent it and without any delay.23

21 Tau Anzoátegui, “Ley,” 79–81; González Alonso, “Formula.” For an example, see Simpson, Encomienda, 60–62. 22 Nader, “The more communes,” 216. 23 Real cédula, 13 Dec. 1508, CODOIN–2–39, 185–186.

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It may be said, then, that the obedézcase-pero-no-se-cumpla principle hardly represented a kind of refusal to obey orders that was corrosive of authority and that could be used by subjects in distant America to evade the clutches of the Crown. It was a legal principle that the king himself initially emphasized in order to make his own orders more flexible and give the recipients of his orders the opportunity to suspend their implementation in light of local circumstances and prior rights and, should the occasion arise, to request a revision. In this way, to put a positive spin on this, they could collaborate on getting legal intention and legal reality to match. It did not take long, however, for abuse to set in. Officials in the New World used the opportunity to delay or even completely drag out the implementation of orders – such as directives to protect the Indios – so that by the end of the 1520s an effort was undertaken to narrow the circumstances of nonimplementation: only when there was the danger of a “foreseeable scandal or irreparable damage” could the implementation of a royal order be suspended.24 It was not possible, however, to dispense with local rights of intervention entirely, a circumstance fundamentally connected to a structural problem of ruling from a distance. This was a problem that could already be discerned in Late Antiquity, though it was especially noticeable in the centralization process undertaken by the Church in the twelfth century. Whenever rulers reacted to supplications, they had to count on the supplicant feigning false facts – for example about his person or the circumstances of his cause. As a result, authorities started inserting general clauses into the grants of rights and privileges that allowed local officials, in cases of fraud committed by feigning wrong facts, to declare sovereign orders invalid. This provision, known as the “truth of the requests” (veritas precum), is found as early as the reign of the eastern Roman Emperor Zeno. In 477 CE he ordered that rescripts issued by his chancellery would only be valid under the condition that the fact depicted by the applicant also be true.25 Since it was impossible in all cases for the emperor to check the veracity of applicants’ statements in advance and on-site, this clause allowed local authorities to undertake the intervention later. The provision was incorporated into the Decretum Gratiani and then, under Pope Alexander III, into papal rescripts. One began to issue warrants with the stipulation that they should only be implemented if the facts behaved as indicated (si res ita se habet). Reservations of this kind finally became the standard for papal rescripts in the Late Middle Ages. If the “right facts” could not be ascertained, because the Curia was neither familiar with nor able to inspect the constant stream of assertions about local circumstances, at

24 Tau Anzoátegui, “Ley,” 84–85, Simpson, Encomienda, 81 25 Hageneder, “Rechtskraft,” 403–404.



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least the legal validity of surreptitious privileges would remain precarious and expire upon discovery of false presuppositions.26 In light of this background story, the ambivalent status of such a formulaic claim by the king “to be informed” becomes clear. The “somos informados” formulation hints at the fragility of the king’s own knowledge. For it shows that the ruler was dependent on informants, that he might conceivably be misinformed, and that one might also be permitted under these circumstances to contradict him. As a rule, however, the formulation tended to be used as a way of enhancing the opportunities for implementing royal directives. In this case the somos informados, much like the formulation ex certa scientia, was meant to enhance the effectiveness of directives by anticipating any objection that the king might “not” have been – or that he might be “wrongly” – informed. Once again, the issue at hand was the possibility of derogating established (local) law and anticipating objections that might arise out of local circumstances. Entirely in line with Max Weber’s definition of domination, this was about rulership as the probability for orders to be carried out,27 so that we may indeed recognize this as a case of a causal link, not between “power” and “knowledge,” but between the “postulate of knowledge” and “domination.” That this is the case, meaning that royal orders had to be based in a serious way on the claim that they rested on information, already points toward a specific problem for the Castilian kingdom: strictly speaking, no royal decision regarding the overseas territories ever rested on personal knowledge of the circumstances there, since no Spanish king ever visited the New World.

26 Hageneder, “Rechtskraft,” 403–406. 27 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 122.

III Strolls through the world. The epistemic setting of the court “Courtiers,” said Don Quixote, “without leaving their chambers or the confines of the court, stroll all over the world just by perusing a map, which does not cost them a penny or cause them to suffer any heat or cold, or hunger or thirst.”1 The vision of making the world available via media was not alien to early modern Spain, and its royal courts had at their disposal long-standing traditions of using media for political purposes. As early as around 1257, the Aragonese King James I was using high-quality paper for his own administration, which made him the first European king to base his rule on paper, writing, and an archive that has been compared in scope and significance with the Papal Registers.2 All this was made possible by Arab paper mills that became part of his royal domain after the capture of Valencia in 1238. After the conquest of Sicily in 1282 by his son Peter III, the production of written administrative records continued to grow, with intensified maritime trade and shipping activities in an Aragonese-dominated western Mediterranean now also assuming a leading role. This also affected the early production of portolan charts, soon centered in Mallorca. An additional impulse for the political deployment of geographic descriptions certainly came from the conquest of Naples in 1442 by Alfonso V of Aragon. As early as 1444, a Descrizione della Città di Napoli e statistica del Regno is recorded. It briefly describes the geography of the kingdom, then lists its most important princes, lords, offices, provinces, and territories, followed by their descriptions. Naples’ royal rights and tax revenues are also mentioned, along with the political procedures customary there.3 Aragon thus entered the modern era with vast experience in the political use of knowledge. The kingdom of Castile is likewise characterized by an early link between rulership and knowledge, which, if one looks at a place like Toledo in the High Middle Ages, can be traced back to both Arab and Jewish roots. For the thirteenth century, the person and court of Alfonso X (the Wise) should be highlighted. Alfonso commissioned the drafting of two comprehensive chronicles, including the first national history written in a European vernacular. Specific works translated from Arabic and a comprehensive statutory code, the Siete Partidas, were also drawn up at this time.

1 Cervantes, Don Quijote, II, 5. The translation used here is The ingenious hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. John Rutherford (New York: Penguin, 2001), 521. 2 Finke, Acta Aragonensia, vol. 1, XXV–XXX; Burns, Society, 9 and 25. 3 “Descrizione della città di Napoli.”



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The policy of the Catholic Kings, finally, made the systematic production of knowledge in the service of rulership appear more vital than ever. This had to do with the enormous size and complexity of the imperial union now jointly ruled by Isabella and Ferdinand, but also with the need (already becoming apparent during the wars of succession) to rebalance economic and political participation by the nobility and cities. The project to promote religious homogeneity, for example, called for an intensified interest in the population and its behavior. Maritime expansion and the seafarers’ discoveries made a systematic recording of the geography, population, and economic potential of these territories necessary. But the reaction to these challenges was a series of measures that were quite varied and uncoordinated, so that one can hardly speak right away about a new, information-based concept of rule. While the voyages of Christopher Columbus, for example, stimulated political curiosity, this inquisitiveness was not applied to geographical study in any systematic way. The curiosity of the court initially concentrated on what happened, on what was seen, negotiated, and taken into possession during the voyages of discovery, that is, on specific actions and their circumstances, but not on recording the characteristics of the alien territories in any comprehensive way. Before we can follow the development of this curiosity in greater detail, it is necessary to provide an overview of the Spanish court’s epistemic setting and institutions.

1 The Spanish court For Alfonso the Wise the palace was that place “at which the king speaks with the people.”4 How this was facilitated, and how the court functioned culturally and socially, has by now become a well-researched topic.5 Everyday political business was decided by the system of the Royal Councils (consejos reales). As early as the fourteenth century a Royal Council of Castile had been established, an institution which, beginning in 1480, had consolidated key duties of domestic and foreign policy, regulated appointments to important offices, and constituted the Supreme Court. A corresponding office for the territories of the other Spanish kingdom, the Supreme Council of Aragon, had been established in 1494. Under the Catholic Kings, the Council of the Inquisition was added in 1483, for the first time covering the two crowns of Castile and Aragon jointly. This was followed by a Consejo de Órdenes (1495), responsible for the military orders of knights, a Crusade Council 4 Siete Partidas, Part. II, tít. 9, ley 29. 5 Above all through the works of Martínez Millán, Javier de Carlos Morales, and Fernández Conti.

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(1509), and then in 1520 the Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias). All these council bodies combined three functions: each was an advisory body that prepared decisions for the king, a partly independent-acting administrative agency, and each acted at the same time as the highest judicial authority for its respective area of jurisdiction. Higher-level political questions were assigned to the Council of State (Consejo de Estado), established in 1529.6

Figure 5: Sketch of Madrid’s Alcázar, Anton van den Wyngaerde, 1569 (Vienna, Austrian National Library, Co. Min. 41, fol. 73)

Initially, the meetings of the councils took place in the residence of each respective council president, until permanent administrative offices became available when Madrid was fixed as the seat of government in 1561. These permanent offices were now located in the Alcázar, the old Moorish fortress renovated several times by the Habsburgs. The sketch by Anton van de Wyngaerdes shows the condition of the palace around the year 1570. Identifiable on the left side is the so-called Golden Tower, in which the workrooms and private library of Philip II were located; the rooms of the Council of the Indies were located on the right-hand side of the gateway in the middle. Finally, in the seventeenth century, at the time of Philip IV, a more distinguished official building with a European aura was added with the construction of the Palacio del Buen Retiro.7 Before Madrid was fixed as the permanent seat of the court, the narrower royal court and the various political council bodies moved with the king from one royal site to the next. Whenever Charles V left Spain, he appointed a trusted person as regent. The regent stayed behind in Spain with the council bodies and conducted govern6 Dios, Consejo Real de Castilla; Ezquerra Revilla, Consejo real de Castilla. 7 Barbeito, Alcázar, 38; Alvar Ezquerra, Felipe II; Brown and Elliott, Palace.



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ment business, his conduct bound by instructions and ongoing correspondence with the emperor. The latter was accompanied by advisers for specific subjects and regional areas, as a rule by, whatever council president was in charge of that field. Above all, one or two important secretaries were usually in charge, as was Francisco de los Cobos for many years. A variety of government business ended up in the hands of a council president like Cobos, including matters of state from the Council of the Indies and Council of Finance. Cobos, together with the other secretaries, organized a kind of “state secretariat” that processed the ongoing correspondence of the state and represented the backbone of the imperial communication system. Family members were typically appointed as regents; for a long time this was Empress Isabella in Spain, then Charles’s nephew Maximilian, and in 1543, for the first time, his then seventeen-year-old son Philip. At this time Philip also began to participate in the consultations regarding American affairs, and to issue relevant documents.8 In this context, the culture of the court is also important to the extent that it helped shape opportunities for communication at court. While the Catholic Kings still held public audiences twice a week, under Charles V, and especially under Philip II, the ruler’s isolation became more profound. It was intensified by a peculiar, specifically Spanish idealization of the ruler’s virtues. The king’s gravitas was meant to be underscored by aloofness, silence, and partly by the downright immobility or invisibility of the monarch.9 In principle, too, Spanish court etiquette introduced in 1548 had diminished opportunities for gaining access to the king, something the Castilian estates, the Cortes, quickly noticed. In 1555 and 1558 they complained that the new etiquette was a hindrance not only to them, but also to the king. It would prevent him from choosing his servants and rewarding his loyal followers.10 They feared, in other words, that the communicative requirements for distributive justice were no longer in place. The ceremonial isolation of the Spanish king is highlighted by a comparison with France: while there even the king’s lever and coucher elicited gatherings of courtiers, the Spanish king dined in silence, surrounded only by servants (about twenty of them). In Spain, accordingly, the office of the head chamberlain had major political significance, since access to the king’s private chambers was assigned to that office.11 Together with the office of the head stable master, who rode out with the king, the chamberlain became the key to the system of rule based on favoritism in the seventeenth century. 8 Rabe and Marzahl, “‘Comme représentant’,” 83–94; Keniston, Cobos; Martínez Millán and Carlos Morales, Corte de Carlos V, 54–60. 9 Fernández de Córdova Mirales, Corte de Isabel I, 369–373; Feros, Kingship, 84–85; Feros, “Twin Souls,” 34; Campbell, Monarchy, 70–71. 10 Bouza Álvarez, “Majestad,” 53. 11 Elliott, “Court,” 149; Feros, Kingship, 83.

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The isolation of the Spanish king was, however, qualified by three circumstances. For one, clearly acknowledged moments of accessibility continued to exist. In addition to private audiences with the king, these moments included going to church, during which one could approach the king for a short time in order to advance one’s cause.12 Second, there was the Alcázar in Madrid, constructed in such a way that the private chambers of the king were located above the study rooms and conference halls of the consejos.13 If the king was in Madrid, this made him quite “near” to his subjects, even if one needed to investigate in each case if, when, and through whom he could really be reached. Third and last of all, the boundary between the court and the city of Madrid was permanently blurred, especially by the people who worked at court but lived in the city. One needs to explain that the newly introduced Burgundian court ceremonial, although it had increased the distance between the courtiers and the king, was simultaneously a rite that strengthened the integration of the courtiers within city circles: the royal household had grown enormously, which was the development that had made it necessary in the first place for the court to be located in a fixed settlement. By day the palace was populated by councilors, secretaries, scribes, servants, and personnel by the hundreds, people who then – at midday, after hours-long sessions, and in the evening – receded back into the city. In addition, those living in the city as a result of the court’s quartering rights included the holders of higher offices, the council presidents, councilors, and secretaries, who in turn brought papers from their offices back home after work. Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, Madrid was evidently becoming more and more the actual social space for the Spanish court. Its society was on display in the rows of the back courtyard theaters (corrales) or in carriages, on horse and by foot, on the edge of the city on the Prado. “In this manner,” according to a French travelogue, “the court is located more in the city than with the king.”14 And the city came into the palace, as we learn from the pen of another Frenchman writing in 1659: The king is only seen at audience, which he grants all private persons who request this from him ... The rest of the time he is enclosed in his palace, where everyone goes walking in the inner courtyards, of which there are two in Madrid of the kind resembling our cloister courtyards, whether it be to acquire something in the shops installed there, or whether it be in the morning owing to matters before the council bodies that convene in the halls on the ground floor of the palace.15

12 Firpo, Relationi, vol. 8, 437; Parker, Grand Strategy, 18–19, 305. 13 Rodríguez-Salgado, “Court,” 213, 235, 242–243; Cabrera de Córdoba, Felipe Segundo, vol. 3, 228. 14 Campbell, Monarchy, 38–39; Joly, “Voyage,” 571. 15 Bertaut, Relation, 44–45.



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The inner courtyards and forecourts of the palace were thus important transshipment points for news, daily meetings, and public spectacles. Travel reports emphasize the many carriages on the forecourt and the clusters of people in front of the grated windows. Oral exchange was served by two additional squares in Madrid that were called mentideros owing to the lies that could be savored there in abundance. One was chiefly the place of assembly for theater people, the second for soldiers from all corners of the empire, so that the latter was more important for political news. All one needed to do to keep abreast of the latest developments, starting in the late afternoon hours, was arrive at the steps of the Convent of San Felipe near Puerta de Sol where, well into the night, soldiers, foreigners, and inquisitive Madridleños exchanged news.16 All these particulars remind us of how hard it is to detach the epistemic from the communicative setting of the court. But the king was supposed to have at his disposal a kind of knowledge that transcended city gossip. Only: How did he do this? What could he know?

2 Spaces of knowledge Spain’s royal courts were a mirror of Philip’s world. If he stayed at the Alhambra, the Moorish legacy was in view, but also the deeds of his father, which had been glorified along the walls of the palace with frescos and Gobelin tapestries.17 In the gardens of Aranjuez Philip II could view the flora and some of the fauna of his kingdom. In the garden of El Escorial he had an additional garden laid out in which plants from the New World grew. And in El Escorial he not only made his kingdom accessible cartographically by having sixty-five engravings from Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum hung, but he also made “salvation” accessible, and in a manner that showed bureaucratic accuracy: An enormous wardrobe contained thousands of relics. The king was said to have visited it daily, asking the sacristan to take out a particular relic, at which point the king removed his hat, bowed, and kissed the object “with his eyes and his lips.”18 At Philip’s request, a graphic model of heavenly Jerusalem had been installed. In the hallways of the palace, in turn, hundreds of pictures and then dozens of maps and landscape pictures were hung.19 In these diverse ways, the ruler was surrounded by objects and media that brought to mind not only the world outside the palace, but also the religious points of reference underlying his conduct. 16 Rodríguez Marín, “Cervantes”; Castillo Gómez, “Leer,” 28–38. 17 Rubio Moraga, “Propaganda carolina,” 118; for Philip IV: Kagan, “Arcana imperii,” 50–56. 18 López Piñero, “Felipe II”; Mulcahy, Philip II, 27–28, 81, 193, 230; Estal, “Felipe II.” 19 Lazure, “Perceptions.”

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Philip II must have been aware that there was something very unsystematic about this assortment of media and sites communicating knowledge. As early as 1555 he had been handed a memorial from the royal chronicler Juan Páez de Castro in Brussels that contained the draft of a plan for an ideal center of knowledge. In Valladolid, still a Castilian capital and royal seat at the time, Páez proposed building a library with three large halls. The first hall was intended to contain all kinds of books and serve as an oracle “for everything about which one has doubts.”20 More unusual is the second, cosmographic hall, for which Páez de Castro had envisioned housing “very carefully produced, large-format maps for seafaring and cosmography about everything that one knows about the world today.” Mainly, a very large map of America was to be constructed, modeled after a map of Europe that was hanging at the time in Rome’s Palazzo di Venezia. Celestial and terrestrial globes were also to be installed, and very precise maps of all the provinces and pictures of the most important cities, including those of America, were to be made available.21 The objects listed would then have turned this room into a chamber of marvels with political utility. Alongside scientific instruments, watches, mirrors, models of inventions and military machines, bridges and fireworks, genealogical tree diagrams of the most important dynasties, the items required included antiquities, natural wonders, vases, but also trees, herbs, and fruits made out of metal and painted. The third hall was meant to serve as an archive and present the most secret part of the collection. The list of the objects to be stored there begins, as expected, with documents, but it also calls for the lists of the colonial empire’s repartimientos, i.e., the allocations of Indian groups to individual Spaniards, to be archived, and for reports from Europe and America to be put in safekeeping. In order to collect all this, books were to be purchased systematically for the first hall, and for the second hall the royal cosmographer was to produce maps and globes, while officials in the Americas were to be tasked with sending rare objects. It was easy, according to Páez, to compile archival material for the third hall, because this material was lying around in the consejos and chancellery offices. There is one brief outburst in Páez’ memorial where we find him idealizing a medium of rule that is interest-free: he likened the holdings in the halls of Valladolid to unusually well-behaved courtiers, attendants who understood that they should only speak when asked a question, and who then provided correct information.22

20 BME, Ms. &. II. 15, fol. 192v; on prototypes: Grebe, Akten, 387–393. 21 BME, Ms. &. II. 15, fol. 193r. 22 BME, Ms. &. II. 15, fol. 193r–194v.



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What Páez de Castro had in mind, therefore, was much more than a library. He designed a site to concentrate knowledge about the world, a site meant to be specifically oriented toward the needs of the Spanish king. Knowledge in support of rulership was intended to have a major share in this, even if the rhetoric of utility for this memorial moved into the background behind a humanistic-scholarly tone that was intended to make the role of the philanthropist in projects like this palatable to the young king. The project, however, was not realized, at least not coherently. With a grain of salt, however, Paez’s three halls do turn up in three major enterprises from the reign of Philip II. In the El Escorial a library of the highest repute was installed, and in Simancas the first state archive of the modern era was systematically expanded. Only the second, cosmographic hall did not end up taking shape architectonically, although it did ensconce itself in a series of projects and institutions to be examined below. It was only later that science and scholarship themselves came to occupy a position of importance at the court of Philip II. One important impulse had been imparted by Philip’s stay in Lisbon from 1581 through 1582, where he had come into contact with Portuguese cosmographers and scholars. While still in Lisbon in 1582, Philip founded a Royal Academia de Matemáticas at the court in Madrid. The purpose of the Academy was to instruct young nobles in mathematics, the doctrine of the spheres, geography, and cosmography. The cosmographers from the Council of the Indies, Arias de Loyola, Pedro Ambrosio de Ondériz, and Andrés García de Céspedes, taught at this Mathematical Academy in the 1590s and at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1629 Jesuits took over instruction, which from that point on took place in their Colegio Imperial.23

3 Media of knowledge “Mediality” rests on the promise of availability. This becomes especially clear in the idea of the one book that is supposed to make the ruler’s entire kingdom available to him. Yet regardless of whether the summarization of knowledge was lauded in one book or in gigantic libraries, this says little about whether and how the promise of availability was actually redeemed. Even contemporaries complained, for example, that the library of El Escorial was barely used. Individual books, by contrast, were read quite avidly. They held up examples of vir-

23 Esteban Piñero and Vicente Maroto, “Casa,” 45–51; Navarro Brotons, “Colegio Imperial,” 59–68.

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tuous behavior or savvy statesmanship for the king.24 In his political testament, Philip II asked his son to spend at least two hours a day contemplating the Mysterium Christi and to read through his father’s political testament once a week – at a minimum. Philip III was also instructed to keep a kind of diary in his own, very private booklet: Never go to sleep without first having examined your conscience about that day. In a small, secret book that you should keep under lock and key, record your sins that you have committed that day by word, work, or thought … That will prove quite useful to you when you get around to the sacrament of confession, … since memory is weak ... When you have confessed, then tear the pages out ... I strongly recommend this to you, for I have benefited greatly from this.25

Philip  II did indeed keep a libro de memoria in which all the favors that God bestowed on him since he assumed office were to have been recorded. He was said to have it with him at prayer, when he would peruse the favors shown him and thank God for each one of them.26 These very different ways of using books show how important it is to do more than simply list the various media of knowledge; what matters, instead, is reconstructing, wherever possible, the concrete use to which each medium was put. The specific “knowledge” of each medium was only constituted in its use, and this is also the only way it can be classified. In this respect, land maps and nautical charts represent a kind of object that is particularly tricky methodologically. A high degree of utility is ascribed to these cartographic media. As a rule, however, no actual use can be proven any longer; it can only be imputed. Nautical charts demonstrate this methodological difficulty with special clarity: although we have to assume that there were thousands of them in circulation, the few copies that have come down to us are decorative versions that did not serve the purpose of navigation but were meant instead to display prestige. Accordingly, any clues as to how they were used, such as notes, lines, or compass marks, are absent. Those navigational charts actually employed were used up in the line of duty and thrown away after becoming worn out, drenched with moisture, or aged.27 Independently of whatever concrete everyday utility such media had, the fields of knowledge involving cartography and cosmography had become entry tickets at court. The cosmographer Santa Cruz recalled having visited the gout24 On the king’s daily reading of laws, following Deuteronomy Chapter 17, verses 18–19, see Senellart, Arts, 54–55, 103–107. 25 BPT, Ms. 155, fol. 5r and 19r–20r. 26 García García, Pax Hispanica, 11. 27 Ash, “Navigation Techniques,” 513.



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plagued Charles V in the winter of 1539 in Toledo and having taught him “astrology, the doctrine of the spheres, planetary theory, and something about nautical charts and globes of the earth,” which gave the king a “pastime and a great deal of joy.”28 Charles had already become acquainted with cartographic projections and related instructional material during his time in Burgundy.29 Of his grandfather, Maximilian I, it had already been said that he was so well-acquainted with all the strategically important pathways, mountains, castles, ravines, and rivers in his country that he was able spontaneously to draw maps of every single territory. In Charles’s time, then, there was already a broad trend running through the courts of Europe to map and describe the territory and hire official or royal cosmographers. Humanism, state-formation, seafaring, and expansion can be discerned as the forces driving this trend in its early phase. In this way, Portugal and the Venetian Republic were able to organize relatively early a kind of official cartography specific to each state. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Venice had established offices responsible for maps and descriptions, including ones that could be used to administer natural resources like water and wood. Starting in 1548, it employed a cosmografo della Repubblica. In 1562 Cosimo I of Florence appointed a cosmografo, and the Republic of Genoa a delineatore. The list could go on and on. Thus, we find Henry II of France appointing André Thevet as his cosmographe du roi. Thevet’s successor, Nicolas de Nicolay, was then assigned to undertake a complete visitation and mapping of France, although the project was not completed owing to the Wars of Religion. In England, too, projects for mapping the land were started during the 1560s. And the territories of the Holy Roman Empire constituted a regular biotope of projects for cartography and mapping of land, of which so far only the most outstanding blossoms have been described, such as the geographic recording of Württemberg under Duke Christoph, the works undertaken by Philipp Apian for Albert V of Bavaria, or by Tilemann Stella for Mecklenburg and Palatinate-Zweibrücken. At the level of the Empire, Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1544) should be singled out, then Tilemann Stella’s failed attempt at using the imperial privileges granted him in 1560 and 1569 to map and describe the entire territory of the Empire.30 Two institutions could be regarded as proper geographic agencies: the Casa de la Contratación in Seville, which is readily described as the earliest example, and then the Swedish Lantmäterikontor, an office established in 1650 and often characterized as a later high point in the institutionalization of geography. 28 Santa Cruz, Crónica, 24; Portuondo, Secret Science, 69. 29 Buisseret, “Spanish Peninsular Cartography,” 1081. 30 Schmidt and Kagan, “Maps,” 666–668; Meurer, “Cartography,” 1213–1214.

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In spite of this impressive wave of cartographic, chorographic, and land-describing projects and institutions, we should not overlook how differently these projects were implemented from one case to another. In England and the Low Countries, for example, backing from the sovereign was minimal. In the Low Countries, the journalistic market was a driving force behind the project. In Spain, by contrast, cartography was frequently viewed as something arcane by officials, even if this policy of secrecy was not kept up, not even by the kings themselves.31 In many places it is evident that maps and territorial descriptions were not employed; instead, they served and met a contemporary need to display prestige and to project a self-image of sovereign grandeur. Maps became part of wall decoration, whether in Stuttgart’s Neues Lusthaus, Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, the Residence of the Archbishops in Salzburg, or in Whitehall. Jan Vermeer’s pictures are striking exhibits of how maps were popular as wall decoration in the Low Countries.32 In England, as early as the 1560s, the landed aristocracy also got caught up in the fashion for hanging maps. When the price for printed maps from the Low Countries fell at the beginning of the seventeenth century, large-sized maps were presumably even hung up in taverns. On the other hand, there was also a demand to which Abraham Ortelius was responding with his 1570 atlas Theatrum orbis terrarum: maps in a small-sized, transportable format in lieu of the expensive, king-sized wall maps.33 Maps, globes, and geographic literature must therefore be imagined in a variety of functions and contexts that extend far beyond their mere utility as reference works for spatial orientation. In 1530 Gemma Frisius wrote that one could hardly comprehend the utility and joy that a globe brought with it once it was set up. It had to be regarded as the only instrument whose frequent use “illuminates astronomers, guides geographers, makes historians certain, improves jurists, causes grammarians to marvel, [and] guides helmsmen.” In brief: it was not only beautiful, but it was also possessed of an indescribable utility and needed by everyone.34 Fifty years later, John Dee described the enthusiasm with which his contemporaries decorated their entrance hallways, rooms, galleries, and libraries with maps and globes. Each one did this with a different purpose in mind: “To conclude, some, for one purpose: and some, for another, liketh, loveth, getteth, and useth: Mappes, Chartes, and Geographicall Globes. Of whose use, to speake sufficiently, would require a booke peculiar.”35 31 Martín-Merás, “Cartografía,” 92–93. 32 Alpers, Art of Describing, 119–168. 33 Barber, “Mapmaking,” 1657–1658; Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, fol. A2a, fol. A2b. 34 Frisius, Principes. 35 Dee, “To the unfained lovers of truthe,” fol. a IV.



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At the royal and princely courts, maps were often hung in a row along with pictures of rulers, genealogies, and paintings of battles. They did not represent mere geographical “reality”; rather, they also often evoked political claims. When, for example, João (John) III of Portugal and Charles V’s sister Catherine were married in 1525, a series of tapestries was commissioned in Brussels. One of these depicts the hemisphere claimed by the Portuguese, above which we see the king of Portugal standing on the left raising his scepter. From the right side of the tapestry, Catherine stretches her hand toward this alliance across the globe. On the side of the globe that is displayed, Melaka and the Molucca Islands are also discernible on the extreme east. The position is critical: these islands are depicted as belonging to the domain of Portugal according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. In this way, King João was demonstrating his claims to possessing these territories. World maps of Spanish provenance, by contrast, usually show the Moluccas on the extreme west, that is, on the left margins of the map.36

Figure 6: Earth Under the Protection of Jupiter and Juno, The Sphere, third tapestry, Bernart van Orley, Georg Wezeler (Palacio Real de La Granja de San Ildefonso)

Here, already, we can see the Tordesillas line referring to a new, politicized perception of global space, as is also seen (for example) in Hans Holbein’s famous 36 Brotton, Trading Territories; Martín-Merás, “Cartografía,” 86.

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1553 painting of two diplomats. Between the men stands a globe on which, upon closer inspection, a finely drawn Tordesillas line may also be discerned. The “Age of Discoveries” was reflected in the medium of popular maps, globes, atlases, and even descriptions of lands and travels, and this reflection also happened in courtly and government circles: in 1543 in Italy, Charles V had an atlas of maps drawn for his sixteen-year-old son Philip. There, too, the route taken by Magellan’s global circumnavigation and the Tordesillas line were delineated on the atlas’s world map. In Whitehall, at the instigation of Elizabeth I, a world map was hung which traced instead the global circumnavigation of Francis Drake, although only at the start of the 1590s when, in light of the ongoing war with Spain, there was no longer a need to show any consideration for the feelings of Spanish diplomats. It was entirely in this spirit that, shortly thereafter, tapestries were commissioned showing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. They hung in the House of Lords until the Great Fire of 1834.37 Globes and cartography thus existed in a field of tension juxtaposing artistic ambitions, scholarly patronage, political claims, and governmental function. There artifacts of geographic display were, moreover, to some extent a fashion item in this age of expansion, conforming to the needs of a public imagination that was becoming much more geographically oriented. That this alone did not suffice – that cartography, in other words, could really only be made “comprehensible” in a specific constellation, in combination with other media, with eyewitnesses and exotica – is made clear by the manner in which the relevant media circulated. In 1523 the Papal nuncio in Germany, Francesco Chiericati, sent Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, a report about the conquest of Mexico along with a drawing of the capital. Yet the text was not enough. He was hoping that the marchioness would have the pleasure of hearing the personal report to be delivered by his servant. The man in question was Antonio Pigafetta, who had survived Magellan’s circumnavigation and was now traversing Europe on a tour as author and contemporary witness to the expedition.38 Chiericati himself was still in Nuremberg at the time. There he was allowed to look at materials that Charles V had sent to his brother Ferdinand so that he, too, could be informed about Magellan’s circumnavigation. Alongside a lengthy report, the materials contained a “sphere” on which the journey had been painted, in addition to spices, branches and leaves, as well as a “very beautiful bird.”39 As can be seen, the promise to visualize distant parts of the world could seldom be redeemed by texts alone. Rather, it is apparent that the epistemic 37 Wieser, “Portulan,” 488; Padrón, Spacious Word; Barber, “Mapmaking,” 1658–1659. 38 Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, 225–227; Cachey, “Introduction,” XV–XVI. 39 Morsolin, Francesco Chiericati, 111–113.



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setting of the actors – their opportunities for knowing something about America – was concretized in different ways that were situational. It was individual constellations that elicited knowledge about the New World, specific constellations in which there were interactions between media and people, between their prior knowledge and the communicative and performative actualizations of that foreknowledge. Yet repeatedly a promise was made, especially to those involved in politics, that a self-explanatory medium might facilitate a synopsis encompassing the entire empire. To fulfill that grand promise, however, the entire country had to be recorded.

4 Land recording projects in Spain The Iberian peninsula itself had repeatedly been the object of colonization. Since the eighth century, Moorish scholars had been producing geographic descriptions of the peninsula. In the eleventh century there emerged, along with the Toledan Tables, a collection of astronomical data as well as of the longitudes and latitudes of Spanish sites. Historians of science have also taken notice of the achievements in astronomy made at the University of Salamanca as well as of the portolan charts made by the Majorcan school of cartography in the fourteenth century. There is no way of overlooking the dominance of Moorish, but above all also Jewish, scholars here, although this was largely gone by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries owing to the expulsion or marginalization of these groups.40 Around 1500, editions of Pomponius Mela as well as Antonio de Nebrija’s preoccupation with Ptolemy testify to how Spain participated in the contemporary geographic discourse of European humanism.41 A first project that could be regarded as systematic and genuinely geographical may be attested for the years 1517 through 1523. It was carried out by Hernando Colón, the second son of Christopher Columbus. This project, however, was not related to Spain’s overseas territories, but rather to Spain itself, and in 1523, apparently at the initiative of the Council of Castile, Charles V suddenly declared that it had been ended. The relevant document says succinctly that it “is now advantageous” to the king “that one not know anything about the aforementioned.”42 At the same time, the royal privileges that traveling staff were accustomed to using so that they could identify themselves while traveling through the country were withdrawn. One can only speculate about the background to this decision: in all 40 Buisseret, “Spanish Peninsular Cartography,” 1070–1071. 41 Randles, “Recovery,” 2; Portuondo, Secret Science, 28–31 and 40–42. 42 Laborda, Descripciones, 81.

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likelihood, the civil war-like conditions that prevailed during the Comunidades uprisings of 1522 had interrupted the surveyors’ work, so that a resumption of the project either appeared inopportune or infeasible, especially since data of strategic importance (such as the distance between sites, the fortification of towns, and information about their condition) had by now been collected. Conceivably there was also resistance in the Royal Council against giving Hernando Colón too strong a position. One of his closest colleagues spoke about the “envy” that had prevented the project from being concluded.43 Parts of the material were then taken, and all that remains are two working manuscripts and a piece of the alphabetical catalogue listing place names. Colón never got around to talking about the project again. Even in his will there are no references to the pieces of the project that were preserved. The end of the project is just as obscure as its beginning.44 The driving intellectual and organizational role for this description of Spain is, however, ascribed to Hernando Colón himself. Hernando, born in 1488, was, like his older half brother Diego, a page and schoolboy at the court of the Catholic Kings. As a young man he had taken part in his father’s fourth expedition (1502–1504), and in 1509 he briefly resided in Hispaniola, where Diego had been nominated as governor. As early as January 1510, at the age of twenty-one and now back at court, he was negotiating with Ferdinand II of Aragon, presumably about familial claims to the political legacy of his father. In the years to follow he developed several projects, which he presented to the Crown in the form of tractates that are unfortunately lost, like one about “the form of America’s discovery and settlement,” on the circumnavigation of the globe, on cosmographic questions, and on a Christian-Spanish world empire built upon the complete navigability of the world and the dissemination of the Gospel by Spaniards. His quite considerable income, part of which was contested in the family trials of the Colóns, allowed him in the following years to undertake three extensive trips through Europe, the first of which was between 1512 and 1517 and took him mainly to Rome, where he stepped up his purchase of books.45 Back in Spain in August 1517, he visited Antonio de Nebrija in Alcalá de Henares and discussed with him what was presumably the project he had already started of describing the country.46 Colón undertook his next big trip as part of the retinue of Charles V. He took part in Charles’s coronation in Aachen as well as at the Imperial Diet in Worms, and he used this and subsequent trips throughout Europe to purchase what ultimately grew to be a 43 Marín Martínez, “‘Memoria’,” 48. 44 Blázquez, “Itinerario,” 83–105; Marín Martínez, “‘Memoria’,” 229–233. 45 Delgado Pérez, Hernando Colón, 39–40, 57, 61–63. 46 Asensio, Cristóbal Colón, vol. 2, 731.



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private library of up to 15,300 books and over 3,000 printed pictures. Not only did this library stand out as a collection of European stature; it was also known for its systematic cataloguing.47 Owing to his frequent travels, social position, and closeness to the royal court, Colón could at best carry out the hard work of recording the land on his own (by traveling through Spain) only if he did so a few stages at a time. He was rather like the mind, and also the financier, behind the project, leading a team and determining how the material he collected would be edited. He had already committed to paper sixty-three pages of the first manuscript volume himself.48 An instruction from Colón’s own hand sheds light on how the compilation proceeded. Initially the compilers used loose sheets of paper and notebooks in which place names were assembled in alphabetical order. As soon as it was reasonable to assume that all the Spanish place names were accounted for, they were to be transcribed into a book where every page was to have just one place name. Under each name the information already gathered about each place was to be written down, grouped systematically by topic. The instruction further prescribed that, in the case of numerical data, the frequency of the record was to be noted along with each reference, since a numerical figure was regarded as more certain the more often it was mentioned. When, for example, it was stated ten times that Segovia was eleven miles away from Ávila, but only twice was the distance put at twelve miles, then one was inclined to believe eleven was correct, and so eleven was then established as certain (cierto). The last part of the instruction refers to a cartographic complement to the territory’s description, although work on this complementary map had presumably not even been started at the time the project was ended. It says there: In order to make the tables (tablas), these are subdivided in quadratic fashion along degrees of longitude and latitude and each degree in miles whose lines cross the entire table as in a chess board, because [in this way] one can easily produce copies from the original, where it is to be painted at first.49

Parts of this working practice can be surmised from the three extant fragments that contain the data from 1322 sites. The Seville Codices make it possible to recognize the different phases in which the material was recorded and ordered. The first codex is a bundle, later sewed together, of working notebooks taken along on the surveying trips, which is why the entries have the character of an itinerary: 47 Caraci Luzzana, “Introduction, 8–11;” Delgado Pérez, Hernando Colón, 93–95 and 107–124. 48 Delgado Pérez, Hernando Colón, 67. 49 Cited according to Rodríguez Toro, “‘Descripción’,” 278.

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San Miguel de Corneja is a village with 40 citizens (vecinos) and is located up at the foot of a mountain in the Corneja Valley. It belongs to the commune of Piedrahita, and after Piedrahita it is a flat, craggy half mile. And after Bonilla it is a few hilly miles with holm oak forests, one traverses midway a hill as high as about two crossbow shots and cuts across, two crossbow shots later, a river on the left side that is called Corneja, by way of a ford, and after Villatoro it is two and a half miles past the pass houses. Until then it is one and a half miles down into the valley through oak forests, and after a third of a mile one traverses the river Corneja on the left via a ford.50

The second codex, by contrast, put the entries in alphabetical order and reduces them to a few important pieces of data: place names, population type and number, the superordinate cities, nobles, archbishoprics, or communities of religious orders, along with the distances to other places in the vicinity. Numbers on the margins refer to the entries of the first codex. The tour through Spain was conducted by Colón’s nameless associates. It is possible to reconstruct twelve routes that were traversed relatively quickly. Thus, the compiler of the route between Seville and Barcelona needed only forty days to describe about 140 sites. He traveled daily a distance between 15.6 and 33.4 kilometers.51 To obtain parts of the information, local residents or officials needed to be consulted, for which one could produce a royal authorization. Juan Pérez, Colón’s friend and librarian, summed up the procedure in a sentence that is interesting on terminological grounds alone, since the summary includes something we may recognize as a contemporary usage of the concept of information, and because it also raises the issue of certification: In order to make this cosmography of Spain, it was necessary to send some persons through all the villages of Spain so that in every village they could inform themselves (se informasen) about the inhabitants that were there and about everything else that was worth remembering, and as soon as they had the information (información), certified by scribes and credible witness, they compiled it.52

Some descriptions make it clear that additional written material was incorporated. There is also variation in the topic, meaning that occasionally additional information was included about such things as local history, legends, jurisdictions, water supplies, or the network of roads. The project is spectacular both in its dimensions and as one of Europe’s first land recording projects altogether. At the same time, it poses puzzles: Colón’s land recording project, for example, is humanistic only in a very general sense, 50 Colón, Descripción, vol. 2, 61. 51 Laborda, Descripciones, 17–18. 52 Pérez, “Memoria,” 47.



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since there is a lack of references to antiquity, of any historical-antiquarian interest, or of any incipient kind of national identity-formation. Nor is any of the actual material recorded for posterity by Colón suited to providing the foundation for a geographically precise map: longitudinal and latitudinal data are missing, and while particulars about distances are available, the associated directions are either missing or only imprecisely indicated. Colón’s land recording remains a torso that only incompletely betrays the shape of what he was striving for. It gives some indication of how things might have proceeded, but also of the hurdles on which the overall enterprise floundered: participant interest that was limited to short-lived projects and unclear ideas about whether and how the finished material should really be used. In Spain, several decades went by before a new approach to systematic land recording was initiated. The 1548 publication of Pedro de Medina’s Libro de grandezas y cosas memorables de España did bring a topographical description of Spain into print, yet this book was still based on a weak empirical foundation and equipped with a relatively poor map.53 It was not until 1566 that a new land recording was commissioned: Philip II ordered the professor for mathematics at the University of Alcalá, Pedro de Esquivel, to undertake a description of Spain. Esquivel and his two assistants surveyed the country by means of triangulation. A large amount of data was recorded, but it also remained fragmentary.54 It is likely that an atlas of drawn maps that has come down to us and is in the library of El Escorial represents a portion of Esquivel’s works. It consists of one general map and twenty detailed maps of Spain, with corrections from the hand of Juan López de Velasco. The atlas also has a large number of place names, shows river and boundary lines, and contains little references indicating that reports were submitted and local witnesses interrogated in order to determine which sites belonged to which specific judicial districts.55 Also worth mentioning, finally, are the works completed by the Flemish topographical artist Anton van de Wyngaerde, who traveled through Spain on a royal mission between 1562 and 1570 making illustrations of its most important cities, and the rudiments of a description of Spain by Jerónimo Muñoz.56 All these projects show that knowledge about broadly based land recordings was certainly available in sixteenth-century Spain. There was, however, a lack of sustained political support for and consistency among the persons involved 53 Medina, Libro. 54 Puerto, Leyenda verde, 423–424; Vicente Maroto and Esteban Piñeiro, Aspectos, 473–482. 55 BME, Ms. K. I. 1; Reparaz Ruiz, “Topographical Maps”; Vázquez Maure, “Análisis”; Crespo Sanz, “Mapa olvidado.” 56 Haverkamp-Begemann, “Vistas,” 56–57; Portuondo, Secret Science, 46–47.

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in these projects. What is more, these land-recording projects did not even come close to achieving their goals. Nowhere can it be proven that these maps were hung at court or used politically. It is also questionable what validity they were accorded as compared to epistemic alternatives – as compared, essentially, to such things as trust in human experience and personal knowledge. The promise that contemporary media offered to demonstrate how it is possible to view the world from an armchair could be frustrated by the king’s humblest subject if he had “really” fought in Flanders or America. Courtiers might take a walk across the world without ever passing the threshold of the court. But only we, according to Don Quixote, are “the true knights errant.” We “on foot and on horseback, measure the whole earth with our own paces,” “exposed to the sun, to the cold, to the air, to the inclemencies of the heavens, by night and by day.” There is an authentic truth inherent in the way “we do not merely know our enemies from their portraits but in their own persons.”57 With this kind of attitude, both proud and epistemic, seafarers also confronted Spain’s attempts to have the newly discovered ocean and its coasts charted by learned cosmographers. What, after all, is a compass mark as measured against the salt of the ocean? In order to understand their attitude, and in this way to get a look at an additional epistemic precondition for empire, we must step up, so to speak, to the edge of the Iberian peninsula. The matter at hand is now about the measures and institutions that were meant to make the way free for the domination of overseas territories beyond the Atlantic. The very first case of such an institution makes it possible to see that the epistemic and the political were entering into a new relationship: in Seville’s Casa de la Contratación, the collection of nautical knowledge became an officially monitored, political assignment.

57 Cervantes, Don Quijote, II, 5. The translation used here is again Rutherford’s, Ingenious hidalgo, 521 (see footnote 1 in this chapter).

IV The authorities of colonial rule 1 The Casa de la Contratación: Nautical knowledge becomes political The most famous institution of Spanish colonial rule is Seville’s Casa de la Contratación. It was founded in 1503, and while it belongs to the tradition of Mediterranean trading houses and emporiums, it goes way beyond these. The Casa controlled and taxed the entire trade in goods across the Spanish Atlantic, which was handled exclusively via the harbor of Seville. The Casa had to provision the ships, and at first also to supply trans-Atlantic settlements, for example with grain, meal, oil, and wine.1 Routine controls were later added to its tasks. These controls were meant to prevent the shipment of illegal passengers and banned books. Prohibition of the latter was to be accomplished in collaboration with the Inquisition tribunal in Seville. As of 1564, when sailing ships began to leave the harbor annually in two fleets for the sake of better protection, the Casa took over organizing and equipping these fleets as well as issuing licenses for passengers. In addition, the Casa was responsible for the administration of estates bequeathed by deceased Castilians in America and for jurisdiction over all questions pertaining to trade with the overseas territories. This meant that the Casa was also in charge of judges and its own jail. The crucial point for us is that the Sevillian trading house was also responsible for naval cartography and the nautical training of pilots. We are witness here to a primal scene in the history of knowledge. Here in Seville, at the outset of the sixteenth century, we may observe with outsized clarity a constellation that is characteristic of history about knowledge in the service of power. A public authority wanted not only to collect knowledge, but also to enforce the application of that knowledge. In order to achieve both ends it was imperative to intervene authoritatively in the practice of seafaring. Here knowledge necessarily accompanied power and, in so doing, encountered decisive resistance from the actors, though this resistance is a subject we shall first treat at length in a later chapter (Ch. VII). But we must first address the question of why nautical knowledge even became a subject that was of significance beyond the planks of a ship.2 Nautical knowledge about the Atlantic had been politicized even before the discovery of America. In 1479 Castile and Portugal had concluded a treaty in Alcáçovas that reserved the open seas south of a line running east and west from 1 Bernal, “Casa, “133. 2 Stimulating on this point is Kimmel, “Interpreting Inaccuracy.”

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Cape Bojador in Africa for the Portuguese.3 For Castile this shut off the passageway along the African coast, which had the historically paradoxical side-effect of making the alternative western route across the Atlantic more important and thus making the discovery of America more likely. When America was then actually discovered, new negotiations began immediately concerning a new line of demarcation. Columbus himself proposed a meridian as that line, in other words, one running from the North to the South Pole. Pope Alexander VI then actually agreed to a solution like this in a series of papal bulls from 1493. The line was to run one hundred leagues west of Cape Verde. All the islands and mainland territories west of this line would be granted to the Castilian kings, an arrangement which, at the urging of Portugal, led to follow-up negotiations and finally to the bi-nationally brokered Treaty of Tordesillas. On June 7, 1494 agreement was reached in Tordesillas for a solution somewhat more favorable to Portugal, namely a line now lying three hundred seventy leagues west of Cape Verde. The fact that these negotiations did not focus on the possession or loss of islands or territories – both lines were located in the middle of the Atlantic and far away from any land known at the time – must initially have facilitated the acceptance of this agreement, since neither one of the two parties immediately lost or gained any land. There was, however, a high price for this abstract solution. After all, one had to scrutinize carefully whether or not islands or tracts of land were actually affected by this line, and it was also necessary to find a way of determining where the line was and marking it permanently. As soon as the solution of the line began to emerge in diplomatic negotiations with Rome, geographical knowledge began in this way to acquire a new importance that went beyond navigational operations. Such knowledge was now capable of supporting or rejecting territorial claims. Right away, too, the line that had been negotiated fortified Queen Isabella’s need for geographic information. She requested that Columbus, about to embark on his second voyage, examine whether settling on such a line might result in useful islands being assigned to the Portuguese.4 Quite apart from the very presumptuousness of dividing the entire world between two nations, the Tordesillas treaty created a problem of far-reaching significance where the technology of knowledge was concerned since it was impossible to find, fix, or control a line in the ocean. The task was even less likely owing to the fact that this was a north-south line, a meridian. Ever since Dava Sobel turned the English clockmaker John Harrison into the hero of a novel about longitude, even landlubbers among the reading public appreciated that it was impossible in the sixteenth century to determine longitudes – and, by extension, merid3 Hera, “Primera división.” 4 Rumeu de Armas, Tratado, 111.



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ians as well – at sea. Only in the late eighteenth century did clocks with sufficient precision become available to locate longitudes. The signatories to the Treaty of Tordesillas were aware that there was a problem of determining longitude, yet they indicated a practicable solution: within ten months of the treaty’s conclusion, a fleet of three to four ships with experts (pilotos, astrólogos, marineros, etc.) from both countries represented in equal numbers would get to work on the problem. The fleet was to sail from Cape Verde three hundred seventy leagues westward and “make a suitable point or sign” there.5 In the first steps toward fulfilling the commission, it becomes evident that the hope is to find an island near or on the line where the line could have been marked. Yet as early as September 1495, the relevant work was postponed to some indeterminate time.6 In the period to follow, there were presumably several violations of this wholly ill-defined demarcation line, Portuguese who had penetrated deeply into the Spanish sphere were arrested, and as a result there were renewed diplomatic interventions as well as the appointment in 1515 of a Spanish commission of experts that was essentially meant to specify the site on which the Tordesillas line traversed the Brazilian coast.7 The investigating judge who was staying on the island of Hispaniola, Alonso de Zuazo, reported to Charles V on January 22, 1518 about his own efforts to determine this line of intersection and about the futile efforts of the commission. Once more he highlighted the basic problem, talked about “dividing the world like an orange,” and discussed how establishing a division longitudinally would not enable ships’ pilots to arrive at a proper positioning.8 Even if one method or another might have succeeded in producing an exact voyage route and a measurement or estimate, there would still have hardly been any possibility of permanently marking the position found at sea. This difficulty was borne on both sides with some equanimity so long as the line was mainly dividing the endless ocean blue of the Atlantic, so that it hardly had any territorial implications. But in 1511, when the Portuguese succeeded in reaching the Molucca Islands, fabled for their immense riches, and in conquering Melaka, the question arose: To which hemisphere did these islands belong? It was actually the Portuguese Magellan who, in 1518, offered to bring Charles V evidence that the Spice Islands fell into the Spanish hemisphere geographically.9 Magellan then actually succeeded, in the course of his global circumnavigation, in discovering the western route to the Molucca Islands and setting up a trading base for 5 Rumeu de Armas, Tratado, 149–150. 6 Rumeu de Armas, Tratado, 173–174. 7 Lamb, “Spanish Cosmographic Juntas,” 53–54. 8 Jiménez de la Espada, “Antecedentes,” 12. 9 Brotton, Trading Territories, 122–125; Rumeu de Armas, Tratado, 209–210.

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Spain there. But he failed in his effort to prove that these islands belonged to the Spanish hemisphere.10 A second attempt to determine the position of the islands in relation to the regulation stipulated by Tordesillas also failed. In 1524 representatives of both countries had agreed to confer at the border line between Portugal and Spain in a meeting known as the Junta de Badajoz. Litigators (procuradores), astrologers, helmsmen, seafarers, notaries, and the actual judges all arrived at Bajadoz. By questioning witnesses, an initial clarification of the circumstances was to be attempted.11 Sixteen survivors of the Magellan voyage were asked about any evidence that local rulers of the Molucca Islands had actually been subjugated to the Crown of Castile: for example, whether the lords of the islands of Tidore and Terrenate had offered gifts, and whether they had tolerated the Castilian flag and appointment of a governor. Not until the interrogators reached the twentieth question was the geographic position of the Molucca Islands with respect to the Tordesillas antimeridian discussed. At the time of these interrogations, however, it had already become apparent that unity could not be accomplished, either about the procedural modalities or about the validity of individual pieces of evidence, especially maps, globes, and reports. The Spaniards were shown routes around the Cape of Good Hope, but only on freshly drawn maps that left the largest part of the route blank. The Portuguese were granted the right to look at Magellan’s log.12 In spite of these gestures, it soon became clear that a consensus about the situation of the Molucca Islands could not be reached. All the documents were employed in a tactical way, and the positions stipulated in advance: the Portuguese saw to it that an itinerary they had brought along, together with several maps, disappeared from the negotiating tables after Hernando Colón pointed out that these documents would lend support to Spanish claims. In the instructions for the Spanish delegation there is a discussion of how, no matter how uncertain the evidence base was, all Spaniards were supposed “to speak as if out of a single mouth.”13 Finally – in an interesting reversal of scientific progression – the Spaniards regarded only old maps as especially probative since one could assume that they had already been made before the subject had become politicized. Mistrust of the opposite side’s maps and globes went so far that the Portuguese proposed

10 Rumeu de Armas, Tratado, 215–217. 11 AGI, Patronato 48, r. 19. 12 AGI, Patronato 48, r. 15; López de Gómara, Historia, vol. 2, 179–180; Fernández de Navarrete, Colección, vol. 4, 345–345; Lamb, “Spanish Cosmographic Juntas,” 55. 13 Burgos, 21 March 1524, AGI, Patronato 48, r. 12.



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for the time being use of a “white globe” (poma blanca), filling in the white spaces only with geographical markings mutually agreed upon.14 Under these circumstances, Badajoz did not produce any scientific findings. Such findings would not, incidentally, have consisted of determining the real geographic length of the islands, but instead in agreeing on a common map and upon marking the consensus on paper in the form of a longitude line. Neither side was able to agree either on basic assumptions – e.g., on the exact size of the earth or which Cape Verde island should actually represent the point of departure for calculating the three hundred seventy leagues to their west15 – or on the location of the Spice Islands themselves. The Spaniards, predictably, saw them to the east and the Portuguese to the west of the line. It is telling that a solution to the problem ultimately could only be found politically. In 1529 Charles V, against resistance from the Castilian estates, conceded the Molucca Islands to the Portuguese in the Treaty of Saragossa in exchange for a one-time payment of 350,000 gold ducats.16 The line of the antimeridian was now drawn definitively on two versions of Seville’s master naval charts and recognized by both sides, each countersigning and imprinting their seals on the model maps. Even in the event that the consensual map should later prove to be geographically erroneous, one clause of the treaty specified that the line drawn on that map and the position of the Molucca Islands relative to the line shown there should remain valid.17 The antimeridian was defined as a line running exactly 297.5 leagues east of the Molucca Islands, which meant that the relevant geography was determined politically and fixed by treaty, and that the treaty would remain in effect regardless of any additional progress in scientific assessment that might be expected in the future. Nautical charts and the positions of vessels had lost a bit of their innocence in the course of these negotiations. The position of a vessel, which started out as an on-board datum of purely navigational interest, had now become a political matter subject to armchair debate. But where Castile was concerned, navigational routes and sea spaces also assumed great importance as a matter of principle, not least because more and more ships were crossing the Atlantic and pushing into new regions beyond the Canaries–Caribbean route. Something that initially could still have been understood as a solitary voyage of discovery now needed to be translated into a routine. The passage by ship between motherland and colony needed to become calculable. To this end, nautical knowledge had to become 14 Fernández de Navarrete, Colección, vol. 4, 350–351, 362, and 368. 15 Sandman, “Cosmographers,” 85. 16 On this, see Cabrero Fernández, “Empeño.” 17 Sandman, “Cosmographers,” 87; Rumeu de Armas, Tratado, 299.

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collectivized, the experiences of a single ship turned into the knowledge base for all ships, even though this clashed with the navigator’s interest in keeping knowledge private. This interest in preserving one’s knowledge advantage is still easy to observe around 1500, for example, during the journey of Alonso Vélez de Mendoza to the Brazilian coast, when the explorer was explicitly prohibited from advancing into the Gulf of Venezuela. Alonso de Hojeda, who was acquainted with this sea from an earlier expedition in 1499, had kept a “certain secret” about this gulf.18 Nautical-cartographic knowledge was initially understood as private property. And it was recorded by each and every navigator in his own way, so that the early nautical maps, which used very different kinds of detailed sections, scales, and measures, could not be assembled into an overall picture. In order to create, by contrast, a common standardized knowledge that would be equally accessible to all Castilian seafarers, an institution was needed to bring together knowledge at a central site and regulate the methods of drawing and recording. To this end the Casa de la Contratación was selected. Following consultations held at Toro in 1505 and at Burgos in 1508, the Casa was furnished with a new senior functionary, the Piloto Mayor. All returning pilots were to report to this “Principal Pilot” so that he could maintain a model nautical map to be stored at the Casa, the padrón real, a master map kept optimally up-to-date on the basis of this collective experience. No Castilian ship would be permitted to leave on new voyages that did not bring along an authorized copy of the padrón real as well as officially calibrated navigational instruments. The text of the real cédula from 1508 explained this procedure succinctly and authoritatively: All pilots are to be guided by the padrón real ... and no pilot is to use any other map, but only those that were copied from the model nautical chart, ... We also order all helmsman ..., when they find new lands, islands, shoals, or harbors or something else that deserves notice in the padrón real, to go to You [the Piloto Mayor] when they come to Castile, and to the officials of the Casa de la Contratación to report to Seville, because everything is to be registered at its [accurate] place in the padrón real. This has the purpose of getting seafarers to be more safely and better instructed in navigation. We also order that, from today on, none of our pilots navigating the Oceanic Sea shall be permitted to leave the harbor any longer without his quadrant, his astrolabe, and the instructional book.19

In the history of knowledge, the institutionalization of a learning system merits our attention because that system was intended to exploit the trial and error of sailing ships in order to improve the knowledge base incrementally. The authority of the Casa was meant to compel individual actors to submit their experi18 Cerezo Martínez, “Padrones,” 609. 19 AGI, Indif. 1961, L. 1, fol. 66r–66v.



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ence-based knowledge and convert it into standard knowledge accessible to all Castilian pilots in the form of a model nautical map. This was tantamount, as it were, to a “nationalization” of personal experiences and knowledge by the state. So that the individual’s knowledge could be made available to others, however, it had to be given the kind of epistemic shape that could make that knowledge transferable and generalizable. In order for the data to “disembark” without loss and “re-embark” in the form of the model nautical chart, that data needed to meet common standards. Knowledge needed to be produced with standardized instruments, reproduced with standardized maps, and finally implemented according to the same kind of training standards. At the same time, the personal, nongeneralizable experiential knowledge of the individual had to be downgraded. Politics and science needed to collaborate so that these standards could be put into effect. We shall return to the question of how efficiently such a program could be implemented in practice, and to the kind of resistance it encountered.

2 The Council of the Indies The Council of the Indies (Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias) was that royal Spanish council body entrusted with coordinating all the administrative, juridical, and governmental affairs of Spanish America and the Philippines. But, above all, the council was there to support the king in making his decisions. There is no founding charter. We do know that the first president of the council, Fray García de Loaisa, was appointed on August 4, 1524 and sworn into office shortly thereafter.20 However, 1524 is a very late date to have been chosen since we know that as early as the era of the Catholic Kings, American affairs – to the extent that they were not handled by the Casa de la Contratación in Seville – were assigned to the same group of persons. We find the idea for a political council dealing with the American territories as early as the year the Casa de la Contratación was founded, 1503. Nicolás de Ovando, the governor in Santo Domingo since 1502, noted: And at court there should be one person whose job it is to conduct all this business [with las Indias] and to receive all letters and reports that come from there, both from the islands and from the Casa in Seville. This person should be assigned with seeing to it that Your Highness answers everything, and with keeping a book in which everything is registered that comes from there and that is resolved.21

20 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 60. 21 Quoted by Szászdi León-Borja, “Casa,” 106.

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These duties were initially assumed, starting in 1504, by a secretary, Gaspar de Gricio, who joined Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca in processing the correspondence and preparing decisions for King Ferdinand. De Gricio was succeeded in 1508 by Lope de Conchillos. Then, in 1515, Francisco de los Cobos, the secretary who would later become so important for Emperor Charles V, was given the explicit title Secretario de Indias.22 America’s judicial affairs were not, however, handled by these secretaries, but instead at first in the Council of Castile, then spun off to the newly created Council of the Indies.23 As a royal council, the Council of the Indies was also tasked with the job of formulating the draft resolutions that were then presented to the king for his decisions. The Council of the Indies consisted of a President, initially five and then later ten consejeros, a tax official (fiscal), an official council secretary who, however, was assisted by titular secretaries without permanent positions, a bookkeeper, a legal counselor for the poor, as well as some additional employees, such as two porters and several scribes. With the reforms of Ovando in 1571, the office of the Supreme Cosmographer and Chronicler was meant to be added. In the sixteenth century the socially dominant figures, even among council presidents, were legal scholars (letrados), until such time as presidents from the ranks of the nobility started to become predominant under Philip III. Since the Council of the Indies was answerable only to the Council of Castile above it, councilmen from the Council of the Indies were usually nominated at an already advanced age. Typically, they had been working previously at the higher courts of Castile.24 Payment for the councilors was relatively low and subject to considerable fluctuation since one part of the remuneration derived, for example, from Indian tributes that had just become vacant, and whose disbursement depended on the safe arrival of the fleet. Owing to the low basic pay they received, councilors were constantly interested in improving their salaries through the granting of royal favors that could be bestowed on them in the form of proceeds from monetary fines, sales of offices, or vacancies for positions in America, that is, from funds whose level was coadministered by the councilors themselves. Payment thus ensued from special funds, which would have been linked to the expectation of some political advantage and should thus be viewed as a kind of “governing principle”: precisely because of the inadequate basic salary they were receiving, the council staff had to be constantly interested in the dispensation of royal favors, which could only be attained if one could point to special zealousness in service to the king. In the medium term, this form of premodern remuneration for ser22 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 36–37; CODOIN–1–34, 329–331. 23 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 37–49. 24 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 139–141.



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vices tended to have a destabilizing impact on the system since the councilors had an incentive to market their loyalty. The subaltern members of the Council, like the scribes, were in any event dependent on keeping their heads above water by receiving all kinds of gratuities from the various parties taking their cases to trial at the royal court or from agents residing at court.25 The comprehensive administrative instructions issued for the Council in 1542, 1571, and 1636 allow us to determine with relative precision how the work procedures of the Council were regulated. The council was supposed to come together daily in the morning for a three-hour meeting and, if need be, convene additional meetings in the afternoon.26 The instructions from 1571 contain more precise regulations. After a discussion of general administrative matters that affected the entire Council, the president distributed the minutes to the chambers according to a precisely defined weekly plan. On Mondays appeal trials were to be conducted, on Tuesdays and Thursdays audits of higher colonial officials (visitas and residencias) were to be reviewed, criminal cases were to be heard on Fridays, and trials of prisoners and the poor heard on Saturdays. Wednesday was reserved for consultations on royal earnings and measures to increase them.27 The Council’s communicative responsibilities would have entailed an enormous time burden for such things as reading letters that arrived from America, which the instructions from 1571 emphasize as the item of business that had priority over all others. The Councils were to listen during the reading of the letters and, at best, make notes about the measures to be taken, but by no means were they to look into other matters. In addition, no ship was supposed to depart from America that had not already taken on board the Council’s replies to the most recent inquiries that had arrived.28 This arrangement for conducting the Council’s business, which was intended to limit loss of time and guarantee the responsiveness of sovereign rule, proved unattainable. Overall, it can be said that the Council of the Indies carried out administrative functions as well as legal and political ones, yet there was enormous overlap among these areas of activity. In contemporary terms, there was an effort here to separate government affairs (gobernación) from private matters in need of regulation (negocios particulares), the latter category also including private suits or appeal proceedings. Starting in 1556, revenues from the American territories, including flows of precious metals, were no longer administered by the Council of 25 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 148–157; Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 67–68. 26 CODOIN–1–16, 376–397 (1542); Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas” (1571); the printed service regulation from 1636: “Ordenanzas del consejo real de las Indias” (1636). 27 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 174; Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas,” 12 (§ 9). 28 Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas,”13 (§ 13).

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the Indies, but rather by the Finance Council (consejo de hacienda).29 Among the governmental and administrative tasks, in turn, there was a distinction between issues that were clerical-pastoral (lo espiritual) and worldly (lo temporal). Individual matters could also be assigned to regional and institutional subdivisions, such as the Viceroy of Peru or New Spain. Even today, the arrangement of holdings for the Archivo de Indias in Seville reflects the distribution of papers according to subject matter or geographical criteria inside the Council of the Indies. In the eighteenth century they were literally distributed by being spread out on tables, each of which represented a specific administrative region, such as New Spain or Peru. The largest archival holding under the rubric Indiferente contains papers that could not be integrated into this arrangement of administrative regions and desks and, in this respect, had to remain “unspecified.”30 As a real y supremo consejo, the Council of the Indies was directly subordinate to the king. Its most distinguished task consisted in preparing decision-making for the king and then implementing the decisions made by the monarch. The exchange with the king took place through a formal consultation (consulta). The councilors first treated the matter under discussion in the Council, composed a written summary about the circumstances and the proposed solution that had been worked out, and conveyed this to the king. Under Emperor Charles V the king received members of the Council every second Sunday, then every third Monday. Those who showed up at the audience presumably included the Council president and Secretary Francisco de los Cobos, and later individual councilors in rotation. Owing to Philip II’s fondness for written procedures, however, this oral consultation (consulta a boca) became rarer, and a written procedure (despacho por escrito) caught on.31 In written consultations, the king’s answer is usually found right on the margin of the proposal, mostly in his own handwriting at first, then later in the hand of his private secretary, Mateo Vázquez. In this way, the notes from the consulta document the dialogue between the Council of the Indies and the king. Frequently, the king would add a simple está bien or así next to the dialogue. The proposal would then be transcribed into a corresponding decree, such as a real cédula, which subsequently had to be presented again by the secretary of the Council of the Indies to the king for his signature. Not infrequently, we find more detailed remarks by Philip, inquiries, or corrections, which then had to be discussed in the Council of the Indies until such time as the case could be presented again. In the course of the sixteenth century, there were changes in the official business of the Council of the Indies. All in all, with the expansion of the colonial realm 29 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 125–132. 30 Gómez Gómez, Forma, 131; Altamira y Crevea, Diccionario castellano, 176. 31 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 67 and 120–121.



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and the creation of new institutions in the new territories, these official duties grew considerably. As early as 1514, as a reaction to the growing amount of communication, a separate seal was provided for American affairs, and as of 1528 it was managed by the keeper of the great seal for the Council. This office was initially held by Charles’s grand chancellor, Mercurino de Gattinara, although his influence on the Council of the Indies waned considerably when Gattinara became more deeply involved in the European imperial politics of Charles V. The office was dissolved in 1575 and then reintroduced in 1623 for the Duke of Olivares.32 Of special importance for the conduct of everyday bureaucratic work and political communication was the work of the secretariat. Here we need to distinguish between the issuing secretary (secretario refrendador), who officially countersigned documents and (as a rule) presented them personally to the king, and whichever member of the secretariat’s or chancellery’s staff handled the internal paperwork. More influential, undoubtedly, was the office of the issuing secretary. After the death of Juan de Sámano, the office was held (starting in 1559) by Francisco de Eraso, who had already served Philip II in the Netherlands as secretary, thereafter by his son, Antonio de Eraso (1571–1586). The latter was succeeded, finally, by Juan de Ibarra (1586–1596), who knew how to build on his close cooperation with Philip II and expand his position into a kind of royal favorite. In 1570 two cameral chancelleries (Escribanías de Cámara) were set up. One was dedicated to matters of governing and pardoning (gobierno y gracia), the other to judicial affairs (justicia). Each chancellery was managed by a cameral scribe and made use of several other scribes who, in some cases, did not have permanent positions. Further above the cameral chancelleries stood the issuing secretary. The structure changed slightly in 1597, after the death of the head cameral scribe for the Escribanía de Gobierno y Gracia, when the cameral chancelleries were placed directly under the control of the issuing secretary, so that Juan de Ibarra’s influence on this important portfolio grew even further as a result.33 Additional processing of information inside the Council was also something handled by the office of the relator. These “reporters” working for this office – first there was one, later as many as three – were there to summarize the content of lengthier documents. The trend was therefore for the secretaries and scribes in their employ to be assigned the job of issuing the documents, and for the relators to be entrusted with the orderly receipt of information, its efficient processing, and its orderly filing. Nevertheless, one may proceed from the assumption that there was no strict functional division between the Council’s political activities and its administrative writing tasks. The job of drawing up important documents 32 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 42–43, 63, 146, and 216; Gómez Gómez, Sello, 91–93. 33 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 141–142; García-Gallo, “Consejo y los secretarios.”

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such as royal commissions or decrees, for example, was undertaken in a weekly rotation by one consejero at a time.34 A functional change was brought about when the Chamber of the Indies (Cámara de Indias) was established in 1600. The Chamber was created at the instigation of the Duke of Lerma and modeled on the Cámara de Castilla appended to the Council of Castile, and it constituted a commission that elaborated proposals for filling positions and granting favors. The relevant consultas were now reserved for a smaller group, consisting of the Council of the Indies’ presidents, three consejeros, and the Council of the Indies Secretary Juan de Ibarra. Furthermore, in 1603, with the appointment of Pedro Fernández de Castro, Count of Lemos, a son-in-law of the Duke of Lerma became president of the Council of the Indies. This meant that the actual consejeros of the Council of the Indies were left with hardly any work or influence, while the Cámara itself was hardly capable of coping with the abundance of tasks. The consejeros answered with a kind of strike and managed to have the Cámara de Indias dissolved in 1609 and its functions transferred back to the plenum of the Council. In 1644, however, a new Cámara de Indias was founded.35 By this time a change in governing style was already starting to become apparent: secretaries were now supposed to form the point of departure for a more ministerial kind of management. In 1621 or 1622 the youthful Philip IV had summoned for the first time a secretary “al despacho” (“for dispatching”) in order to help the king take care of government business. In 1714, then, a regular Despacho de Indias had taken shape for transacting government and administrative affairs, so that almost all that remained for the Council of the Indies to handle were judicial tasks.36 For the period under discussion here, it is the changes of secretariats in the early seventeenth century that are more significant. In 1604 a regional differentiation of the secretariats according to viceroyalties took hold. Each secretariat for New Spain and Peru was now headed by its own secretary. Two juntas that convened for the first time under Philip II took over the more specialized portfolios, on matters of finance and war, the two being the Junta de Hacienda for a short time (1596–1604) and the Junta de Guerra for the longer haul (starting in 1597). The latter became a gateway for noble members of the Council, de capa y espada as the contemporary expression went – “with cloak and sword.” It would certainly be an inadequate characterization to imagine the Council of the Indies merely as a public agency, a sort of organogram of specific func34 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 175. 35 Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 179–180, 188–189, and 226. 36 Gómez Gómez, Forma, 32–34. On the later Council of the Indies, see García Pérez, Consejo; on staff members and patronage, see Gómez Gómez, Actores, and Peralta Ruiz, Patrones.



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tions that were implemented with greater or lesser efficiency. Many contemporary practices can only be understood if one forms a fuller picture of the Council’s spatial, courtly, and social situation. Until it moved into the Alcázar of Madrid, the Council of the Indies followed the king to whatever temporary residence where he was holding court, its meetings taking place in the residence of the President, and its files carried along in large chests. After one last winter in Toledo, there was a move in May 1561 into fixed office rooms on the ground floor of the refurbished Alcázar of Madrid.

Figure 7: Sketch of the Council’s working rooms in the Alcázar of Madrid, 1598, AGI, MP Euro­ pa-Africa, 5

There, as may be discerned from the upper half of this sketch from 1598, three rooms were made available, of which one had been divided into three working areas (A, B, and C in the illustration) by partition walls.37 They were located in the southeast corner of the Alcázar, with the windows pointing toward the palace garden. A separate entrance led via the southern front of the palace to the great 37 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 67 and 143; AGI, MP Europa–Africa, 5.

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second courtyard of the Alcázar (Patio de la Reina) and to the council. The plan shows the distribution of the workrooms: Juan de Ibarra, who was after all the secretary of the Council of the Indies and who presented the king with documents to sign, had only a window niche of about four square meters at his disposal. Things were worse for his younger colleague, Pedro de Ledesma. He sat at a space where boards, straw mats, carpets, water jugs, and kindling wood were also stored. The only imposing rooms were the two conference halls, which can be seen in the illustration on the right next to the workrooms. Their walls were lined with red and green velvet and silk, the tables were adorned with cloths of the same color and silver writing utensils, and the councilor’s benches and president’s chair were upholstered in silk.38 Should there have already been globes in the Council of the Indies at this time – for which we do have early indications, though a firm indication exists only as of 1626 – they would have stood in these conference halls. There was probably also a ticking clock since one was stipulated for the audiencias. If mention had already been made of an archive for the Council in the sixteenth century, this still probably meant little more than some very limited available storage space, such as certain shelves, but above all lockable chests. The contrast between the spare rooms for actual work and the imposing rooms for holding conferences reflects the ambivalent position of the Council members. On the one hand, they had to make do with a small salary. On the other hand, they had a relatively high-level position at court. At the start of the seventeenth century the situation changed in several respects. In 1612 the Council of the Indies moved into more spacious rooms in an eastern extension of the palace. In addition to three large assembly rooms, the Council now had its own rooms for the secretariats and for “accounting” (contaduría).39 Under the young Philip IV an order was issued in 1622 to have secret windows built into all of the palace’s council halls. In this way the king or one of his confidants could eavesdrop on the meeting of the consejeros without himself being seen. That this order also applied to the Council of the Indies is suggested by the masons’ bills, even if no actual use of these windows can be attested.40 In the seventeenth century, it was usual for councilors to come from the nobility. At the same time there was an intensification – after the court returned from Valladolid in 1606 – of the court’s social integration into the city of Madrid, which brought new opportunities for communication in its wake. This also affected the Council of the Indies, which, beginning in the 1630s, routinely took part in the 38 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 168–169. 39 Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 274–278. In 1717, the Council moved again (into the palace of the Duke of Uceda, today’s Capitanía General de Madrid, Calle Mayor 79). 40 Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 278. Invoice from 19 Juli 1622 in AGI, Indif. 428, L. 35, fol. 228v.



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city’s festivals, especially its bullfights. To this end three balconies were rented at the Plaza Mayor for each fight. They were adorned with palm fronds and fragrant herbs, as well as with panels of silk and green damask fabric that the Council had embroidered with its coat of arms. The first balcony was reserved for the consejeros, the second for the secretaries, and the third for the other staff members of the Council. A wooden podium served to include additional spectators.41 The wives of Council of the Indies members also took part, and liquid refreshments and sweets were provided in great quantities. During processions, such as those for Corpus Christi, the Council of the Indies was ranked third based on the Council’s age but ranked second in its capacity as a branch of the Council of Castile.42 Similar appearances in the context of urban, courtly, or clerical feasts served both to put the Council’s prestige on display within local society and, indirectly, to enhance the income of Council of the Indies members, since special donations were customary. For Carnival in 1671, by way of illustration, we have a precise lineup of the allocations, according to which the president received four hams, twelve capons, and two turkeys, while a simple staff member (oficial) was at least entitled to about half of this allotment. At Christmas there was also turrón, an almond sweet. At courtly bereavements the Council members were allotted valuable Segovian cloth (paño de limiste).43 On Corpus Christi, too, toward the end of the seventeenth century, an annual special payment to Council members became established practice. The Council of the Indies, unlike the Casa de la Contratación, did not own its own chapel room. Yet it held mass in the nearby church of San Gil, and after 1580 in San Juan. The chaplain of the Council had his own altar vessels. He was assisted by the porter for the Council of the Indies, who then slipped into the role of a sacristan.44 Some religious festivals acquired special significance for the Council in the course of the seventeenth century. To this end the Council rented its own rooms in churches and convents, had them ornately furnished, and ordered large quantities of candles, flowers, and spices – as was the case with the festival of Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, the patron saint of Peru, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and also the festival of Santa Rosa de Lima, the patron saint of the Peruvian Viceroyalty’s capital.45 41 See the invoice vouchers in AGI, Indif. 433, L. 5, fol. 132r (1631); AGI, Indif. 434, L. 6, fol. 24v– 24r (1632); AGI, Indif. 434, L. 6, fol. 249r–249v (1633 in the Plaza del Buen Retiro); AGI, Indif. 434, L. 7, fol. 206r (1635) and AGI, Indif. 435, L. 9, fol. 294v (1639). On the festivals, see Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 278–288. On the position of other council bodies, see Río Barredo, Madrid, 156; Juan Gómez de Mora, Arquitecto y trazador, 339. 42 Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 283–284. 43 AGI, Indif. 880, (unpaginated); AGI, Indif. 855, (unpaginated). 44 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 169 and 284. 45 See AGI, Indif. 880, (unpaginated); Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 286–287.

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Just the sketch of the working rooms should have made it clear that it can be quite misleading to imagine the Council of the Indies as the administrative center of a world empire, at least if this is carried along by the idea of an efficient administrative machinery in which information was processed at high speed and decisions were made. To a large degree, the hustle and bustle of the Council and its staff took place, on the one hand, in the work of writing, reading, and copying, and also, on the other hand, in communications with the parties involved, such as conversations with agents staying in Madrid. A great deal of this business was hardly regulated by actual instructions; much of it took place in private homes and on the roads between these lodgings and the Alcázar. Secretary Juan de Ibarra, for example, was not at all accustomed to working out of his window niche in the palace. In his house nearby, he had luxurious halls, several desks, and a staff, including seven pages, to receive and serve guests. This level of wealth was unusual for a secretary, but not the very idea of the open household and courtier: a secretary or an early modern consejero – and this is something contemporary theory tracts brought to mind – was a communicative mediator whose advice was intended for the king but whose ear and door remained open to the supplicant. We will return to this feature of the Council of the Indies, an informal quality though a decisive one with respect to the Council’s epistemic setting, in connection with our analysis of daily work practices there. For now it is important to sketch out the development of institutions in Spanish America.

3 Institution-building in Spanish America At the moment Christopher Columbus set foot on the first American island, he became a vassal of the Castilian Crown as well as its principal official. In contracts with the Castilian kings, the so-called Capitulaciones de Santa Fe, he had stipulated that he be granted the hereditary right to the title of an admiral and governor general of all the islands and mainland territories he might discover.46 In addition, he received taxation rights and the option to submit nominations for local officials, from which the Crown could then select one of the candidates. Even the early expeditions of discovery and conquest were accompanied by formal documents, such as certifications by notaries of actions that took place on the seashore or in the jungles. In light of the extreme situation at the frontier, these legal formalisms may strike us as strange, yet they offered safeguards against the latent danger that acts of discovery or conquest might not be rewarded but instead 46 17 April 1492, ACA, Cancillería Real L. 3569, fol.  135v–136r; on the Capitulaciones de Santa Fe, see Damler, Imperium, 37–42.



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punished after the fact. They were there to document agreement with the requirements of Castilian law and the expectations of the Crown. Precisely because these actions took place in a de facto norm-free border zone, it was important for on-site actors to send the Crown signals that their behavior conformed to the rules, since it seemed as if the long-term success of these actions was only possible in agreement with the Crown. It should therefore come as no surprise to learn that those very conquistadors who had been temporarily disobedient would want to put their zeal on display. There was a well-known attempt by Hernán Cortés to bring his behavior back into legally correct channels and emphasize his loyalty and achievements to the Crown. He had, after all, embarked on his expedition even though the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, had already stripped him of leadership over his expeditionary troop. Shortly after Cortés had founded the city Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz on the American mainland, he created a city council that promptly appointed him captain general.47 With respect to institution-building, we may distinguish among four successive phases, whose precise dating depends on the time of contact, conquest, and actual domination of larger territories, so that the dating varies from region to region. After a first phase of immediate conflict there ensued an equally short second phase characterized by improvised forms of rule that had been set up the conquistadors themselves. Both phases took shape very differently in ways that depended on what Indian social formation already existed on-site and how the Spanish conquered and assumed control of the site. Thirdly, in the context of the transition to colonization by settlers, an institutionally stronger solidification of Spanish rule then occurred, which was accompanied politically by the Crown’s serious effort at this point to rein in or even eliminate the de facto power of the conquistadors by setting up administrative bodies. This required the creation of institutional authorities in a position to circumvent those social and political ties that had formed between the leaders of campaigns of conquest and their participants in the context of the expeditionary ventures. Retinues with all their neo-feudal tendencies were to be replaced with a system that would pool loyalties and attach them to the court. As we shall see, this new system of attachments was essentially to be guaranteed by leaving the ultimate decision about rewards or punishments at court. This third phase of institution-building was characterized by compressing the network of bureaucratic authorities and legislative regulations. After this process had run its course, and coinciding with the first generation of conquistadors and settlers coming to an end, a fourth phase becomes apparent. This final phase was dominated by a long-term balancing out of political and economic interests between motherland and American territories. 47 Straub, Bellum iustum, 52–53.

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The political and administrative bodies of Spanish America were subjected to a series of modifications, reforms, and adjustments. However one might choose to describe the process of institution-building for colonial rule, it has to be borne in mind that there never was a zero hour for the shift in rule. In places where Indian societies persisted, fundamental beliefs and partial structures of Indian tradition survived or helped shape the particular model of compromises about rule worked out between the Spanish and the Indians. This affected not only the adoption of concepts and symbols, or the local levels at which rule was exercised by native chiefs (caciques, curacas), but also the way the entire apparatus of rule was constructed. We may elucidate this with a case from New Spain: the smallest political unit of the precolonial era in the region of what later became New Spain was a clan or group of families designated by the Nahuatl concept calpolli (or calpulli). Taken together, a certain number of calpolli constituted a larger political unit which, together with the accompanying territory, is called an altepetl.48 This unit elected a leader, the tlatoani (tlatoque in the plural). In this way, even a smallish group of families could constitute a more or less independent “state.” A few of these states acquired outsized power and dominated – like the triple alliance of Mexico, the Tepanecs, and the Acolhuacan empire – a large number of other states. Within the framework of this alliance, there was a supreme military and religious leader of Mexico, the huey tlatoani. The triple alliance’s rule was by no means seamless; it contained quasi-autonomous states that had their own tlatoque and other states that were subordinated to a kind of military governor (cuauhtlatoque, tlacatecameh). Through Cortés’s conquest of Tenochtitlan, the residence of Moctezuma and capital of the Aztecs, the Spanish succeeded in occupying the ruling center of a space whose dimensions, contours, and political subdivisions were hard for the conquerors to survey. This difficulty in getting an overview of the territory was not simply due to the conquerors’ geographic blindness; it certainly also owed something to the Aztec empire’s own opaque complexity. For this empire was characterized not by rigid borders, but rather by complexly layered spheres of influence, by traditions and family ties that were set in motion and called into question in the process of conquest. Overall, then, the modern concept of the state is ill-suited to adequately capture the political structure of the Aztec empire; yet scholarship has distinguished among three zones for the exercise of political rule. The first, a core zone in which the Aztecs had direct control, included the already mentioned triple alliance of the Aztec empire’s three city-states with its center in Mexico’s high valley. Grouped around these three core city-states was a 48 Gerhard, Guide, 4; Lockhart, Nahuas, 14–28.



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second zone consisting of two states that were independently administered yet under Aztec suzerainty. Thirdly, there was a zone of allied tribes. Some borders were drawn more sharply; others were blurred, especially where the exertion of allied tribes’ interests dwindled, i.e., in weakly settled marginal areas. In the course of the march to Tenochtitlan, Hernán Cortés and his troops traversed these layers of Aztec rule in sequence and became acquainted successively with peoples that had different relationships of taxation and dependency as well as different inclinations to be either loyal to or defect from Tenochtitlan. When Tenochtitlan was finally conquered, Cortés was indeed able to fall back on tribute systems that already existed and alliances that could be renewed. Yet, at the same time, construction began on entirely new institutions oriented toward European or Spanish categories of law and of clerical and secular rule. This process seemed to simplify power relations, yet the way this happened was deceptive. For initially these new European categories of law and rule were, by and large, little more than assertions, constitutional fictions that doubled the reality of rule. For, on the one hand, Castilian legal and administrative organs took up their work with a claim to validity that was thoroughgoing and across the board. But in the individual regions and cultural circles, on the other hand, there was a very specific social, political, and cultural reality that more or less allowed these institutions to have validity and that modified them in each case. The practice of colonial rule was therefore preoccupied with processes that mediated between these two spheres of political arrangements, mediating processes in which specific on-site compromises between these two spheres were negotiated. In a similar way, too, the adaptation of European law flowed into the flexibility and casuistry of derecho indiano, just as the mission to the indigenous peoples issued into an accommodation of Christian symbols and beliefs with the indigenous cosmology.49 In effect, this doubling – which paired claims to validity for colonial rule alongside the realities of colonial life – created a knowledge problem sui generis. From a distance, it became much more difficult to form a picture of all the different local realities that affected political rule. How new colonial institutions and concepts could supersede and abnegate indigenous realities of rule may best be elucidated by taking a look at territorial concepts: the term Nueva España was already in use in 1520, that is, even before the final capture of Tenochtitlan. In 1524 it was an approximate designation for the area extending from today’s El Salvador and Honduras in the south to the Chichimeca border in the north. Northeasterly, it extended as far as Huasteca and in the west as far as Colima. The term thus captured a territorial entity that did not even exist politically and whose diverse geographic, ethnic, cultural, linguis49 On this, see Tau Anzoátegui, Casuismo.

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tic, and religious differences were still far from being understood. In 1528, the Audiencia of Mexico City was established as the first central authority for New Spain.50 Starting with the appointment of Antonio de Mendoza in 1535, there was finally a Viceroy for New Spain. That he was not really “master of the situation” in an epistemic sense was demonstrated by two official statements he made during his term of office: In 1541, he was still reporting confidently to Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, the chronicler in Santo Domingo, about the progress he was making: I have made an effort with this report to become very well-acquainted with the affairs of this land, and I found diverse opinions. For, just as there were so many masters in every province, so it was that they recount things each in his own way. I will continue to collect and verify them, and when that is done, I will send it to you. … And this local matter is by no means so small that one could not make a book out of it. This book would certainly not be small, for although Montezuma and Mexico is … familiar to us, someone like the cazonci [this was the title for the Tarascan ruler] of Michoacán was by no means a smaller master. The same applies to others who did not even know each other.51

Ten years later, resignation is discernible: There are so many opinions and ways of observation that diverge from each other that it is not to be believed … I have spent 16 years since my arrival observing this land and attempting to understand it. And I could swear that, as far as the leadership of the land is concerned, I now feel newer and more confused than at the start.52

With the appointment of a viceroy first for New Spain in Mexico City, and then in 1543 for the Peruvian Viceroyalty in Lima, an office was created in the American territories that the Aragonese and Castilian kings had already used in their European part-kingdoms. The viceroys appeared as an alter ego of the monarch: they represented the absent king. In addition to this representative task, they had a number of responsibilities in the area of civil, legal, and military administration as well as of royal church patronage (patronato real). They were, for example, governors of the capital city province and presidents of the audiencia there. Yet they did not exercise any sovereign supremacy over all institutions of the viceroyalty. The presidents of other audiencias, like the governors and captains-general, for example, conducted their own correspondence with the king. To what extent the right of the viceroy to decide as the king would do, therefore, depended powerfully on the specific political situation and on the personal reputation and assertiveness of the office-holder. 50 Gerhard, Guide, 11; Arregui Zamorano, Audiencia, 42–44. 51 Fernandéz de Oviedo, Historia general, vol. 4, 252. On the cazonci, see Stone, Places, 29. 52 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 54.



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Among the other high-ranking institutions, the first ones that should be mentioned are the audiencias, which mainly worked as courts of appeal. In addition, they took care of tasks that involved controlling lower-ranked institutions of civil administration. Thus, they could appoint investigative judges in order to inspect the leadership of officials in their court districts. The judges of the audiencias for Mexico and Lima could also act as the viceroy’s consultative committee. They would convene under the viceroy’s chairmanship and form the so-called real acuerdo. After Santo Domingo (1511), the first mainland audiencia was established in Mexico City in 1528. This was followed by the establishment of audiencias at Panama in 1538, at Lima and Guatamala in 1543, at Bogotá and Guadalajara in 1548, as well as in 1559 at Charcas, today’s Bolivian Sucre. Quito first received an audiencia of its own in 1563. The paperwork of the audiencias was not restricted to legal cases. For example, the audiencias were supposed to keep accounts about the repartimiento, the procedure that assigned Indians to the Spanish. In the early phase of the Conquista, this assignment was frequently undertaken by the army commanders themselves. Hernán Cortés, for example, saw this as a welcome opportunity to reward his followers and simultaneously secure rule over land and people by appointing small overlords on-site.53 The repartimiento procedure and the encomienda system were familiar to Cortés from the Caribbean. They both represent stages in the atrophy of medieval feudality. The repartimiento (“allotment”) is a typical mechanism for distributing booty in wars of conquest. In short-term military campaigns and raids, booty was also taken. Yet as a matter of course this booty consisted of mobile goods, and sometimes slaves or hostages, distributed among the victors immediately after a victory – with due regard for prevailing rules – and then taken away by them. But if this was going to be a policy of conquest planned for the long run, i.e., of seizing land and securing the territories acquired, then the “spoils” also had to be defined differently. In this case the reward would have to consist in real estate, i.e., in allotted parcels of land, houses, or seigniorial rights over subjugated population groups. Only in this way could demobilization of one’s own army be accompanied by that army’s transformation into an occupying regime capable of permanently safeguarding what had been conquered in the interest of self-sufficiency and sustainability.54 The consequence for power politics was to perpetuate the confiscation of spoils, and to establish the inequality of social, legal, and economic relations inherent to colonial rule.

53 Simpson, Encomienda, 63. 54 Marín Guzmán, Sociedad, 506–507.

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The frequently invoked connection between the Iberian Reconquista and the trans-Atlantic Conquista would essentially have to be found in this centuries-long orientation of Spanish rule around a mechanism for distributing the spoils derived from the seizure of land (with all the consequences of that distributive mechanism for politics, society, and legal culture): increasingly since the twelfth century, the Reconquista had to do (among other things) with securing tracts of land that had already been conquered. Since the thirteenth century, documents about distribution are attested that were registered in regular libros de repartimiento. They list the goods and rights to be distributed as well as the names of the conquerors according to each one’s social status.55 A politically decisive factor was the essentially feudal legal relationship that was constituted immediately following the actual moment when the spoils were distributed: the encomienda.56 In theory, it represents a relationship of entrustment. As in the medieval system of fiefdom, the Indians who were allotted to the Spanish were not supposed to represent some kind of arbitrarily disposable property. Rather, Indians were in a protective relationship with their encomendero that was associated with reciprocal rights and duties; the Indians were “entrusted” (encomendar) to him. What happened in the medieval fiefdom system by way of a formal act of entrustment between vassal and feudal lord – the so-called commendatio – basically happened in the encomienda, however, by way of repartimiento, that is, out of the logic of victory and subjugation. This is worth emphasizing for two reasons. For one, it illuminates the reasons behind the schism in the discourse about how the Indios were treated. Their unconditional protection as well as their exploitation were characterized in an equally fateful way as “just,” since the obligation to protect was based on the principle of entrustment, but the assignment of Indians to conquistadors was based on the idea that the Indians represented the actual reward for the achievements of the conquistadors. But on the other hand –and this leads back to the question of institution-building – encomenderos are local ruling institutions of the first hour, institutions that make it possible in the first place for there to be a transition from crusading to the establishment and safeguarding of durable rule. Encomenderos therefore showed up wearing the habit of a victor and, eo ipso, of a legitimate ruler, a ruler who, especially under the frontier conditions of the early colonial period (i.e., in the absence of an established network of institutional authorities), saw himself as an institutional authority. At times, certainly, this was in the interest of the Crown, to the extent that it carried out the Crown’s rulership claim into the regional expanses of the empire. But, over the long run, the Crown had to 55 Powers, Society, 104; Constable, Medieval Iberia, 228–231. 56 On the prehistory of this system, see Miranda Ontaneda, Klientelismus, 32–49.



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be interested in limiting, indeed in restraining, relations of feudal rule. This was made possible by the establishment of administrative and judicial authorities whose legitimacy was supplied entirely by the royal will, i.e., no longer from the act of conquest itself. By the same logic, there was an early attempt, made for the first time in 1514 on Hispaniola, to have the repartimiento carried out by a royally appointed repartidor.57 The encomienda policy for the entire sixteenth century is characterized by political compromises that resulted from this tension between the conquistadors’ ambitions and the Crown’s organizational drive. Little has been said in this sketch about the concrete scenarios for exercising rule on-site. The practice of the encomienda had almost nothing to do with the idea of entrustment, an idea which, after all, also envisioned (along with a grant of protection) such things as instruction in the Christian faith. Guidelines for Indian protection of the kind that Cortés himself had issued in 1524 were ignored. An explicit ban on encomienda, which the Crown pronounced several times, could not be implemented in Spanish America. When Cortés refused to implement the 1528 ban on encomienda, he explicitly invoked the principle of obedézcase-pero-no-se-cumpla.58 In the colonial practice of New Spain, the encomienda was shaped by the encomendero’s claim to labor services or tribute payments from the Indian group assigned to him. Initially it was labor services, and then later tribute payments, that were paramount. There were, however, strong regional distinctions: while tribute became the norm relatively quickly in the core regions of New Spain since it was possible to build on pre-Spanish traditions of taxation there, in the more thinly settled outlying regions it was labor services, but also forms of de facto enslavement at odds with the law that were more common.59 Encomienda-free groups of Indians were obligated to provide the king with tribute. Raising tribute demanded – much more than did labor services – familiarity with the Indians’ demographic and economic situation, and to some extent also with pre-Spanish traditions of rendering tribute. There was a need to record the number of Indios and have their tax revenue (tasa) determined and, from time to time, reexamined (retasa). To this end, the audiencias kept accounts in so-called libros de tasaciones.60 While the jurisdictional subdivisions of the territory were essentially predefined by the audiencias’ districts, captaincies-general (capitanías generales) 57 Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 5. 58 Simpson, Encomienda, 60–61. 59 Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, 92–93; Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 13–14. 60 Vollmer, “Regionalbezeichnungen,” 40–101, esp. 43–49; on the second Audiencia’s policy regarding tribute, see Ruiz Medrano, Reshaping New Spain, 51–56.

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were created for military administration and governorates (gobiernos) for civil administration, each headed respectively by captains-general or governors. The power of these models to make sharp distinctions, however, should not be overdrawn, since tasks involving civilian and juridical administration often went together. It was also the case that those officials with a special knack for accumulating several of these offices enjoyed greater influence. At the local level, city regiments (cabildos) were deployed. Following the Castilian model, local administration was to be overseen and accompanied by a Crown official, the corregidor. At the local level these corregidores were intended, according to the policy of the 1530s, to be a counterweight against the encomenderos, or even to replace at least some of them, since as Crown officials they were put in charge of Indians who had become available and from whom the corregidores were then to raise tribute but not receive any labor services.61 Not infrequently, however, they conceived of their office as an opportunity for enrichment and access to the Indios. To some extent, therefore, the control function tended to fall to the appellate judges at the district level, the alcaldes mayores. The Indian form of settlement changed significantly because of colonial policy. Early on, some pueblos de indios were set up in place of scattered settlements. Beginning in the 1540s, as part of the so-called reduction policy, an effort was made to replace the traditionally strong integration of Indios into tribal associations with Indian villages into which the indigenous population was resettled.62 Heads of the Indian villages frequently remained ancestral caciques. A basic territorial distinction was made between kingdoms (reinos) and provinces (provincias), and then more locally based either on cities or on the capitals of the encomiendas, of which there were about six hundred in sixteenth-century New Spain.63 Essentially, the provinces still mirrored pre-Spanish domains and became the foundation for the division of dioceses. It needs to be stressed that we have mentioned only the most relevant institutions here, and that minor shifts as well as special developments and functions could not be explored. For the considerations addressed in this book, two conditions regarding the work of these institutions are more important, and these will now be viewed in succession: namely, for one, the conditions of political communication and, for another, those concerning the acquisition and application of knowledge.

61 Ruiz Medrano, Reshaping New Spain, 42–51. 62 Morales Folguera, Construcción de la utopía. 63 Vollmer, “Regionalbezeichnungen,” 41.

V Knowledge in the setting of colonial rule I want to use this chapter to work out some of the functions of knowledge in the setting of colonial rule. This is about finding answers to the simplest questions, such as why people at court wanted to know something or – conversely – why it also struck Spaniards in America as opportune to let the faraway court in Castile know something. These processes of exchanging knowledge did not take place in a domination-free zone so that they might be stylized today as a kind of learning process for Europeans about an alien world. Quite the contrary: they were an essential element of the way political power was brokered, so that the question of knowledge’s role also implies a question about how colonial rule was constituted. Power and knowledge were indeed related to each other, yet the fluidity of their relations can only be sorted out analytically if one works out what the specific formations were. Several areas strike me as particularly important for an understanding of the whole, and they are explored in the following five sections.

1 The vigilant triangle As has already been observed, the buildup of Spanish administrative bodies in Spanish America may be traced back to a political calculation: On-site administrative bodies were supposed to contribute toward weakening local bonds of loyalty in conquistador society and maintaining a presence for the Crown as the power that punished, regulated, and rewarded. And this was to be done precisely where the Crown itself never put in an appearance and did not even have at its disposal any troops worth mentioning. Only in this way did it seem possible to place at least some kind of countervailing force against the de facto autonomy and immense power of the conquistadors and their followers. Only in this way was there a possibility in the medium term of stopping conquistadors and their families from turning themselves into territorial rulers with neofeudalistic power bases. The most important tool of administrative countervailing power was the law. Its function for colonial politics can clearly be construed by looking at the lengthy process by which the heirs of Christopher Columbus or Hernán Cortés were deprived of most of the special privileges their fathers had acquired through acts of conquest.1 Overall, however, the enduring stability of the Spanish colonial empire was not based on the employment of legal measures, but rather on the symbiotic relationship between the court in Madrid and the elites of Spanish descent in the colonial territory. So long as these elites could rely, with some 1 Pietschmann, Staat, 122–122, 147–161; on the use of law, see Damler, Imperium.

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degree of certainty, on preserving their improved economic and social position within the framework of existing power relations, they behaved in a way that was politically loyal and that stabilized rule. One can formulate the point more abstractly and, at the same time, more fundamentally. Spaniards in America had to know that loyalty toward the Crown would pay off and that disloyalty would come back to haunt them in the long run, since the one could lead to a gain in privilege, the other to a loss of the same. Since the court was far away, certain structural preconditions were required to maintain this awareness: one precondition was a potentially unrelenting observation of political loyalty and disloyalty, and the second was communicating this watchfulness to the Crown. Only by way of this setting could rule from a distance be stabilized over the long run; only this way, in other words, was it possible to pursue colonial rule. Every form of larger, centrally organized governance is confronted in two ways with the phenomenon of distance: For one, there is the distance in spatial terms between the decider and that which has to be decided, such that mediators intervene, that is, the ones who make communication possible medially in the first place. For another, though, there is qualitative distance between the partners in communication since the respective horizons of experience and knowledge for center and the periphery have fewer and fewer points of contact as distance grows between court and colony. There are also mediators working on this, but they do not merely transmit knowledge; rather – as experts for the remote – they “translate.” Only by way of both these types of mediation (the spatial and the qualitative) can it be guaranteed that syntax and semantics are transmitted. Similar phenomena regarding the shaping of communication under conditions of distance may be attested for the High and Late Medieval Papacy, as well as for the Inquisition. Yet the colonial situation amplifies the distance problem, especially as it relates to the second aspect of communicative distance, the problem of cultural differences and the need for translation.2 In the case of the Spanish colonial empire, for example, the pathway leading from an Indian settlement to the court of the king might involve a chain of transmission and translation that can also be understood as a series of “epistemic ruptures.”3 Then news did not simply have to be passed on, but also understood by each participant or translated into each one’s linguistic, cultural, and social reference system. Where scholarly research has dealt with communication from the colonial era, it emphasized either the one or the other problem of imperial overstretch. It concentrates, that is, either on questions of communication techniques or on questions of translation, i.e., on the hermeneutics of cultural contact and rule 2 Given, Inquisition, 141, 150. 3 Briefly on this problem: López Austin, “Research Method,” 116.



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from a distance. Communications techniques were faced with the problem of overcoming spatial distance. These techniques as they existed under premodern conditions are usually described as a factor that caused news or details of the news to be delayed or lost. The hermeneutic approach clearly gets closer to the phenomenon that interests us here in that it deals with the very capacity of individual communicative, administrative, and governmental authorities to comprehend and then appropriately and understandably convey the foreign or remote subject.4 But in the way both these kinds of analysis, each in its own fashion, portray the process of understanding or misunderstanding linearly – that is, as a chain of successful or unsuccessful translations and transmissions – they overlook how this process of understanding is incorporated into existing power and social structures. They thereby ignore the political dimension of communication and reduce it to an act of conveying information that has to succeed in merely technical or substantive terms. For an analysis of the connection between knowledge and rule, however, it is necessary to interpret communicative acts according to the topography of the participating authorities and actors, especially since these are not merely mediators, but are themselves actively communicating interests, watching each other, and reacting to each other. As complex as each topography of the actors might ultimately be, wherever rule has become established, it assumes a triangular basic form. I shall therefore speak of “vigilant triangles.” Their base was constituted by acts of vigilance, their sides by acts of communication. The kind of vigilance we have in mind here is social vigilance, i.e., an unrelenting attentiveness to the actions and omissions of others. Vigilance is to some extent fundamental for society as such, for it generates a reciprocal, interlocking attentiveness that registers deviations from social expectations (with respect to law, custom, convention, etc.), occasionally sanctions them, and also coaches the individual in self-observation and consciousness about social norms. The critical point for our reflections, however, is not the function of vigilance for the social regulation of local societies (social control, inclusion and exclusion extending all the way to measures of vigilante justice),5 but rather its expansion in space, including the possibility of “remote control” and thus of a political foundation for colonial rule. But how can one participate from a distance – let us say, from the court in Madrid – in daily vigilance over people on-site? Even the contemporary discourses about the “blindness of the king” had recognized the cognitive deficiencies afflicting the center of power. It was impossible 4 Todorov, Conquête; Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions. 5 Mutual surveillance as a principle of rule was already explored by Kantorowicz, Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite, 251–255.

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for the power center to “see for itself” what was going on in the remote part of the empire. It was dependent on mediators and advisors. These intermediaries functioned as agents of the ruler in the periphery of the empire, made observations in his place, and exercised rule on his behalf. In order to counter the danger that these distant “hands” and “eyes” of the ruler might become independent, the premodern world banked on the medium of trust and of control. Control, in turn, could only be carried out where the conditions for communicating characteristic of “vigilant triangles” prevailed. It must be emphasized that this model of Spanish colonial rule’s communicative setting does simplify things. But, regardless of the differences among the cases analyzed here, time and again we find colonial rule resting on a triangular basic structure. The function of this structure was to arrange things so that the kind of local, vigilant, mutual observation individual actors were already conducting with each other was something in which the ruler could also participate. He could only participate by having at least parts of these observations reported to him. Vigilance and communication thus needed to collaborate with each other, so that the alertness exercised by local society produced an opportunity for (colonial) rule to exercise surveillance. Surveillance is an easily misunderstood concept. By no means is it intended here to mean having total knowledge or being all-seeing in an Orwellian sense; indeed, quite to the contrary, it signifies a subsidiary and only occasional kind of participation in local vigilance, a mere sur-veiling (watching over) that never attains the intensity and sharpness of detail characteristic of local watchfulness. But it does entail certain possibilities of control from afar, and it uses these possibilities to modify the processes whereby power is negotiated on-site. Every participant has to know that he is being observed by others and that these observations could be communicated to a third, powerful site. In order to transform merely local social control based on watchful reciprocal observation into “domination” in the sense of actively involving higher-ranking, distant authorities, the observations that were made on-site need to be communicated to the ruler. The observer thus becomes a rapporteur. There now unfolds that triangular structure that makes it possible in the first place for the distant ruler to participate in the reciprocal attentiveness of observers that has been lurking on-site. Should this communication “upward” not take place, all we would be left with is vigilance in the sense of local social control and local conflict management. But with upward communication a centralization of power is achieved whose point is that it does not even need to be instigated by the center. It takes place because local actors are constantly invoking the center as the power that dispenses rewards and punishments. The conditions that must prevail in order for vigilant triangles to take hold are simple, but for the colonial situation they are hardly trivial: There must be at



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least two persons watching each other in the periphery. And both must have the opportunity to communicate independently with the ruling center so that they can report the loyalty or disloyalty of each one’s opposite number. Finally, they must be so close together that they are capable of perceiving and assessing each other.

Figure 8: Schema of the vigilant triangle

In order to govern a larger area in this manner, then, there is a need for many actors whose spaces for action and perception intersect since this is the only way they are in a position to observe each other and, if need be, assess and report on the loyalty or disloyalty of the other. This turns the triangle into a different figure, that of a fan opening ever wider. Communication here does not have to take place permanently, but it has to be permanently possible. Only in this way can all participants act on the assumption that observation is happening and that communication can happen.6 Every actor must therefore count on another one reporting on him to the center. The incentive to do this becomes greater the more the center succeeds in maintaining a monopoly on punishment and reward. The center must essentially constitute that authority that can deploy, dismiss, and promote officials, that awards and refuses the granting of favors. Even the supreme good of royal favor might then see to it that the communicators from the 6 Moos, “Attentio,” 296.

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periphery report acts of loyalty and disloyalty to the center. Conversely, of course, central headquarters can also become active, demand reports, require authentication, etc. It was hardly possible to find a concentration of actors equal to the task of observing each other so closely in the early colonial era. There were also two dangers at work here. One danger was that the role of the actor and the observer coincided – as in situations along the frontiers in which it was the conquistadors themselves who were basically describing their own deeds. The second danger was that direct communication with the Crown became impossible. In both cases the triangle falls apart, and observation reverts to its original condition, namely to a local, reciprocal, and rather shallow kind of vigilance in which actors manage their conflicts on their own without involving the authorities. When this happens, political control no longer takes place. The Crown was aware of these dangers and worked to counteract them. In 1509, for example, Diego Colón was prohibited as governor of Hispaniola by a real cédula (royal decree) from stopping others communicating with the Crown. King Ferdinand heard about one such case. He called it “a major disservice” and, accordingly, ordered that nobody be prevented from writing to him. The king explained that even if these people “write all kinds of things, I have to see this, as is right and proper, so that whatever is written will not damage anyone other than whoever deserves it.”7 On June 15, 1510, the order was reiterated: Diego Colón and the officials of the Crown should no longer prevent anybody “who wants to send or bring documents, or also books, reports, letters, and other writings. Rather, everyone should be able to write what he wishes.”8 What needed to be prevented, in other words, was a person or authority setting himself (or itself) up as a gatekeeper. Such a person would then – to use the language of our triangular model – be in a position to interrupt the lines of communication and turn the triangle into a straight line. The king would then have to rely on one channel maintained by a gatekeeper who would become the Crown’s sole interlocutor and thus an uncontrollable actor. In New Spain, for example, this kind of danger arose from the first Mexican audiencia. Owing to criminal actions, its oidores (judges) had been excommunicated by the appointed bishop of Mexico City, Juan de Zumárraga. The audiencia reacted by starting to intercept the bishop’s letters at the same time it was sending Spain denunciatory accusations against the bishop. Finally, however, Zumárraga succeeded in smuggling a letter to Spain with the help of a Basque seaman who

7 Real Cédula, 14 Nov. 1509, CODOIN–2–5, 175–176. 8 Real Cédula, 15 June 1510, CODOIN–3–1, 271



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hid the paper in an oil barrel.9 The royal court reacted with an extreme sense of alarm to the news that the audiencia was intercepting letters and forcing couriers to reveal the messages being transported: under threat of lifelong banishment, the oidores were prevented from stopping letters or persons. It had to be ensured that “everyone who wants to or regards it as good can write freely and send any kind of writing, letter, or dispatch or travel around with these free and unhindered.”10 Shortly thereafter, the newly appointed second audiencia emphasized that, from now on, there would be alternative paths of communication and that the audiencia itself would not have any problem with the new arrangement: About this and about the additional matters, as the people are fond of writing, Your Majesty will already be informed by way of other channels, and we know well that one will not say other things, … and we are, in our purity, secure against [malicious] gossip.11

A “freedom to write” (libertad de escribir) applicable to each subject of the Crown is indeed something quite remarkable. Yet it seems misleading to ascribe this, along with some kind of freedom of speech, to early democratic traditions in Spain, as Lewis Hanke has done.12 Rather, the freedom to write the king represented a linchpin of royal legitimacy and rule. It worked to legitimate the Crown because it created an outlet for venting complaints and suggested that the ruler was responsive. It stabilized colonial rule because it created the communicative conditions for rule from afar. How strongly the idea of communicating freely was linked with serving the ruler was illustrated by an order that Charles V gave in 1530, which said: That it is part of our service that all [of America’s] citizens and inhabitants …, our subjects and vassals, each one and whenever he wishes, can come to us in order to inform us about the affairs of these countries, and just the same also to write us and report to us from there about everything, [and that he] can do [this] freely, without anyone hindering him.13

That all subjects of the Crown participate in this form of remote rule by communicating what they have observed amounts to an extension of the denunciatory principle used by the Inquisition into the practice of colonial rule. The procedures of the Inquisition were, after all, essentially introduced in order to protect 9 Greenleaf, Zumárraga, 35; on the background details, see Simpson, Encomienda, 73–78. On the interception of the letters, see RAH, Salazar 33470, G–23, fol. 116r–120r, fol. 116–117. 10 31 July 1529, Puga, Provisiones, fol. 22r. 11 30 March 1531, Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario, vol. 2, 36. 12 Hanke, “Free Speech.” 13 Real Provisión of Charles V, 25. Feb. 1530, AGI Patr. 275, r. 12 (unpaginated), CODOIN–2–10, 7

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complainants against arbitrary revenge. Only by protecting a confidential communication could such complainants ever be encouraged to raise charges against persons in higher social positions. The “freedom to write” is therefore, at least in part, a transfer of the inquisitorial principle that accusations be safeguarded onto procedures involving communication by letter. It is a “freedom to denounce” under conditions of colonial rule, i.e., of spatial distance and weak institutions. The fact that all subjects can do this permanently may be construed as a radicalization of inquisitorial principles. It seems more appropriate, however, to understand this as a way of adjusting the communicative structures for exercising rule to the exigencies of the early colonial era. Very early on, in effect, there was a kind of “privacy of correspondence” recognized by the Spanish colonial empire.14 One can rate this as an achievement, but one must also be clear about its ambivalent function. It was not the freedom of the individual that was the focus, but rather the controllability of the remote, its affixture to the royal court in Madrid, a tethering that took place in small communicative services and demonstrations of loyalty, and which even then was only guaranteed if there were enough observers who could communicate from periphery to center instances of deviance or loyalty. As already said, this form of rule from afar only functioned when there was a sufficient concentration of observers. For some places, as for example in the case of Mexico City, this only succeeded when the viceroy and audiencia, the city regiment and the bishop could all watch each other as each one conducted his (or its) own correspondence with the king and with the Council of the Indies. Under conditions like this, each actor’s freedom of communication restricted the others’ freedom to maneuver. This could contribute to a balancing out and limiting of local power. But, at the very least, it could also contribute to the rival parties investing part of their energies on-site in the competition for the favor of the Crown.15 The early colonial era and the broad expanse of the colonial territories were characterized, however, by a net of institutional authorities that was spread out very thinly, so that these could only control each other effectively in the rarest of cases. So that control could nonetheless take place, there was, in addition to spot checks by the administration, the possibility that any subject could issue a

14 See 14 Aug. 1509 (AGI, Indif. 418, L. 2, fol. 43r–43v), 15 Dec. 1521 to Hispaniola (AGI, Indif. 420, L. 8, fol. 337v–338r), 25 Feb. 1530 (CODOIN–2–10, 6–10), 8 Dec. 1535 to the Governor of Cartagena (AGI, Santa Fe 987, L. 1, fol. 104r–106r), 9 Aug. 1538 to Francisco Pizarro (AGI, Lima 565, L. 3, fol. 38v–40v), 24 Aug. 1548 to the Governor of Río de la Plata (AGI, Buenos Aires 1, L. 1, fol. 162r–164r). 15 Ruiz Medrano, Reshaping New Spain, 3–4.



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report or complaint to the Crown. Everyone, that is, could exercise a control function, report loyalty or disloyalty, and thus place himself in service to the Crown. It needs to be noted that attempts to organize rule from afar in a triangular way often did not take hold. On-site, it was possible for people to collude and manage conflicts of interest among themselves instead of communicating these to the Crown. The center’s policy of offering its services as an interlocutor to deal with complaints and interests also did not simply result in the center getting to “know” more and more about the periphery. The opposite effect could even be produced because the center’s policy could encourage positions that were highly laden with self-interest. The senders knew that the parties opposing them were also raising their voices. They therefore engaged in a reciprocal effort at disparaging each other through insinuations that could be either true or entirely fabricated. To offer a drastic example, from Santa Marta, of the kind of conflict that typically took place between clerics and colonists concerning the treatment of the indigenous population: The colonists not only accused the Dominican friar Tomás Ortiz in a letter of having taken money and not paying taxes. He was also accused of being a “whoremonger, heretic, and thief.”16 In this way, his opportunities for arguing against the Indian policy of the colonists were curtailed. In order to provoke the favor or disfavor of the ruler, praise and blame were employed tactically. The more that people were involved in this game, the more likely it became that a highly contradictory overall picture emerged, a gray noise of contradictory interests. The court, even if it was still doing a decent job simply managing the sheer mass of reports, would then face the dilemma of having to select individual correspondents who could issue judgments in its place. Communication thereby reverted to trust, be it trust in a person or an office, but in any event invested in some privileged observer. A policy based on open channels of communication, thus, was never completely realized, or at least it could never be sustained for very long. Such a policy was repeatedly forced back by efforts to prioritize particular communication partners favored by the Crown. Those privileged were the central authorities of colonial rule, such as the audiencias, the viceroys, the bishops. The Crown also favored certain methods for dispatching people who might be called “special correspondents.” These special reporters, acting as investigating judges or officials undertaking visitations, were given an explicit assignment to clarify some particular situation. Not least, it needs to be emphasized that the act of “informing” could itself be understood as proof of special zealousness and loyalty. Some observers could “earn” positions of trust for themselves by frequently communicating their observations. And some authorities placed a special value on using reports to clear 16 Quoted in Friede, Vida, 40–41.

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themselves of any suspicion that they might be suppressing communication. In 1531 Mexico’s audiencia wrote to the Crown: We have no greater distress – even if this new way of ruling these lands … causes much [distress] – than being so far away from Your Royal Person, for [at] every hour [of the day] we wish to give account of what we are doing, so as not to err.

The audiencia requested that it receive a reply to or confirmation of each one of its letters, something it would gladly have done at its own cost since: When we receive a reply from Your Majesty about what we are doing, we derive great courage and relief regarding that which is still to come.17

On the part of the Crown, too, the expectation was cultivated that observations should be reported. These observations represented a communicative service to the king. At the same time, buena correspondencia made it possible for writers to ward off suspicions, like having something to hide. The primary purpose of the triangles may thus have been to ensure opportunities for control. But, secondarily, they may have also served as incentives for supplying information and thus for stabilizing the Crown’s trust in each supplier of information. In this manner they constituted the communicative framework of colonial rule. Yet there is now a more practical issue for us to consider. It is important to examine how the systematic acquisition of knowledge about Spanish America began. Here we shall become acquainted with variations in the communicative setting and discuss the consequences of different communicative constellations for the epistemic setting of Spanish colonial rule. The question, therefore, is posed: What could one possibly know?

2 Beginnings of knowledge acquisition An impulse of primordial curiosity may be seen in the reaction of the Catholic Kings to the discoveries of Christopher Columbus. This example illustrates how lists of questions gradually came to be used, how the rudiments of an elementary political curiosity on the part of the ruler developed over the medium term into administrative procedures that were rather strongly regulated. At the same time, this raises anew the question as to why the ruler wants to know “everything” (and yet never does know everything). A letter from Isabella and Ferdinand on September 5, 1493 says: 17 30 March 1531, Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario, vol. 2, 49.



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We ourselves, and nobody else, have seen the book that you left us. And the more we discussed it and looked into it, [the more] we became aware of what a great matter your undertaking is and that you know more about it than one had ever thought one will get to know among the living … And so that one can better understand the book, it strikes us as necessary to know the latitudes and longitudes of the islands and lands you have found as well as of the routes that you have taken. Send these to us at our convenience.18

Curiosity is not what needs to be emphasized here, but rather the initiation of a sustained communication about knowledge between the Crown and Columbus. Columbus offered to share his exclusive knowledge with the Catholic Kings. The ship’s log he had left them was a sample of this service that had pleased the royal couple and now called for more. Here, “reporting” also always meant taking on this role and, with each additional “delivery” to the Crown, continuing to work on the stability of this constellation. Over the medium term, the curiosity that had now been aroused could solidify the position of trust between explorer and Crown by way of additional reports. This altered the communicative and epistemic setting of the court: carriers of knowledge about things remote now had the opportunity to become part of an expanded circle of royal advisers. In order to attain and then maintain this position, however, a strategy needed to be considered that would constantly keep supplying only partial bits of information in doses. Whoever wanted to enroll over the long term in the circle of the court’s correspondents – be they the kings themselves or their advisers – could not have had any interest at all in the final delivery of “complete knowledge.” On the contrary: it would have had to be in his interest that no document, no medium, be produced that might result in replacing the expert in remote things. The strategically clever thing to do, therefore, was always to turn in “partial deliveries” of local knowledge, packages sufficient to be understood as “service” but without ever fully satisfying the Crown’s interest in this knowledge and, instead, tending to stimulate that interest further. The goal of the correspondent was not some kind of final entera noticia for the court, but rather a self-perpetuating correspondence, along with a sustained relationship to the court ensuing from that exchange. Columbus, owing to his special position and in his capacity as a pioneer, certainly cannot be regarded as representing the norm for this kind of correspondence. In his case, nevertheless, the tendency toward this kind of politics – the politics of partial deliveries – emerges with a special clarity. In August 1494 the Catholic Kings wrote to him once more:

18 Quoted in Jiménez de la Espada, “Antecedentes,” 13–14.

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We have seen your letters and memorials ... And although you discuss all things at sufficient length, so that it is a pleasure and a joy to read about it, yet we want to know some more about what you have not written to us, so that we may know how many islands have been found to date, and what names you have given them. For although you name some of them in your letters, it is not all, and in other cases it is the names that the Indios use. And: how far is it from one to the other. And: what you found on each of these islands ... And, in general, we want to know all the seasons, how they are in each individual month, for according to what you say there seems to be a great difference between the weather there and here. Some might say that there are two winters and two summers there. And write us everything at our convenience. And send us all the other falcons that can be sent from there, as well as all the birds that are there and that one can have, for we want to see them all.19

In this letter it is easy to see how individual components of previous reports triggered additional inquiries. The correspondence sets in motion a dialectic in which every piece of incoming information is not actually enlarging the knowledge of kings; instead, what each new tidbit mostly does is sharpen awareness about the amount of what is (still) not known. Lurking in the background is an allocation of knowledge that is uneven: the kings and the court know almost nothing about their kingdom’s new periphery, while the eyewitness knows potentially everything. Kings may have the right to demand reports that communicate this knowledge to them. The initiative to formulate questions rests with them, but the authority to answer these questions resides with the pioneer. Only the knowledgeable one, and not the ruling center, could have an interest in keeping this asymmetry permanent. That the kings at some point want to “know everything,” “see everything,” and have everything sent to them is therefore not simply a desire to expand the boundaries of their personal curiosity, but also a sign of the growing awareness that it is politically vital to bring knowledge to the court and to lessen or end the informational advantage enjoyed by the on-site describer. Conversely, we should assume that the on-site actors are not just simply sending as much information as they can to the Crown, but that they are simultaneously and quite consciously cultivating the domains of knowledge that give them an edge. They foster that reservoir of local, personal knowledge from which each of them feeds his own power because this turns them into irreplaceable carriers of local knowledge, limits the extent to which they can be controlled from afar, and expands their personal room for maneuver. What needs to be emphasized are the longer-term consequences for the communicative and epistemic setting, consequences that show up, for example, in the correspondence with Columbus: the Crown reinforced its “curiosity” by using the instruments of formalized writing and institutionalized control; lists 19 Quoted in Jiménez de la Espada, “Antecedentes,” 14.



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of questions were meant to enhance the opportunity to become truly informed about everything that interested the kings themselves, rather than about what seemed worth reporting to the on-site correspondence partner. This also changed the character of the knowledge to be communicated in a decisive manner. The individual components of knowledge that had previously been reported as a kind of “gift” that also gave the reader “joy and pleasure” now became a duty. To overstate the point: Columbus was no longer captivating the Catholic Kings with his stories. Now they were tying him down by using a form, and also (in the end) by using the institution of a notary scribe who was supposed to accompany him on his expeditions. In 1502, when Columbus departed on this fourth voyage, his instructions included, for the first time, provisions to this effect: And you are to inform us about the size of the islands mentioned, and you are to keep records about all the islands and the people [living thereon] and about what kind they are, so that you give us a comprehensive report (entera relación) about everything ... On these islands and on the mainland you are … to see if there is gold, silver, pearls, precious stones, or spices or other things, and in what quantity and of what origin. And you are to report all of this to our scribe and official, whom we order to go with you so that we will know about all the things that are on said islands and the mainland.20

Even before the fourth voyage, the Crown had started taking political measures to counteract the growing power of Columbus. At the end of 1501, to keep Columbus in check, Nicolás de Ovando was installed as governor and supreme judge of the Caribbean islands. Alongside the actor there was now an observer, alongside the conquistador a minimal level of bureaucracy. This established the presence of a countervailing power loyal to the Crown, a presence that harbored an opportunity for limiting the de factor abundance of power wielded by on-site actors. What did this mean for the way people dealt with information? The new agency of observation was to see to it that deed and report no longer coincided in the hands of the explorers and conquistadors, that the “vigilant triangle” could unfold, allowing control from afar to become possible in the first place. Even for the first agencies of colonial rule, therefore, the business of observing and reporting to the crown is a fundamental part of their political assignment. Precisely because this took place in a pioneering situation, a cohesive space for administrative observation did not emerge. It was only possible to place an observer at the side of those explorers and conquistadors who had accumulated such extraordinary power. The affected parties were aware of this control procedure: Francisco Pizarro complained bitterly when the Bishop of Tierra  Firme visited him in Lima on a royal mission. While he had conquered the land with knapsack on his shoulders, 20 Quoted in Fernández de Navarrete, Colección, vol. 1, 427–429.

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nobody had stood by his side to assist him. But now, when the land was conquered and won, “they send you a stepfather.”21 In the Spanish thieves’ argot of the time, “stepfather” (padrastro) stood for the institution of opposing counsel (procurador en contra). Pizarro had seen through the political function of the bishop, which was, through observation, to curb his room to maneuver. As far as the further development of question lists or instructions to explorers and conquistadors was concerned, even the nineteenth-century writer Jiménez de la Espada was able to show that, in the case of Columbus’s fourth voyage, there was hardly some kind of conspicuous and strict reporting duty that had become standard. In the instructions issued to Magellan, for example, these kinds of orders are missing, as they are in dozens of contracts concluded between the Crown and the leaders of voyages of discovery from the first half of the sixteenth century.22 By contrast, high officials of the Crown were more frequently given appropriate instructions, as was done both for Governor Nicolás de Ovando and the newly founded Casa de la Contratación in 1503, where it says that these authorities must “continuously write” the kings “and inform them about every report that they have about the affairs of las Indias.” The staff of the Casa were supposed to append their opinions and suggestions about what had to be decided.23 That the principle of the reporter as traveling companion was understood as a general technique for binding remote actors to the Crown is illustrated by the fact that some of America’s earliest governors copied the procedure, employing it themselves when they sent troops out on missions of exploration or conquest. In 1518, for example, when Diego Velázquez sent Hernán Cortés to search for Juan de Grijalva and then continue exploring the Yucatan coast, he explicitly instructed Cortés to be extremely zealous about making inquiries into the secrets of the islands and adjoining lands. To this end Cortés was to have a notary scribe deliver a comprehensive report (entera relación) about the local inhabitants and their beliefs, about the trees and fruits, the herbs, birds, and animals, but also about gold, precious stones, pearls, and other metals, as well as about everything one could know or reach.24

21 This is how he was quoted by the Bishop of Tierra Firme, 3 Feb. 1536, to Charles V. See Jiménez de la Espada, “Antecedentes,” 30. 22 Jiménez de la Espada, “Antecedentes,” 16. By contrast, see Garza and Izquierdo, “Estudio preliminar,” XII. 23 AGI, Indif. 418, L. 1, fol. 97v–98r, edited in CODODES III, 1495–1496. 24 CODOIN–E–1, 402.



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3 Early initiatives: land recording, control, and participation Let us now see which topics were of special interest in the early colonial era, and why they were of interest. This means, initially, taking a look at ephemeral ways of describing the land, forms of description that are now, by and large, lost. Thus, in the sources we find references to early maps or descriptions of the Caribbean islands that had apparently been undertaken at the initiative of whatever conquistadors or governors were ruling there. To be sure, indigenous knowledge was also incorporated. Hernán Cortés is even supposed to have received a map of northern Mexico from Moctezuma himself.25 The early cartography of the colonial era, too, continued to be based on indigenous knowledge that arrived either by inquiring about geographic details or directly at the hand of an indigenous draftsman.26 If a purpose for these early land descriptions was ever mentioned, this occurred, as a rule, when there was a reference to the repartimiento, the procedure for assigning Indian laborers to the Spaniards. As already mentioned, these documents denote the transition from the Conquista to settler colonization because they document the allocation of those “spoils” that promised a long-term betterment in the social and economic position of former conquistadors. Epistemically speaking, the first thing needed was to compile an overview of the conquerors who were asserting a claim, meaning the conquistadors, and then of the conquered, meaning the Indian laborers. As seen politically, the main concern was who undertook this allocation and controlled it, since this person or institution would command the loyalty of the encomenderos. For the early phase it is hard to determine to what extent and where this process ran of its own accord or was already accompanied and controlled by the Crown. Nicolás de Ovando, for example, had been given royal instructions to create a libro de repartimientos. This book was intended, among other things, to list the names of the caciques and specify the number of Indios under their control as well as their fitness for work and family status.27 Regardless of whether such inventories were really drawn up on-site, that they possibly existed in some cases reveals little about the epistemic situation of the court. In 1526, for example, the Crown knew far too little about Cuba’s population and settlement structure in order to make decisions, so that a real cédula from that year says:

25 Vollmer, “Regionalbezeichnungen,” 40; on the maps, see Boon, “Maps.” 26 Mundy, Mapping; Méndez Torres and Méndes Martínez, Límites; Montes de Oca, Cartografía. 27 Burgos, 23 Nov. 1511, Jiménez de la Espada, “Antecedentes,” 23.

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That many persons come in order to supplicate that we give them a sinecure from the simple villages and pastoral positions and churches that were established and set up there. And some of them we do not award because we are not informed and have no comprehensive report about the villages and their population.28

So the king requested more information: Because I want to be informed about the houses, livestock herds, and landed estates and farms and other things that we have on the island, and about the quality and the value of each thing and what its yield is and could be, ... I order you … to prepare a very long and precise report about all of this.29

In the same letter, however, he also requested advice about what had to be decided (lo que conviene en ello proveer). This simultaneous interest in advice and information may be irritating, at least if one conceives of obtaining information as a means to the end of reducing political dependence, that is, of sparing the king the necessity of having to take advice (from the more well-informed). Yet, as will become apparent in what follows, only in rare cases can the calculation made by the participating authorities be unambiguously reduced to just one function of knowledge. Rather, the orders reflect a specific, situationally fluctuating need to combine different functions: one function, for example, might be to obtain information about the variables that drive a decision, while another might be to seek advice about decision-making in the form of very concrete suggestions. The individual weighting of these functions depended strongly on the standing of the authority being addressed, on what kind of trust there was in the person employed there, and on political guidelines and requirements that were constantly changing. Since the 1520s, for example, the encomienda policy fluctuated constantly between laissez-faire and brief phases in which the encomienda were banned or pushed back. Even if it was not realistic to prohibit the system outright, as had been envisioned in 1523 and 1542, each measure of encomienda policy immediately politicized the underlying knowledge base, for example, all the information about the repartimientos and their demographic and historical foundation, i.e., about the natives, their fitness for work or for providing tribute, and about the accomplishments and circumstances of individual conquistadors. A clear determination by the Council of the Indies to exercise direct control over the encomenderos and officeholders, however, is tangible only in a few cases. In December 28 CODOIN–2–1, 359, 9 Nov. 1526. A similar order went out on the same day to Hispaniola: AGI, Indif. 421, L. 11, fol. 300r–303r. 29 CODOIN–2–1, 359.



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1530, for example, reales cédulas were issued in which there were references to how important it was for the Crown to have “complete and truthful knowledge of the persons” living in New Spain. Only in this way could one pick those best qualified for the offices and sinecures that were becoming available, though to that end one needed to trust (confiar) in the loyalty and diligence of the officeholders to whom the Crown had written. These officeholders were supposed to list the most eligible candidates secretly and impartially, but also (for example) to pay attention to who, so far, had been treating well the Indians entrusted to them. The first list was to be sent along with the next fleet, and the following ones every two years. The order was unrealistic, since its explicit intention was to include all good people who lived there now and in the future (de doctrina y buena vida y exemplo). But the modus operandi does elucidate once more the role played by advice based on trust as provided by on-site authorities, and the link between such advice and the claim to objective observation – all of which was supposed to be offered explicitly “without respect and predilections.” These kinds of measures also never aimed merely at creating perfect foundations for decision-making by the Crown. They were supposed to make it clear to the affected parties that they were going to be observed, that the Crown really was living up to its duty of diligent care: accordingly, it was stated that, although one could actually proceed in secret, it “would be good if both the Indios and the settlers, through you, were to recognize our intention and our diligence.”30 On the whole, the Crown’s political interest in questions about the distribution of the indigenous population had only started to take root in the 1520s. The background to this interest, in addition to the mass dying of the Caribbean’s native inhabitants, was formed by the reports Hernán Cortés had given about the high level of civilization among the Indios in New Spain and the precolonial tribute system of Aztec rule.31 This shifted the image of the native inhabitants from one of a locally deployable workforce to potential tribute-paying subjects of the Crown. If the objective was effective access to this tribute potential, more was needed than just gradually releasing these Indians from the encomienda system and subordinating them directly to the Crown or a royal corregidor. A demographic overview also had to be created, and the pre-Spanish tribute system needed to be understood. The range of what needed to be known thus grew wider: not only was there a need to determine the approximate shape of the land (its geography) and the number and distribution of Indios for individual encomienda territories. More to the point, these kinds of population figures for the entire land (its demog30 AGI, Indif. 422, L. 14, fol. 149r; on the additional cédulas, ibid., fol. 149r–149bisr; on the procedure, see Simpson, Encomienda, 97. 31 Bustamante García, “Conocimiento,” 34–37.

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raphy) needed to be specified. Information about the precolonial tribute system (historiography, ethnology) also needed to be obtained. The measures undertaken for the early land descriptions correspond to the stages of colonial rule. As early as the first half of the 1520s, Cortés was already undertaking operations to describe New Spain, to some extent apparently on his own initiative. He continued, however, to run the repartimiento on his own without giving the court in Madrid sufficient information about this. For the time being, too, he advised against levying tribute. He seems to have wanted to keep the Crown out of the business of distributing the spoils. In 1525, as a reaction to this, Luis Ponce de León was dispatched to New Spain as an investigative judge. His instructions contained a broadly defined errand to describe, an assignment making it clear that the court and the newly founded Council of the Indies needed a great deal of information in order to act politically on their own. Ponce de León was not only to describe the tribute system, but also to send the court, as soon as possible, a comprehensive description of New Spain.32 The king knew about the size and importance of New Spain, about its fertility and population, about its ability to live in political communities and be brought to the Christian faith since these were “people with intelligence.” Hence, it was the wish of the Crown to employ bishops and other persons knowledgeable about the “holy life.” And furthermore: It is our wish to know thoroughly and in detail about this New Spain, and about its lands and provinces, about its kind and manner, and about its settlements, and about the size and meaning of each [of these settlements], and about the borders …, so that the native inhabitants of those lands can be instructed in our holy Catholic faith.

The king, according to this account, had consulted about the matter with the Council of the Indies and come to the conclusion that the investigative judge should travel to New Spain with the following assignment: Inform yourself with your own eyes in a thorough and precise manner about the size of New Spain, its lands, provinces, and settlements, as well as about the inhabitants of all these and about the borders and their features. And about how many dioceses one could or must assign, how these would be marked off from one another, and where they should have their seat and what revenues one could momentarily allocate to the diocese. Inform yourself in the same manner about whether it would be favorable to appoint an archbishop in Mexico City.33

32 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 17v–18r (4 Nov. 1525); in addition, Bustamante García, “Conocimiento,” 36; Baudot, Utopía, 43–44. 33 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 17v.



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Ponce de León died in 1526. His successor the following year, Marcos de Aguilar, in no way completed the assignment to the extent desired by the Crown – he merely took another look into questions of the repartimiento and Indian tribute – so that on April 5, 1528, a new order went out about undertaking a description of New Spain. This time it was addressed to a commission that was meant to be set up by the recently established audiencia of Mexico in consultation with the newly appointed bishops of Tlaxcala and Mexico City, as well as the heads of the Dominican and Franciscan convents there. The commission was meant to constitute a political counterweight against Hernán Cortés,34 although it was hardly in any position to do this owing to internal differences. The first audiencia was indeed made up of men from the so-called Velázquez faction, determined opponents of Hernán Cortés. Yet this faction discredited itself through what was in part an extremely brutal policy of self-enrichment and oppression. Nuño de Guzmán, the audiencia’s president, instigated a number of massacres during the conquest of northwestern Mexico (Nueva Galicia). Because of this, Juan de Zumárraga, nominated as Bishop of Mexico and Protector of the Indios, ultimately came into fierce conflict with the president and judges of the audiencia, in the course of which Zumárraga temporarily excommunicated these opponents.35 For our purposes, it is the procedure that is of interest: by way of a real cédula, the audiencia was informed that the king intended to order the cosas de la república in New Spain to secure the conversion of the Indios as well as their proper treatment. It had often been ordered that the Council of the Indies speak about this, as well as … that [the Council] … get information, by all possible routes and in every way, so that one can issue orders on these matters.36

The members of the Council of the Indies had “informed [themselves] both in writing and orally, by monks and clerics as well as by other persons who had been in the aforementioned land for a long time.” They had also consulted the reports of Marcos de Aguilar and Hernán Cortés and provided the king with a “comprehensive report” (entera relación). And yet: the king had decided to compose this real cédula so that the aforementioned commission could convene in Mexico City and deliberate there about a number of questions and become “informed in every imaginable and possible way about the truth so that, once we have seen it together with your report, we can order what is necessary without 34 Arregui Zamorano, Audiencia de México, 14. The real cédula (5  April 1528) in Puga, Provisiones, fol. 7v–9r and, incorrectly dated, in Solano and Ponce Leiva, Cuestionarios, 5–7. 35 Marín-Tamayo, Primer conflicto. 36 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 7v.

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additional delays.”37 There follows the actual list of the points to be investigated, which (against the background of this procedure) are to be understood not as a questionnaire in the narrowest sense, but rather as a catalogue of agenda items to be covered. The explicit language is: “we order that you discuss together all the chapters listed below.”38 The manner in which the information is to be obtained is interesting: the commission was instructed “by means of the tongues of translators” to inform themselves among the native inhabitants and other subjects living there, who “have more knowledge about this,” specifically about the names of the provinces of Colima and Guatemala, their distance from one another and population, as well as about the number of their native inhabitants and settlers. Explicitly, and chapter by chapter, the commission was supposed to take an interest in whether the land was flat or hilly, and whether it was more or less fertile, and also to list each territory’s rivers, harbors, and points of access to the sea.39 The second bundle of questions is devoted to the Conquista: in the same manner, the directive was to provide information about how many conquistadors had served under Hernán Cortés and about who among these were still living and where their heirs were located. One was also directed to ascertain their personal quality and the services they had possibly performed, and whether, after conquering and settling, they had been rewarded with a repartimiento of Indios or in some other manner. And in addition: who among them is married, and who is still a bachelor? The third bundle of questions picks up on the problem of the repartimiento: In which provinces are there non-Indian inhabitants, and how many? Which of them currently have an allotment of Indians, and what amount of land and Indios is involved in this repartimiento? Another thing to find out was how the number of residents in the individual villages of the repartimiento might have changed, as well as how many settlers or conquistadors had no Indians assigned to them.40 The ensuing section of the real cédula no longer instructed the commission only to obtain information, but instead to formulate proposals that could form the foundation for future orders by the king. This shift is worth noting inasmuch as it handed over, de facto, a portion of the right of consultation that was actually reserved for the Council of the Indies. The commission was to inform itself, form an opinion, and submit proposals to help with the king’s decision. How was this envisaged in detail?

37 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 7v. 38 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 7v. 39 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 8r. 40 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 8r.



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It was the wish of the king, so the decree read, to render mercy (merced) to the conquistadors and settlers. To this end the commission was to issue a memorial about the assignment of the Indios to the conquistadors and settlers mentioned. In so doing, the personal quality and service of each was to be considered, but also the amount of Indios and land. The commission should even propose the level of tribute to be given the king and use its report to address the following question: “Which amount of tribute to be given us seems just to you?”41 Critical questions about distribution should not, therefore, be deliberated at court, but instead in the periphery. The formulations show how the commission’s right of proposal and the right of the Crown to grant awards were meant to mesh with each other. The memorial to be drawn up was supposed to list the assignments of Indians in such a way “as appears good to you that they must be given and distributed by us.” And further: So that we, when we have seen the memorial mentioned and the reports and the repartimiento, [may] command the arrangement that is appropriate to our service and the gratification of the settlers and conquistadors, giving each his portion and amount that seems just and sufficient to us.42

Here we recognize the principle of distributive justice that made observation necessary. Since the king could not conduct this observation himself, it was delegated to a commission. Two local circumstances had to be taken into consideration in this transaction, circumstances about which the center had barely any data: the merits of the claimants and the value of the Indians to be distributed. It was accepted that this procedure invited the commission to engage in power-sharing, indeed, to participate in the politically crucial field of remuneration for services and loyalty. But the danger of abuse was certainly recognized: before their deliberations, the commission members were supposed to hear mass, and then swear before the priest that they were going to undertake the assignment of Indians “entirely faithfully and without hate or love.” It was further ordered that the participants were on no account to allot any Indians to themselves, with the exception of ten household servants. Instead they were to receive “proper salaries” with which they “can support” themselves.43 The problem already mentioned by Alfonso the Wise, that the king cannot see everything (no ver), and must therefore avail himself of assistance from others who use power (usar poder) in his stead, becomes apparent here. The crit41 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 8v. 42 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 8v. 43 Puga, Provisiones, fol. 8v–9r.

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ical binding agent of trust (fiarse) is flanked by the kinds of safeguards that even today are meant to prevent the abuse of official power, such as an oath swearing to the interest-free use of power and the promise of an appropriate remuneration. Similar orders went out in the ensuing years to Tierra Firme, Hispaniola, Venezuela, to the Nuevo Reino de Granada, to Nicaragua, and Peru.44 If one examines how the interest in describing New Spain continued to develop, the first thing to note is that Mexico’s first audiencia had also failed to fulfill its descriptive assignments. The order to create an “información y descripción de la tierra” needed to be repeated when Mexico’s second audiencia was installed under Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal in 1530. A similar-sounding order went out to the governor of the province of Santa Marta.45 At this time the court was uncertain as to whether any of the preliminary work for the first audiencia of Mexico had come into being, so that it initially ordered that research be undertaken on this very point.46 In 1532 the Crown again demanded that a description be undertaken, and it underscored the goal of stabilizing New Spain politically. At this time, Fuenleal, the new president of the audiencia, had already reported several times about the work currently being done. It emerges from the written correspondence that the first audiencia had not made the slightest effort to tackle the description assignment. In lieu of this, they had undertaken allocations of Indians. The first action that was in line with royal instructions was when the oidores of the second audiencia convened, together with the heads of the religious orders in the city, and undertook a number of measures to inform themselves. To this end they summoned corregidores as well as heads of monasteries, cabildos as well as encomenderos, to send reports to Mexico City. In addition, people were dispatched from the city to individual provinces, and others who arrived from the hinterland were systematically questioned.47 In the end, there were consultations with Hernán Cortés about a suitable subdivision of the land.48 In December 1532 Fuenleal was then able to deliver a first – and then four months later a second – description of New Spain. Regrettably, both have been lost since the eighteenth century.49 Obviously, however, even for contemporaries these descriptions did not satisfy all the needs 44 Bustamante García, “Conocimiento,” 40. 45 AGI, Patr. 184, r. 16, fol. 1v (30 March 1531); reply in AGI, Méx. 1088, L. 2, fol. 27r–30v (20 March 1532). To Santa Marta: CODOIN–2–10, 86–93 (4 April 1531). 46 Real cédula, 12 July 1530, Puga, Provisiones, fol. 39r–39v. 47 AGI, Méx. 1088, L. 2, fol. 32r–46v (20 March 1532); CODOIN–2–10, 106–135. 48 The written outcome of these consultations could be the brief document Relación de las cuatro provincias en que se divide el reino de Nueva España; see AGI, Patr. 20, n. 5 r. 23, edited in Paso Y Troncoso, Epistolario, vol. 14, 55–57. Also to be taken into consideration: AHN, Diversos – Colecciones 22, 50 and BME: Ms. &. II. 7, 65, fol. 363a–368b. 49 Konetzke, “Beschreibungen,” 16–17; Bustamante García, “Conocimiento,” 41.



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of the court: as early as December 1533, a new cédula was issued demanding that the audiencia gather information that had to be at once more precise and thematically broader. Because we want to have complete information (entera noticia) about this land and its characteristics, I order you to make a very lengthy and precise report about the size of this land, both in its length and breadth and about its borders, indicating the proper names [of these borders] …, and also about the special features and peculiarities that there are, reporting precisely about the villages, and also which settlements of native inhabitants there are there, indicating their rites and customs. In a similar manner: which Spanish citizens and settlers are there, where each one lives, and how many of them are married to Spanish woman, how many to Indian women, and how many still unmarried? And: which harbors and rivers there are there, and which buildings, and which animals and birds are kept there, and of which species these are?50

Overall, these early orders about collecting information leave behind an ambivalent picture. The still young Council of the Indies took on the business of collecting information for the first time in a systematic way. This happened, however, with a clear awareness of how preliminary decisions had to be made by the relevant on-site commissions. These commissions never delivered “pure information”; they also supplied proposals about the assignment of Indians to be undertaken. Information collections, therefore, were subject to a mixed calculation. They did not serve merely the cause of “being informed” so that decisions of a more substantive nature could be made, nor did they serve that purpose either for the commissions and authorities that were local or for the Council of Indies operating back at the center. Rather, both here and there, it is the secondary functions of information-gathering that are clearly discernable. Let us first take a look at colonial society: the second audiencia of Mexico reported to the court in 1531 that it had made itself unloved among the encomenderos because of the stricter justice it exercised and its moderating influence on encomienda policy. One of its jobs, after all, was to revoke the assignments of Indians undertaken by the first audiencia.51 It was especially difficult to placate those Spaniards who received no income at all from encomienda. It was now explained to the Crown how this discontent was handled: We believe that it strengthens their trust that we will be informing Your Majesty about the truth and their troubles. And we encourage them to wait in that we tell them that we are busy with the description of the land for a general repartimiento. And they see this, that we have already dispatched persons … to all parts of the land in order to report to us about what 50 Quoted in Bustamante García, “Conocimiento,” 44. 51 Ruiz Medrano, Reshaping New Spain, 34 and 47; Simpson, Encomienda, 84–94 and 89–90.

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there is there and what neither we nor the prelates and monks reach. And in this manner we keep them busy, even if the talk and the assemblies do not cease.52

This argument does a very good job of showing which secondary functions information or the act of informing possessed: In that the audiencia let the claimants know that it was going to “inform” the Crown about their wishes and concerns, it nourished belief in the responsiveness of the political system. In that the audiencia was itself collaborating on a description of the land, it was demonstrating its own commitment to a solution of the encomienda problem. Sending people out to all parts of the land for the purpose of describing the land helped legitimate Spanish rule in that it rendered visible the work being done by the political system on distributive justice, thus keeping claimants’ hopes alive. Although the content of the information and its possible utility for the recipient were not the paramount concerns – what mattered instead was the performative act of obtaining information – the audiencia did promise it would eventually deliver its description of the land and rely on this [description] while composing the report it was going to submit. The great importance of the secondary functions involved in informing certainly did not exclude information from entering into political or administrative decisions in a more substantive way.53 Should one now wish to look at the other side – that is, to pose the question as to which reason the court had in mind as it asked for information – then the critical point must be the observation that coupling information with decision-making was not even supposed to take place at court; instead, in large measure, the pairing of these two functions was already meant to happen on-site, locally. For the commission was supposed to send both its report (relación) and the expert opinions it proposed (pareceres) to the court. That is, by no means did the court intend to push for data collection with the aim of independent decision-making. Instead, it delegated parts of its decision-making authority to the commission on-site. As a consequence, the receipt of information did not serve to place decision-making at the center on the most rational, most substantive foundation possible. It was meant to ensure opportunities for control, to keep arbitrariness within narrow confines, and to ensure that politically shrewd decisions were made, i.e., to take on-site claims and interests into account. In order to enhance the likelihood of meeting these different goals, the court pushed for a legal and empirically complex procedure of preliminary data-gathering. That these data were subsequently meant to be sent to the Council of the Indies may be interpreted in different ways: either the Council of the Indies was already really 52 Letter of the Audiencia of Mexico, 30 March 1531; Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario, vol. 2, 37–38. 53 Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario, vol. 2, 38.



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following the goal of systematically acquiring information about the colonial empire in order to place its “rule from a distance” on empirical foundations. For this interpretation, however, there are no explicit indications or programmatic statements beyond the formulaic language of the queremos tener entera relación (“we want to have a comprehensive report”). Even the procedure for using the list of questions, after all, was meant above all to organize the Commission’s deliberations by subject. Or else (in the alternative interpretation) the Council of the Indies wanted to guarantee that the de facto rule of a local commission could at least be controlled from a distance, for which the Council had to have access to the decisions and to the substantive documentation about the situation. Taking into consideration the circumstances, this ex-post control seems to have been the main function of the demand for information. It is certain that the decision about allocating Indians was meant to remain with the king in a formal sense, which meant that a minimum of documentation – even if only in the form of list-like proposals about the encomiendas to be awarded – had to be submitted. Even if surveys of demographic data were requested, then, it does not make sense (for that reason) to talk about an early form of statistics. We are looking at a procedure with which the mediation of decisions between center and periphery was to be conducted and, at the same time, opportunities for control from the center were to be safeguarded.

4 Objectivity as technique for control and exoneration As it could be discerned, sending information to the Council of the Indies had a control function. But why was this kind of control exercised by transmitting documentation instead of by using the technique offered by the vigilant triangle? The critical difference is that, in this case, it was not the loyalty or disloyalty of actors that needed to be controlled, but rather substantive decisions. It could not be ascertained whether the actors had or had not abused the trust placed in them by the Crown; the real issue was, instead, the appropriateness of their activity in detail. In order for his deeds to be monitored according to this criterion, the actor had to convey different things. On the one hand, he had to communicate what he had done or wanted to do. On the other hand, he had to show why this action was “right.” The latter required what was in part a highly descriptive effort, namely a description of the circumstances that had led to a particular decision. For example, in order to document that the allocation of encomiendas had proceeded “justly,” both a report about the claimants as well as a report about the Indians to be allocated, their living space, and possibly also their economic systems – and thus their “value” – had to be added. Consequently, demographic

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lists from the early colonial period were developed not only in order to document how the allocation of Indians – the repartimiento – would be organized, but also in order to document to the Crown that this allocation happened in a way that was substantively adequate. Only by presenting and sending along objective reasons could an official who was de facto participating in the exercise of power steer clear of the suspicion that his actions were based on subjective interests, that he might be abusing power. On the one hand, this facilitated control by the Crown, since the Crown gained insight into the basis for its officials’ actions; by the same token, though, control was also impeded. For the documentation of the “substantive matter” could be used tactically to conceal the interests of the participants. It inserted a vast amount of data that obscured subjective biases, that disguised what the interests were. Regardless of how this might be assessed in each individual case, overall, this manner of proceeding nourished a culture of permanent and demonstrable emphasis on “objectivity” in the official written record, a culture whose epistemic effects must be of interest to us. For if it was not the curiosity of the recipient, but rather the interests of the sender, that motivated the production of many empirical descriptions, the empirical and the political realms are placed in a relationship that demands explanation. What are the peculiar features of this relationship? In the Spanish colonial era, two different kinds of writing may be distinguished, namely documentation of actions (actions that already happened or ones still intended) and documentation of situations (substantive circumstances). The first kind frequently took place in the form of proposals and petitions, but to some extent also in the form of advisory opinions and expressions of views (pareceres), with the latter professing to document the situation itself (información, relación). Both types of writing were frequently sent out together.54 One depicted the substantive issue, while the other type requested or recommended that an action be approved. The combination of these two had the legitimating effect of suggesting that the one thing (the action) would ensue directly from the other thing (the substantive matter at issue). In such a case, dispatching comprehensive, substantive documentation would not be aimed primarily at making sure that the recipient, for example the Council of the Indies, was informed as best as possible. Rather, the point is to demonstrate that an office has been properly administered. The authority on-site is, in a sense, examining itself, sparing itself an external review and actively countering the slightest suspicion that subjective motives might be at work, which is why one may speak of an “exonerating empirical reference.” That reference puts the link to the substantive issue in the limelight. It stages a world in which the factual grounds for action become the dominant scenery 54 Heredia Herrera, “Carta,” 141.



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obscuring in the backdrop the players’ interests. All this exonerates the senders and pretends to grant the center a controlling view while simultaneously itself controlling what the center gets to see. This distinction between “substantive issue” and “action” is fragile, especially when one considers that both types of documents are produced by the same people or authorities, yet the distinction holds to this day. It represents the foundational legitimation for administrative action, namely the claim that one is making “substantive decisions” about the issues. In order to demonstrate this credibly, both the “substantive issues” and the “decisions” have to be documented. This does not result in the depiction of reality, but rather in the compilation of a set of parameters relevant to decision-making, and in a way that provides for an (inner-directed) conviction that one is acting correctly and an (outward-directed) offer to let correct behavior be observed. Both of these effects shield the decision that has been made from doubts. These kinds of procedures essentially follow the logic of judicial practices. For, on the one hand, in juridical proceedings, case files (records of interrogations), etc. are produced that objectify a substantive fact or circumstance; and, on the other hand, a judgment (or decision) is formulated that is demonstrably based on the substantive facts of the case that are objectified by the case files. The administration’s exonerating empirical reference did, however, mask a methodological problem. Since the “substantive issue” and the “decision” were typically produced by the same person or authority, objectivity was not attainable at the level of the actors. This makes it all the more questionable that such objectivity was postulated at the level of the medium. The linguistic distinction between types of documents that depict something (relación, información), on the one hand, and decision-making proposals and expressions of opinion that motivated or legitimated action (pareceres), on the other hand, was a distinction that could prove helpful here. The distinction suggested that it was possible to find objective grounds for a decision, and in this way it helped suggest that there could be such a thing as objective administration, or at least that the suspicion of arbitrariness could be kept at bay. Contemporaries did not talk about “objectivity,” but rather – again, borrowing from the legal culture – about “truth,” about “true reports” (relaciones verdaderas), and about “thoroughness.” The latter was demanded in order to counter the suspicion that specific details or features were being kept secret. Thoroughness could be meant extensively, in the sense of a comprehensive, full report (entera relación), or it could also be understood in the sense of intensive reporting that included all the important details (relación muy particular). Overall, therefore, it may be said that the strict distinction between “information” and “interest” did not become relevant for the first time in the modern

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era. It was a distinction that was already shaping the techniques and political-administrative rhetoric of premodern colonial rule. The power symbiosis between colony and motherland made a continuous flow of communication between the two necessary, a flow in which – abstractly speaking – it was not only information that was being exchanged, but also and always interests. This is a fundamental problem of the absolutist state based on privileges and of the economy of rewards peculiar to that state, but a problem that was intensified by the special circumstances of communication in a space of territorial rule traversing the Atlantic. We are dealing with a distension in the space of territorial rule in which the source for a major share of privileges, such as those involving allotments of Indians or appointments to office, rested with the court in Madrid although the thirst for privilege burned in America. Whoever could not travel to Madrid himself or send agents there to represent his interests was left with the option of writing from a distance. This, however, required other forms for dissimulating interests. If it was possible, within the royal court’s dense network of personal contacts and diverse interactions, to present one’s interests in an elastic way, to deny that one had interests at stake sometimes while letting one’s interests shine at other times (depending on the situation), and in this way to approach one’s goal slowly and step by step – if this was possible, then writing from a distance, especially under conditions where everything was embedded in administrative formalities, crucially depended on preparing an adequate report about the substantive state of affairs. Such written reporting delivered empirical information, including and especially in cases where this was a matter of realizing one’s interests in a subtle way. The connection between the delivery of information and the deliverer’s interest assumed two shapes. For one, just delivering information diligently could be counted as proof of loyalty. In this case, information was the same as interest. For another, information could be sent along in order to facilitate a reference to empirical matters, that is, in order to have the periphery feign a substantive state of affairs that would make it appear to the center as if there were no meaningful solution other than the one proposed. In this case, information was part of a strategy for the conscious objectification of decisions. Information was then actually concealing interests. Hence, when the space of territorial rule was distended, the decisive effect of this expansion could not have lain in the delay of decision-making processes (because of slow ships and offices, etc.). More consequential was the shortage of opportunities for communication and its channeling through written forms. Whatever the procedure may have been in each individual case, the status of those persons or authorities who routinely communicated with the Crown and thus had privileged access to the scarce good of communication was greatly enhanced. They were the gatekeepers who regulated access to the channels of



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administrative writing. As such, they were, as we shall soon see more clearly, placed under enormous pressure by petitioners. This meant that the colonial situation itself harbored incentives aiming at procedures that distinguished demonstratively between the objective and the subjective and that also, in this way, created their distinctness. The procedures also assigned an allotment of roles to the actors. This is something that can be discerned by looking at some of the procedures’ features: for example, wherever witnesses were consulted in order to examine some of the claims asserted by a petitioner, or where notary scribes (escribanos) were employed in order to write down statements of fact or testimony. These clerks then appeared, in a sense, ex officio next to the event and created a certified image of it.55 It also fell to the higher authorities of colonial rule to function as official observers in certain situations. They could be called upon to create a picture as objective as possible, but also at times to express their opinion on the matter (we will shortly come back to this distinction). They then served as an authority providing an objectified observation in an official capacity, an authority that might be assigned, for example, to describe the circumstances of some incident or the qualities of a claimant. When assigned this task, there was no way for them to avoid opening themselves up to the concerns of the claimants, that is, to hear out their private interests, forward their cases through official channels, and comment on them. This role taken on by the administrative authorities becomes especially clear when it comes to the awarding of offices and the aforementioned reports about services rendered (relaciones de méritos y servicios). Should a decision about awarding a colonial office or granting a special favor be made at the court in Madrid, it required that a written statement be made available showing the reasoning behind the decision. In principle, as already indicated, it was envisioned that some authorities of the colonial empire could nominate especially qualified candidates. The situation became more complicated if the initiative lay not with the local authorities, but instead with private persons. For, in that case, who should examine the candidates’ suitability? Since 1542, the prevailing regulation was that whoever wanted to ask the king for a gratuity or to grant a favor first had to appear in person before the audiencia of that territory or region with a petition indicating what he wished. The audiencia then had to forward more precise details about the request to the Crown, meaning communicate the interest involved, but also inform the Crown about the qualities and contributions of the petitioner. The requisite informaciones were to be undertaken in secret and

55 Guajardo-Fajardo Carmona, Escribanos; Rama, Ciudad letrada; on the dubious reputation of the escribanos, see Alonso Romero, Proceso penal, 195.

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the participating parties not allowed to see them.56 In this case, however, a third factor came into play: the audiencia was supposed to compose an expert opinion and hand it over in a closed, sealed envelope. In that the audiencia was requested not merely to objectify, but also to express a political opinion, its participation in power was conceded (in the sense of a preliminary decision). Again, we may discern parallels to the mechanisms of the vigilant triangles. In all three procedures – interrogating witnesses, consulting a notarial scribe, and soliciting advisory opinions from the higher administrative authorities – an observer was appointed situationally who had to appear next to the actor. Two documents then emerged. One presented the request made by the actor (the supplication), the other the observation made in an official capacity. This was how the triangle, embodying the tension between actor and observer, initially developed. A portion of that tension then turned into media substitutes, intended to ensure a modicum of control. But these media substitutes also contained the potential for achieving the very opposite. For the remote reader in particular, it was no longer discernible to what extent the documents were the outflow of a serious and objective examination or of a prearranged agreement extremely well concealed by the formalities of the procedure. For this remote reader lacked knowledge of local conditions, persons, and factions. Control could therefore ultimately not be guaranteed by these routine procedures – these merely make abuse harder – but only by special procedures that suspend trust in the functioning of routines and the reliability of officials. Situationally, this happened first by way of official visitations, the visitas and residencias, in which an investigating commission examined the official conduct of an authority. But, secondly, this control was facilitated permanently and far more radically by the way that opportunities for communication and denunciation could be cultivated (and also permanently used) by third parties. The correspondence between Spanish America and the court is characterized by accusations, denunciations, and mutual incriminations to such a degree that one must grant this phenomenon a constitutive significance for the setting of colonial rule. Local counterknowledge was welcome, in whatever way it managed to find its way to the court, since it offered an opportunity to break up the cartel of silence and congruence of interests among actors on-site. Its potential rested – and this is the most remarkable thing structurally – in the very spontaneity and lack of prearranged agreement characterizing this counterknowledge. For only in this way could this counterknowledge remain an unpredictable factor that was hard to incorporate into the calculation of deceit. This hardly gave the court an epistemic advantage, for spontaneous counterknowl56 BL, Add. 33983, fol.  62v. The order was repeated (13 Feb. 1558 and 23 Nov. 1562), see also AGN, Real. Céd. (Dupl.) t. 1, núm. 325 (fol. 292v–293r), 16 Aug. 1565.



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edge was highly biased, and it clashed permanently, indeed deliberately, with the information that official channels were transmitting. The function of this knowledge, therefore, consisted less in the way it might have allowed its recipients to know more and more – for, as this knowledge grew, so did inconsistency, lack of transparency, and uncertainty – but instead, and much more, in the way it had a political impact on the actors involved: communicative checks helped balance politics in such a way that it could never tilt entirely in favor of local solutions abroad. These checks forced colonial actors to come to terms at least partially – though in a sustainable way – with the metropolis in Madrid. These connections are worth highlighting because they demonstrate in exemplary fashion how political elements of communication are linked to empirical observations. But they also show that empirical references in the official writings of colonial authorities should not offhandedly be added to the side of rationalization and efficient control in the ledger of colonial rule. They are part of a more complex economy of political communication that, although it makes a strong formalistic impression, is ultimately characterized by structural discordances in practice. The deception fell back on the same mechanism with which it was supposed to be fought, namely on the ostentatious, procedurally constructed and operated production of objectivity. It helped fabricate a paper reality that allowed actions to appear as the logical consequence of this reality and hence steer clear of the suspicion that these actions might rest on interests. What remains to be shown is how this practice was already being criticized by contemporaries, and how they had certainly recognized that an institution of colonial policy like the Council of Indies, precisely because it was permanently demanding information, was also constantly being deceived. Before we look at how the communicative and epistemic setting of the Council of Indies represented itself, and how it was finally modified within the framework of Juan de Ovando’s reforms, we need to take a look at how information was handled at the court of the viceroy. Casting a glance in this direction will make it clear that officials at the royal seats of the colonial empire also had to struggle with the problem of insufficient knowledge.

5 Listen, describe, and decide: the viceroy’s court With the installation of the viceroys in New Spain and Peru, there was a shift in the communicative and epistemic setting of Spanish colonial rule. From now on the viceroy became a central gatekeeper of communication. As such, he became involved in the business of exchanging interests. One of his essential tasks was

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listening. A report about Viceroy Luis de Velasco the Elder (1549–1564) illustrates the daily work routine of this royal alter ego: Every Monday morning hearing for the natives with two or three translators relating to all kinds of business. Notes are made about issues that are to be discussed with the audiencia ... The rest is taken care of without paper and ink getting in the way. In the afternoon he attends meetings of the audiencia, both for dealing with the affairs of the natives and for voting. In the evening from eight to ten government business with the secretary. Every Thursday the same is done, Tuesdays and Fridays he is in the courtroom of the audiencia for court hearings and legal decisions, afternoons from one to three, matters are usually discussed with the members of the religious orders, the rest of the time he listens to Spaniards, as on the other days at that hour. And on this day, the members of the Royal Treasury ... The morning hours on Wednesday are wasted – as on the other days as well – talking with the natives and in the afternoon affairs of the city, which are reserved for this day. The rest of the time is needed in order to review the letters of the prelates, religious orders, alcaldes mayores, corregidores, and other private persons ... and when ships are coming or departing, the work is tripled. But the biggest work consists in awarding the posts of the corregidores and alcaldías mayores, finding the qualified persons and suffering the conquistadors, their sons, and other persons who bring writings. All want that they be given something to eat. And for two hundred offices there are two thousand claimants.57

Almost every sixteenth-century viceroy commented on the enormous pressure from claimants and also on which strategy he developed to evade this pressure. Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain from 1535 to 1550, for example, complained about the endless hearings with the natives. His report to his successor makes it clear that for him, listening was not about absorbing information, but rather about the politically stabilizing function of the “open ear,” about legitimation through the procedure of listening: I made it a habit always to give the Indians a hearing. Even if, many times, they lied to me: I do not get upset about this, for I do not believe them and I decide nothing until I have found out the truth. Some say that, by not punishing them, I am training them even more to become liars. It would be a greater mistake to make them afraid, for then they would stop coming to me with their concerns. To me, who endures wasting his time with childish nonsense.58

57 AGI, Indif. 856, (unpaginated). 58 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 41.



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The Indios were inclined (Mendoza says) to assemble and write “fantasy letters.” When the governing authority then attempted to chastise them or contradict them, it was said that one was obstinate and would not take advice from anyone. Mendoza’s solution: To prevent this kind of thing, I have listened to all who come. And I do not contradict them, for this would never come to an end, but instead I answer that this seems very good to me, that everything is good, and that I will take care of this conscientiously. What comes out of this is less that they say I am not implementing anything and not ordering anything, but rather that I have a somewhat limited comprehension and understand nothing. And that is how I get away. And really: if I had to do what I am advised to do, the entire country would already have been turned upside down at least twenty times.59

Martín Enríquez de Almansa, viceroy of New Spain between 1568 and 1580, also values this legitimating function of ostentatious listening, which he virtually defined as something the country needed: There is nobody either large or small, of whatever station, who would know in what direction he could turn, if not to the viceroy. And, indeed, in all manner of the most frightening matters. For up to and including the annoyances and childish pranks that get acted out between some in their houses, it seems to them that they cannot find any decent outcome if they do not report about it to the viceroy. And I have seen that this country longs for this, and that the viceroy has to be the father to all. And hence he has to play along with all of this and … listen to them every hour, endure them with patience.60

In the same letter, Martín Enríquez formulated the problem of the viceroy’s isolation and structural ignorance in a way that recalls the “blindness of the king” and the “corridors of power.” Although he knows (the letter says) that a viceroy should become acquainted with the land by undertaking a visitation journey that “entails that he will become, through his own inspection, the master of many things about which he cannot gain sufficient instruction by report,” he has, in the end, never undertaken a visitation journey.61 He closes his advice to his successor, who will now be seeing “with the eyes of the newcomer,” with a warning against those who will be coming quickly to explain the situation to him: For they only side with the victor. Speaking that way and knowing that there is a viceroy in this country, everyone draws … near, each with his business, which all comes down to their ambition and their interests in damaging their neighbors. Since all this is new to the viceroy, and he sees the facades of these people who explain that they are not wanting 59 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 54. 60 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 203. 61 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 211.

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anything more [and] are giving [to] understand that one cannot govern these lands without their advice.62

But on what foundation of knowledge should the viceroy govern? The very first two points of the royal instruction of April 25, 1535, instruct him to inform himself thoroughly: First of all, and above all else: Inform yourself, as soon as you have arrived and are beginning to understand something of the things of the country, about which efforts there were and are concerning spiritual and clerical matters, … and concerning the conversion and instruction of the country’s natives … And discuss the shortcomings that you find individually with the prelates of each of the dioceses. Then send me a report about this and about what seems advisable for the prelates and you to decree so that I, after I have seen your information [información] and your opinion [parecer], can decree what is appropriate. Further: Take care that Mexico City and all other cities and settlements in the entire province are visited – the most important by you personally, and those that you personally cannot visit by suitable and trustworthy persons whom you appoint and who are good at executing what is decreed here. Inform yourself about the type of each settlement, the number of natives there, and Spanish citizens, and what you can ascertain at the time of your visitation about the natives in any way paying or contributing to us or to the person who maintains them in encomienda in our name. Base this on our older visitation books and on the tax lists and descriptions that our presidents and oidores [of the audiencia] have undertaken. Inform yourself in the same way about whether the natives can contribute or pay more without harm … Also inform yourself how much each pueblo’s tribute amounts to in gold and silver.63

As this excerpt illustrates, the viceroy and his court were meant to become a center of competence able to moderate central questions of colonial policy. The vehicle of the visitation was to be given stronger consideration, and the outcomes of conversations and inquiries were to be sent to the court. The instruction addressed a number of topics about which the viceroy was to inform himself. In addition to questions about the appropriateness of certain taxes (alcabala, tribute from Indians) and about deposits of precious metals, questions concerning how to reward the conquistadors with encomienda continued to be prominent. It had always been the wish of the king to provide appropriate and honorable remuneration to those who had helped the Crown in conquering and pacifying the land. The viceroy was supposed to prepare a memorial about what seemed right to him about allocating the rest of the land, or assigning fiefs and titles, to the conquistadors. When it came to these suggestions, there was supposed to be a 62 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 212. 63 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 23.



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chapter-by-chapter list about which earnings each conquistador or settler would draw from a particular location or stretch of land that could be promised him by the granting of a favor. The viceroy thus was meant to become a moderator of the colonial economic remuneration scheme and reach decisions that the court was not in a position to make. The instruction made this clear, involuntarily, in the way it reported that people at court already had “diverse opinions” (diversos pareceres) regarding the allocations. But the court wanted to give copies of these opinions to the viceroy, that is, send them back to America so that the viceroy, as soon as he had understood enough about the matter, could negotiate on-site with prelates, monks, and honorable men – again, that is, with a commission. Then one was supposed to send the king new opinions, which this group had to prepare about opinions already in existence.64 The process described here exposes how it was that the information existing at court could not be applied. Either there were too many unknown persons involved, or the court was receiving contradictory views. This was not surprising inasmuch as it was to be expected that the allotment of rewards was a matter highly charged with interests and biased positions. The Council of the Indies was not in any position to resolve these conflicts, so it resorted to a procedure using surveys and the cooperation of political advisers. A commission was set up with the task of poring over the diversity of the available material and undertaking the business of consensus-building. At that point the court was apparently ready to show trust in the result of this procedure. Once more, by way of trust in the authority of the viceroy and his circle of advisors, key authorities of the court were, de facto, outsourced to the colonial territories. One needs to bear in mind that this involved a core political business of the court, namely the issuing of rewards for deeds loyal to the Crown. This had become necessary because the Council of the Indies lacked the epistemic competence to make these decisions for itself. Here, then, lack of knowledge was motivating a displacement of decision-making authority to the periphery. There is no contradiction between this and the simultaneous demand that information be sent to the court. For, in light of the previous observations, this may be interpreted as a measure helping to ensure that the adequacy of decisions already made would remain controllable. We see, then, that the mere direction of the information flow and the concomitant centralization of information do not constitute an indicator of “growing power” at the center. On the contrary: the information flowing to the center is an indicator of how the center has delegated decision-making power to the periphery and is now searching for a way to limit the abuse of that power.

64 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 26.

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The instruction’s additional points show that no policy of monopolizing information at court was being pursued. For example, in point 14 of the instruction it said that a large part of the province was fertile, from which great benefits could ensue. The viceroy should inform himself about all of this, find out about “growth possibilities” for the royal treasuries, and commission people he deems suitable to undertake measures he deems appropriate. Sending reports and information was not even demanded for this aspect. In many cases it becomes clear that the court was not even acquainted with the status quo and also had no intention of becoming acquainted with it in detail. The court listed individual questions in order to sharpen the viceroy’s attention relating to those aspects that were regarded as especially urgent. Thus, for example, the viceroy was supposed to inform himself about how many corregidores were already serving in a province, and with what kinds of revenues. Then the viceroy was supposed to make the necessary decisions himself. In other cases, the court explicitly wanted to participate in the knowledge that the viceroy was supposed to acquire. The viceroy, for example, should also get to know where bishops were located in New Spain and its neighboring provinces, and what the borders of the dioceses were. It also needed to be determined if the layout of the dioceses could stand improvement. On this point the Crown did indeed demand an exact report (particular relación).65 It therefore makes sense to assume, at the time when viceroyalties were installed, that the Crown had a deep-seated interest in information only on very specific subjects. Certain areas that had to do with moderating political interests were left, in a spirit of trust, to the initiative, knowledge, competence, and authority of the viceroy. In other cases, the decisions to be made had to be documented with a report and, if need be, by sending additional data to the court, whether this was done so that the court could exercise control or so that the court could use certain basic questions about the constitution of the territory – such as its dioceses – to obtain up-to-date information. Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza actually did send a description to Spain whose scope, however, can no longer be determined. As early as the end of the 1560s, the book containing Mendoza’s description was missing from the Council of the Indies.66 It was certainly recognized that neither the audiencia nor the viceroy were “on-site,” which is why greater emphasis was placed on making sure that the viceroy obtained a picture of New Spain either on his own by traveling on visitations or by sending out other qualified persons as visitors. Thus, in 1535, some consideration was given to letting one of the oidores of the audiencia travel

65 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 27–28. 66 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 317r–317v.



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through the land as a mobile commissioner and reporter.67 The enormous range of the tasks he was assigned is striking, which leaves the impression that these traveling oidores were meant to provide the viceroy with entera noticia: He should inform himself about the land, the number of settlers, in what manner they subsist or can subsist, [then about] the churches and monasteries that would be necessary as well as about other public buildings that one would have to erect for the welfare of the villages and the improvement of roads, and whether injustices are inflicted [on the Indios] by the Spaniards or by their own caciques. And if they sacrifice, practice idolatry or other rituals and commit serious excesses, as they typically did. And if the corregidores are properly conducting their office and if the slaves in the mines are dutifully fed and instructed and whether they are given moderate work that does not present any danger to their lives, and if the Indios are burdened or enslaved contrary to orders, … and finally he should inform himself about all other matters that it is appropriate [to know].68

This sprawling list provides an opportunity to reassess the function performed by the act of informing oneself and the postulate of entera noticia. In the case of this traveling oidor, it could not be about – or only be about – the systematic gathering of information. It makes more sense to interpret the wandering oidor as a political instrument the Crown could use to demonstrate its due diligence as sovereign ruler by delegation. The oidor let himself be dispatched on a case-by-case basis so that, as an agent of juridical watchfulness, he could assume control functions over other officeholders, take action against violations of the law, and register structural problems. The list of questions helped him know which areas required special attention. Naturally, a single commissioner was not a solution adequate to the size of the land and the abundance of tasks. Presumably, then, there was also some consideration given to sending him only where he was most needed, and also to dispatching one oidor at a time by rotation so that there would not be a breakdown in the relationship of the audiencia’s judges to the problems in the periphery of each jurisdiction. In each case following their inspection tours, the oidores would have gained geographic and other specialized knowledge and, on the basis of this knowledge and experience, be able to “judge” differently and advise the viceroy more competently. For the early colonial era there is a significant tendency to wish that an instrument actually intended for special cases – such as that of an investigating judge or visitation commission – be turned into a permanent instrument of governance. The tendency is demonstrated nicely by this particular case: Just a year before the viceroy’s instruction elevated the traveling oidor into a general instrument of governance, the king had ordered a 67 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 36. 68 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 36.

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visitation to the provinces and governments of Guatemala as a result of several complaints. The visitation was supposed to be carried out by an oidor from the audiencia of Mexico. The accompanying real cédula makes it clear how the sovereign authority’s “complete knowledge” was meant to coincide with opportunities for the king’s subjects to gain hearings: So that in this manner all provinces and governments might be visited and one could have full notice (entera noticia) about what is to be ordered in each case, and so that the settlers and the native inhabitants can appear before the judiciary.69

This was not a matter, then, of some extensive network of authorities for control and observation, nor was it about entera noticia as a program of knowledge centralized at court. Instead, it was a matter of just having an instrument in the first place that could be used occasionally to extend the royal ruler’s claim of validity into the broad expanse of colonial territory.70 To this end an observer had to show up, and the act of informing oneself had to be practiced as part of judicial watchfulness and the exercise of political due diligence. Quantitatively, then, entera noticia did not mean the scope of what was to be recorded. It stood for the high degree of watchfulness by the ruler. On the whole, then, it may be said that informing oneself could fulfill a number of functions and that, depending on the function, call up a completely different model of dealing with knowledge. Either the act of informing oneself was converted, as in the just-mentioned case of the traveling oidor, into a kind of mixed calculation involving the oidor’s political-juridical presence and growing geographic and expert knowledge. Or else the process of informing oneself was transferred to the court of the viceroy, which at this time was granted a high measure of political trust. It was relatively rare that the demand is made for knowledge to be conveyed to the Spanish court. When this did happen, it had to do either with an opportunity for control or with basic knowledge about the kinds of structures that were ultimately the responsibility of the king. When it came to deciding about dioceses and their borders, for example, the viceroy could not substitute for the king. Last but not least, traces of a kind of original political curiosity may be noted on the part of the court, which wanted to form its own impression of these distant lands. Under point 16 of Antonio de Mendoza’s expanded instruction from July 14, 1536, accordingly, it says: And because we very much wish to have a drawing or a portrait of the most important settlements and harbors of this land and its coast, order somebody to do this, as faithfully as one 69 CODOIN–2–10, 190. 70 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 37 and CODOIN–2–10, 191.



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can do this there, indicating the place, the altitudes, the distance in leagues from one place or harbor to another, … And send us, if this is feasible, the same report about the territories and islands that the Marqués [Hernán Cortés] has discovered or will discover.71

On the whole, although the examples cited do clarify a connection between the exercise of power and information, they do not elucidate any kind of linear progression between information procurement and increasing power. The relationship is more complicated. It was evident, to be sure, that the Council of the Indies demanded information in some cases precisely because it lacked knowledge. But this did not happen in order to acquire knowledge, that is, for the sake of systematically building up the knowledge of the Council. Rather, this served to attenuate the political consequences of the lack of knowledge that existed (and would continue to exist). For this lack of knowledge led to the participation of the viceroy in the core political business of the court – the awarding of encomiendas. In order to compensate for this de facto shift in power, the relevant decisions made at the court of the viceroy had to be subjected to continuous control. This called for information, which is why information in this case represents compensation for power, not power itself. Information flowed to where power was receding, to the center. In addition, dealing with information had secondary functions that were essentially related to legitimacy and justice. The audiences of the viceroy offered the king’s subjects an outlet, and the travels of the oidores and visitators demonstrated watchfulness on the part of the sovereign power. As far as the viceroys’ actual opportunities for becoming acquainted with their country were concerned, there is an enormous contrast between idealized, formulaic expressions calling to mind the ideal of the “all-knowing ruler” and statements made for internal consumption that expressed a note of resignation. In an internal report at the beginning of the 1550s, Antonio de Mendoza had articulated this lack of competence and knowledge on the part of Spanish officials and reflected on the political consequences: His Majesty appoints me and people like me as viceroys and governors, [people like me] who are new in this office and have no experience. He sends oidores who would not even be appointed alcaldes mayores over there and entrusts to them a new world that is without order and law and does not correspond in any way to [what] the [world] over there [is really like]. What does His Majesty expect will happen 2,000 leagues away from him, other than that everything will be destroyed and that one ultimately experiences before one understands?72 71 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 37. 72 Hanke, Virreyes, México, vol. 1, 57–58.

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These kinds of resigned, indeed politically alarming perspectives were juxtaposed to contemporary visions of what was feasible and knowable. Concerning Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, Viceroy of Peru between 1555 and 1559, for example, it was said: he has a list of all persons there are in the entire empire, without there being anyone remaining of whom one does not know who he is and from where, whether he is married or a bachelor, and with what he is occupied and what he lives off; and in this way one finds out who are the idlers, depraved persons, and gamblers, in order to lead them to diligence and work or to join new expeditions.73

Even at the court itself, shortly thereafter, a program of comprehensive knowledge was pursued, whose background we shall now consider.

73 Beltrán y Rózpide, Colección, 62.

VI Entera noticia: Ovando’s project of complete knowledge Ovando’s reform captivates our attention because of how systematic it was and how early it was attempted. It would be hard to locate a comparable project in which control of such an enormous territory was based so early and so explicitly on “full notice.” In addition, Ovando presents his analyses and the measures he undertakes in a functionalist language that seems surprisingly rationalistic, even modern. This seemingly rational-modern functionalism is apparent not only in the content of Ovando’s presentation, that is, owing to the way Ovando’s language strives to base governing (gobernación) on knowledge (noticia). The plot is also modern: since the Council was not in possession of the necessary knowledge, measures had to be undertaken to procure this knowledge. This meant that any shortcoming, once diagnosed, was regarded as a challenge that had to be countered by using adequate techniques. Ovando’s line of argument suggests technical feasibility and a relatively swift transformation from a condition of ignorance into one of “complete knowledge.” As will be seen, Ovando’s project really is of crucial importance, not only for the history of ideas, but also for the history of knowledge and of rulership. Yet, precisely because of its seemingly solitary position, his project calls for the strongest possible kind of historicization, which would help explain how it came about and what kinds of interests contemporaries had in it. A large part of what transpired would remain misunderstood if one simply emphasized Ovando’s reform as a pioneering act pointing ahead toward modernity. The aim of this chapter is therefore a dual one: On the one hand, the reforms of the Council of the Indies initiated by Juan de Ovando and the measures that resulted from these reforms will be described. On the other hand, the chapter will attempt to establish the contemporary status of these reforms, the specific motivation of each participant, and the position of the decisions that were made within the spectrum of options discussed at that time. In order for reforms to get underway, a crisis discourse that builds up pressure for action is required. This context is nicely illustrated by the very first visitation the Council of the Indies undertook in 1542. At the beginning of the 1540s, Charles V had commissioned a secret report in which the different opinions circulating at court about colonial policy and its chief institution, the Council of the Indies, were collected. The report begins with a description of this very discourse: The general rumors and voices that were and are present at this court as well as in Seville … and that have even spread out across the entire kingdom, should not be new to His Majesty. It is said that, among the judges at this court and the officials serving His Majesty

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who are preoccupied with America’s affairs, there is not the necessary purity that such dealings require.1

The reputation of the Council of the Indies was damaged, its transgressions notorious. The latest scandal at the time had to do with Hernando Pizarro’s attempts at the Spanish court to influence an ongoing investigation into the Peruvian civil war – and, presumably, to exert direct pressure on Council of the Indies members. Since 1540 Bartolomé de Las Casas had also been in Spain, where he was writing a number of important memoranda. He wanted to make Charles V aware of abuses in colonial policy, and he literally reminded the king of his responsibility by noting “that his Majesty is obligated by divine instruction to regard the aforementioned proclamation of faith and the salvation of so many souls, [even] to the detriment of all Your worldly interests, as the paramount objective.”2 In addition, the estates (cortes) that Charles V had summoned to Valladolid in 1542, were pressuring “his Majesty to order that the atrocities being perpetrated on the Indios be avoided. In this way God would be served, America would remain intact and not be depopulated in the way that it is currently headed to becoming depopulated.”3 Finally, in the summer of 1542, Charles V intervened: in Valladolid, he summoned a Junta Magna from which the Leyes Nuevas emerged. These laws contained significantly improved regulations for protecting the Indios. In the same year, 1542, he personally initiated the visitation of the Council of the Indies from which, among other things, the Council’s first administrative instructions emerged. These instructions declared the protection of Indians as an objective, and they called for permanent watchfulness.4 As we know, the regulations issued by the Leyes Nuevas hardly took hold in colonial practice. The mass extinction of the Indios continued. Out of a population of about 11 million Indians for central Mexico in 1519, by 1540 only about 6.4 million were left; by 1565 only 4.4 million.5 Just before Ovando’s reform, the indigenous population had already been reduced to a little more than a third of its original estimated size. The tense political situation in Spanish America had briefly relaxed following the end of the Peruvian civil wars (1538–1548). Yet a series of developments was steering events toward new crises, which became

1 BME, Ms. &. II. 7, 88, fol. 460r. 2 Las Casas, “Conclusiones sumarias,” 119. On Las Casas’s conviction that fully informing the king was the precondition for solving the problem, see Castro, Another Face, 108. 3 Quoted by Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 78. 4 Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 77–86; Martínez Cardós, Indias, 109–110; López de Gómara, Historia, fol. Bb1a–Bb1b (Ch. CLI). 5 Borah, “Siglo,” 218.



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acute after the accession of Philip II in 1556. Even as early as the 1540s, the threat from English and French buccaneers in the Caribbean and along the Spaniards’ sea and communication routes had been growing. As of the 1560s, finally, it was becoming more evident that there was a new self-awareness among the descendants of Spanish conquerors and immigrants born in America, the Creoles (criollos). This development came to a head in an acute crisis of loyalty for New Spain with the conspiracy of Martín Cortés, which was put down and then, in 1566, finished off with the execution of two co-conspirators and the banishment of the conquistador’s son.6 These alarming developments blended with a feeling that the Spaniards’ missionary efforts had stagnated or even failed. There was a chorus of loud complaints, and they all had to do with guiding the king in the desired direction. The descendants of the Spanish conquistadors and immigrants emphasized their accomplishments in conquering and securing the new territories as well as the unusual harshness of life in the New World. They raised the specter of riches drying out or Spanish America being lost altogether. As a cure-all, the sons of the encomenderos extolled the virtues of the so-called “perpetuity” (perpetuidad), giving the allocation of Indians a permanent status by making the encomienda privilege heritable.7 Without the perpetuity, this cunning argument went, the encomenderos would have to generate all their wealth in a single generation and without regard to the future. With perpetuity, by contrast, their interest in sustainable economic management, entirely to the benefit of the Indians and the land, would grow. It had been recognized in Madrid that these groups’ loyalty represented the Achilles heel of colonial rule. Yet the solution was complicated. Admittedly, the political loyalty of the Creoles, of Spanish origin but socialized in America, could be bought by bettering their economic and social situation. But an expert’s report from the 1560s determined that identification with the motherland would decline from generation to generation in any event.8 Against this background it had to be guaranteed, at the very least, that the Creoles would always seek to renew the betterment of their status only by going through the circuitous route of the royal court in Madrid. They should not forget that they had to address their efforts and demonstrations of loyalty to the motherland permanently. If only for this reason, Madrid could not simply concede perpetuity; doing so, after all, would establish a Creole ruling class that would have been permanently privileged independent

6 Schwaller, “Early Life,” 38–44. 7 Mustapha, “Contribution,” 81–100. 8 Lope García de Castros, see Elliott, Empires, 234; Poole, Ovando, 103.

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of any favor bestowed by the Spanish king.9 A portion of the influential posts was also meant to be reserved permanently for Spaniards from the motherland. These kinds of considerations show that certain constellations of rulership were politically desired even if they inevitably brought a degree of ignorance with them: both the newcomers from Spain and the Councils of the Indies in Madrid had to make decisions about the affairs of Spanish America about which the Creoles themselves would have been much better informed. This was anything but an efficient way to conduct everyday politics, but structurally it was conducive to fencing in the Creoles’ political room to maneuver. The situation of the indigenous groups varied from region to region, yet the issue here was always some existential question having to do with the loss of life and culture, resettlement, or compulsory labor and tribute. A variety of petitions and initiatives from indigenous groups may be attested that were sent directly to the Spanish king rather than to on-site institutions. Francisco de Toledo, the Peruvian Viceroy from 1569 to 1581, even attributed to the Indios there an excessive inclination to litigiousness and an enthusiasm for official papers.10 At the Spanish royal court, representatives of the missionary orders advocated for the interests of the Indios. They appealed to the conscience of the king. But in so doing they also threatened to play the trump card of clerical politics, namely to question the church patronage of the Spanish kings, since this patronage rested on the duties of the Catholic mission.11 There certainly was, therefore, pressure to act. Yet we must now show how this sense of urgency translated concretely into Juan de Ovando’s visitation and his reform of the Council of the Indies. We have documentation of what was driving the actors, and about what kinds of opinions were circulating at court, in the form of letters, statements of opinion (pareceres), and (not least) sworn testimony from witnesses interrogated by Ovando himself in 1567 and 1568. Ovando questioned these witnesses under oath so that he could better understand the weak points in the existing system and so that he could collect points of indictment to charge against members of the Council. The immediate impetus for the visitation of the Council of the Indies that began in 1567 arose from the connection between two movements. The ongoing critique of the Spanish Indio policy associated with the name Bartolomé de Las Casas is well known. The critique continued to be backed after his death by a 9 See the report of the comisarios de la perpetuidad, sent to Peru in 1559, edited in NCODOIN, 6, 62–63. See also Pedro de la Gascas’s reflections from 1554, in Hampe Martínez, Don Pedro de la Gasca, 213. 10 Hanke, Virreyes, Perú, vol. 1, 140. 11 Pietschmann, Staat, 40.



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number of clerics and monks at the Spanish court. But it was only with the rise of Cardinal Diego de Espinosa and his clientele that a new impetus was brought into play. We have to look at both these movements. Let us begin with the executors of Las Casas, the advocates of the Indios.

1 America cannot be understood: The path to reform When Bartolomé de Las Casas died on July 18, 1566 in the Madrid Dominican convent Nuestra Señora de Atocha, his last will prompted the formation of a junta of theologians and legal scholars who were to examine the theses of the deceased and design new regulations for Indio policy. The reading of the will took place in the Council of the Indies. Present were, among others, the Indian Commissioner of the Franciscans, Hernando de Barrionuevo, his fellow Franciscan Alonso Maldonado de Buendía, and the Augustinian Alonso de la Veracruz;12 this was a group that distinguished itself as the new driving force behind the reform policy. After his return from America, Maldonado frequently lodged complaints both with the Council of the Indies and the Papal nuncio in Spain. In September 1565 he sent a memorial to Philip II in which, in light of the magnitude of the subject, he called not only for a junta, but also for a general council. Finally, in July 1566, a document was drawn up for the Council of the Indies that summarized the positions of Las Casas, Maldonado, and Barrionuevo. In the document a structural accusation made by Maldonado crops up: the Council of the Indies, it is charged, cannot do justice to its responsibilities because it is located far away from America. It did not succeed in understanding the situation there.13 These accusations seem to have fizzled out, until the influential president of the Council of Castile, Cardinal Diego de Espinosa, intervened. He demanded a report about conditions in America, which a certain Luis Sánchez then composed. Sánchez, a cleric with low-ranking university degrees (bachiller), had spent eighteen years in America, where he chiefly worked as secretary to Bishop Juan del Valle in what is today the Columbian diocese of Popayán.14 Del Valle had died, and Sánchez now found himself in Spain, where on August 26, 1566, he delivered a rhetorically polished, passionately accusatory report to Cardinal Espinosa. One feature of Sánchez’s report worth pointing out is that, although he did refer to outrageous atrocities, he did not attribute the abuses 12 Pereña Vicente, “Estudio preliminar,” 36. 13 Poole, Ovando, 105. The argument is already made in rudimentary form by Jerónimo de Mendieta in 1565, see García Icazbalceta, Nueva colección, vol. 1, 38. 14 Poole, Ovando, 106–107; Friede, Vida, 87.

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to exceptional situations or the mere avarice of the conquistadors, but instead to a structural failure of Spanish rule in America.15 The nature of the Indios was systematically ignored, for example when it came to resettlements. Resettlement (according to the report) meant that the Indio was dying like a fish out of water. The mission, too, had failed: of the millions who died, not even one per cent had become Christian, and even among those baptized one could not find an ounce of belief. The Indios would playact like apes, cry during the mass but remain empty inside. Only in Mexico were things somewhat better. He himself had wasted his time preaching and teaching, which is why he knew that the failures had a lot to do with the bad example the Spaniards were setting by preaching differently from what they practiced.16 If Espinosa were to ask him how it was possible that all these atrocities perpetrated on the Indios had still not been stopped seventy-four years after the discovery of “las Indias,” Sánchez would answer: because one does not understand America and certainly never will understand it. One reader summarized it this way in the margins: “las yndias no se entienden.”17 Either, Sánchez continued, God wants to punish the Indios for their sins and therefore prevent America from being understood. Or one would have to take into account the three following causes: First, there was the size, distance, and diversity of the regions that one is attempting to govern with uniform – and therefore always inappropriate – legislation. Those keeping vigil over America “have never seen it and are forced to rely on what others say or write. In addition, as soon as a consejero in the Council of the Indies has begun to understand things, he gets transferred.”18 Secondly, those who come to Spain or write from America are informing poorly (informan mal), because they are only interested in their own gain and “wish to go on living freely and unrestrained.” Since one is governing on the basis of these informaciones, one has frequently erred. The Council of the Indies was taken in by this and, for good reasons, had no idea whom it should believe. Thirdly, there were also indeed good people and monks coming from America who were ardently reporting the truth. But these were few in number, poor, and unpopular at court. Deterred by lots of lies, those at court also did not believe them. Las Casas, “the good Bishop of Chiapas,” and his own former master, the Bishop of Popayán, were dead and had accomplished little with all their work.19 15 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 11, fol. 2v, Memorial von Luis Sánchez, 16 Aug. 1566; edited: CODOIN–1–11, 163–170. 16 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 11, fol. 3r–3v. 17 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 11, fol. 3v. 18 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 11, fol. 4r. 19 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 11, fol. 4r–4v.



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Who, therefore, is responsible for these ills? Sánchez answers this question with political sensitivity: it cannot be “our good king,” since he has absolved his conscience by using the Council he appointed, and because he listens to everything and then orders that everything that comes to his attention (que viene a su noticia) be improved. The Council of the Indies was equally little at fault because it was making an effort to send the best bishops and judges to America. If they go to seed there, what can the Council do about that? In his view, a portion of the blame lay with certain judges none of whom had ever carried out what the Council had ordered them to do, neither the Leyes Nuevas nor a thousand other regulations “para el buen govierno de las yndias.” An additional portion of the blame lay with clerics and monks who were enriching themselves, and finally with the conquistadors and encomenderos who had committed crimes so terrible that their very depiction would be too much for His Grace’s Christian ears. The only possibility for creating a remedy Sánchez saw in a “grande junta” with the participation of the king or of Cardinal Espinosa, along with the Council of the Indies, major theologians, and all those good monks and persons who had been dealing with this problem and had experience in America. One should take a bunch of them (his recommendation went) and ask them what they had seen in their respective provinces.20 Before we continue following the developments leading to the formation of the Junta Magna, it makes sense to illuminate the motives behind this, especially the very different interests of Luis Sánchez and Diego de Espinosa. Sánchez, born in Cifuentes northeast of Guadalajara, had studied at the University of Salamanca under Juan del Valle, his later superior. It may be assumed that one of them went to America shortly after the other; in any event, Sánchez showed up there early in the service of Juan del Valle, who in 1546 had been appointed the first Bishop of Popayán. As the bishop’s secretary, he became a kind of writing and traveling representative of the bishop’s interests, that is, his agent. As early as 1553, Sánchez wrote and signed a report “in the name” of the bishop in which he sought protective measures for the Indios and indicated that he had visited the diocese himself. In this report we already find the argument that the Indians were dying when they were resettled, as well as the demand for an annual visitation. In October 1555, Sánchez was back at the Spanish court, again representing the interests of the bishop.21 During this two-year stay at the court, we find Sánchez in a threefold role that illuminates the contemporary situation of communication and information: Sánchez had himself formulated anew a request from the bishop and signed his 20 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 11, fol. 4r–6r. 21 AGI, Quito 81, n. 4, fol. 1r–3v; Friede, Vida, 87–105.

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application “in the name of the Bishop”; he had personally delivered the letter, and he was then also prepared as a witness to corroborate under oath the conditions in the diocese of Popayán described in the letter. This was necessary since it was believed at court that only by questioning people familiar with the place and the subject matter could one attain any certainty about the bishop’s administration and the situation in the diocese. This was possible because additional witnesses had just traveled along from America, and they were also consulted.22 Between the 23rd and 25th of October 1555, then, Sánchez and two additional witnesses were confronted with a catalogues of questions. What was this all about? Juan del Valle requested, among other things, financial support and transfer to a more pleasant diocese. What was needed, therefore, was verification of the assertions that Popayán was the most expensive region and the Indios who lived there the most barbaric in all of Peru. The witnesses corroborated this unanimously. Sánchez also declared that everything was very expensive there and the soil barren. The bishop stated that, at risk to his own life, he had attempted to teach the Indios razón (reason). They were “los más bárbaros,” and he himself had frequently seen how they ate human flesh.23 Luis Sánchez, therefore, was acting as a witness for the claims he had conveyed and had presumably also helped draft. In addition, he was acting as a kind of “expert” who could, if need be, interpret or orally augment the written testimony. This is worth emphasizing because it shows that agents from Spanish America appeared at court in multiple roles – as lobbyists, whistle-blowers, and informers – that carried any attempt at making information look objective to the point of absurdity. In cases like this, the objectifying tension between assertion and proof, supplicant and witness, interest and information, was utterly staged. In this way, the Council of the Indies became bedazzled by a dramatic spectacle in which facts were manufactured, and with rules the Council itself – following the usual legal and administrative procedures – had helped establish. While these procedures did not guarantee truth, they did raise the effort required for those attempting to persuade. At the time of the 1566 memorial, Sánchez’s role had been changed by the death of Bishop Del Valle. He now advocated reforms on his own and soon became involved in clientelistic maneuvers of the first order. The central figure in this clientelistic network was Cardinal Diego de Espinosa. When he requested the memorial from Luis Sánchez, he was close to the high point of his power. Espinosa had become consejero first in the Council of Castile, then in the Council of the Inquisition, in 1565 and in 1566 president of these two councils, and from 1566 to 1571 he was General Inquisitor. He enjoyed the good will of the Jesuits, the friendship of 22 AGI, Quito 81, n. 7, fol. 3r; Friede, Vida, 155–156. 23 AGI, Quito 81, n. 7, fol. 10v.



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their general Francisco de Borja, and the complete trust of Philip II, who in 1568 had managed to arrange for Espinosa’s elevation to the office of cardinal.24 The whirlwind career of Espinosa can only be explained against the background of a network of patronage built up in an extremely systematic way. In the documents from his estate there was a list enumerating the worth of every office available in Spain, of all current aspirants, and of his own clients from the year 1573. A contemporary noted: If a bishopric was filled, an office or a benefice, it went through his [Espinosa’s] hands and to his friends or relatives, and in this way he had persons in the entire kingdom who served him and honored his name, ... the same thing in all the councils, since they were all his creatures.25

If one views the visitation and reform of the Council of the Indies from the standpoint of patronage politics, what stands out is a broad and enduring personnel alliance: it may be surmised that Diego de Espinosa knew both Luis Sánchez and the Bishop of Popayán, Juan del Valle, as early as their years studying together at the University of Salamanca. Juan de Ovando had also studied at Salamanca, albeit at the elite Colegio de San Bartolomé, which twice refused to admit Espinosa.26 The university and the Colegio de San Bartolomé became the first node in Ovando’s patronage network, his subsequent activity in Seville the second one. There, at the latest, he also became acquainted with Espinosa since both worked closely together here: in Seville in 1556, Ovando became chief ecclesiastical judge (provisor) and vicar general to Archbishop and General Inquisitor Fernando de Valdés. In 1564 Diego Espinosa became Valdés’s coadjutor. The network in Seville was also heavily shaped by ex-collegians of San Bartolomé and their families, specifically by the cathedral canon Diego Vázquez de Alderete and his nephew, Pedro de Alderete. Members of this network soon included, alongside Juan de Ovando, Diego de Espinosa, the humanist Benito Arias Montano, and Mateo Vázquez de Lecca. The latter had already been taken into the house of Alderete as a child, and then was in the service of Ovando, with whom he also lived for a

24 Escudero, “Notas”; Poole, Ovando, 90–91. 25 Quoted by Martínez Millan, “Un curioso manuscrito,” 315. 26 Juan del Valle studied law from 1529 to 1532, and on 1 Sept. 1536 a bachiller in civil law was conferred on him. From 1541 to 1547 he held a chair at Salamanca’s faculty of arts (Friede, Vida, 56–57). Espinosa arrived in Salamanca around 1540, was admitted to the Colegio Mayor de Cuenca in 1543, studying and teaching both kinds of law, and graduating as a licenciado in canon law in 1547 (Martínez Millán, “En busca,” 193–199). Ovando arrived in Salamanca at the end of 1545, and in 1551 he graduated in civil law (Poole, Ovando, 25–26).

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long time.27 The most important representatives of the patronage network in New Spain were Pedro Farfán, oidor of Mexico’s audiencia and rector of the university there, as well as Pedro Moya de Contreras, the Archbishop of Mexico and New Spain’s first General Inquisitor.28 Over the years to come, Ovando, Espinosa, Arias Montano, and Mateo Vázquez took turns at court, gained promotion there quickly, and promoted each other. The pace and direction were prescribed by Diego de Espinosa: Arias Montano, editor of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible, became the first librarian of El Escorial, Mateo Vázquez private secretary to Philip II, and Juan de Ovando, after the visitations of the University of Alcalá and the Council of the Indies, became President of the Council of the Indies and then of the Finance Council. The path had been cleared among others by a cousin of Juan de Ovando, namely Nicolas de Ovando. In 1566 he had been incorporated into Espinosa’s patronage network, and two years later he headed an investigation that cleared Espinosa of the suspicion that he was not of Old Christian ancestry.29 Socially, the group may be described as a collection of letrados who derived their claim to leadership from their legal studies at university, not from noble ancestry. Politically, Espinosa took up the cause of implementing the Tridentine reform policy. To that end he let himself be consecrated as a priest, which contradicted his original wish to accept any office but “not be a cleric.”30 Structurally, what happened under Espinosa was that political and administrative centralization was forced, while elements of control were consolidated, as in the area of visitations and in book censorship, so that one may regard this as a modernizing effect of the Counter-Reformation in Spain. The measures affected the monastic orders, the affiliation of dioceses, and the universities, but also the councils’ mode of operation, which was streamlined at Espinosa’s initiative.31 Parallel to this, Espinosa pushed ahead with the junta system, meaning a commission system that dealt with the implementation of political goals outside the existing council body. For the Council of the Indies, this development materialized in the very Junta Magna of 1568, whose intellectual origins can be traced back to Bartolomé de Las Casas and whose political origins lead back to Espinosa’s patronage policy. The cardinal was able to secure control over the Council of the Indies, finally, in three steps: First, by deploying this very Junta Magna (it convened under Espinosa’s leadership in his house), secondly, through the person27 Poole, Ovando, 27, 33, 47, and 87; Lovett, Philip II, 12–13. 28 Poole, Ovando, 27–28; Poole, Contreras, 10–16. 29 Poole, Ovando, 88, 230. 30 Quoted by Martínez Millán, “En busca,” 195. 31 Martínez Millán, “En busca,” 196, 200–221.



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nel matters of the visitator and later President of the Council of the Indies, that is, of Juan de Ovando, who (thirdly) acquired the right in 1571 to submit proposals for appointing officials in America directly and without participation from the councils.32 If one takes a look at the most important posts in the American administration, everywhere one finds clients of Espinosa, such as the two new viceroys, Francisco de Toledo and Martín Enríquez de Almansa, and their respective archbishops Jerónimo de Loaysa and Pedro Moya de Contreras (the previously mentioned fellow student of Juan de Ovando at Salamanca). The Council of the Indies was also successively populated with additional clients of Espinosa. Up until the time of the reform, councilors Gómez Zapata and Hernández de Liévana, along with Council of the Indies president Tello de Sandoval, can also be identified as part of Espinosa’s patronage network. They were succeeded by Francisco de Villafañe, Miguel Ruiz de Otalora, Benito López de Gamboa, and (of course) Juan de Ovando himself. Ovando, in turn, brought Juan de Ledesma along and appointed Juan López de Velasco, the former secretary to the president of the Council of the Indies, to the office of Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler. López de Velasco became Ovando’s most important colleague, even while the visitation of the Council of the Indies was still proceeding.33

2 The Visitator’s work Ovando’s visitation of the Council of the Indies ultimately led to three measures, each of which aimed in its own way at improving the knowledge base of the Council, and which will be examined more closely below. First, all the written laws, regulations, and decrees concerning the American territories and their administration, statutes that even the Council of the Indies itself had long since lost track of, were to be codified. Secondly, in 1571 the office of Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of the Americas was established. The holder of this office was given the continuous assignment of working on a description of the natural environment and history of America. Another book of descriptions to be compiled in the Council of the Indies represented the third measure that was envisioned for the improvement of the information base. In order to facilitate this libro de las descripciones, a legal order was issued in 1573 requiring all officials in America to deliver descriptions, following a detailed scheme of observation, and to update the descriptions annually. Finally, the reform of the Council of the Indies was accompanied by an intensified and – owing to the shipment of printed 32 Poole, Ovando, 119. On the arguments, see IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 432. 33 Martínez Millán, “En busca,” 194, 198, 222.

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copies – professionalized use of question lists. It will be seen that this measure should not be viewed as part of Ovando’s original plan, which is also why it is not described here as a fourth measure. Only in the course of the visitation process did it develop from an instrument of official examination into a tool for the procurement of empirical data. Ovando was a lawyer and had accumulated experience in clerical administration, in the Inquisition, and as a visitator. But this does not explain how he was able, within a short period of time, to familiarize himself with colonial policy, a subject far removed from his area of expertise, and develop the individual measures that were part of what amounted to an astonishingly systematic reform. We need to take a closer look at how the visitation of the Council of the Indies went off, and at which ideas the people involved had in mind. The maneuvers made by Luis Sánchez and Diego de Espinosa had only provided an external impetus for the visitation of the Council of the Indies. Yet where did the direction and development of the reform originate, and what was the origin of the ideas? Dozens of statements have come down to us. They document that many participants were engaged in an intense debate about the weaknesses of colonial policy and its institutions. Often the first and most important listener or reader was Juan de Ovando. How did it come to this? If one compares the visitation of the University of Alcalá previously undertaken by Ovando with that of the Council of the Indies, one observes a shift in the procedure. In Alcalá, as was typically the case with clerical or monastic visitations, the main thing examined was whether the everyday world of university teaching and administration conformed to the norms of the institution’s founding statutes. The visitation, therefore, mainly served the purpose of leading the institution back to its origins; it was reformatio in the premodern sense of the word. Only to a limited extent were adjustments made, such as permitting new instructional texts or shifting parts of the curriculum.34 Even where the visitation of the Council of the Indies was concerned, a visitation that got underway about two years later, the point of departure was the Council’s set of instructions. Yet the share of visitation business addressing more fundamental questions quickly grew beyond that traditional starting point. This visitation created new offices, changed legal foundations, and marked a turning point in terms of personnel, not least because Ovando himself assumed the office of council president in 1571. In a subsequent consultation with Philip II that took place in the first half of 1571, Ovando distinguished between two things when he subjected the Council of the Indies to a “general inquisition”: First there were questions about the personal culpability of those being visited, and secondly there were more general concerns. The accusa34 Poole, Ovando, 67–76.



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tions regarding the administration of the councils were substantial: bribery, laziness, seeking personal advantage, deliberately delaying the conduct of business, etc., yet ultimately these led nowhere: nine members of the Council of the Indies had already died by 1567, a tenth by the end of the visitation. Ovando had to report to the king that the first part of the visitation, aimed at determining personal culpability, had to be shelved “because all those whom one could indict are dead.”35 This made the second part of Ovando’s reforms even more extensive and consequential. This was the part dealing with general concerns (lo general), and which was no longer part of the official examination, but was instead aiming at a revision of the structure of colonial rule. It was the outcome of an elaborate, multilevel procedure. Chronologically, we may mark off an initial phase in which information was collected by questioning witnesses, a phase that began shortly after the start of the visitations in July 1567 and lasted through December 1568. As early as 1567, additional written statements were called for, so that, in addition to the minutes recording witness testimony, the historical record contains a number of reports that are, to some extent, quite comprehensive.36 In May 1568, finally, the Junta Magna, a reform commission for policy on America, was established, which presumably convened through the end of the year. That same year Ovando was intensively preoccupied with the documents kept at the Council of the Indies. The fact that Ovando himself was unable to get a picture of the situation on the basis of the Council’s documents probably led to the judgment, just cited, “that in the Council of the Indies, one neither has nor can have any intelligence of American matters.” Therein lay a major contrast to the visitation of the University of Alcalá. In the case of the Council of the Indies, Ovando himself had a knowledge problem: he “did not understand America.” Accordingly, in January 1569 he changed the visitation from a normative examination of administration into an empirical enterprise dedicated to procuring information comprehensively. On January 23, 1569, a list of questions he had drafted was sent to America, the aim of which was chiefly to procure those data that had not yet become available – or were not available in any comprehensible order – in the Council of the Indies. In the autumn of 1571, finally, the new instructions of the Council of the Indies were promulgated and Ovando was appointed as President of the Council of the Indies.37 In this capacity, Ovando then had the opportunity through 1574 to study the answers and follow the progress being made in the legal compilation project. 35 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 158–159; IVDJ, envío 88, 542, fol. 1r. 36 Peña Cámara, Nuevos datos. 37 IVDJ (envió 23, 25, and 88); Abril Stoffels, “Junta Magna,” 129–194; Mustapha, “Contribution,” 87–99; Ramos Pérez, “Crisis indiana.” On the participants, see IVDJ, envío 88, 545; NCODOIN, 6, 267–268.

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It is illuminating to see how the individual phases of the visitation proceeded, and thus how the focal points of its work and its objectives changed step-by-step. The idea of appointing a major reform commission – the Junta Magna – may be attributed to Las Casas and Luis Sánchez. Yet it seems likely that the king only made up his mind about reform under the impact of a worsening situation regarding American policy that was approaching a crisis point. In March 1568, Philip II had received a letter from Lope García de Castros in Lima describing in alarmist terms the country’s political instability and the declining loyalty of the Creoles. Shortly thereafter, there was an increase in news about impending consequences for clerical policy. Members of the missionary orders had begun to bypass Madrid and turn directly to Rome. The Pope, against the background of the missionaries’ complaints, considered appointing a congregation of cardinals to oversee the mission, which would have meant the end of the Spanish kings’ direct control over church patronage. The plan to install a papal nuncio in America would also have curtailed the royal prerogatives relating to this patronage. This fear of an impending loss of power by the Spanish king, finally, might explain both the haste with which the junta convened and the enormous leeway it was given to shape policy. On July 27, 1568, only three days after the death of Prince Don Carlos, the junta convened for the first time in the house of Diego de Espinosa. Francisco de Toledo, only recently designated as the new Viceroy of Peru, postponed his departure and took part in the meeting.38 This is not the place to follow the decisions of the Junta in detail. These decisions affected almost all areas of colonial policy, with a certain focus on questions of church governance and missionary work. The subjects covered included the manner of exacting tribute, raising additional taxes, increasing the number of clergy and the necessity of regular visitations to the dioceses, restricting permissions for missionary work to the three orders of the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians, deploying Inquisition tribunals in America, creating schools for the Indios, and then questions relating to the regulation of mines, trade, and production, the Viceroy’s governing powers, as well as (once again) the never-ending issue of perpetuity.39 Questions about knowledge in the service of rulership were only touched upon in a few passages. And when they were discussed, it was in two contexts: For one, they were discussed out of pragmatic concerns, such as the question of which procedures should be used to establish how the Indios would 38 Carta del licenciado García de Castro (20 Dec. 1567), NCODOIN, 6, 215; Ramos Pérez, “Crisis indiana,” 1–8; Poole, Ovando, 111. On the background, see Mora Mérida, “Kirche und Mission,” 378–379, as well as briefs from 17 and 18 Aug. 1568 in Tellechea Idígoras, Papado y Felipe II, 194–197. 39 Ramos Pérez, “Crisis indiana,” 8–61.



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provide tribute. For another, the problem of the enormous distance between Spain and America was repeatedly addressed. The clergy should, for example, be recruited chiefly from the ranks of persons who came from America or had lived there, “owing to the knowledge (noticia) that they have about the province, nature, and disposition of the people.”40 In addition, owing to the “significant inconveniences” brought about by the great distances and lengthy delays, some aspects of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and decision-making needed to be handled on site. Something similar should hold for Inquisition tribunals: “One should arrange to give them somewhat greater freedom, owing to the damage that delays entail.”41 It should also be proposed that the Viceroy conduct a visitation of his kingdom so that he “becomes acquainted with the condition and the lay of the land and its places not only through reports and can take care of and arrange many affairs that cannot be taken care of in the same way through the mediation of other persons.”42 It so happens that Francisco de Toledo, who had participated in the Junta Magna, translated this ideal into practice. After his arrival in Lima, he undertook a multiannual visitation journey through the Viceroyalty of Peru.43 While, in the case of the Junta Magna, it is the outcomes in particular that have been documented, the transmission of source material has provided us with a fuller documentary record when it comes to the official visitation undertaken by the Council of the Indies that ran parallel to the Junta’s meetings. A bundle of documents containing witness testimonies and expert opinions allows us to analyze the broad spectrum of views. These texts came about because Ovando was systematically questioning witnesses in order to form a picture of how the Council of the Indies was administered. Not only were the councilors and staff members working for the Council of the Indies consulted; so, too, were outsiders who had something to do with the Council. These were chiefly Spaniards returned from America who were now at the Spanish court – so-called indianos – but after January 1569 they also included higher-level officials in America. The latter were sent a comprehensive question list, and in addition they were personally requested to summon a number of older, experienced witnesses. Each one was supposed to take a stance on how the Council of the Indies and every staff member with whom he was acquainted discharged their offices.44 It was possible (and made sense) for Ovando to widen so broadly the circle of those issuing complaints relating to the visitation of the Council of the Indies 40 Abril Stoffels, “Junta Magna,” 132. 41 Abril Stoffels, “Junta Magna,” 132–133 and 151. 42 Abril Stoffels, “Junta Magna,” 185. 43 Levillier, Francisco de Toledo, 128–135. 44 Fernández Sotelo, Primigenia Audiencia, VIII.

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(there were even reports coming out of New Galicia, meaning the Pacific coast of New Spain) because the Council had an enormous area of influence and extensive network of correspondents with which to work. One merely needed to request that the periphery undertake an evaluation of its intelocutors in the central Council. External denunciators in particular increased the likelihood that the collegial cartel of silence among affected parties on-site could be broken up. Yet the really decisive thing here is the date. The Council’s American correspondents were first included at the beginning of 1569. By this time the personal misbehavior of individual members of the Council of the Indies had long since ceased to be the paramount concern. Nine of these members, after all, were already dead. Instead, the main issues were now a fundamental assessment of colonial policy and the systematic procurement of information about the American territories. By way of Ovando’s inquiry, that is, the Council’s contacts in America were now being invited indirectly to undertake a structural evaluation of colonial rule. The list of questions varied depending on the person to whom it was addressed and in which phase of the visitation. Thus, the interrogatory for the witnesses interrogated in Madrid had forty-six or forty-eight questions, which may be reconstructed from two answers recorded in detail.45 The question lists from January 1569 that were sent to America, by contrast, show that Ovando was pursuing several goals simultaneously. The Archbishop of Mexico was sent a question list that dealt with the official visitation of the Council only in the first eight points. It was intended to question the most experienced, oldest, and smartest people about what they “know, believe, understand, have seen, and have heard that in any way concerns the visitation of the Council of the Indies and the persons to be examined, … and whether there was any omission, negligence, or maliciousness.”46 The Archbishop should then communicate the results of this survey in a report and send it, along with his own opinion, to Ovando. The questions following this address the status of the Church and mission. The Archdiocese along with its cathedrals, its borders, compartments, jurisdictional districts, etc. should be described, right down to a list of all the prelates who had been active therein (Questions 9 to 11). After that, all Spanish settlements were to be listed, indicating the number of inhabitants and houses, and there should be an answer to the question of how pastors listed the faithful in registers, and how they heeded the dictates of the Church (Question 12). In describing the Indian settlements, what needed to be considered (in addition to the demographic details) was the attitude in each case of the Indios toward Christian teaching (Question 13). In addition, there was to be a list of all churches, monasteries, hospitals, and colleges, all cler45 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 1r–20v, fol. 53r–161r. 46 AGI, Méx. 336A, r. 2, doc. 104 (1), fol. 1r; Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 12–15.



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ical benefices and offices and their beneficiaries, as well as rectorates, along with the number and qualification of clerics and priests in the religious orders (Questions 14 to 18). Quite obviously, the objective of having these questions answered was to create an empirical foundation so that (for example) concrete measures could be taken to establish new dioceses or increase the number of priests either unaffiliated or affiliated with religious orders (agenda items already discussed in the Junta Magna). The aim of the remaining questions (20 to 31) was (to put this in modern language) to provide materials for Church history. It was ordered that there be notarized copies of all statutes, regulations, and instructions from provincial and diocesan synods, in addition to lists of participating persons and staff placements. Each catechism used was also to be copied, along with the documents of the collegiate chapters, the instructions to the visitators, the rate schedules of the clerical courts, the regulations with regard to clerical annuities, etc. Where no books could be found, witnesses were to be questioned.47 The question list was therefore directed, in the first part, toward matters of administration for the Council of the Indies, in the second part toward describing the status of the archbishopric, and then thirdly toward ordering the copying of documents obtainable there. The Archbishop, who initially assumed he would be the sole recipient of the letter, had the critical sections copied and forwarded to sixty-six parishes as well as to the provincial superiors of the orders, who for their part had already received such requests directly. He set short deadlines for the clerics, so that a majority of the replies from the parishes arrived after only a few months in Mexico City, where they were processed for forwarding to Spain. The provincial superiors of the orders, who had received another question list asking for details about the climate, agriculture, or about the level of training and language skills of the monks, forwarded the inquiries – in accordance with the “snowball effect” – to the priors of the monasteries.48 We have records of replies from the Archbishop of Mexico, from the bishops of Tlaxcala, Antequera, Michoacán, and New Galicia, as well as from the Audiencia of New Galicia and the provincial superiors of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians of New Spain. The replies were only roughly oriented around the guidelines of the question list. Some points were treated summarily; in other cases, for example, the names of the clerics were left out, even though they had been explicitly requested.49

47 AGI, Méx. 336A, r. 2, doc. 104 (1), fol. 2r–2v; Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 13–15. 48 Brinckmann, Augustinerrelationen, 6–17 and 64–65. 49 Brinckmann, Augustinerrelationen, 3–10, 19, and 26–27.

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Ovando and his staff were likely to have received the first reports in the second half of 1571, that is, just at the time when Juan López de Velasco became the chronicler and cosmographer for the Council of the Indies. The data contained in the reports were then also entered in his Geografía y descripción universal de las Indias, completed in 1574.50 At this time López de Velasco and Ovando were already experimenting with additional question lists and formats. Ovando told a Hieronymite monk departing for America that he should report back to him about everything he might see or understand there.51 They presented some people at court who had experience in America with a list of about two hundred questions and asked them to compile descriptions based on answers to the list.52 By means of a real cédula from 1572, the viceroys and audiencias were then requested to send material to the newly appointed chronicler for the Council of the Indies. Initially, they should provide information about persons who had already composed or compiled commentaries or reports. In terms of content, this was all about a broader concept of “natural history,” so that there should also be reporting about the rites, religions, and forms of rule among the Indios, and descriptions of the lands and their nature were also requested. One should also have a look into the archives, office rooms, and desks of the official scribes and send on the material, in the original where possible and otherwise by copy.53 We will return to the history of the colonial question lists. But, in the way of a preliminary finding, we may note that the use of question lists for the purpose of describing lands is already apparent in the context of the official visitation, though without having immediately become a major instrument to be used by the cosmographer and chronicler who took up his office in 1571. Essentially, neither the inquiries of 1569 nor those of 1572 aimed at guiding empirical observation on-site; rather, they sought to organize the collection of documents already in existence. The transition from the visitation of the Council of the Indies to gathering data about Spanish America becomes especially clear in the case of the 1569 question list, which is still concerned with the official visitation in its first eight questions, then moves on to de-statu questions of clerical organization, and ends with a request to copy documents meant to help the chronicler and cosmographer of the Council with his work of compilation.

50 Cline, “Relaciones Geográficas,” 189. 51 Fray Diego de Santa María, procurador of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Manzano Manzano, “Visita,” 115. 52 Jiménez de la Espada, “Antecedentes,” 48–49; Garza and Izquierdo “Estudio preliminar,” XIII; Cline, “Relaciones Geográficas,” 189; Portuondo, Secret Science, 179. 53 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 15–16.



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What represents a striking new development from the perspective of the historian of knowledge – namely the transition from inquisitorial procedures scrutinizing deviance from the norm to procedures concerned with empirical assessment – proves on closer examination to be a pragmatically transacted extension of the interrogatory for a communication scheme that would have seemed only natural to the actors involved. Question lists, in any event, tend to blur the contrast between the normative and the empirical. What mattered was the purpose to which the replies were put. While statements testifying to official misconduct by individual members of the Council of the Indies entered into a normative procedure – into a tribunal – the remainder of the material that was collected served the purpose of description. In the end, one can hardly speak of a “watershed” that marks a turnabout from one kind of use for question lists to another. Instead, we are dealing with an openness of this instrument to different applications. In the case of the next (and, from an archival point of view, less well-documented) visitation initiated by the Council of the Indies in 1586, witnesses certainly were questioned and an interrogatory prepared. Yet this apparently happened exclusively in Madrid, and once again the substantive content focused only on misconduct by members of the Council.54

3 Positions in the reform discourse Let us now see which ideas were presented by witnesses and by the authors of political expert opinions in the course of the visitation. In this case it is not necessary to go into the usual positions of colonial policy, where either the extreme burden placed on the Indios was lamented or, conversely, the loss of privileges and income opportunities for the conquistadors and encomenderos was deplored. These debates have been relatively well researched, and they are only of marginal interest to historians interested in the question of colonial policy’s epistemic requirements. They were focused on the kind and the size of tribute, on perpetuity (meaning the heritability of the encomienda), on the procedures of the mission, and by extension on the clerics and Indios. Instead of going over this well-researched ground, here we want to emphasize some positions that, while they may seem peripheral at first glance, did enter (at least in part) into Ovando’s thinking and projects. Licenciado Diego Briviesca de Muñatones, councilor on the Council of Castile, made extensive comments about changes he deemed desirable. In 1559 he had been sent to Peru as a kind of investigating commissioner in order to clarify the 54 IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 498.

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question of perpetuity, and in the course of this undertaking he made a visitation to the Audiencia of Lima.55 Muñatones was, therefore, certainly in a position to make a competent assessment of the situation facing colonial policy. The witness was sworn in on August 18, 1567, and his testimony recorded. In addition to making proposals about perpetuity, the reappraisal of tax rate (retasa), and economic policy, Muñatones also addressed two fundamental problems of the colonial government: the distance between the motherland and Spanish America, and the very specific kinds of knowledge that governing and administering the American territories made necessary.56 The letrados working at the audiencias there had been trained at Spanish universities. They were lacking (Muñatones wrote) both in the knowledge and experience needed for government business in America. Muñatones had this to say: And thus the audiencias and their judges cannot accurately treat questions of government, since they lack appreciation of the processes that they should know, and [since they] do not know what is good and what is bad. The judges that come there have previously neither seen this country nor have they experience with matters there. And if they are capable of knowing and understanding something, they are recalled, or else they request a license to be permitted to return.57

Here Muñatones was addressing the unfortunate policy of filling the colonial empire’s higher offices with candidates from the mother country, and he made three reform proposals. First, the judges from the audiencias should concentrate completely on what they could do, meaning on court decisions. To deal with government matters, secondly, the Peruvian viceroy, who came from Spain and only stayed for a few years as a rule, should be provided with his own consejo, a board of advisers that should be assembled from a selection of the most experienced people from all the provinces. The proposal had revolutionary features inasmuch as it designed a different structure for colonial rule, for this would have meant setting up an “American” council body at the court of the viceroy.58 Muñatones surprises us, however, with a third proposal that goes even further: at a centrally located site within easy reach of everyone – he proposed Panama City – an additional consejo should be established. This other advisory board would be there to discuss all the concerns and appeals of the “subjects and natives of those king-

55 AGI, Patr. 189, r. 16; AGI, Patr. 188, r. 33 and r. 22; Roberto Ramírez, “Informe.” 56 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 1r–20v. 57 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 5v. 58 The designated viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, also recommended this kind of consejo. See Levillier, Don Francisco de Toledo, vol. 1, 78–87.



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doms.”59 The advantages were obvious. This way, one would spare American subjects those long, dangerous, and costly journeys to the royal court in Madrid. The establishment of a Central American council would also attract a lot of new additions to the population, so that the French could no longer attack there. In Peru there would be fewer uprisings, since one would have to fear that Panama might intervene. One could dissolve the Council of the Indies in Madrid. It would suffice to have His Majesty assisted by two advisors who would deal with very difficult cases, with affairs of state, buen gobierno, and with financial questions.60 Thus, we are looking at a proposal for the fundamental reorganization of decision-making structures. It was apparently intended that the king only be consulted about high-ranking questions from now on, with the Central American council taking all the other questions. Muñatones’s closing reflections on this point provide a clue as to why he himself ventured such a proposal. The remainder of those from the Council of the Indies staying on at the court should be made up of consejeros from the Council of Castile, that is, from the very body to which Muñatones himself belonged and from which the Council of the Indies had once been spun off. Its president was also meant to be consulted as an advisor, the president being the powerful Cardinal Diego de Espinosa, to whose circle of promoters Muñatones had belonged for a long time. Muñatones still had a great deal to say about staffing, but he held back from saying more about this because it would require making lengthy remarks.61 So however one might assess the proposal by Muñatones – whether as a revolutionary project that would have outfitted the American territories with their own political institutions, or as a maneuver of patronage politics – he did link the political-administrative constitution of colonial rule with the question of whether its decision-makers had adequate knowledge. In that he was also pleading for an amalgamation of personal knowledge and decision-making, he would have created a form of political representation and autonomy for the Spanish-American territories, that is, precisely what they were refused until they gained independence centuries later. A Central American Council of the Indies was never put into practice. In the meantime, Muñatones, who was always characterized in the minutes of the interrogation simply as “that witness,” secured his position as an expert on colonial policy. In the following year he turns up as one of the participants in the Junta Magna, which then began to convene in the house of Diego de Espinosa. A form of political representation for the Spanish-American territories was apparently not hard to imagine. Las Casas was still being comparatively cautious 59 See too the anonymous letter in IVDJ, envío 25. 60 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 7r–8r. 61 Poole, Ovando, 88–89, BL, Add. 33983, fol. 8r.

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when he proposed that, from among the twelve consejeros from the Council of the Indies, two at a time should have previously served as judges at American audiencias.62 Another witness, the Franciscan Francisco de Morales, who had spent about two decades in Peru, believed he could remember that the idea of a Central American Council of the Indies (in Panama or Nicaragua) went back to the first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza. Mendoza had told Charles V that one could not conduct an appropriate colonial policy so long as the Council of the Indies remained in Spain.63 Morales could never understand why there was a wish “to turn the spindle” there when the wool was located three thousand miles away in America. Precisely because this had to do with diverse territories, with matters that were novel and still quite disordered, putting these untidy matters in proper order required that one “examine them, get closer.” If one wanted to keep the Council of the Indies in Spain, at least somebody should be appointed president who came from America. In addition, one should admit two or three judges from New Spain, Peru, and New Granada into the Council of the Indies. In this way, one would be walking straight; otherwise, one would be wandering in the dark.64 In the face of these positions, the measures finally taken by Ovando appear in a different, conservative light. For while Ovando did indeed pose the problem of insufficient knowledge, he did not call into question the Council and its being headquartered in Spain. His package of measures, which we will examine more closely, was more of an attempt to strengthen the Council of the Indies instrumentally and thereby make it impervious to the accusation of ignorance. To this end, however, Ovando seized on at least two arguments. Like some of the witnesses, he wanted the Council of the Indies to recruit only officials with American experience and not to endanger the expertise of the consejeros by transferring them to other positions.65 Of the forty councilors who had been employed in the Council of the Indies since it was founded, only six had set foot in America up to this point, and two of these for only a very short time.66 The Council’s president at the time, Francisco Tello de Sandoval, was among these. He and Ovando knew each other from Salamanca’s Colegio de San Bartolomé, yet Tello de Sandoval was not very interested in official business, only came to the Council on rare occasions, and was

62 Las Casas, “Conclusiones sumarias,” 120. 63 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 260r. 64 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 260r–260v. 65 BL, Add. 33983, fol.  10r. As early as 1558, Francisco Briceño proposed integrating three oidores with American experience into the Council of the Indies, see Schäfer, Consejo, vol. 1, 140. 66 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 160.



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recalled just two months after the start of his official visitation.67 His successor, Luis Menéndez de Quijada, died after only eleven months on the Council, before Ovando then took over the office of President of the Council of the Indies. In view of the situation, it is all the more remarkable that Ovando was not able to get anywhere with either proposal, the one to appoint councilors with American experience or the recommendation to prevent transfers out of the Council. There are documents of drafts for directives corresponding to both proposals, yet they were not signed by the king. A second attempt at including these kinds of regulations as supplementary provisions in the instructions for the Council of the Indies also failed.68 Resistance was to be expected here inasmuch as appointing people to office was among the most important sources of royal courtly power. In addition, it was feared that there would be a real reversal in the structure of political clienteles should persons with strong connections to America be represented in the consejo. An anonymous expert opinion about the pros and cons of employing indianos that was written sometime after 1600 clearly speaks to this issue: If they are placed in the Council of the Indies from there, then they would be coming with lots of friendships and obligations. In matters of granting favors, of pardons, of justice, or of government, they would act in a biased way and look out for the welfare, the honor, and the well-being of their friends, and to the detriment of those who have not been [their friends].69

It was also feared that consejeros with American experience would be rather “insufferable” as colleagues, since they would be able at every opportunity to claim that they had seen everything “with their own eyes” and then insist that others follow their vote. Both arguments were making the rounds at court. The anonymous expert writing this opinion did, however, ultimately reject this view: Spanish courtiers also had connections. Were one to follow the last-mentioned argument, then one could never consult experts, not even battle-hardened advisors about military matters.70 Apparently, it was mainly the consejeros already in service who defended themselves against the accusation that their knowledge lagged behind that of the indianos. They had already sent His Majesty memorials and were self-confidently claiming that their experience is so great that none of those who come from America can measure up to it, for whoever comes from there may be bringing along the experience of one, two, or

67 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 180r–181r; Poole, Ovando, 116. 68 IVDJ, envío 88, 543–544, as well as envío 23, 498. 69 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 25v. 70 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 25v.

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three provinces. But they do not have any experience that reaches from one pole to the other and any very comprehensive understanding of everything.71

The expert offering this opinion was clever enough not to deny this in principle, yet he noted: “Just this one thing: that this experience was not acquired by looking at things on one’s own, but rather by how things were reported.”72 He distinguished carefully between erudition and understanding, on the one hand, and specific knowledge of a foreign country (experiencia), on the other. In order to clarify this difference, he seized on a dramatic example. Whoever might still recall who Doctor Valenzuela Pescador was would know that this was one of the cleverest men in Castile. He received a professorship on the first try at Salamanca, but when he was then appointed fiscal (prosecuting attorney) for the Council of the Indies, this is what happened to him: In this office he was so confused and inhibited, he did not know how he was to conduct business and how to decide. After only a few days, all this suffocated him and he died from grief, annoyance, and fatigue. And it could be that many things that seemed infinitely difficult to him, and which he nonetheless did not dare to repress, would have been quite easily and effortlessly undertaken by just any letrado from America.73

The expert opinion report, finally, gets around to addressing Ovando’s reform and the project of “full notice,” which by this time already went back a generation. In the instructions from 1571, it was stated that the Council was always to have at its disposal a description of America’s provinces since one could not correctly understand any matter that one did not know about before. On this point, the author of the expert opinion had written: When, therefore, the ordinance wishes so much that the judges of the Council of the Indies have so great a knowledge of things in America, how much more [knowledge] they would have if they had lived there previously. They would be like maps and portraits of that what they would need to know. And since they would not [merely] have these painted in front of them, they could have a clear and specific knowledge of things in their mind, and not the kind [of knowledge] that is so confusing, like what someone has who needs to gather it from maps.74

Ovando’s project, still seemingly so self-confident, of creating a capacity to understand a distant land with the aid of perfected media and institutions – this was 71 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 26r. 72 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 26r. 73 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 27v. 74 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 29r.



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a project that had apparently lost some of its radiance. Or else – and this would be more significant for an historical assessment of the project – it had never possessed this attractive power for contemporaries in the first place. The social background to this skepticism was represented by the permanent presence at court of the indianos, who did not let the fault line between personal experience and mediated knowledge disappear. In conversations, negotiations, and daily contacts, the sobering experience must have been drilled into the mind of the learned “authority” on the colonies that he was capable of being contradicted by the lowliest eyewitness. And there were plenty of eyewitnesses: in addition to the actual claimants who were speculating on getting benefices, positions, and other favors, and who thronged around the court, there were also agents in Madrid who were lobbying on behalf of higher officials or cities as agentes or procuradores and attempting to influence political decisions, as well as agents representing litigants (pleiteantes). In a report from 1610 it said that the Castilians traveling to the court from America would spend three to six years, sometimes even more, in Madrid and, in the process, exhaust their economic reserves.75 The anonymous expert opinion writer describes the tensions that arose from the appearance of the indianos at court: There were many quite learned men who knew the borders of these lands, these harbors, these rivers, and these military accomplishments from history or mathematics without having set foot on them. But when they, in spite of all this, have something to do with one of those who have set foot in these provinces, then these have surely told them that they have demonstrated talent and erudition in their depiction. But they had forgotten that a certain river at certain seasons of the year is not navigable and that that harbor has shoals and that that path is very wooded, made to order for ambushes.76

The expert opinion writer illustrates how there was more going on here than petty expressions of a know-it-all attitude – that these tensions, instead, merely scratched the surface of a deeper structural problem – by discussing the absurdities of political correspondence between the royal court and America: Year after year, for all these kingdoms [of America], perhaps 70 or 80 letters are written, of which 10 deal with things that are decided. All others are there to seek advice and because His Majesty wishes to be informed in that He says: “since it has come to our attention that this or that is to be improved, we order such and such an audiencia to inform us about the state [of this matter], and how we can proceed in an appropriate way.” And one sends the same to the bishops if it has to do with Church matters.77 75 Don Juan de Acuña, AGI, Indiferente 878, unpaginated. 76 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 29r. 77 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 30r.

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The anonymous opinion writer is thus describing the written correspondence of colonial rule as an ineffective dialogue about a desire for knowledge that never reaches its goal. One is repeatedly demanding fragmentary descriptions of colonial reality without assembling them into an overall picture. Nor is this even what these descriptive fragments are meant to accomplish. Their purpose is to remedy acute emergencies about making decisions and justifying them. They follow the short-winded logic of everyday governing and, consequently, often call for a proposed solution right away. Strictly speaking, therefore, matters are already decided in America, for the most part. Even more damaging is the enormous delay entailed by ineffective communication between the American territories and the Spanish court. It would make no sense to ask those “out there” about everything when there are those “at home” who could know, although this would require that they have some experience of America. If they had this experience, they would only be asked in rare cases for information, perhaps because certain things might have changed over time. There were also some who could become rather nasty, and then “it is good to appease them with this delay.” On the whole, though: The damage due to loss of time [is] quite extensive …, since, on matters having to do with government and the state, loss of time is a hangman, but for those having to do with pardons and justice, it is of the sort [making it so] that the claimants or parties, if they achieve nothing after a long postponement, are destroyed.78

Here it is very easy to recognize the borderline that exists between the legitimating function of the “open outcome” associated with procedures and the danger that this might be turned around into an opposite, delegitimizing effect. (Recall the discussion in Chapter One about Luhmann’s “legitimation through procedure.”) This delegitimizing effect threatens to occur when the damage caused by delay is so great that it outweighs the utility of postponement, as when (for example) justice can no longer be administered to living perpetrators or one is only promised an appointment when it is no longer possible for the appointee to take office. The effect is amplified by the large financial and personal commitment that claimants and supporters of one party or another took on when they decided to support their cause by being personally present at court. The writer of this expert opinion was definitely interested in these delegitimizing effects. He seemed more interested, however, in the ability of the Council of the Indies to govern, its governability as such, which is why his discussion finally returned to

78 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 30r–30v.



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question of what kind of information base the Council of the Indies had, a question he regarded as decisive for everything: For it is very dangerous to attempt governing these matters on the basis of opinions and reports. Among the greatest misfortunes of the Council … is that the truth almost never penetrates through to it, because the people are such that, even when they would articulate the truth orally, they deny this when their turn comes to write it down.79

The knowledge deficits of the Council, then, did not rest merely on its members’ personal ignorance, not only on how the decision-making center depended on chains of intermediation, but also on the problem of how to translate information into official writing. Even in the case of elaborate procedures for examining or consulting witnesses, deception was routine. Even the highest-level official reports and documents from the audiencias were not able to circumvent this problem. Even worse: they ended up forwarding “false information” and – en passant – authorizing this misleading information officially: And since the audiencias have to inform by means of that which is transcribed in front of them, they also cannot say what is [true] in each case. In order to make informaciones de servicios or stand surety, one can have witnesses drawn … If need be, a claimant has chatted up the entire village. Rarely, too, can judges freely report bad things about someone who is bad. In one way or the other one finds this out, and then they are pursued. And if they [the witnesses] were in the Council of the Indies, then these troubles would disappear, because there they can say the truth orally and clearly, without anybody’s suspicion and free of slanders.80

Accordingly, only extrication from the environment of one’s own social ties would make it possible for people to speak and judge freely. We will return to these reflections on the conditions enabling objectivity in office. Here, for the time being, we want to emphasize that an expert opinion written in the first half of the seventeenth century comments in an extremely critical way about the communicative and media-related basic assumptions underlying Ovando’s reform. It eventually makes the trenchant point that governing consists in knowing persons. But this very achievement – getting to know people – cannot really, in the view of the author, be mediatized. Only somebody coming from America would have a detailed picture both of things and persons: And thinking that one could repair anything here by letting people who come from America to the court issue a report just means discovering a deep sea full of many assertions … I

79 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 31r. 80 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 31r.

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only want to say this much: Everyone speaks for himself, be he a cleric or a layman, and everything is fabrications, vanity, and ambitions. Even if they wear that mask and disguise that are so readily used, [the guise] that this is all about service to God and King and about the welfare of the poor natives. In their cover they are searching for means to achieve what they wish for. And theirs consists in moving souls with words of edification and looking, in their hearts, at their own edifice.81

4 The Ovandian Reform’s measures The time has come to take a closer look at Ovando’s three reform measures. The aim of his first reform projects was a legal codification, that is, a systematic compilation and reliable publication, of the legal provisions applicable to Spanish America.

4.1 Compiling colonial law The problem of compiling colonial law was posed because, in the premodern world, there is hardly a distinction to be made between actual “legislative acts” and other written correspondence on matters of sovereignty with legally constitutive effect. The range of legally binding documents is correspondingly broad. At first, Castilian laws had legal force in Spanish America. However, the number of ordinances specifically enacted for the colonial territories, the Leyes de Indias, had grown enormously, so that an independent American law (derecho indiano) developed. Law (ley) in the narrow sense was originally made up of such texts as had been confirmed in the Cortes of Castile. Yet as early as under John II (1419–1454) the option was established that the king could decree laws with equal legal force as pragmáticas (pragmatic regulations).82 A comparable function was fulfilled for the Americas by the real provisión, a solemnly elaborated royal decree. It was used where the objective was to organize extensive subject matter and emphasize the law’s claim to validity, as in the case of the Leyes Nuevas from 1542. While the real provisión, after mentioning the “Don” and the name of the ruler, begins with a list of legal titles and bears a seal, the real cédula is much drier in that it only puts el rey at the beginning, then names the relevant person or institution to whom the ordinance is addressed, so that it can finally command that the decision made at court be implemented. Reales cédulas close with the royal signature (Yo, el Rey), and they were the 81 BL, Add. 13992, fol. 31v–32r. 82 Tomás y Valiente, Manual, 245.



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most common instrument of colonial policy. Also having legal force, however, were simple royal letters (cartas reales), used to answer queries from colonial agencies, and finally ordinances (ordenanzas), which were more comprehensive regulations of such things as the official business of certain agencies or dealings with natives. Formal royal decrees (reales decretos) about the internal course of business at court became valid merely by virtue of the king’s signature. They are frequently found on the overleaf of a consulta or as a simple ticket.83 Frequently, in these cases, a decision was made casuistically and on the basis of specific inquiries addressed to the ruler. In this way, legally valid statements made by the ruler were motivated by the interests of those who wanted to preserve, gain, or regain their claims to certain rights or privileges. The rights obtained this way were conceded to the individual or reported to the affected institution, although they did not get expressed in a legal code that was broadly in force and publicly visible, which is why this is also discussed as “subjective law.” Over the medium term, the “legislator” lost track of things, even if he attempted to maintain an overview by keeping a record. The king and the Council of the Indies thus had no other choice than to make an occasional request for transcripts of legal texts circulating or collected abroad. Even before 1533, a request like this from Charles V is documented. Charles wanted Mexico’s audiencia to inform him which legal texts there were that had been authored by his parents and grandparents.84 The bewildering profusion of legally constitutive statements was supposed to be counteracted by codifying the laws. For a legal codification to take place, however, all available volumes of registers had to be browsed in order to identify whatever had been decreed. In addition, copies of legal texts collected on-site were requested. Following this inspection, collection, and arrangement of the holdings, an effort had to be undertaken to translate the essence of the relevant provisions into a systematic compilation of laws. This compilation of laws was to be regarded as objective law replacing the variety of subjective law and all previous provisions. The path to this kind of legal compilation was a long one: at first, all that was available were chronological collections of law texts that could document the existing variety of laws in the form of excerpts but not replace this assortment.85 Ovando, too, only achieved a partial victory, and only because the visitator had already been able to fall back on preliminary groundwork. In the Council itself, the plan for a comprehensive codification arranged according to legal subject had 83 Schäfer, Indienrat, vol. 1, 175; Gómez Gómez, Forma, 240–242. 84 CODOIN–2–10, 180–181. 85 As early as 1563 the oidor of the audiencia of Mexico, Vasco de Puga, published a first chronological collection of law texts, see Puga, Provisiones.

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already been drawn up in 1560. The work of compiling was carried out between 1563 and 1565 by Secretary Juan López de Velasco. He worked his way through about two hundred register volumes from the Council of the Indies that contained about 10,000 decrees with legal force. Ovando’s contribution was likely to have been the attempt to convert the preparatory work that had presumably been put in chronological order by López de Velasco into an arrangement ordered by subject, to eliminate duplications, fill gaps, and thereby prepare the actual systematic legal code for Spanish America. Seven books were envisioned for the project: the first on clerical-religious rule, the second on worldly rule, the third on the justice system, the fourth on civil matters for the Spaniards (república de los Españoles), the fifth on civil matters for the Indios, the sixth on the tax system, and the seventh on seafaring and trade.86 In line with this arrangement by subject, López de Velasco converted the extracts from his collection into an intermediate product, the so-called copulata de leyes y provisiones. The only books completed, however, were the first two, which have come down to us as the Código ovandino and which only acquired legal force in the form of smaller excerpts.87 After Ovando’s death in 1575, the works were called off, if we overlook Diego de Encinas’s unsystematic collection of copies, which he had begun in 1582 and published in 1596. In the 1620s the codification project was again taken up by a staff member from the Council of the Indies, the relator (court reporter) Antonio de León Pinelo, who had already worked his way through five hundred register volumes.88 The project was completed in 1636 by Juan de Solórzano, yet for the time being there was no money for printing, so that the law book of the Recopilación de las Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias came into force in 1680 and then was published the following year. The project of legal compilation allows us to clarify a basic problem about activity relating to modern legal offices and administration. This kind of work must permanently document its own action, meaning the issuing of texts. In early modern Spain this happened by way of register volumes, in which, however, not simply short forms of the documents issued were entered, but instead complete transcripts. Only in this way was it possible to check, in case of doubt, what the exact wording was for an ordinance or privilege. The administration was therefore doubling its output in that it issued texts both for the parties concerned, the addressees, and for itself, the sender. Even in the ideal case of a register that was kept completely and without interruption, the sheer mass of copied texts grew in such a way as to require the use of auxiliary tools for facilitating secure and rapid access to the items being searched. This gave rise to abridgements and indexes 86 Manzano Manzano, “Visita,” 117–119. 87 Manzano Manzano, “Visita,” 119–122. 88 Manzano Manzano, “Proceso recopilador,” 13–14; Muro Orejón, Antonio de León Pinelo, 4.



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arranged alphabetically, by subject, chronologically, or geographically: that is, it produced, in addition to the rather extensive spectrum of massive texts, a pyramid of references to this pile of legal writings. At the same time, typically, there was growth in the space and personnel for a kind of back office employed in the orderly storage or sometimes case-specific presentation of the necessary documents. The work of this back office could extend to the provisional archiving of these documents or to their being handed over to an external repository, like the archive in Simancas. It must be borne in mind that the collections of accumulated texts, quite independently of how well they were organized with the help of auxiliary tools and maintained by the back office, constrained the future work of the administration since these collections often already contained (the longer the process of accumulation lasted) preliminary decisions bound by precedent that one could hardly ignore (and that could only be circumvented at the cost of accruing contradictions). A directive of Philip II that was finally entered into the printed legal codification from 1681 illustrates this kind of bureaucratic hermeneutics, according to which the correct assessment of just one document essentially and always necessitates familiarity with all previous provisions as well as with the specific circumstances surrounding them. In that directive it says: “That to make laws, what is initially required is full notice (entera noticia) of what has been mandated in this matter.” This knowledge should not be created simply by reading the decisions previously reached, but also by “best knowledge of the issues and affairs as well as of the affected regions.” It was to be achieved through informaciones or expert opinions (pareceres) of persons who were governing there or who “could give any kind of information about this,” though not – according to one caveat – “in case the delay in getting such information should entail a disadvantage.”89 The clause “harm by delay” provided the long way to complete knowledge with a bypass: if complete knowledge was not achievable, then a law could also be made without it. The two principles for legitimating sovereign decisions – norm or necessity – are easy to recognize here. The first principle binds legitimate decision-making to previous or background knowledge; the second invokes necessitas to cut the Gordian knot of foreknowledge. For either one of these decision-making modes, however, a certain degree of empirical knowledge about local conditions and past history is hardly something one can do without. In order to avoid always having to make inquiries on-site, an appropriate institution needed to be integrated into the Council of the Indies itself. This happened because of the second measure in Ovando’s reform, the creation of the office of a Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of America, the cosmógrafo cronista mayor de las Indias. 89 Recopilacion de leyes, lib. II, tít. II, ley XII.

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4.2 The Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of America Court historiography in Spain has a long tradition. As early as the thirteenth century, Alfonso the Wise had surrounded himself with chroniclers and had two important chronicles written up. The royal chronicler, however, first developed into an independent office, removed from its connection to other court offices, under John II (1419–1454). Under John’s son, Henry IV (1454–1474), the chronicler then became an officeholder appointed, as a rule, for life and receiving his wages in order to write a chronicle.90 That such a chronicler was meant to have privileged access to sources is clear from a decision made by the Catholic Kings. Only a few weeks after the Battle of Toro, which sealed Isabella’s victory in the wars of succession, she endowed the cronista real Juan de Flores with a privilege: everyone, from the infanta to the simplest subject, was to treat him honorably and communicate with him about everything that was historically relevant.91 Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, the first semi-official chronicler of Spanish America, also had privileged access to sources. Since 1518 he performed the functions of a secretary and archivist to the Council of the Indies. Since the Council of the Indies was where the reports of the conquistadors were received, d’Anghiera had access to official reporting.92 But inasmuch as the Council of the Indies only became established as an independent body by being spun off from the Council of Castile, d’Anghiera had neither the title of cronista de Indias nor the prospect of an office consolidating itself within the Council. At this time not only the politics but also the history of Spanish America was still overwhelmingly seen as a mere annex of Castile. Accordingly, after d’Anghiera’s death, his papers were handed over to the chronicler of Castile. In any event, d’Anghiera had created the bulk of the material for his Decades (published in Latin) not out of written reports and materials from the Council of the Indies, but rather based on his encounter with the protagonists of America’s conquest whom he received as guests in his house. The second chronicler of Spanish America, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, became a kind of trans-Atlantic counterpart to d’Anghiera. Born in Madrid, Oviedo had been raised as a page at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, then moved around adroitly in the world of the Italian courts, became an apostolic notary and Inquisition secretary, in order finally to become (in the course of six voyages and his term of office as alcalde for the fortress of Santo Domingo) an expert on the Caribbean and Central America. In 1526 he made a name for himself with a 90 Kagan, Rey, 38–39; Carbia, Crónica, 34–36. 91 Valladolid, 29 May 1476, Bermejo Cabrero, “Orígenes,” 408–409; on the impact of the privilege, see Tate, “Alonso de Palencia,” 40–41. 92 Contarini, “Relación,” 72.



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brief work (his Sumario) which, following Pliny the Elder, dealt with the natural history of America.93 Then, in May 1532, Oviedo offered to continue his work with the Council of the Indies if he were to be offered a salary and have both traveling costs and upkeep for an assistant covered. The Council welcomed the proposal in its consulta for Charles V: it would be good if one let the candidate travel around all the areas he had not yet visited so that he could see there what he had not yet seen – “para ver lo que no tiene visto.” It was recommended that Oviedo follow a procedure in which he would be paid as a kind of traveling reporter who would continually send the Council reports about history and natural history that would then be organized at the Council and copied into the chronicle of Spain.94 In August Charles V’s reply arrived: What you say about how American affairs should be written up and about how there should be a memory of them is good. And if you mean that Oviedo will do this well because he has been in these lands for such a long time and owing to the experience and knowledge (experiencia y noticia) he possesses on these affairs, then give him the office, under the condition that a copy of what he writes is given us before it is printed or published so that we can have a look at it.95

Oviedo was given the office but, against the recommendation made by the consulta for the Council of the Indies, he was not obligated to travel around the “rest” of Spanish America or deliver only sections of text that would then have been compiled into an actual chronicle at the Council. The chronicler, after he had become alcalde at the fortress of Santo Domingo in 1533, was located at what turned out to be an ideal site for gaining access to the knowledge picked up by travelers passing through the Americas. Like d’Anghiera before him, he asked the protagonists of the various ventures of conquest and discovery about what they had done, and he also built up a network of correspondents in order to obtain additional information. As early as 1535, the first part of his Historia general y natural de las Indias was printed in Seville; in 1557 some chapters from the second part were published in Valladolid.96 While d’Anghiera’s Decades had become the first work on America to have a European-wide reach, even though its author had never set foot in America, Oviedo was now staying most of the time in Santo Domingo, far away from the court and the Council of the Indies. An actual chronicler inside the Council of the Indies was lacking, so that this office was first institutionalized within the frame93 Fernández de Oviedo, Sumario; on this, see also Lerner, “Visión humanística.” 94 Consulta, 27 May 1532, AGI, Indif. 737, n. 24, fol. 1r–1v. 95 Quoted by Pérez de Tudela y Bueso, “Estudio preliminar,” CXVIII. 96 Carrillo Castillo, Naturaleza, 77–78; Lerner, “Visión humanística,” 4–5.

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work of Ovando’s reform. The title of the new office, that of a cosmógrafo cronista mayor de las Indias, makes it clear that, alongside the actual work of chronicling, there was a cosmographic focus to the work. This should not be understood as if the cosmographer in the Council of the Indies should replace the cosmographers working for the Sevillian Casa, even though the Council’s cosmographer was assigned duties of scientific geography and cartography. Rather, the job was linked to a broader concept of historia of a kind that was already predominant in Oviedo’s mind. He made historia naturalis an integrated kind of history, conceived as a project bringing together those aspects of describing land and population involving geography, natural habitats, but also culture. It is only surprising at first glance that the office was first occupied by former Council president Juan López de Velasco, that is, not by a humanist renowned in the fields of rhetoric and history. In the context of the Council’s visitation, and during the work on legal codification, Ovando had convinced himself that López de Velasco had the skills necessary to compile large amounts of data. And Ovando had designed the office in such a way the chronicler could remain in Madrid as a kind of “stationary observer,” so long as all necessary materials were made available to him. The cosmographer and chronicler was one of the oficiales, the permanently employed staff sworn in as employees of the Council of the Indies, which is why his job responsibilities can be looked up in the administrative instructions of the Council from 1571. It says there about his work as a chronicler: So that memory of the outstanding deeds, which happened and will continue to happen in America is preserved, the Chronicler and Cosmographer of America should continually write its history with the greatest precision and veracity that can be achieved, about the customs, rituals, antiquities, deeds, and incidents. These are ascertainable from the descriptions, stories, and other reports and investigations that one sends us at the Council. This history is to remain in the Council without being publicized or read beyond what appears appropriate to the councilors of the Council of the Indies ... [The chronicler] is to hold and preserve the descriptions that he compiles under lock and key, without granting access to anyone or telling anything he is not ordered to do this by the Council. And if he concludes something, then he is to give it annually to the secret archive.97

It is striking that this is not about making a book that is, so to speak, conclusive, but about the continual writing of history; the chronicler “always keeps writing the history”—“vaya siempre escriviendo la historia.” The work should also remain primarily in the Council of the Indies and only be made accessible to outside readers after explicit release by the councilors. Finally, the sources from which the chronicler had to create his history were also named, namely the descriptions 97 Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas,” 48–49 (§ 119–122).



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and reports sent to the Council of the Indies. To the extent that this was a dual office of chronicler and cosmographer, the official’s duties as cosmographer were also stipulated. He had to calculate lunar eclipses in advance and send the governors instructions about how they could measure the longitudes of those sites for which this kind of data was lacking. In addition, “cosmographic tables” were to be drawn up to record the longitudes and latitudes of all provinces, oceans, islands, rivers, mountains, and sites. Finally, everything was to be translated into a map sketch or picture, whereby the chronicler and cosmographer had to draw on the descriptions of those areas that were delivered to him, as well as on reports and notes handed out to him by the chamber’s secretaries of the Council. All this had to happen in the way it was regulated in the legal passage “on the descriptions,” the título de las descripciones.98 This brings us to the third measure of the Ovandian reform: to the requirement that all American officials contribute permanently to collaboration on a “book of descriptions.”

4.3 The Law on the Permanent Description of America Ovando must have been aware that the question list had only limited value as an instrument when it actually came to meeting the enormous demand for information required by the Council of the Indies and its cosmographer and chronicler. This is the only way we can explain why it was that, while he also used question lists (as just shown) as a tool for soliciting empirical information about Spanish America in the course of his Council of the Indies visitation, he did not deploy this instrument systematically and across the board. The familiar, printed interrogatory with fifty questions to which the so-called relaciones geográficas of the 1580s were a response was first sent out in 1577, two years following Ovando’s death. In lieu of question lists, what we find at the center of his productive period as president of the Council of the Indies are directives about keeping a book of descriptions (libro de la descripciones), instructions which then culminated in a law from 1573 to make work on these descriptions permanent. The idea of creating one central book of descriptions had already emerged in the Council’s ordinances from 1571, where it said: Because nothing can be understood or treated the way it should be if its subject is not previously known by those persons who have to know and decide about it, we decree and order that the [councilors] in our Council of the Indies see to it with particular zeal and special care that there always be an accurate and finished description and investigation

98 Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas,” 47 (§ 117 and 118).

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of the condition of all things about the Estado de las Indias, both about the land, as of the sea, of [things] natural and cultural, eternal and seasonal, ecclesiastical and secular, and of those past as well as of those that will come with time, to which the government or the stipulations of the law could extend. And that they have a book with the aforementioned descriptions in the Council and use great diligence in correspondence so that each year the viceroys, audiencias, and higher officials inform about the news and that [news] that occurs is transcribed in the aforementioned book.99

A wide-ranging ordinance from July 3, 1573, regulated how this book of descriptions was to be produced. It drove home one more time how vital it was to have “full notice of matters … so that the persons to whom we have left the government of America and its provinces can govern in accordance with their office and their duties.”100 Everything (said the ordinance) would serve the purpose of making sure that not only the king would have entera noticia. Those who ruled in his name should also possess complete knowledge about their provinces or offices. At the very beginning of the ordinance it was also explained why the form of a ley general had been chosen: With individual actions that had taken place many times before in the form of dispatched question lists, the persons involved could talk their way out of this by claiming they had not received the letters. The results obtained this way would “not suffice to have full notice.”101 The ordinance proceeds in three steps. It starts out naming the persons assigned the job of describing the Americas, then designates the objects to be described, and thirdly indicates the form to be followed for making the description. With regard to the persons named, a distinction was drawn between those officials who were to monitor the execution of the ordinance and their subordinates who actually implemented it, that is, had to prepare the descriptions. The original of the descriptions was always to remain on-site, and a copy was to be forwarded to the superordinate authority. Responsibility for the descriptions rested with the Council of the Indies, which stood at the top of the official pyramid. The Council was supposed to punish the defaulters and copy the reports they received into books. The knowledge constituted in this way was meant to guarantee the continuity of the information even after individual councilors had died or been transferred. All offices required to collaborate on the descriptions were listed. The list extended from archbishops to priests, from the provincial superiors of the monastic orders to the vicars, from the visitators to all the scribes, including those for the mines, from engineers and fiscals to the captains and pilots. In this 99 Ordinances for the Council of the Indies, 24 Sept. 1571, repeated 1636, libro II, título VI, of the Recopilación de leyes [1791] 1998, vol. 1, 232. 100 AGI, Indif. 427, L. 29, fol. 5v–66v, fol. 5v–6r, Real Cédula, 3 July 1573. 101 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 17 and 42.



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way, everyone holding any office should make inquiries and deliver descriptions in accordance with his particular field of service and responsibility. At the end of the ordinance, then, the duty of description is unexpectedly expanded: now it says that all subjects who happen to be in America and understand something about American matters should prepare precise and truthful descriptions and send these to the Council of the Indies or to the highest courts of America.102 In a second, far more extensive section, there is a definition of what should be described. Here we can barely get close to conveying in full the catalogue of topics listed in this section. At the beginning there is an extensive description of the land (a cosmography), which also refers to such things as epidemics, climate, and data about geographic coordinates, which would be corrected by measuring the polar altitude and observing lunar eclipses. Then a hydrography was to be made describing the coastlines, the location of islands, the course of rivers, the location of beaches and harbors, but also their navigability, the winds, and the currents, keeping in mind the seasons and possible sea routes.103 The ensuing natural history program focuses explicitly on each province, each region, and each site. It was supposed to take into consideration the peoples living there, the livestock and wild animals, the customs relating to hunting, breeding, and use of animals, the fish, birds, trees, plants, lumber, fruits, and finally the minerals, pearls, precious stones and metals, but also diseases and local medical knowledge. In addition, under the term historia moral, an extensive cultural history was stipulated. It would deal with the natives, their history, their territories, languages, forms of rule, and offices, with religion, customs, birth, marriage, and death rituals, as well as with education and childhood, with burial sites, food and drink, clothing, houses, vested rights, inheritance rules, and contractual forms. But also to be included would be trade, punishable crimes and the penalties for them, the kings and rulers, tribunals, services, and tributes, specifying their size, frequency, and how they are raised, wars and causes of wars, peace customs, characters used in writing, and written language usage. Also to be kept in mind would be pictures and arts used to recall history, the temporal division of days, months, and years, “that is, everything that they had in their misbelief and what one must conserve or remove therefrom.”104 Then it would be important to write about the history of the Conquista, innovations among the Spaniards, and each of their histories on-site. Then the describers were to turn their attention to state structures, the division of provinces, the offices and councils, and also the allocation of Indios by way of encomienda. At a more local level, finally, there was a call 102 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 18–21. 103 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 20–22. 104 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 23.

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for extensive descriptions of places. These were to contain city maps, a history of each city’s founding, lists of religious, royal, and public sites and houses, roads, bridges, and springs, as well as of public properties, borders, mountains, fields and meadows, bodies of water, and woods. The additional requirement that all the norms and regulations of all institutional authorities be compiled was a stipulation that corresponded with the legal codification being carried on within the Council of the Indies. It also seemed necessary to describe all public offices, down to the gatekeepers, shipwrights, and scribes, as well as information on the conquistadors, their deeds and descendants, goods, offices, and Indian allotments. This was followed by sections on financial administration, on the division of dioceses, and on benefices that called for “registers of souls” among the population in addition to registers of clerics. In these registers, it was also intended that such things as marital status, ethnicity, confessions, and communions be listed. Even vagrants were to be listed. Finally, there would be descriptions of pre-Christian religion, including its idols, rituals, superstitions, and deviations from catechism, excommunicates, and additional transgressions. A final section relates to the description of all the orders, the orders’ provinces, monasteries, monks, provincial chapters, current privileges, and clerical parishes.105 How all these descriptions were to be prepared was something given a detailed description in the third section. The officials should create an empty book in which an initial table of contents followed by chapter and title headings were to be entered on pages that were otherwise left blank. The entries should be copied out by local scribes at the end of each year and then forwarded to the superordinate authority. The original should remain at the place where it was created, so that new observations and changes could be registered. In the years to follow, therefore, it would be sufficient to report only individual changes. In this way – as soon as the system was installed – the contributors’ effort could be reduced to updating the state of information. Not every man would have to cover the entire range of descriptions, just those falling within his area of responsibility. To this end, even as it was being sent out from the Council of the Indies, the text of the ordinance should be tailored to each individual office so that, for example, only chapters dealing with hydrography and navigation should be delivered to sea captains. On the information’s return journey to the Council of the Indies, then, the individual reports were not only to be passed on, but also summarized at several stages in the form of provincial reports, then diocesan reports, and so on. All this would result in ever newer books being produced, each one with a higher level of aggregation.

105 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 26–29.



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Whoever did not deliver the description by year’s end would lose one third of his salary and, in case of a repeat offense, also lose his office, without any additional warning.106 Individual authors on-site had the opportunity to send, in addition to the report they handed over to their immediate superior, a second report going directly to the Council of the Indies. The Council thus had an opportunity to make comparisons since it would have been informed directly through one channel, and through another channel via the filter of intermediate authorities. Additionally, very detailed rules on implementation regulated how the collections of data and descriptions for individual subfields were to be carried out. They explained, for example, how polar altitudes were to be calculated, how to determine lunar eclipses, draw maps, or compile lists of persons. Finally, a broad range of books and auxiliary resources for colonial policy from afar was to be created. To offer just one example having to do with filling offices: the cameral scribes working for the chancellery of the Council of the Indies, which was responsible for matters of governing and favors, was supposed to keep a general tally in which all current appointments to offices for all the provinces, cities, and settlements were to be listed in a kind of table. This tally book would show who was supposed to make the appointment, how this would proceed, and for which period, with what salary, and with whose money the office would be furnished. As if this were not enough, the qualities of the previous officeholders and the day they took office were also to be listed. On the other side of the Atlantic, the scribes of the audiencias were to keep books designed in a similar way for each province and to report annually to the cameral scribe for the Council of the Indies about any changes, so that the Council could update its data. In addition, all Spanish communes had to keep “citizens’ books” in which the inhabitants of the community were classified into nine different categories. Special care should be taken to make sure that nobody was added, without first being scrutinized by the local legal authorities, to the first of these nine categories, the “conquistadors.”107 The final category, that of the “Indios,” hardly played a role in these citizens’ books kept for the Spanish cities. Yet they, too, were meant to be recorded in lists of residents (padrones generales) that the notary scribes for the capital towns of the Indian communities were to maintain. These lists were to be broken down by settlement, street, house, and family, with all the Indios in each age group listed by name, age, and characteristics. Annually these lists were to be updated and totals shown for the number of married Indios, marriageable Indios, Indios paying tribute, and Indios exempt from paying tribute on the basis of age. All this 106 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 31–33, 72. 107 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 45–47.

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information was to be examined and then forwarded to the corregidor, who had to keep a summarizing book about the indigenous inhabitants of the entire corregimiento. The corregidor would keep one copy in his archive and send a second to the alcalde mayor. The alcade mayor, in turn, would produce a provincial book out of the dispatches from all the corregidors, leave the original in his archive, and send a duplicate to the viceroy or the relevant audiencia, which then had to forward the provincial book to the Council of the Indies.108 Similar types of staggered bookkeeping and regular data maintenance were envisioned for the tax system, the appraisal of indigenous tax payments, the tithe, ocean ports, mines, and fines. Precisely because of the ambition to make these records comprehensive, there were diverse points of overlap both between jurisdictions and the categories to be assessed. On this point one need only explain that Spanish citizens could frequently be assigned to several different categories (conquistador as well as encomendero), and that heretofore the only area considered was that of temporal administration. But the clerical authorities were supposed to keep accounts on their own of such things as all their goods, monasteries, convents, hospitals, and religious endowments, as well as accounts identifying the constitutions in force for each institution and all the persons currently working therein. The monastic orders had to create comparable account books about all their members, about all provincial chapters, their privileges, and the parishes to which they were ministering. In addition, once again, there were lists of inhabitants of all the dioceses and parishes, both of the Indios and of the Spaniards, in brief: “of all souls of the American kingdom.”109 In the parishes, differentiated clerical lists of residents were also to be kept. There should also be a listing of all those who were not familiar with Christian doctrine, and then it should be determined on which days and at what hour they were to be summoned for religious instruction. As was already the case with the temporal parish or community administration, “statistical” data were also requested. It should be quantitatively determined, for example, how many persons went to confession but did not take part in communion, how many confessed and took part in communion, and how many did this in a way that did or did not comply with the precepts of the Church. Clerical authorities were, in addition, to prepare book about the natives’ pre-Christian religious beliefs, a census of excommunicants, another one for notorious persons living in shame, the mendicant and nonmendicant poor, and even for vagabonds. This list in particular was to be kept with special care – and updated every four months! – since it did, after all, deal with souls desperately in need of remedy. Interestingly, this information was explicitly 108 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 48. 109 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 61.



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not to be forwarded to the governors or even to the Council of the Indies, but only to the local bishops.110 All this diligence was directed toward making it possible to preach the Christian faith and the law of the Gospel. But this necessitated a very accurate geographic familiarity (muy especial noticia) with all provinces, places, and regions. All those who had a part in governing, the “archbishops, bishops, abbots, priests, clerics, religious people, and churchmen” should therefore: draw up investigations, descriptions, and reports about everything that is part of the República Christiana and the spiritual realm, so that every individual knows and understands what is part of his office and can account for how he fulfills this, and so that one can know and understand what has been carried out adequately and what is still missing, so that one can order this done.111

The last points mentioned make it very clear that, while the ordinance was fundamentally designed to collect information within a central authority, there was another goal to be pursued. Irrespective of centralization, that other goal was to put local authorities in a position of increased attentiveness toward the object under their watch. All in all, what seems especially noteworthy about this enormously broad and systematically defined program of administrative information procurement is the attempt to make information “permanent.” This was not about a one-off gathering of data, for some purpose like drawing up a chronology or a text describing a single land; it was about continuously ensuring a maximum degree of knowledge. This knowledge should, on the one hand, be available in a centralized council body, the Council of the Indies. But, on the other hand, it should also be cultivated in subordinate offices, for there, too, government had to be based on complete knowledge.112 We must now return to the reactions that this ordinance provoked in colonial practice.

110 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 64 and 69. 111 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 55–56. 112 Solano and Ponce, Cuestionarios, 17.

VII Practices of knowledge acquisition In this chapter we will reconstruct how the measures to procure information took hold in practice. This requires taking a closer look at four areas where the pathway from observation to description was designed differently in each case. In a first section we return to the padrón real, the model nautical chart, and in a second to scientific expeditions undertaken by the Spanish Crown. Thirdly, we take a look at reactions to the 1573 Law on the Permanent Description of America, and fourthly at the dispatch of question lists. Although each of these procedures set in motion a different model of the empirical, they all had one thing in common: almost everywhere it was lay scholars who were the actual proponents of compiling information. It will be seen that the cooperation of lay observers led to paradoxical side effects. The most important of these had to do with how measures for centralizing knowledge turned the people who were moving about in the periphery into authors of this selfsame centralized knowledge. They became the describers of America and the Atlantic, describers who acted out this role, to some extent, with remarkable self-confidence.

1 Mirror on the world Good nautical charts, as the Sevillian cosmographer Alonso de Chaves summed it up, are more perfect than a mirror. They create a “picture of the world” that survives even “in its absence.”1 With this mirror metaphor, however, Chaves was feigning a degree of perfection, usefulness, and acceptance that Seville’s most important nautical chart, the padrón real, never achieved. As Alison Sandman has already shown in her pioneering works on the subject, this was essentially attributable to sailors’ different conception of “correct knowledge.” It is therefore worth casting a glance behind the mirror of the padrón real and posing the question of how the padrón real developed in practice. We are given a first look at this by the report of the Italian humanist Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, who in 1514 had visited the map room of the Casa de la Contratación along with Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca: While we were shut away in a room, many indexes [indices] of those things were made available to us: A solid globe with the discoveries and many parchments that the sailors call “navigational maps.” One of these had been drawn by the Portuguese. Amerigo Vespucci from Florence is supposed to have worked on this one ... Another map from the lifetime of

1 Chaves, Quatri partitu, 110.



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Columbus was there for us, which he had started to make as he was traveling through this region. His brother Bartolomé has supplemented it ... Furthermore, every Castilian who was convinced that he could measure lands and coasts had drawn his own navigational map.2

D’Anghiera wanted to know how large America was. The visitors leaned over the maps, had compasses brought, started to measure off and add up legs of routes from individual maps. That is, in 1514, the Casa did not have anything like a reliable general map; instead, it housed a number of individual maps of varying quality and topicality. When the actual padrón real, whose creation had been ordered in 1508, actually emerged, and what form it assumed are questions that are hard to answer, especially since none of the original padrones reales have come down to us.3 In its initial stages, the padrón real must actually have consisted of a bundle of maps of different clippings and quality, just like the ones d’Anghiera had found in the map room.4 Ursula Lamb takes as a starting point the second half of the sixteenth century and a large wall map in the Casa, supplemented by a book with nautical charts, which is indeed likely but cannot be proved with certainty.5 In 1593, when improvements were ordered for the common model nautical chart, the padrón ordinario, which covered the Atlantic routes, there was criticism that this padrón had not been changed for twenty-six years. It was also recommended that five additional model maps for special sea areas (padrones particulares) be prepared.6 In the years to follow, finally, the padrón real actually did comprise six maps, one on the Carrera de Indias across the Atlantic and five on other maritime areas, as well as (and here the sources differ from each other) either one or three universal maps that were apparently larger in scale.7 While the actual model nautical charts had certainly been made up of parchment since 1512, the working copies for the pilots were drawn on paper. Parchment had the advantage of being easily erasable, but it harbored the danger of “warping” under heat or dampness, so that the stretches measured out became shorter or longer. The maps were copied by carefully tracing the pattern of the coastlines. The padrón real itself was supposed to be kept safe

2 Martyr, De orbe novo decades I–VIII: Parte prima (I–IV), 286. 3 Regarding the attribution and preservation of maps, see Davies, “Egerton”; Cerezo Martínez, “Padrones,” 613–637; and now comprehensively, Sánchez, Espada, 163–301. 4 On the inventory, see also AGI, Contr. 5784, L. 1, fol. 20r–20v; AGI, Indif. 418, L. 3, fol. 326v–328v. 5 Lamb, “Spanish Cosmographic Juntas,” 51–62. She refers to the invoice of García de Céspedes in AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2, although this does not mention any wall map. 6 AGI, Indif. 742, n. 151c, Sevilla, 22 Dec. 1593. 7 See, inter alia, AGI, Indif. 1957, L. 5, fol. 9v; AGI, Indif. 742, n. 151c, 22 Dec. 1593.

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in a “chest with three keys”8 in which the model instruments were presumably also stored: an astrolabe, a Jacob’s staff, and magnetized compass needles. Newly manufactured instruments had to be tuned to these before they could be officially embossed and thus authorized for release by the Piloto Mayor. In addition, since 1539 there were route books in which islands, bays, shoals, and harbors were recorded along with their shape and appurtenant information about coordinates and distances. Not last, the Casa also contained reports from pilots,9 even if these have also not come down to us, and thus, on the whole, it also contained a broad range of geographic-nautical tools, registers, and maps. At the same time, all this still says very little about what kind of status the copies of the padrón real had on board ships. Navigation is not a science per se. The Latin navigare means simply “travel with the boat,” and the criterion of good navigating is a seafaring one: that of the ship arriving safely. This criterion certainly included knowledge of the waters that had to be traversed as well as the ability to control the movement of the ship through this space, in other words, navigation. Navigation was conducted at the beginning of the sixteenth century either visually, i.e., by orientation to coastal formations and landmarks, or by dead reckoning, i.e., an estimation, beginning at the port of departure, of the routes and directions traveled. The latter facilitated traversing longer distances without land in sight. A compass served to determine direction. Pilots knew the landmarks from earlier voyages, while the directions and routes to be sailed were memorized, so that they essentially managed to get by without knowing how to write or even read. A considerable number of Spanish pilots were illiterate.10 At most they could “read” the gradation marks on a compass or the course lines of portolan maps, and they navigated on the basis of experiences and estimates, not with the assistance of precise instruments or scientific calculating and measuring procedures. Measurements, however, would have been necessary in order to correct the estimates and the mistakes of the instruments. For in the end, for several reasons, even a compass does not show the course actually sailed: the ship can drift off because of side winds, or it is moved by currents, and the compass needle points not to the geographic North Pole but toward the magnetic one instead. This declination of the compass varies from site to site so that, for example, it is even possible to set sail with a compass corrected for Seville but not be able to take into consideration the different magnetic declinations of all the 8 AGI, Indif. 1968, L. 20, fol. 93v, 27 Feb. 1575; Cerezo Martínez, “Padrones,” 617; Cortés de Albacar, Breve compendio, fol. LXIII–LXIV; García de Palacio, Instrucion nauthica, fol. 71v–75v. 9 For a book of this kind from 1590, see Sandman, “Spanish Nautical Cartography,” 1097. 10 Sandman, “Cosmographers,” 105–106; and on the literacy rate, see Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea, 229–231.



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areas to be traveled. It was also uncertain which route the ship had just covered, since one estimated the individual nautical days and then added them up. In the case of dead reckoning, miscalculations of the direction and route added up the further away one was from the port of departure or from the last landmark. Here, too, occasional measurements would have helped correct the mistakes, which is possible on the open sea only by making angular measurements in relation to heavenly bodies. Astronavigation, however, played only a subordinate role in navigational practice, which was not merely related to the educational level of the pilots but also to the weakness of this technique: in order to determine latitude, the angle between the horizon and a heavenly body – as a rule, that of the sun or the North Star – had to be measured, which was hard to manage on swaying ships, even with good visibility. And, at least where the bearing of the sun was concerned, fixing latitude also required that astronomical tables be consulted.11 Even if this resulted in a successful measurement of the latitude, it was still impossible to measure the longitude. As a result of all these circumstances, nautical charts initially played at best a secondary role in everyday navigation. The more important function of nautical charts was more likely one related to media, a function of the mediation of knowledge between ships and between pilots. The fact that the Casa de la Contratación and its Piloto Mayor were now intervening in this business led, as of the mid-1520s, to a series of conflicts. They began with an official visitation of the Casa de la Contratación, at which, initially, discrepancies in the available nautical charts were faulted once again. There was a call for a junta of local experts, the creation of a new model nautical chart as well as a world map, and these tasks were entrusted to a man of the royal court whom we already know: Hernando Colón.12 Colón had just barely arrived back at Seville when he stepped up his effort to systematically collect geographic information. In this he was supported by Diego Ribero, a Portuguese in service to Spain, as well as by the young cosmographer Alonso de Chaves. Supervision of the training and admission of pilots as well as control of the maps and nautical instruments now fell to Hernando Colón.13 The pilots were obligated under threat of penalty to keep daily accounts at sea and make their reports available to Hernando Colón so that he could use the collected “informaçion” to improve the model nautical chart.14 De facto, with all these assignments and privileges, Colón had become the Piloto Mayor of Seville, although at this time the office was actually occupied by 11 On this, see Landes, “Finding the Point at Sea,” 23. 12 Real Cédula from 20 June 1526 (AGI, Indif. 421, L. 11, fol. 21v); Real Cédula from 6 Oct. 1526 (AGI, Indif. 421, L. 11, fol. 234r–234v). 13 Sandman, “Cosmographers,” 97–98. 14 AGI Sevilla, Indif. 421, L. 12, fol. 40r–40v, from 16 March 1527.

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Sebastiano Caboto. But Sebastiano Caboto, the son of the Genoa-born Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) who had become famous for his discoveries made in service to the Venetians and English, had left Seville in 1526 with a small expeditionary fleet in order to search for a Western route to the Spice Islands.15 He would not return until 1530, so that the reform efforts of Colón and his assistants Ribero and Chaves stepped into the gap left behind by Caboto’s four-year absence. The tendency of the reformers around Colón who had known each other since the Junta of Badajoz and (proud of their erudition) designated themselves as cosmógrafos, was to view navigation no longer as an experience-saturated practice but instead as an application of scientific theory. They thus demanded from the pilots a very scientific-astronomic method for determining a position that had hardly been practiced to date. Yet the scientific competence of the cosmographers proved to be a double-edged sword, since their opponents were permanently accusing the cosmographers of having no connection to practical seafaring and, indeed, not being acquainted with either the ocean or America. In 1545, when a group of fifty-five pilots signed a protest against the current padrón real, their statement said that it was … … hard that we have to sail according to maps that are made following the pattern of a padrón fabricated by persons who have not gone to sea, nor who master the art of navigation, nor have experience therein or have seen the lands, coasts, shoals, and islands.16

The dispute between the camp of the practitioners and that of the cosmographers need not preoccupy us here in detail, but the basic constellation of the dispute is of interest.17 First of all, it needs to be emphasized that the attempt to collectivize the practical knowledge of the pilots lead to a paradoxical effect. For a long time the very institution that was supposed to guarantee the “socialization” of nautical knowledge, namely the Piloto Mayor, failed at its task. This can be said above all for the tenure of Sebastiano Caboto, who, following his return, and along with the official cartographer Diego Gutiérrez, abused his office in order to enrich himself. An official visitation by the Casa in 1549 drew up the charges against both. Caboto had accepted money and hens and, in return, licensed incompetent pilots and captains. Beforehand, Gutiérrez had revealed to his pupils what they would be asked in the examinations. If, nonetheless, there was any threat of them making a mistake, he gave them a wink. By contrast, candidates who had not gone through Gutiérrez’s instruction did not stand a chance. In this way, Caboto and Gutiérrez would have 15 AGI, Indif. 421, L. 11, fol. 234r–234v; Sandman, “Cosmographers,” 83 and 109–110. 16 AGI, Just. 1146, n. 3, r. 2 [Block 3], fol. 154r. 17 For a more detailed account of the dispute, see the German or Spanish edition of this book.



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formed a monopoly determining the prices for instruments and maps at will. Since, all the while, they were marketing maps that did not correspond to the padrón real, further improvements of the latter were also no longer being made.18 Caboto and Gutiérrez had thus utterly commandeered the program of standardized maps and instruments and reversed the meaning of their office in that they used their royal privileges to cash in on them. Paradoxically, they were assisted in this scheme by the rigor of the state’s regulatory attempt to keep prices high and, for a long time, block market entry to competitors. Caboto, incidentally, could no longer be called to account. Under the pretext of wanting to visit Charles V in Brussels, he had left Seville, and in 1548 he entered into service for the English.19 It is, furthermore, important to be clear that the question of how to make the best nautical chart was at no point a project immune to pressure from the street, the judgment of returning pilots, and complaints about sunken ships and drunken crews. Knowledge in early modern Seville was never a merely theoretical matter; instead, it was always also a practical business shaped by the rhythm of departing ships, which forced actions to be based on fragmentary, uncertain, and merely probabilistic information that was then provisionally corroborated and tested in practice. The “experiment” then took place in vivo, on the high seas, at enormous distances, and under great danger. This clashed in principle with the learning system of the padrón real, for that was a system that banked on a gradual emendation of knowledge, on a step-by-step process of progressive improvements to the map, and thus on true knowledge as the outcome of a long, drawn-out process over time. Science can accompany emendation processes with great patience. The pilot, by contrast, needs to make his decisions hic et nunc. He has responsibility for the welfare of his own ship, for the very specific current voyage, not for seafaring as such or even for its future. The distrust of seamen toward the attempt of the Casa to monopolize nautical knowledge cannot therefore be dismissed simply as naysaying to progress by stubborn seamen. They recognized the dysfunctionality of the procedure, the problem of a model nautical chart laying claim to geographical truth, and they asserted the independent validity of their own practical conduct and knowledge. What mattered for the pilots of Seville was something confidently formulated in a statement from 1552, which said that “someone who has sailed and possesses experience has a different understanding than the one who boasts about having mere theory at his command. Because theory and not experience deceives, and the eyes that see the matter also seldom deceive.”20 18 AGI, Just. 945, fol. 210r–210v. 19 Sandman and Ash, “Trading Expertise,” 814, 827–828. 20 AGI, Just. 836, n. 6, block 3, fol. 217v–218r, Petition from Diego Gutiérrez, Pedro de Medina, and Diego Sánchez Colchero, 12 March 1552.

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The dysfunctionality of the padrón real rested not least on a translation problem, since the hundreds of experiences made at sea and on the coasts of America could not be handed over to the Piloto Mayor and transcribed into the padrón real without something getting lost. The Casa knew about this problem: if one interrogated all returning pilots, the question would remain how binding their testimony should be and how one should proceed in case of contradictory statements. There was a danger, as Pedro de Medina expressed it, of “losing, by the assertion of one person, the truth of many.”21 They could also be deluding themselves about what they had remembered, which is why Francisco Falero suggested again in 1545 that pilots should keep daily records.22 Alonso de Santa Cruz, by contrast, believed that he had discerned a source of error in the exertion of scientific pressure. He proposed a kind of “blind procedure”: the pilots should be led into a room in which no mapmakers and persons interested in maps would be present and then asked to point out mistakes on the map. If one used this procedure to interrogate each pilot carefully and under oath, one would quickly have a much better cartographic foundation.23 With this procedure, which applied the inquisitorial principle of a “protected denunciation” to the field of emending knowledge, it was apparently hoped that one could exclude the bias that pilots would get caught up in should they have to talk about their mistakes in the presence of former teachers, examiners, or map dealers. In this way, too, they could express themselves in the language of their own experience, free of theory, without being required to provide exact geographical positions. Yet all this would have changed little had not both sides started to move toward each other by the end of the sixteenth century. Among the pilots a gradual change of mentality had taken place that had to do with a generational shift, with the gradual implementation of new training standards, but above all also with an increasingly common daily use of instruments, that is, with a dovetailing between scientific methods and practical seafaring. The cosmographers, by contrast, now focused on activities at court, where the office of the Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of the Americas had been established at the Council of the Indies in 1571 and the Academia de Matemáticas had been set up in 1582. Then, in the 1590s, the Council of the Indies sent two of its chief cosmographers, first Pedro Ambrosio de Ondériz and then his successor Andrés García de Céspedes, to Seville in order to come to grips with the shortcomings of navigation that still existed. In the course of doing this, as we shall soon see, all the implements used to process nautical knowledge were put to the test – from astrolabes, through the padrón, all the way 21 Quoted by Sandman, “Cosmographers,” 151. 22 AGI, Just. 1146, n. 3, r. 2, fol. 7v, Francisco Falero, 5 May 1545. 23 AGI, Just. 945, fol. 168r–171r, Alonso de Santa Cruz, 6 Sept. 1549.



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to the pilots examinations – so that they could then be improved in consultation and by consensus with the affected pilots. To this end, first in 1593 and then again in 1597, the pilots of Seville were assembled in several juntas and asked to take a position on the padrón and the instruments. On the basis of the pilots’s answers from 1593, Ondériz composed a lengthy expert opinion about the errors in the padrón real, but ultimately what he proposed was to undertake some initial control measurements. In order to organize these, the Casa had an instruction for the next outbound fleet printed as early as December of that year. It listed those sites about which there was some doubt and ordered that notations be taken at those places about the maximal height of the sun and the day of measurement, using new astrolabes and, if possible, in the presence of an authenticating notary. Most of these sites were grouped based on their relationship to the usual travel routes so that they could be remeasured in connection with voyages about to take place in any event. For out-ofthe-way places and coasts, special missions were formulated: thus, for example, the northwestern coast of Yucatán was supposed to be measured by the governor there, while the New Spain fleet was supposed to use smaller sloops to undertake depth readings of some shallows and coasts, and the governor of Havana was to be equipped with a frigate in order to undertake additional measurements in certain areas under his jurisdiction. In addition, all pilots were supposed to undertake occasional control measurements and examine whether their routes deviated from those of the map and whether islands or shoals were missing. It was especially stressed that they were supposed to make these measurements well, meaning: if possible, on solid ground. Finally, the instruction indicated that the pilots were not supposed to use their private, improved nautical charts as a point of reference for corrections; instead, they should use a copy of the official padrón. Otherwise, the data could not be used. The measurement results should be sent as quickly as possible, i.e., on the first news-conveying ship, to Seville.24 The idea of having remeasurements undertaken presumably emanated from court, and there from Juan de Herrera or from Ondériz himself, that is, from the court circle of the Academia de Matemáticas. They were banking on the competence of a few specialists, while the representatives of the Casa in Seville insisted on the standpoint that their pilots had sufficient training to undertake the measurements themselves. One could save oneself the costs of separate voyages dedicated exclusively to surveying.25 But the results of the survey from the returning fleet that soon became available cast some doubt on this, for only three of the pilots commissioned with the survey had even provided any data, and the data they sup24 There is a copy of the instruction printed by Juan de Léon in AGI, Indif. 742, n. 151c. 25 Vicente Maroto and Esteban Piñeiro, Aspectos, 416.

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plied did not have the desired precision.26 In spite of careful preparation and the twenty-four calibrated astrolabes that had been given to the ships, the attempt to turn the pilots into remote-controlled surveying assistants to the cosmographer had thoroughly failed again.27 Both the officials of the Casa and Ondériz initiated a second attempt. To gain a hearing for their proposals, both turned (via the Council of the Indies) to the king, who, curiously enough, approved the two competing projects within a matter of three weeks. The Casa had proposed a slightly modified repetition, but one in which now only twelve of the “pilotos mas ynteligentes” were to be equipped with astrolabes and instructions.28 Ondériz now envisioned an entirely different procedure. The remeasurements should be implemented by two specialists who were to take off in small boats, each with twelve oars, along the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and Cartagena, as well as the Antilles, and survey these coastlines. Ondériz’s promise that all this could be accomplished within ten months at a low cost appears somewhat out of touch with reality. It was thought, for example, that one would merely need to permit both boats to trade in nuts and seeds along the coasts. Ondériz explicitly referred to how Philip II in 1583 had approved an expedition with a similar setup undertaken by Jaime Juan (to which we will return shortly). If Jaime Juan had not died en route (Ondériz claimed), he would have accomplished great things. Philip II agreed, yet Ondériz had no time left to carry out the undertaking. He took out a loan so that he could send his books, maps, and instruments to Seville, fell ill shortly thereafter, and died in January 1596 in Madrid.29 His official responsibilities were taken over by Andrés García de Céspedes, the author of the textbook that displayed the Pillars of Hercules on the title page.30 Céspedes was a learned cosmographer who in 1577 had taken part in the attempts to collect information about the location of positions on the basis of lunar eclipses and had become, after a long stay in Portugal, a member of the recently founded Academia de Matemáticas. With regard to the reform of navigation, Céspedes built on the procedure already operating under Ondériz, which was to base his decisions on the broadest possible consensus of pilots and in consultation with the Casa.31 It is unclear why he did not continue the expedition project, yet on the 26 Consulta of the Consejo de Indias, 28 July 1595: Vicente Maroto and Esteban Piñeiro, Aspectos, 448–450. 27 Vicente Maroto and Esteban Piñeiro, Aspectos, 416–421. 28 Real Cédula, 7 July 1595, AGI, Indif. 1957, L. 6, fol. 53v. 29 Consulta des Consejo de Indias from 28 July 1595: Vicente Maroto and Esteban Piñeiro, Aspectos, 449; Real Cédula from 16 Sept. 1595, AGI, Indif. 426, L. 28, fol. 220r–221v. 30 AGI, Indif. 426, L. 28, fol. 248v–249v (15 May 1596); AGI, Contr.: 5784, L. 3, fol. 94r (13 June 1596). The instruction from 13 June 1596 for Céspedes in AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2. 31 Sandman, “Apologia,” 8–9.



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whole Céspedes seems to have concentrated more on improving the practical use of maps and compasses than on perfectly surveyed location data. With regard to the data, he based his approach on two things: On the one hand, he built on already existing documents, e.g., papers and maps that he made a special point of having brought from Lisbon. On the other hand, he again relied even more strongly on the experiences of pilots, although Céspedes believed their reports had to be carefully revised so that mistakes resulting (for example) from magnetic declination could be subtracted out retroactively.32 Céspedes organized this collaboration with the pilots by using juntas, which he convened in April of 1597. At these councils, printed question lists were distributed in order to collect the opinions and experiences of the pilots. Although the question list was composed in the tone of an instruction, substantively it opened up an evaluative dialogue about opportunities for improving the instruments. This places it in a tradition, started by Ondériz, of emending practice based on reaching a consensus with the pilots: Memorial on what the pilots of the Atlantic passage have to pay attention to regarding the revision of the model of the navigational charts and the other instruments that they use in order to become acquainted with the heights of the stars and the courses of their voyages. First. Attention is to be paid to all things of which one knows that they are erroneously represented in or absent from the padrón … Furthermore: They [the pilotos] are to present their opinion about the above-mentioned and about whether it is good that the astrolabe that one is using at the present is larger than usual. Furthermore: Whether it is disadvantageous to mount the magnets of the compass needles under the compass rose or with the usual declination adjustment of the half-line. And … if they are of the opinion that the magnets should be mounted movably so that, when one sees a deviation of the needle at sea, the pilot could correct the magnets appropriately. Or if this is disadvantageous or onerous. Should this seem onerous, whether it might then be good that every pilot have a compass needle with the magnets under the compass rose that are movable so that deviations of the needle can better be observed, and that the other compass rose or compass roses [that he has on his person] carry the magnets with the usual deviation of the half-line. For, transported from one place to another, they can use the particular [compass] that they find more useful.33

32 Sandman, “Apologia,” 13–14. Invoices for the transports from Lisbon at AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2. 33 AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated).

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Figure 9: Questionnaire for pilots, Seville, April 1597, including the answer of Juan Sánchez de Ruisenada (AGI, Patronato 262, r. 2)



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The forty statements from pilots that have come down to us were partly, as in the copy pictured here,34 written directly into the open spaces on the question lists or on the other side of the page, so that one may assume that a portion of the written answers were relatively spontaneous, possibly even jotted down in the course of the meeting. In terms of content, the dominant theme among the statements was approval of the padrón real, although a number of smaller corrections and suggestions for improvement found their way into the comments. There was skepticism about changing the instruments. It was feared that this would undermine existing confidence about working with these instruments. This concern was drastically formulated by the cleric Andrés Sánchez, who apparently took a position because he still remembered the reforms of the 1550s and had himself undertaken Atlantic passages earlier: It seems like a brazen act to me to change the magnets of the compasses or even to introduce any kind of innovation, for this would unsettle those who know little and who therefore get their bearings from the compasses previously in use.35

Interestingly, Sánchez saw that whatever marginal benefit there was to be gained from improving or emending the Atlantic routes had long since been attained since the appropriate measures had already been taken in his youth. Even the compass needles were no longer magnetized as well as they had been earlier: Look at how many years one spent sailing to America without any thing of importance being found that might be improved.36

On the whole, suggestions for corrections were either listed matter-of-factly or completely omitted since change was understood as a danger and consequently rejected. Accordingly, the pilot Juan Gallego said: It is not advisable to keep changing the maps and the padrón, for our predecessors have already used them, and thus far they have rendered them good service. Wanting to improve them could cause great damage, [at least] in the sea voyage between Santo Domingo, Havana, New Spain, and Tierra Firme, for which I was examined.37

34 Statement of Juan Sánchez de Ruisenada [or “Ruiseñada”], AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated). We have evidence of him as a pilot between 1596 and 1602, see AGI, Contr. 752; AGI, Contr. 3972; Contratación 1118, n. 1, fol. 1r; Contratación 1134, n. 4, fol. 1r. 35 Statement of Andrés Sánchez, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated). 36 Ibid. 37 Statement of Juan Gallego, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated).

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The older pilots in particular did not see any need for action. In his answer, Francisco Márquez pointed out that he had been sailing the Atlantic route for more than fifty years, and then he went on to defend the padrón real: And in all I have always determined that the maps I took along with me were correct. I sailed using their course specifications, without finding anything wrong in any one of them. I therefore assume that there is also nothing wrong in the padrón. For should there have been any kind of deviation anywhere, this has already been improved and placed at the correct site. And therefore one should not touch it [the padrón] in any way.38

The way pilots interacted with the maps in practical terms had apparently stabilized, which need not mean that the charts were constantly being used. It does seem, however, that they had found their place as a reference for the pilots’ own practical knowledge and were no longer contested there. Pilots had also already become accustomed to the enlargement of the astrolabes and their readout scales, changes implemented under Ondériz. Most either rejected or were indifferent to the additional option of traveling with freely correctable compasses. The statement of pilot Pedro Sánchez Arias is representative of the substantive tone and conservative approach found in most replies: Gentlemen, I say with regard to the padrón that it is good from here to New Spain and also from here to Honduras, with the exception of a small matter that I have told the Piloto Mayor about the coast of Honduras, between Trujillo and Puerto de Caballos. And with regard to the size of the astrolabes currently in use, I say that they are perfect. Not larger and not smaller. And I say with regard to the compass needles that they are good the way they are, since we are experienced in dealing with them. And if somebody, owing to his curiosity, would like to take one with him that has its magnets under the compass rose, he is welcome to do this. And I say this and sign it with my name. Pedro Sánchez Arias.39

As this quote incidentally reveals, a not insignificant portion of this exchange of information would have to have taken place orally. The question list served – entirely in line with its title (memorial) – as a kind of aide-mémoire for the points to be discussed. A trace of the conversations about geographic-cartographic problems that accompanied the process of answering the question lists may also be found in the response by Juan Rodríguez Aguilera. He corrected some course information on South America, pointed out shoals that were missing from the padrón, and on the back of the page sketched an additional group of islands that 38 Statement of Francisco Márquez, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated). 39 See AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2. Puerto de Caballos is today’s Puerto Cortés in Honduras.



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could not, however, be identified any longer outside the context of an oral explanation.40





Figure 10: Group of islands, detail from Juan Rodríguez Aguilero’s answer to the questionnaire shown in figure 9 (AGI, Patronato 262, r. 2)

Basically, then, we are dealing with documents that render visible only a small portion of the ephemeral exchange of information that took place between the pilots and the cosmographer. And these documents have come down to us only because the cosmographer got into trouble with the court and had to defend his method. For it was only in order to exonerate himself that Céspedes preserved these documents, which otherwise would have been thrown away after being evaluated. The critique of Céspedes’s work emanated from a Madrid junta of mathematicians who met in the rooms of the Council of the Indies, first together with Céspedes but then later without him. While the junta praised the cosmographer’s diligence, it arrived at a negative conclusion: the reform of the Atlantic passage had “not yet attained the desired certainty and perfection..., and several sites also did not appear at their place.” These things needed, however, to be achieved quickly, not only because of the seamen and shipwrecks, but also so that “the other nations lying in wait do not make fun of Spain and the reputation ... of such an exalted council is not ruined.”41 Only after several meetings did the experts accept Céspedes’s instruments and textbook. For the time being, they did not even address the matter of the padrón.42 Céspedes commented bitterly that this critique had nothing to do with science, but instead was about personal animosities that three participants in the junta harbored against him, literally about “maliciousness that is based on interests.”43 He proposed that these three persons no longer be consulted, which is also what happened. They (in his words) had merely intended “[to] pervert and

40 Statement of Juan Rodríguez Aguilera, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated). In 1609, as the pilot of a flyboat (filibote), he drowned near Gibraltar, see AGI, Contr. 942, n. 5. 41 Parecer de todos, sin Céspedes, undated, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated). 42 Ibid. 43 Quoted according the letter of the Relators of the Council of the Indies, Diego Lorenzo Naharro, 8 Jan. 1599, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated).

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[to] delay the matter.”44 What is remarkable is not the dispute as such, but rather the manner in which Céspedes organized his defense of the padrón real. Specifically, he presented expert opinions from three Sevillian mathematicians. One of the three, Antonio Moreno, highlighted not only the perfection of the padrón, but also in particular the constant communication that Céspedes had cultivated with those affected by the making of the padrón: “I often saw him in the kinds of conferences that he conducted with the pilots and the seamen, [and] just the same with the maps and the descriptions of routes.”45 Moreno evoked once more the practical grounds of legitimation for navigation (“what one aspires to in seafaring is leading the ship safely from one place to another”46) and the stubbornness of the pilots: If one were to give them another form or marked-out route for the courses, I am of no doubt whatsoever that this would never be accepted by the pilots and captains ... there would be nobody who would steer according to this, since these are people who cannot be confronted with difficult things ... this would require that all pilots be mathematicians.47

Also at court, then, they were starting to argue by using the inherent logic of nautical practice. Céspedes himself cast his lot with the practitioners, even though he was an acknowledged mathematician and cosmographer who had already been proposed by Juan de Herrera for the chair at the Academia Real Matemática and was also supposed to take up this professorship in 1607.48 Following the advice of the pilots, he had left the padrón for the Atlantic passage almost unaltered. It is worth quoting Céspedes’s viewpoint as expressed in a longer excerpt, since what is taking shape here is not only a shift in the scholarly discourse about the “right” kind of navigation and cartography, but also a movement of boundary line between practitioners with substantive expertise and local knowledge, on the one hand, and scholars at court, on the other. We will encounter similar ruptures between personalized, local knowledge, on the one hand, and generalized knowledge at central headquarters, on the other, in yet other contexts. Céspedes’s words were summarized by a relator from the Council of the Indies, who is partly quoting and partly reporting, which is what explains the switch between the third and first person in the narrative:

44 Letter from 8 Jan. 1599, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated). 45 Statement by Antonio Moreno, 16 Nov. 1598, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated). 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 On Céspedes and the Academia Real Matemática, see Vicente Maroto and Estaba Piñeiro, “Casa,” 49–50.



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With regard to the emendation of the map, he [Céspedes] says that one must not change anything in Atlantic seafaring since the pilots have established this with the experience of a hundred years of seafaring, and the lunar eclipses that one has observed here agree with the map’s description. This is apart from some shoals that one finds every day, as confirmed by the statements of 40 pilots that he presented here. They must, as experts in the field, be given credence. Alongside the statements of the pilots he presents three expert opinions of Sevillian mathematicians that not only are in command of the theory, but also are familiar with practice, owing to daily exchange with the pilots. This [familiarity with practice] is lacked by some of our people’s mathematicians who have never seen the ocean or had anything to do with pilots. Should one change their courses as they are described in the maps, this would cause the loss of many ships. And this I say as someone who has sailed, and after forty years of studying mathematics, it would be a great burden on the conscience for those who would permit this. For aside from the loss of wealth, one would lose many men who would be leaving behind widows and orphan children. And therefore one should not change the courses of the pilots, for with those that they have, they reach the destination, and they complete the voyages, which they would not do should they [the courses] be changed.49

Céspedes crowned this plea against improving or changing the padrón real and for trusting in the experience of the pilots with the observation that one should also not change the padrón for the Mediterranean, since “the seafarers who live there have their familiar courses on which they come and go, even if individual parts are not on their true latitude and longitude.” The conclusion drawn by Céspedes exempted naval cartography from the project to form a picture of the world that survives in its absence. One should indeed correct the mapa general in accordance with the correct longitude and latitude specifications, but not the actual navigational charts employed by the Mediterranean travelers.50 The difference between the maps of a geographer and those of pilots was recognized at the same time that the experience and practice of the pilots as knowledge sui generis was shielded against the universalistic claim of scientists and scholars to make emendations. It would be better to grant them erroneous maps than to unsettle them with error-free maps. The decisive change to which Ondériz and Céspedes contributed thus consisted not in gaining information of one kind or another, but in establishing a culture of cooperation on equal terms. This was reflected in a turn of phrase that was made in passing yet was very apposite. It was remarked that pilots are the “chief instruments of navigation” who were now to be asked explicitly for their

49 Letter from the Relator of the Council of the Indies, Diego Lorenzo Naharro, 8 Jan. 1599, AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated). 50 AGI, Patr. 262, r. 2 (unpaginated).

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opinion (pareceres).51 The pilot was thus upgraded as the decisive “processor” of nautical knowledge.

2 Traveling science But what happened with the expeditions in the way that Ondériz (as we have just seen) proposed to undertake them in order to survey the coastlines? Independent scientific expeditions are usually associated more with the eighteenth century, when fully equipped expeditions – ventures that put the research assignment wholly at the center of the voyage – set out for the first time. In the sixteenth century it was more typical to obtain knowledge about distant lands by way of correspondence, through reading travel reports, contact with travelers, and the exchange of exotica.52 Yet as early as in the second half of the sixteenth century there were some attempts to describe the American continent by way of expedition, even if these efforts lacked the financial resources, personnel, and instruments to accomplish this satisfactorily. In 1557 André Thevet managed the feat of publishing a book about Les singularitez de la France antarctique, autrement nommée Amerique, even though he had only stayed just a few weeks on a small island off Rio de Janeiro. A systematic program of research into America’s natural history was envisaged by the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi. In a text from 1569 or 1570 he called for a ship to be outfitted with the necessary instruments for a scientific exploration, but also with notaries, illustrators, and scholars. It should reach as many places as possible and, while there, record everything rare and unusual while taking specimens of all species on board.53 Around the same time as this initiative, a scientific expedition was being prepared at the court of Philip II. It was envisioned that Francisco Hernández, using the title of a “general physician” (protomédico general de todas las Indias), should lead a five-year-long expedition that was to traverse the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru as well as the Philippines. The expeditions were supposed to explore the trees, plants, and especially medicinal plants, with Hernández himself both investigating the countryside, taking samples, and conducting experiments while also investigating what was known about these plants on-site. For this he would need the help not only of his son Juan and his fellow passenger, the cosmographer Francisco Domínguez, but also of local specialists (physicians, illustrators, 51 AGI, Indif. 1957, L. 6, fol. 12r–14v, fol. 14v. 52 By way of summary see Harris, “Networks.” On the exotica, see Findlen, Possessing Nature. 53 Lestingrant and Pelletier, “Maps,” 1467–1468; Bustamante García, “Empresa naturalista,” 44–45.



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notaries, plant collectors), with the viceroys taking care to ensure the cooperation of these experts.54 Since, in the end, it would mainly be Indios collaborating on the project, special indigenous knowledge about plants and medicinal plants could now pour in. In September 1570 Hernández and his assistants embarked on their expedition. In March 1571 they took up their work in Mexico City, yet as early as September of the following year Hernández became so seriously ill that he was forced to modify his method of working. He developed a descriptive model and a question list and began to send out both from Mexico City in order to get information about the natural landscape and plant world of New Spain, Peru, as well as of the Pacific region. In addition, Hernández drew up a plan at his desk for a botanical voyage whose goal it was to obtain seeds, plant samples, and sketches of the plants in their different growth phases and at their natural sites. He finally got around to undertaking this expedition himself between 1573 and 1574, though he restricted himself chiefly to the regions Michoacán and Pánuco.55 On August 4, 1576, the first volumes dealing with natural history, drawings, plants, as well as live and stuffed animals arrived in Seville. Twenty-five days later, the crates were opened in Madrid in view of the king. The following year Francisco Hernández and his son arrived in Spain, together with additional volumes about natural history, seventy-eight bags with seeds and roots, eight barrels, and four buckets with trees and herbs. Francisco Domínguez, their collaborator and cosmographer, remained behind in New Spain and kept working there until the 1590s.56 Little is known about what happened next at court. Hernández intended to continue his work collecting specimens from out of Spain and to get the editing of the volumes underway, yet there seems to have been resistance. Philip II himself was initially enthusiastic about the works of natural history. He kept the volumes in a jewelry case and had screens with drawings of the expedition hung in the dressing room. He appointed Hernández as personal physician for the young Prince Philip. The work was never printed, however, which possibly was due to the enormous scope and high cost of such a project. It is more likely that the publication fell victim to fluctuating interests and the shift in American policy of 1577, for 1577 marked the beginning of a policy banning literature on America’s natives and their customs. As a result, many texts were confiscated, including the writ54 Instruction, 11 Jan. 1570, CODOIN–2–15, 279–283; Varey, Mexican Treasury, 46–47; Bustamante García, “Empresa naturalista,” 45. 55 Bustamante García, “Empresa naturalista,” 46; CODOIN–E–1, 362–379, or Varey, Mexican Treasury, 47–60. 56 Bustamante García, “Empresa naturalista,” 47; Baudot, Utopía, 485; CODOIN–E–1, 379–384; and now more recently on this, see Portuondo, Secret Science, 200.

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ings of Bernardino de Sahagún.57 The bulk of what Hernández had written, to be sure, dealt with plants, but he closely scrutinized how they were used by indigenous medicine and had intended to translate his work into Náhuatl. Perhaps this tendency to enhance the status of the indigenous had given Philip II an occasion to stop promoting the publication; it is also possible that Hernández as a person was now being taken out of consideration for the completion of his own project. That same year, in any event, Juan López de Velasco proposed entrusting the project of continuing Hernández’s mission to the protomédico of Peru, Antonio Sánchez de Renedo. Hernández’s materials first attracted attention by way of Italy: they were revised, initially in a highly abridged from, by Leonardo Antonio Recchi da Monte, whose manuscript was then acquired by the Accademia dei Lincei and edited there.58 Hernández’s life exemplifies how an interest in natural history was stimulated both by humanistic studies as well as by imperial expansion. Well before his expedition voyage, he had been involved in translating the natural history of Pliny the Elder into Spanish and had started to investigate the flora of Andalusia.59 Since the 1550s, moreover, Hernández had lived in Seville, so that he was permanently confronted with news and objects from the New World. One needs to bear in mind that collecting exotica did not represent a phenomenon restricted to the higher nobility or courtly circles; rather, a broader milieu of interested observers had developed in which objects from the New World were passed on and collected. Even as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, the house of Pietro Martire d’Anghiera had been a transshipment point for novelties and the observation of exotica. In 1525 the Venetian ambassador Andrea Navagero reported that, while one could not find anything in print about the New World in Toledo, he would nonetheless soon be reporting ad nauseam about this since one could inform oneself about everything by way of d’Anghiera and the president of the Council of the Indies, García de Loaisa. The president of the Council owned an amazing bird without feet, and at d’Anghiera’s house Navagero saw gorgeous things made with feathers: “and every day one sees new objects.”60 In Seville, too, the cosmographer for the Casa de la Contratación, Jerónimo de Chaves, had a small private collection of curios. It contained a piece of a whale, a tortoiseshell, a crate with mussels, and a glass with preserved American artichokes. His colleague at the Casa, Rodrigo Zamorano, was fascinated by the fauna of America. 57 Bustamante García, “Empresa naturalista,” 47; Consulta, 20 March 1578, AGI, Indif. 739, n. 60; Baudot, Utopía, 471–502. 58 Portuondo, Secret Science, 168–169; Baudot, Utopía, 487. 59 Campillo Álvarez, Francisco Hernández, 38. 60 Andrea Navagero, 12 Sept. 1525, edited in Cartas de micer Andrés Navagero, 50.



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He owned an armadillo, snakes, and crabs, and on the walls of his house in Seville he mounted mussels, fish, and other stuffed animals that seamen had brought back to him from their voyages. Gonzalo Argote de Molina, finally, created what amounted to a regular museum in Seville. In 1570 Philip II was among the visitors to his collection of books, weapons, horses, animal heads, drawings, coins, and rocks from all over the world.61 In this way Seville became a place in which one was incessantly confronted with stories, natural history specimens, and artifacts from the New World. The second scientific expedition, led by the Valencian cosmographer Jaime Juan, began a few years after the return of Francisco Hernández. Its intellectual father was Juan de Herrera, the architect of El Escorial and cofounder of the Academia de Matemáticas at the court of Madrid. Over eight years, Jaime Juan was supposed to undertake a description of New Spain and the Philippines, and in particular he was to calculate the meridians, determine the local magnetic declinations, and observe lunar eclipses.62 Once again it was kept in mind that he should be given on-site support from the existing authorities as well as from Francisco Domínguez, who had remained behind in New Spain following the Hernández expedition. Jaime Juan was also accompanied by a draftsman and two servants.63 Very little information has come down to us about Jaime Juan’s actual expedition. On Saturday, January 17, 1584, he joined Francisco Domínguez and the archbishop in carrying out an observation of a lunar eclipse in Mexico City. Yet by June 1587 Jaime Juan’s death was already being reported from the Philippines.64 It is remarkable how both these scientific expeditions were not coordinated with Ovando’s project of entera noticia. Ovando and Hernández knew each other and were friends. It may be regarded as certain that Ovando supported the expeditionary project and as likely that he himself had contributed to its design.65 It is all the more striking that he did not integrate the project into his redesign of the Council of the Indies, so that (for example) he did not envision Hernández as a regular partner corresponding with Cosmographer-Chronicler in the Council of the Indies. It is possible that Ovando treated the two undertakings separately because he conceived of the botanical assignment given to Hernández as a field 61 Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature, 122–124; Portuondo, Secret Science, 96–101. 62 Bustamante García, “Empresa naturalista,” 49; Portuondo, Secret Science, 86–87. 63 AGI, Filip. 339, L. 1, fol. 228r–229v, fol. 235v–236v; AGS, Guerra Marina Leg. 144.19, Petition, 28 April 1583 along with the authorization granted on 5 May 1583 in AGI, Filip. 339, L. 1, fol. 228v. 64 Report of the Archbishop, 22 Jan. 1585, AGI, Méx., 336B, r. 4 (unpaginated); AGI, Filip. 18A, r. 5, n. 31 (20 June); AGI, Filip. 34, n. 75 (26 June). 65 Baudot, Utopía, 491; Poole, Ovando, 142–143; Campillo Álvarez, Francisco Hernández, 105– 106; CODOIN–E–1, 376–379.

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of work sui generis. Since Hernández began his expedition in 1570, but the office of the Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler in the Council of the Indies was only set up in 1571, it is also conceivable that Ovando omitted any reference to the overlap for tactical reasons. Otherwise, perhaps, the establishment of the cosmographer’s office in the Council of the Indies would have been jeopardized. The relationship of the Council of the Indies to Jaime Juan’s expedition turned out to be more crucial. Even in the run-up to the expedition, the Council of the Indies had asked Philip II if it might not be a good idea initially to scrutinize the suitability of Jaime Juan and his instruments. The Council also pointed out that, at this time, there was still one other cosmographer, Francisco Domínguez, busy with the description of New Spain in the service of His Majesty. Quite obviously, the Council felt it was being ignored, even though there were some contacts between expedition and Council: even before Jaime Juan’s departure, Juan López de Velasco had compiled some notes about what Jaime Juan was to investigate. The Chief Cosmographer of the Council of the Indies was also given Jaime Juan’s measurements of the lunar eclipse he had observed in Mexico City. Yet the two projects were not interlocked in any systematic way.66 In the ensuing period, additional scientific expeditions were undertaken, yet they were tailored to fields of observation with a narrower range of topics which, like the Pacific expedition of Pedro Fernández de Quirós from 1605 to 1606, focused on the search for unknown land. Beyond that, there was a variety of smaller-scale surveying and research voyages, such as the aforementioned initiatives undertaken by Ondériz in the mid-1590s. A comprehensive program to collect material for natural history, however, was hardly achievable by individuals, no matter how much they were supported by correspondents and local assistants. But how well did the other procedures of Ovando’s reform effort stand the test? Let us first take a look at reactions to the ordinance for the permanent description of America from 1573.

3 The permanent description of America As comprehensive and systematic as the abovementioned ordinance for the description of America and for the writing of a “Book of Description” was, any traces of the ordinance’s impact are extremely thin and hard to follow. Only at one place, in Quito, is it possible to adequately reconstruct the sequence of events 66 AGI, Indif. 740, n. 103, Consulta, 5 Feb. 1583. Additional documents: Portuondo, Secret Science, 89–90; AGS, Guerra Marina, Leg. 155.150–152; AGI, Méx. 336B, r. 4, note in the duplicate of the Report of the Archbishop, 22 Jan. 1585.



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and, by extension, how people dealt with this ordinance. The ordinance for the description of America, signed on July 3, 1573, was sent via the Council of the Indies on December 10 of the same year to the viceroys and presidents of the audiencias. These, in turn, were supposed to forward copies and partial copies of the ordinance to subordinate clerical and temporal officials. A good half year later, on August 6, 1574, we find the first entry into the minutes of Quito’s city council. It says there, with words that leave a somewhat aloof impression, that His Majesty orders that the report and the description “be given him by the kind of people who live in all of America.”67 The notary for the city council was then supposed to prepare a copy, and the municipal council was to convene in order to discuss the ordinance. Over the course of at least three meetings, through September 10, 1574, the text would then be read aloud.68 The next message comes from another authority. At the end of January 1575, three officials from Real Hacienda of Quito observed in a letter to the king that the ordinance had not even been forwarded to them. Assiduously, they promised to complete all the necessary tasks that were part of their office and send the results with the next fleet as soon as the ordinance would be made available to them.69 The city council itself seems no longer to have been actively pursuing this task of description at this time; in any event, it had to be warned by a superior authority, the audiencia that also had its seat in Quito, before a first draft was ready by the end of 1576. Finally, after a series of amendments and corrections, the report from the city council of Quito was handed over to the audiencia on January 23, 1577. The staff members of the Real Hacienda were faster, as they had announced they would be: their report had already been sent out at the end of 1576.70 The authors of both reports got around to discussing the reasons why they were only able to deliver partial reports or approximate data even though the ordinance expressly said that no circumstance whatsoever could release anybody from the obligation to undertake the investigations, descriptions, and dispatch of information. The officials of Quito’s Real Hacienda were not always able, for example, to come up with correct figures. In the thinly settled region that is today the Ecuadorian canton of Quijos, according to the authors, “there are neither officials, nor are the Indios assessed, so that the tribute that they have to give might be known.” It was assumed that up to 100 people would be living in the pueb-

67 AGI, Indif. 427, L. 29, fol. 5v–66v; AGI, Indif. 427, L. 29, fol. 95v–96r; Libro de cabildos, 178. 68 Libro de cabildos, 186. 69 AGI, Quito 19, n. 8, letter from Pedro de Valverde, Juan Rodríguez, and Gaspar Suárez, 25 Jan. 1575. 70 Ponce Leiva, Relaciones, vol. 1, 232–250 and 251–265.

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los.71 The city government of Quito had indicated 50,000 as the number of Indios required to provide tribute for the entire jurisdiction of the Quito Audiencia and used this number to project a total of 200,000 souls altogether. It was not even obligated to do this, since the ordinance did envision that city councils only had to provide details for their own jurisdiction, meaning the inhabitants of the city. Yet it was apparently easier, owing to the visita commenced in 1570 by the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, to get access to this larger number than to retrieve specific details relating to what was actually being asked.72 The notary for the city council of Quito listed in great detail the hindrances that had prevented him from delivering the very part of the description that concerned his own office and his area of responsibility as notary: He was very busy, ill, and indisposed; and, moreover, the fleet was just about to set sail. In the city council there was also no book and no collection about what His Majesty desired to know. An actual archive (the notary went on to say) was also missing, and the official papers that were located in the houses of the city council had been robbed, stolen, and destroyed. In brief: he could not, no matter how diligently he worked, produce the aforementioned description.73 Quito’s audiencia judges advanced objections more fundamental in character. In a letter to the Crown from December 23, 1574, in which they complained bitterly about the conditions for communication (they were waiting up to four years for replies from court and then, at best, received deliveries of letters already opened and rummaged through), they got around to discussing the instruction for the description of America: We believe that the reports about these things that Your Majesty has ordered be conducted will have little utility with regard to the governing of these lands. Difficulties are bound to arise from this, for we regard it as impossible that one will really understand local matters through any kind of report that one makes, and in the reports that are to be sent there can be nothing other than confusion and great inconsistency, for everyone will be issuing them according to their interests and their own plans.74

The oidores of the audiencia had clearly recognized that the invitation to permanent submission of information threatened to worsen the epistemic opportunities available to the court, since one would conceive of this as an invitation to have particular interests constantly transmitted. The oidores had a different solution to propose: One should send some trustworthy men along with a cosmographer. 71 Ponce Leiva, Relaciones, vol. 1, 241. 72 Solano and Ponce Leiva, Cuestionarios, 31; Ponce Leiva, Relaciones, vol. 1, 255. 73 Cited in Ponce Leiva, Relaciones, vol. 1, 264. 74 AGI, Quito 8, r. 8, n. 22, fol. 6v, 23 Dec. 1574.



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One would have to “discover [these tracts of land] on foot and see them with their own eyes.”75 Finally, the oidores pledged, admittedly in rather formulaic terms, that they would tackle their obligation to undertake a description. No report from the Audiencia of Quito has come down to us, however. In the reports that actually were delivered, something that is striking in stylistic terms is how frequently it is not stated what is, but rather what one knows from the stories and descriptions of others. This was a way for those issuing the reports to reflect upon their own epistemic situation and to mark what was contingent and uncertain about their statements. In the report of the Real Hacienda, for example, it is clear that even conditions in close geographic proximity to the report’s author were known only by hearsay: It is known that, 15 or 20 miles from this city, in the pueblos of Sicho, in the direction of the Pacific, there is a rich emerald mine ... and there were Indios who said that they had seen this and that it was very rich ... and there were Spaniards who took part in the discovery of the mine, and, as far as one knows, the emeralds were not taken from the side of the mountain ridge, but rather from the side lying in the direction of Puerto Viejo. An attempt was made to look for it, but nothing was found. When the leaders were in the process of discovering it, they said that they would not go any further, since they had seen the demon, even if they confirm quite certainly that this mine exists.76

It is relatively hard to explain the absence of additional and more comprehensive answers. The majority of the authorities to whom requests were written had apparently not even reacted, which may have had to do with a series of structural errors in the ordinance. It is obvious that the ordinance for the description of America asserted a claim that was grotesque and, in many respects, unattainable, both with regard to the complexity of the system to be installed as well as to the scope and abundance of details inherent in the individual tasks of description. Even under present-day conditions it is hard to imagine that the lengthy chains for the transmission or processing of information from the smallest offices to the center would not be ruptured or slowed, perhaps because individual partial reports get delayed or because only fragmentary, inhomogeneous data are available. It seems unrealistic, furthermore, that the description project could be conducted cost-free and without a staff of its own. In addition, there is the fact that the 1573 ordinance for the description of America was pursuing inherently ambivalent goals from its very inception. The ordinance was not only aiming, after all, at providing entera noticia for the center back home in Spain. “Very comprehensive knowledge” should also be provided to all those exercising an official func75 AGI, Quito 8, r. 8, n. 22, fol. 6v–7r, 23 Dec. 1574. 76 Ponce Leiva, Relaciones, vol. 1, 244.

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tion in the name of the king, to all local authorities, and this should be knowledge about every official’s province and jurisdiction. Whether and to what extent this secondary goal of enhanced knowledge, expertise, and attentiveness by officials on-site was attained is something that, owing to a lack of transmitted records, can no longer be determined. Lay participation was, however, indispensable for the pursuit of this secondary political goal of increased expertise and attentiveness. Some fragments and commentaries from the same period allow us to draw additional conclusions about the reasons why the information assignment of the ordinance was not followed. Before we take a look at these, however, it makes sense to turn our attention in somewhat greater detail to the phenomenon of how question lists were used, which we shall do in three sections. First, we shall take a look at the broad application of interrogative methods. I then turn to the emergence of scientific question lists for the trans-Atlantic territories, and finally to the replies.

4 Interrogative methods It is tempting to view the use of such question lists as an indicator for a new, administratively-friendly mode of processing empirical information. Like the modern printed form – the paper interface that standardizes communication with official agencies – question lists can help form input from offices into datasets that are as uniform as possible. In this way they facilitate administrative routines, avoid “special cases,” and allow recorded data to be processed with follow-up procedures that are loss-free. The creation of uniform datasets can only succeed if there is strict reduction, that is, when only a few parameters are requested and registered. To this end, modern administration uses not question lists, but forms that are more like cloze tests (with blanks to be filled in). Similarly structured documents already exist in the early modern era, frequently also in printed form, yet there is great change in the purposes for which these forms are used and the ways they are handled. Thus, the fill-in-the-blank text form was frequently used to confirm personal rights or privileges, e.g., as a letter of indulgence. In that case it was an unornamented version of a legal document and not an instrument for the serial recording of empirical data. Early on, however, we also find forms intended to determine the compatibility or noncompatibility of a candidate by using the slot-and-filler logic of a fill-in-the-blank form. Whoever was “compatible” could be granted a particular “passage.” As an early example we may cite a 1535 questionnaire from the Inquisition with which genealogies attesting to



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“purity of blood” (limpieza de sangre) were meant to be checked.77 In contrast to the modern use of forms, the comparable early modern questionnaire forms were not filled out by the respondents themselves. Instead, they served to enable the authorities entrusted with these status assessments to carry out the recording of the crucial parameters in a routine way. And not only that: by way of their strict procedural formality, they also helped produce the kinds of decision-making tools on paper that served to exonerate post decisionem, by keeping at arm’s length any suspicion of arbitrariness. Against this background it becomes clear how misleading it is to only focus on the single aspect of compiling empirical data, and to suggest that the entire purpose of using administrative written forms was to put the ruler in a position of “knowing” something. Instead, we must also take into account how the official compiling of specific parameters of reality also had an exonerating function, such as that of documenting how decisions were referred back to empirical circumstances. For the early modern era, too, we should not assume a fixed genre of questionnaire with a range of functions that is always the same. Although diverse question lists have come down to us, and procedures formed around questions may be regarded as typical, one needs to differentiate between different contexts for the deployment of question lists. Interrogations were already being used within the framework of visitations as practiced by the late medieval Church and religious orders, both as an instrument for interviewing witnesses and conducting hearings as practiced by courts of the Inquisition as well as for examining candidates being considered for clerical positions and canonization. In late medieval and early modern Spain, interrogations were also employed to examine such candidates as those applying for passage to America, seeking admission to a knightly order, or to examine the conduct of individual officials in the framework of the visita and residencia, two official examination procedures.78 Famously, the career of the writer Miguel de Cervantes was also examined via an interrogatory in 1578, when he requested an office in America as a reward for his services.79 In the early modern era, interrogatories thus represented a universal means for examination via questioning, one used both in a scientific-scholarly context and in the context of colonial rule, as in the

77 AGN México, Inquisición t. 42, exp. 2, fol. 7r–27v. 78 Fried, “Suche”; Beauroy, “Centralisation”; Stagl, “Dialog”; Duvernoy, “Dossier.” For an example of a interrogatory sent out in a visitation of the Order of Calatrava from 1313, see RAH, Salazar 37238, I–41, fol. 129–132. For a printed interrogatory used to examine candidates for the Order of Alcántara in 1569, see RAH, Salazar N–37 [61915], fol.  35r–37r. On interrogatories for official examinations, see BPR, II/2548. 79 CODOIN–1–25, 386–534.

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visitation of villages, appraisal of tax levels, allocation of encomiendas, or (as a kind of form-guided self-description) in the application for royal favors. In administrative deployment, questioners were often endowed with official authority or even with punitive powers. They gathered information by questioning, which meant that they proceeded orally as a rule. The question list then served as an aide-mémoire for the questions they were going to ask. All in all, therefore, our working assumption is that there was a broad interrogative culture, of which questionnaires in the narrower sense were just a part. Linguistic findings also reveal as much: in Spanish, cuestionario first became a familiar term during the eighteenth century, while interrogatorios meant judicial inquiries more narrowly. Normally, the question lists under investigation here were designated in a more roundabout way, e.g., as “instruction and memoria, about the reports that are to be prepared for the description of America that His Majesty has ordered be prepared.”80 Scenarios in which rulers do the questioning double the already existing power gap between the authorities and the subject. The right to initiate falls to the questioner, and the respondent is forced to react to the questions posed (and frequently only to these!). Yet in arriving at an assessment, caution is warranted, and it is important to look closely at how great the leeway was for answers deviating from the topic and at how questioning proceeded. The question as to what kind of authority was vested in the questioner should also not be summarily dismissed by a mere suspicion that more powerful questioners exercised a higher degree of pressure, i.e., that their higher rank entailed an equally large power gap to the detriment of those being questioned. Not infrequently, the very opposite may be evidenced. Powerful visitators and investigative judges were frequently desired by groups that were socially rather weak, including Indios, because these weaker groups increased their chances of being able to use the question dialogue to communicate in a way that bypassed local authorities (and, for example, reporting misbehavior by these authorities). They were thus hoping, to put this in terms of the vigilant triangle model developed above, for an official observer to drop by who was as assertive as possible toward local power holders. The immediate issue did not have to be an opportunity for reporting the misbehavior of local power holders, in other words, protected denunciation. Not infrequently we also find examples of subjects calling for a kind of “statistical” control by the administration. The Indios themselves, for example, had an interest in reassessing the Indian tributes (retasa) during the phase of massive decline in the indigenous population. They pushed for officialdom to undertake a new population census. With the help of the new count it would be possible to establish officially that 80 RAH, Ms. 9–4663, fol. 1r.



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fewer Indios were now living, and that the amount of tribute should therefore be corrected to a lower figure.81 In using question lists for purposes of describing the land, to which we now turn, gathering information was exempted from immediate judicial sanctions and from political or fiscal decisions. Collecting information was oriented toward a more abstract goal, namely entera noticia as a foundation for buena gobernación. That the question lists came from a “scientific” official, the Cosmographer-Chronicler, with answers directed to him, was also likely to have fortified this impression among the participants. It was also important that the question lists were sent by letter, so that the questions were not verbalized by foreign authorities, but instead discussed and answered by local officials themselves. Before we turn to the question lists in detail, an overview is required about the different initiatives of the Crown to procure information in this way. In the course of this overview, quite different aims and target groups will come to light.

5 The questions As early as in the Crown’s correspondence with Columbus, as we have seen, questions were repeatedly strung together. Similar lists may also be found later in the correspondence with earlier officials and, beginning in the 1530s, with the audiencias and viceroys. Among the higher authorities, at least, these lists also served second-order political functions. With the aid of these lists, not only was it possible for information to be gathered, but the opinions of officials working on-site could be requested and incorporated into decision-making processes. The scientific deployment of question lists (to which we now turn) represents a break with the tradition of how early question lists were used, inasmuch as secondary political functions were now playing at best a marginal role. This change in the use of lists began in 1556 with a plan drafted by Alonso de Santa Cruz, whom we already encountered as the geography teacher of Charles V and as a cosmographer in Seville. At this point Santa Cruz had already amassed decadeslong experiences in both the theory and practice of geography, for example as a member of the Cabot expedition to Río de la Plata, as author of an Atlas of all the islands of the world, with a book about longitudes, and as a map maker and cosmographer in Seville. In his libro de longitudes from 1555, he complained that there was only “mediocre knowledge” (mediana noticia) about the New World 81 Examples: AGN, Tierras t. 2941, segunda parte, exp. 113, fol. 281r–282r; AGN, Tierras t. 2964, exp. 108, fol. 323r–323v; AGN, Tierras t. 2964, exp. 17, fol. 90r–91v; AGN, Tierras t. 2964, exp. 62, fol. 211r–212r; AGN, Tributos t. 42, exp. 3, fol. 100r–128r.

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and announced that he would publish tables with precise descriptions about all parts of the world. In his memorial the following year, he then designed a model to which the question lists of the 1570s and 1580s were oriented. The concrete occasion was provided by a nautical expedition for which it was expected that the cost to the Crown would be kept low by having the ships conduct trade on the side. Santa Cruz regarded this as nonsense, since private persons would sooner or later convert their services into cash by acquiring special liberties, favors, or claims to office. The follow-up costs of a privately financed expedition would thus be extremely high.82 In order to organize things differently, Santa Cruz attached a comprehensive question list to a letter to Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, the second Marqués de Mondéjar and former president of the Council of the Indies. The list (Santa Cruz suggested) could be integrated into the instructions for nautical expeditions or forwarded to the viceroys and other officials.83 For the first two points of the memorial, Santa Cruz referred back to Sevillian experiences. The leaders of nautical ventures (capitanes) ought to understand the art of navigation and be in a position to check positioning data. Pilots, in turn, should master their instruments, especially the declination of their compass on their outbound voyage, so as to facilitate navigation on the return journey. A second section is devoted to the description of the land: it was important to find out if the new territories were mountainous or flat, rich in bodies of water and lagoons, whether the land made its inhabitants or visitors sick, what the kingdom and the province or region was called in the local language and in Spanish. The names of rivers, their sources, and their estuaries were also to be ascertained. The same was to be done for mountains and mountain ranges, for mines, gemstone deposits, and pearls. In a third section, the scope of interest is broadened, first so as to include a comprehensive natural history approach and then also to encompass an approach focused on cultural history. Thus, all animals and their peculiarities are to be described, the yields of the earth and the trees to be specified, the harvesting and sowing times as well as the use of plants explained. Finally, the borders of the provinces, their dimensions, and the most important cities and landscape forms were to be described, but also indigenous ideas about their world, their creation myths, their conception of human nature, and their religion, their temples, priests, and rituals. Should there be books dealing with all of these, they should be procured, together with a translator. The thirteenth question focused on civil conduct, services, weapons, and forms of trade, weights and measurements, the fourteenth on apparel, social conventions, marriage and life customs. In addition, inquiries 82 Cuesta Domingo, Santa Cruz, vol. 1, 65–68. 83 Portuondo, Secret Science, 108–115.



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were to be made into warfare, inheritance laws and forms of rule, as well as into other, unlisted attributes of the peoples found.84 Santa Cruz’s question list closed with a comment on procedure: one needed to write the proper names for places clearly. Thematically, Santa Cruz took his bearings from the contemporary genres of chorography as well as from historia naturalis and moralis. Since he also brought in experiences from his time as cosmographer in Seville, it may be assumed that the proposal to undertake an empirical land survey by way of a question list and using laypeople would hardly have seemed spectacular to contemporaries. It simply meant a shift in the area to which interrogative techniques would be applied. Santa Cruz had been questioned as a witness in court with interrogatories, had undoubtedly carried out serial interrogations himself in dealing with pilots, and without doubt he was familiar with older contracts in which individual discoverers were obligated to issue reports; as a scholar, too, he must have been acquainted with the tradition of asking correspondents for information with the aid of question lists. The transition from question lists as a form of legal scrutiny to one of empirical recording was fluid even in court cases. One need only recall the breadth of the topics and objects that were to be examined with the aid of question lists. Over and over again, the issue at hand was not merely individual deeds, but also the facts surrounding them, the circumstances that lay in the past or far away and that could not only be ascertained by serially questioning eyewitnesses. Historical and geographic questions also had to be answered since they had legal consequences. In 1512, for example, a determination was supposed to be made about whether the Central American region of Darién had or had not been discovered by Columbus.85 In 1532 six sailors from Sanlúcar de Barrameda were questioned as to whether they had set sail on the passage to America on ships that were overloaded. It was made explicit that “experienced” sailors were questioned, since it was important that their evaluation be included in establishing the circumstances of whether there was an overload and therefore a danger to freight and crew.86 The distinction between layman and expert, eyewitness and expert witness, was almost always fragile, since the issue at hand was not, as a rule, the “naked fact” but rather an assessment of the same. To this end it was important that witnesses had powers of judgment schooled by experience. Be that as it may: the question list compiled by Santa Cruz presumably made the rounds only at court, not in the New World. Following the other (just 84 Cuesta Domingo, Santa Cruz, vol. 1, 71–72. 85 AGI, Indif. 418, L. 3, fol. 306r. 86 Jacobs, “Funcionarios,” 382–383.

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described) initiatives from the 1530s and the first question lists drawn up by Ovando, which mixed the old business of official inspection of the Council with the new business of empirical data capture, the famous list of 1577 with its fifty questions was sent out as a printed interrogatory. In 1584 it was reprinted almost word for word and sent out again. Only these activities produced the serial replies known as the relaciones geográficas. At this time, too, a printed question list had already been circulated in Spain. The replies to the questions on this list – the so-called relaciones topográficas – have been preserved in eight hand-written volumes.87 In all likelihood they go back to an initiative of the royal chronicler Juan Páez de Castro. Páez de Castro wanted to obtain material for a topically broad and chorographically differentiated history and description of Spain, and he assumed that it would take longer to dispatch persons as a way of gathering information throughout the land than to have the description prepared by prelates, corregidores, and judges already resident at the individual sites. In this case, then, speed (and not distance) was the decisive argument for sending out the questions by letter and relying on local lay describers. In 1582, at a time when question lists had already been used serially in Spain and the New World, Juan López de Velasco was praising this method in communications with the king. Sending out written instructions for descriptions would not only save time (López de Velasco was saying). It would also result in fewer costs than traveling commissions would incur. The king was told he could accomplish no work more honorable or more useful than to have all the places and villages in his kingdom be depicted through pictures and written descriptions.88 Against this background of an extremely broad use of question lists, it is pointless to ask whether the question list about America emerged from those lists used for Spain. And stringing together different question lists for America in chronological order (1530, 1533, 1548, 1569, 1577, 1584, 1604, 1636, 1648, etc.) also fails to recognize that each of these dealt with a specific situation and assignment. It simply makes an enormous difference whether a question list is intended to present the topics investigated by the work of a commission to the viceroy, whether it arose in the course of an official investigation by the Council of the Indies, whether (as, for example, in 1553) it was almost exclusively about taxation, or whether the list actually served to procure information for a high-ranking compiler in the Council of the Indies, as was the case for the first time in the dispatches of 1577 and 1584. Since interrogatory procedures were among the every87 BFZ, Altamira 180, D. 80; BME, Ms. J. I. 12. 88 Campos y Fernández de Sevilla, “Relaciones Topográficas,” 389–390; Portuondo, Secret Science, 212.



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day occurrences of Spanish legal and administrative practice, one would basically have to adduce the entire field of interrogatory procedures as background to the use of colonial question lists, not a few individual measures of colonial policy. How the serial use of “scientific” question lists was imagined within the framework of colonial policy may be inferred from the real cédula that accompanied the question list of 1577. There had been repeated discussions in the Council of the Indies about how one might obtain a “certain and precise account and knowledge of America’s affairs … in order to better serve its good governance.” One arrived at the conclusion that the best thing would be “to make a general description of the entire estado of America,” as precise and secure as possible.89 So that this might succeed, the question lists should get all the way to the smallest places in America by way of a snowball system. The viceroys and presidents of the audiencias were to send the lists to the governors, corregidores, and alcaldes mayores, with as many copies as it was believed the recipients needed in order to forward instructions to all Spanish and Indian sites. The first thing the governors, corregidores, and alcaldes mayores then needed to do was create lists of all the places that fell within their area of jurisdiction, with explicit instructions to do this in legible handwriting. The follow-up step was then to have mid-level officials distribute copies of the instruction to the communal councils, and to priests and monks at Indian sites as well. The respondents were supposed to stick to the order prescribed by the questions. As soon as answers were available, they were to be sent back to the Council of the Indies via the same official channels.90 Within the individual villages, the recipients were supposed to deal with each reply themselves or hire persons to do this who were acquainted with the country’s affairs. This meant starting out by putting a caption on a sheet of paper containing the date, the names of the participants, as well as the names of those superordinate officials to whom the instruction had been sent. Then each chapter of the instruction was to be carefully read out, followed by writing down what was to be said about this. It was explicitly said that the proper method was to proceed chapter by chapter, and that one should leave any chapters where there was nothing to say without comment. All in all, one should express oneself “clearly and briefly” and “confirm what is certain and characterize as doubtful what [is] not [certain].”91

89 Real cédula, 25 May 1577, Solano and Ponce Leiva, Cuestionarios, 79–80. 90 Solano and Ponce Leiva, Cuestionarios, 79–80. 91 Solano and Ponce Leiva, Cuestionarios, 81.

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Figure 11: Printed interrogatory with fifty questions, sent in 1577 (AGI, Patr. 171, n. 2, r. 7)

The list comprised fifty sections, each of which stands for an entire subject area. In a first block (Questions 1–5) the compilers are requested to provide information about the history and geography of each place and region and about the



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landscape, soil conditions, and climate there. In the questionnaire it says, for example: First, in the Spanish settlements one should name the name of the region or province in which they are located, and what this name means in the language of the Indios, and why it is called that way. 2. Who was the discoverer and conquistador of this province, and on whose orders was it discovered, and the year of the discovery and conquest, everything that one can reasonably know about.92

Question 5 is then addressed to the history of the Indios and their settlements. Here, the demographic development of the Indios would also have to be addressed: “Are there many or a few Indios, and were there more or fewer in other times, and the reasons for this that one knows.” Section 15 builds on this by asking “if they [the Indios] lived healthier or unhealthier earlier, and the reason why this is so.”93 Additional questions were addressed to the geographic situation of the sites (6–8), to a given site’s name and the meaning of that name, and the number of the place’s inhabitants (9). A drawing of the place was also called for (10), which required calling on Indian helpers.94 Questions 11 through 15 were addressed entirely to matters involving Indian settlements, with a special focus on the precolonial era. The subsequent questions (16–21) are chorographical in nature, meaning that they demand data on such things as the terrain, soil conditions, rivers and waters, volcanoes, caves, etc. This was to be followed by a description of the flora, with special attention to agricultural crops, harvest yield, how Spanish plants might flourish in these regions, and medicinal plants (22–26). Shortly thereafter wild animals and livestock are the matters addressed, before attention is turned to a description of mines, quarries, salt works, and the form and construction methods for houses and possible fortifications (28–32). Following a question about the typical on-site forms of production, tribute, and trade (33), the question list is devoted to clerical and monastic institutions (34– 37). Questions 38 through 45 dealt with maritime matters – about such things as the depth of the harbor basin, the tides and currents – so, naturally, they did not concern many of the places where the question lists were sent. Finally, basic questions about regional living and economic conditions were addressed, such as questions about supplies (of kindling wood, water, etc.), and then again about the demographic development and its possible causes, as well as about soil and

92 Solano and Ponce Leiva, Cuestionarios, 81 93 Solano and Ponce Leiva, Cuestionarios, 81–82. 94 Mundy, Mapping.

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air conditions (46–49). Finally (50), all participants are requested to sign the paper before it is to be sent back promptly.95 Approximately two hundred replies on the question list from either 1577 or 1584 have been preserved, many more than for other initiatives. In 1604 an extremely comprehensive list with a total of 355 questions had been sent out, for which we have evidence of only twelve replies from smaller jurisdictions.96 Quite obviously, one had run up against the limits of manageability. In a letter from the Audiencia of Charcas to the king it says that, although one had indeed prepared copies of the instruction and sent them to two corregidores in the vicinity, one did not know if these had already undertaken anything, since it was, “if not impossible, at least very difficult” to find out so many things even about a single corregimiento. Nor was there much hope for the writer’s own assignment, to describe the entire audiencia district: The district of the audiencia is nearly 600 leagues [about 2,520 km.] long and about 200 [roughly 840 km.] wide. These regions are not like those of Spain. The major portion is mountainous and inaccessible. The rivers traverse unfamiliar, still unconquered regions, and hence one cannot know or discern very well where they are headed and how many leagues. Finding out which soils are fertile and which are not is something we regard as just as impossible as much of what the questionnaire contains. Nonetheless, we have distributed all the questionnaires across the entire district, but we assume that the governors, corregidores, and other judges will not venture to preoccupy themselves with these kinds of difficulties, since just finding the very simple things would require much time and large expenditures.97

Things got back to a reasonable level with the question lists from 1635 and 1648, although these lists also had a very specific objective, which was not conducive to eliciting a broad reaction. Their aim was to procure material for a clerical history of Spanish America.

6 The answers As was just made evident, the question lists could overtax the officials who had to process them, both with respect to the logistical manageability of this kind of descriptive task as well as in relation to the knowledge required. It will be shown, however, that there was more than one kind of response to the overwhelming 95 Solano and Ponce Leiva, Cuestionarios, 84–87. 96 Five have come down to us, see Gerhard, Guide, 31. 97 Letter from the Audiencia, 13 March 1607, quoted by Gandía, Francisco de Alfaro, 372–373.



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burden of the question lists. One phenomenon was a more or less tacit refusal to answer the questions properly. But there were also diverse cases in which significantly more was delivered than was actually requested. In order to answer the questions on the lists, smaller ad hoc commissions were frequently formed. The recipient of the letter, usually a corregidor or alcalde mayor, consulted aides and frequently also a writer. The composition of the group varied according to whether the site was Spanish or Indian, yet Indios were also consulted in Spanish sites, since they were the bearers of that knowledge about precolonial times to which some questions were addressed. Indios also drew the required pictures, so that a fascinating bundle of indigenous drawings have come down to us.98 The remarks made in the prefaces and postscripts to some answers allow us to reconstruct how things proceeded. At the end of the report from Minas de Zultepec (near Taxco), for example, it is averred: The said Mr. Alcalde Mayor has attempted to inquire into, to know, and to investigate all said chapters … with the greatest possible zeal, both by report from Miguel de San Pedro and Diego Suárez, people whom he has seconded to this assignment, as well as by others from whom he expects to attain clarity. And he has not been able to know and find out more than what is contained herein. And so that it is certain that he has fulfilled his duty, as he is obligated in the service of His Majesty, he has arranged for this to be recorded officially. To this end he has ordered me, the writer in attendance, to offer [the report] in official form.99

In some cases the authors got around to talking about the limits to their own knowledge and inquiries. For example, a supplementary sheet was appended to the brief report from Totolapan on which it said that one had composed the required report as well as could be done and was herewith sending the shortest and truest report possible, and yet: Everything that is said is rather general, for with the efforts I have undertaken no noteworthy or interesting things could be discovered. Therefore there will not be any reply to many chapters of the instruction and memorial.100

Other comments emphasized practical problems. In one, for example, it says that one has not sent along any picture of the site because no one could be found who could draw it. Details on the latitude of the site would be missing because nobody at the site would have known how to measure a celestial altitude.101 In a comment from Minas de Zumpango it said that one did not wish to say anything other than 98 Mundy, Mapping, 61–76; also the overview in ibid., 30. 99 Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 8, 187–188. 100 Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 8, 164. 101 Tetiquipa and Cozauhtepec, see Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 3, 183.

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that the midday sun throughout the entire year casts a shadow, toward the north for one half of the year and toward the south for the other half.102 From Tenguantepec it was announced that the question about the names and history of the site as well as about the number of inhabitants across time (Question 9) could not be answered “because one knew nothing about this and has not understood it.”103 A delicate matter was touched upon by Questions 5 and 15, which addressed changes in health conditions and the demographic development of the indigenous population. Seventy-three percent of the responses from New Spain did not even react to this part of the question list, and an additional seventeen percent stated that one did not know any answer.104 In the report from Chila there was this terse response: The pueblo has become much smaller because the Indios are in the process of dying out. It is somehow a sickly pueblo. Why nobody knows.105

Somewhat later, in response to Questions 16 and 17, which were concerned with the vicinity of the village and the health conditions of the region, it says: “The pueblo is located in a narrow valley, enclosed by hills. It is a vicious pueblo, with lots of wooded areas.” And finally: It is a somewhat sick pueblo, since the region is hot and a bit humid. There are different illnesses, the most common of which is a fever [malaria]. It is treated with a mixture of berries and moldy water.106

Just these brief excerpts illustrate the value of the relaciones geográficas as a historical source. The design of the survey, especially the inclusion of laypeople, resulted in the preservation of an enormous variety of voices and ad hoc appraisals from the early colonial period. In some cases it can be shown that the question list actually led to additional and farther-reaching inquiries being conducted on-site. In the course of these investigations, an internal dynamic developed leading to outcomes both unexpected and unsolicited. From Metztitlán, for example, the Council of the Indies received a drawing that explained the Aztec calendar. The conquistador’s son Gabriel de Chávez had informed himself about this with the assistance of the town’s oldest inhabitants. Chávez was shown

102 Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 8, 195. 103 Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 3, 112. 104 González Rodríguez, “Aprovechamiento,” 194. 105 Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 5, 45. 106 Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 5, 45.



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Indian glyphs that were copied and finally forwarded. Others, at the instance of the instruction, had paced off the perimeter of the locality.107 Practical difficulties, technical jobs like measuring and drawing, were presented above all by the demand for numerical figures, such as those relating to demography. Problems with a “statistical” recording of the area and the population were experienced above all by the higher authorities. As already described, the Audiencia of Mexico had been tasked earlier, in 1528 and 1530, with reporting the numbers of Spaniards and Indios at individual sites. Identical instructions had gone out to subordinate offices. The president of the Audiencia reported in 1531 and 1532 about the problems: the number of Indians was impossible to determine (the report said) since they frequently changed their residence and lived broadly dispersed or at inaccessible places. The largest problems were encountered by the contadores during their attempt to count the “subjects” of Hernán Cortés. These people evaded the counters systematically, disappearing with all their worldly goods on their shoulders, so that it was only possible to find a tenth of the presumed number.108 In the case of the Spaniards, it was possible to determine where they came from, how long they had been in the country, and what they owned. Assigning them to a place of residence, however, proved difficult, and it was quite impossible (the report continued) to get a record of Guatemala’s or New Galicia’s Spaniards or of those who lived from trade or handicrafts. De facto, this meant that the only group counted had been the encomenderos, who were the most important people anyway as far as impending decisions were concerned.109 In the reply to Ovando’s question list from 1569, there is one small but illuminating clue providing a sudden insight into the way reporters dealt with figures: It should be noted that, although the number of citizens for each pueblo is specified in this report … we do not know these for sure. Rather, what is approximately set down is what we more or less know from hearsay or what we suspect. And we say this so that on does not take one’s cue from this number, which is uncertain, for in some villages there will be fewer, in others perhaps more.110

On the whole, when it comes to assessing the opportunities for answering the inquiries, one would have to differentiate strongly from region to region: in 1533 the governor of Nicaragua asked the king to release him from this obligation.

107 Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 7, 55, 75; Acuña, Relaciones, vol. 3, 53. 108 AGI, Patr. 184, r. 16, fol. 1v (14 Aug. 1531); AGI, Patr. 16, n. 2, r. 29. 109 Konetzke, “Beschreibungen,” 18. 110 Quoted by García Icazbalceta, Nueva colección, vol. 2, 30.

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Locally, one had not been able to agree on any one procedure.111 The governor of Honduras pointed out that his province had hardly been subjugated and was not fully penetrated. In Peru, in turn, officials saw themselves unable to describe the status quo owing to the onset of a civil war there. Even later, when colonial rule had already started to make progress penetrating the region, the task of description remained a logistical problem. In 1578 Francisco de Toledo, the Viceroy of Peru, reported that responding to the questionnaire was not possible. “Your Majesty demands so many things.” Too many people needed to be taken away from their official business in order to answer the questions, and they also had to be paid for this.112 The limits to the principle of a more or less cost-neutral recording of Spanish America by officials of the Crown clearly emerge once more in a letter from the Viceroy of Peru in 1635. He had received a real cédula from the Junta de Guerra of the Council of the Indies demanding that he undertake, along with detailed maps of the entire country, a description of the minerals, fruits, livestock, precious metals, fortifications, bays, harbors, and shipbuilding materials of the territory, without neglecting to address details about the Spanish and indigenous population.113 In his letter of reply, the Viceroy began by pointing out that the history volumes written by Council of the Indies chronicler Antonio de Herrera and published between 1601 and 1615 included almost everything that His Majesty wanted to know. Even maps could be found there. In the 1629 bibliography of Antonio de León Pinelo, one could look up other authors who had written about America. According to the Viceroy, moreover, León Pinelo had been the relator for the Council of the Indies and had already delivered diverse papers and reports to the Council that were the basis of Antonio de Herrera’s work (among other writings).114 As if this were not enough: the viceroy had asked the cosmographer Francisco de Quirós for an opinion about what opportunities there were to carry out the called-for tasks of describing and mapping the entire viceroyalty, and the answer was appended. Quirós had first pointed out that many regions could not be seen and even fewer described, since the roads were difficult, the rivers torrential and without bridges. There were also regions that were entirely unsettled, while others had been settled by warring Indians. With such an enormous stretch of land, one would have to estimate three years’ time would be needed just to describe the coasts. One could imagine a rowboat with eight rowers, one pilot, and three sailors who would also be able, when necessary, to get their hands 111 Jiménez de la Espada, Relaciones geográficas, vol. 1, 270–271. 112 Konetzke, “Beschreibungen,” 19–20, 31. 113 Real cédula, 30 Dec. 1633, AGI, Indif. 429, L. 38, fol. 36v–37r. 114 22 April 1635, AGI, Lima 45, fol. 1r–1v.



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on firearms in order to defend the ship against Indians. For the interior of the country, in order to inspect the population figures with any accuracy, one would need, according to Quirós’s calculations, to cover a distance of more than 9,000 leagues (about 38,000 km), which would take about five years. In the provinces there were more than 1,500 places to visit, and one would have to stay at least one day in each of them, but often three or four days, in order to record the relevant information. All in all, therefore, a period of over seventeen years would have to be estimated for a comprehensive recording of the land if one did not wish to deliver descriptions of the kind that come from having to invent a great deal in exchange for not leaving Lima. Quirós reckoned on utopian costs in the amount of 63,000 pesos, without even including his own salary in the calculation.115 This makes it clear that the principle of using laymen to undertake the descriptions was bumping up against its limits. Making a geographical inventory of the entire region, which ultimately also had to be a comprehensive demographic analysis, would require another format, that of “traveling science.” Expeditions, however, were expensive and protracted, and in many cases, like that of Jaime Juan, led nowhere. Another difficulty arose in situations where descriptions had to contend not with the magnitude of their subject, but rather with the subject’s political significance. Part of this problem was the micropolitics of official appointments. For example, in 1575 the Archbishop of Mexico, Pedro Moya Contreras, had submitted a report about the entire clerical personnel of his archbishopric that, even if one cannot regard it as a direct reaction to the ordinance of July 3, 1573, did involve structurally similar data.116 He commented on this in a letter to the President of the Council of the Indies, Juan de Ovando, in which he emphasized that he had composed the report with great care and in secret, and that he had tried to get good information about everything. Particular care had been taken, he wrote, with regard to possible errors, specifically, “[so] that nobody suffers damage through the information of others.”117 Moya feared that he might be misleading in assessing individual candidates, which is why he promised to send additional statements and corrections with each outgoing fleet. Logistical problems and individual acts of resistance were certainly to be expected in an enterprise as extensive as the question list actions undertaken by the Council of the Indies. This makes it all the more interesting that we discern a countervailing phenomenon, the phenomenon of exceeding the assignment. 115 AGI, Lima 45, fol. 5r–63r. 116 On June 15, 1574, the Archbishop had been summoned to send lists of newly available benefices with every fleet, see AGI, Méx. 336A, r. 3, doc. 116, fol. 1r. 117 BNE, Ms. 20285, 3, no. 5 (24 March 1575), fol. 7r.

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Scholarly authors in particular did not let themselves be reduced to the role of merely reactive correspondents on-site. This attitude should not be interpreted simply as a love of writing (or inability to express oneself briefly) peculiar to their vocation. Their understanding of “text” and the function of written communication contradicted the assigned task, which was to process a form point by point. They viewed the question list, instead, as a thematic stimulus to present their own history of the region, something that ultimately needed to satisfy the requirements of the history genre more than it had to fulfill the strict instructions of a sequence of questions. It was entirely in this vein that the Bishop of Tlaxcala explained his way of dealing with the questionnaire to the President of the Council of the Indies in 1604: Even though His Excellency requests that one answer in accordance with the questions of the interrogatory as to what each site and each pueblo has: we started it this way and found it to be a great impediment. The impediment consists in making this report too cumbersome by repeating the questions in each pueblo and organizing the description more long-windedly than the Decades of Titus Livius ... And hence it seems sensible to me to categorize the questions according to their meaning …, and to move on from one genre to another, whereby one will answer everything that the interrogatory contains, and reading the compendium will remain bearable. I have seen to it that the reports are linked with each other. If something from the interrogatory is simply omitted, this should be understood as an indication that this issue is not one that exists at the site just discussed. In this way one saves oneself the effort of repeating many times that the subject of the inquiry does not exist.118

Such variations on the question scheme altered not only the scope and composition of the answers, but the communicative setting as a whole, since these alterations meant that the writers from the American periphery were, after all, tending to place themselves on equal terms with the chronicler at the Council of the Indies. They were presenting themselves as scholars in their own right, not as writing functionaries. Similar attitudes may also be found among relatively lower-ranking clerical officials. They overlap with the broader phenomenon of writing “history from below” by clerics, members of the religious orders, and also Indios.119 The Bishop of Quito had, for example, assigned the secretary of the cathedral chapter, Diego Rodríguez Docampo, the job of responding to the question list of 1648. The secretary had, in any event, been working for years on an historical work that he had started in reaction to an older royal summons to present the king with historical descriptions. He now understood his own contribution as a thematically suitable excerpt from his own historiographic efforts, which he 118 BPT, Ms. 99, fol. 9r–10v. 119 Adorno, “Indigenous ethnographer,” 384.



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made available in advance to the chronicler in Madrid. He had already concluded one of nine planned volumes and undertaken extensive archival research to this end. The work was moving ahead only sluggishly since he did not have any writers or financial assistance at his disposal. He asked His Majesty to forgive errors and authorize the version submitted so that it might acquire the necessary validity.120 Rodríguez Docampo, in other words, was hardly thinking that his text ought to supply only that material from which the Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of the Court, Gil González Dávila, might then compile an authoritative church history. That it was actually envisioned like this can easily be demonstrated in this case. In drawing up his Teatro eclesiástico de las Indias occidentales, González Dávila really did draw on some data from Rodríguez Docampo, though he did not name his source. In this as in other cases, he wrote tersely: “I have read in an interesting report.”121 The alternative understanding of what proper writing should be that was cultivated by these authors from the periphery, who nonetheless dutifully sent their texts on to Madrid, may be illustrated in the case of the Descripción de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala. It represents a reply to the question list of 1577 which, however, went way beyond what was asked for, with more than three hundred manuscript pages and eighty pictures. Its author, the mestizo Diego Muñoz Camargo, emphasized that he had more than thirty-five years of experience. He adorned his work with citations from the classics and saw it as so important that he traveled to Spain so he could hand it over to Philip II in person.122 In this case the question list was understood as a welcome opportunity to dedicate a chronology composed in person to the king. In this way, the “text” was understood, as Walter Mignolo has shown, as a “gift” bestowed on the king. In order to maximize this gift, it was important to write a great deal, aspire to an elevated style, and find a ceremonious way of dedicating and presenting the work. It is noteworthy that the Crown did not rebuff – indeed, could not rebuff – these kinds of gifts, even if they ran counter to the actual assignment; after all, they did constitute proof of a subject’s loyalty. The work was accepted by Philip II and placed in his private library.123 In this way the gift, from its production to its placement in the library, successfully avoided the pedestrian status of a mere answer to the chronicler’s question list. An additional case, that of Vasco de Contreras y Valverde from Cuzco, reveals a paradoxical effect of this development. Precisely because Contreras was aspir120 Ponce Leiva, Relaciones, vol. 2, 208, 212, 214, 322. 121 González Dávila, Teatro ecclesiástico [2001], vol. 2, 205. 122 Muñoz Camargo, Descripción; Reyes García, “Introducción,” 26. 123 Mignolo, “Mandato,” 455.

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ing to erudition, and hence striving for a professional way of writing the text, this imperiled the goal of creating empirical descriptions by an on-site observer. Contreras had composed an exceedingly lenghty treatise about the history and natural history of Cuzco which, however, had assembled major sections from previously published works about Spanish America. Two-thirds consisted of a copy of Antonio de Herrera’s Décadas. In this way, the Council of the Indies ended up receiving from Peru the copy of a printing that its own chronicler had published almost fifty years earlier. The Council also received, instead of new geographical data, a selection of quotes from previously published books. Cuzco’s geographical position, for example, was not something Contreras had even ascertained by measuring it. Instead, he conveyed to the Council of the Indies two – incidentally contradictory – pieces of information, which he had found in works by Antonio de Herrera and Giovanni Botero. The official reader in Madrid expressed his disappointment in a marginal note: Lovely that, even in the city itself, one has doubts about its polar elevation when, after all, it is so easy to establish this by observation.124

All in all, it may be said that similar effects of overfulfillment, stylistic overediting, or the application of erudite compilation techniques did not simply constitute misunderstandings, but instead represented changes in register already built into the fundamental ambivalence of political communication. They did indeed run counter to the actual task of supplying the chronicler with information. But they did so only because this was a better way to satisfy the requirements of another, ever-concurrent political function of premodern writing, namely to render a service. This was not about transmitting information, but rather about signaling loyalty – and about hoping for favors.

124 BPR, Ms. II/1280, fol. 1v.

VIII Consulting: scenarios for the application of knowledge The time has come, in a final chapter, to examine how the measures undertaken to obtain information about America affected affairs at court. Asking about knowledge at court as such would lead us astray here. It is possible to enumerate which opportunities a particular court had to inform itself simply by aggregating the descriptions and available expertise at its disposal. Yet the mere fact that, for example, Philip II could draw on the archive at Simancas and on the relaciones geográficas says nothing about whether this actually happened and, if it did, to what end. Instead, therefore, an attempt is made here to observe knowledge at court in actu, as it were, and to elaborate two typical constellations, or epistemic settings: first, the working conditions of the Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of America and then, secondly, those of the Council of the Indies.

1 Authorities without eyes: The dilemma of the court chronicler Even Juan de Flores, Chronicler of the Catholic Kings, had already been vested with the privilege of being able to communicate with everyone about history. Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, after all, had the best contacts and direct access to the papers in the newly created Council of the Indies. And Fernández de Oviedo, shortly after his appointment, applied to have free access to all archives as well as the right to demand detailed information from commanders of expeditions and conquests. These privileges meant a lot to Oviedo. In his work he repeatedly referred to the privileges of Charles V that were intended to compel all governing authorities, judges, and officials to report to him on everything historical by sending authentic testimonials, or notarized copies. Yet this chronicler in residence at Santo Domingo lacked institutional authority in practice. Others did not respond sufficiently to his official summonses, as he himself complained.1 With the creation of the dual office of a Cosmographer-Chronicler in the Council of the Indies, the principle of privileged access to sources reached its apex. The official instructions of 1571 provided that the chamber’s secretaries of the Council were to send the chronicler all papers and writing he needed in exchange for a receipt.2 If one adds the recently promulgated ordinance on the 1 Carrillo Castillo, Naturaleza, 79; Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general, vol. 1, 13; Gerbi, Naturaleza, 298. 2 Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas,” 49 (§ 122).

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permanent description of America from 1573 and the assignment of question lists from 1577 and 1584, it becomes evident that the official chronicler had enjoyed a radicalized privilege of access to sources since the 1570s. He had access not only to all the archival material, but also – as it were – to the New World as such: all American officials were obligated to provide the Cosmographer-Chronicler with information. In the Council’s new official instructions from 1636 the chronicler’s right of access was expanded once again, which facilitated a “hunt for books and manuscripts”: And should he determine or come to know that any kind of papers, reports, histories, or writings be in possession of a private person that are important for what he is writing or intends to write, he is to report this to the consejero who is the historical commissioner so that these [papers] will be fetched or copied.3

Inasmuch as it also fell to Juan López de Velasco, the Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler appointed in 1571, to render expert opinions about alternative descriptions of America’s history or cosmography, he monopolized more than just the source material. He could also control the production of alternative texts.4 This immense power led, as we shall shortly see, to paradoxical outcomes. While the chief cosmographers and chroniclers of the Council of the Indies were granted unusual access and equipped with excellent tools, they wrote and published relatively little. They did not exploit the full potential of their office. From 1571 through 1574, Juan López de Velasco worked on his magnum opus, the Geografía y descripción de las Indias. And by 1580, he finally issued a revised excerpt, the so-called Sumario. In both texts the answers from the relaciones geográficas were not incorporated, but instead there was merely material from earlier inquires – e.g., answers to the question lists from the phase of the Council of the Indies visitations – as well as sections from the literary estate of Alonso de Santa Cruz.5 The texts that he produced, therefore, do not match up with his own initiatives to acquire information, which had essentially been shaped, after all, by the question lists of 1577 and 1584. It is also striking that López de Velasco concentrated above all on geography and chorography in his Geografía y descripción de las Indias. To be sure, both the native inhabitants and their customs are also briefly addressed, yet the actual history of Spanish America is not touched upon. In 1588 the Council of the Indies consulted the king about whether one 3 Recopilación, libro II, título 12, ley iii. 4 On López de Velascos as censor: Friede, “Censura española,” 64–65; as censor of Lazarillo de Tormes see Portuondo, Secret Science, 155–156; Berthe, “Juan López de Velasco,” 143–144. 5 Arocena, Antonio de Solis, 29; Portuondo, Secret Science, 70–71 and 178–183, and Berthe, “Juan López de Velasco,” 154–156.



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might appoint another chronicler and cosmographer. There was dissatisfaction with López de Velasco since he had become secretary of the Financial Council and also had no time at all to complete his activities as chronicler.6 Since the beginning of the 1580s, in the meantime, he had concentrated on other activities, above all on those that – like an edition of the writings of Isidore of Seville – interested him as a humanist or that brought him closer to his goal of improving his position at court.7 After López de Velasco, the dual office of cosmographer and chronicler was divided. Arias de Loyola was given the office of chronicler in 1591; cosmography went to Pedro Ambrosio de Ondériz, whose work was just discussed. The chronicler Loyola was even more of a disappointment than his predecessor López de Velasco. According to his instructions, he was to deliver texts annually, yet three years after he assumed office his salary was blocked. He had not submitted a single line and defended himself by arguing that the clock should only start running when all papers were ready and the necessary selection had been made. While it was true that the papers had been handed over to him, there were too many of them and they could not be organized in such a way that one could have started to write.8 Owing to Loyola’s failure, Ondériz briefly assumed both offices again, before he himself died. He was followed as cosmographer by Céspedes, who also became Piloto Mayor for the Casa de la Contratación and therefore frequently resided in Seville. The office of chronicler was assumed by Antonio de Herrera, who as a result was also handed the materials on the history of America. Céspedes actually used the relaciones geográficas (on many of them there is a brief notation “Céspedes, visto”9), yet all he left behind was the Regimiento de navegación, that navigational instruction book featuring the cover picture with a ship passing the Pillars of Hercules, again, not a work of history. Antonio de Herrera (1596–1625) then became the first chronicler for the Council of the Indies who actually submitted a work of history. Between 1601 and 1615, his four-volume Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las Islas i Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano appeared in Madrid, a work that also goes by the name Décadas owing to its division of chapters. Both of Herrera’s successors in office, Luis Tribaldos de Toledo (1625–1635), librarian to Conde Duque de Olivares, and Tomás Tamayo de Vargas (1635–1643) again left behind only fragments. It was not until the aged Gil González Dávila (1643–1658) became chronicler 6 On deletions in the manuscript, see Berthe, “Juan López de Velasco,” 157; Consulta, 10 Dec. 1588, IVDJ, envío 23, 144. 7 Portuondo, Secret Science, 142–154 and 158–159, also 207. 8 AGI, Indif. 742, n. 153 and n. 153a (April 1594). 9 E.g. in RAH 9–4663.

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that there was again a publication of a historical work about Spanish America in the mid-seventeenth century with the Teatro ecclesiástico, which was entirely devoted, however, to church history. In 1607, the office of chronicler was assigned to two people, for a change. Philip III awarded Pedro de Valencia the title of a Cronista historiógrafo general de las Indias Occidentales. Between 1607 and 1613 Valencia, a humanist and student of Arias Montano, reworked the answers to the question list of 1604 and left behind fragments of a history of Chile.10 While the creation of a second chronicler appears like a relapse into the era when the court chronicler was an honorary post, shortly thereafter a countervailing trend caught on. Now, increasingly, lower-ranking officials who had worked for a long time in the Council of the Indies, and were therefore experienced in dealing with the materials on hand there, became involved in the description of Spanish America. In this respect, Antonio de León Pinelo was a special case. He was born in Castile around 1590, but as a young man he then went with his family to Peru, where he graduated in canon law from the University of Lima in 1618. Back in Spain he distinguished himself at the Council of the Indies – much like López de Velasco before him – by working on the codification of the laws, then as a relator, so that he soon became one of the foremost experts on America, both through personal experience and from having studied the Council’s documentation.11 In 1658 he became successor to the deceased Gil González Dávila as chronicler for the Council of the Indies, although by this time he had already done most of the research and the work. León Pinelo stood out both because of his humanistic education and his enormous diligence. Within the framework of the legal codification, he had worked through around five hundred register volumes, and he had traveled to Simancas for additional research.12 In addition to the annals of Madrid, among the works he composed was the first history of the Council of the Indies, several writings about the offices and administration of America, but above all – with the Epítome de la biblioteca oriental y occidental (Madrid 1629) – a bibliography of writings about America and Asia that is indispensable to this day. In his case, too, an Ovandian drive for order is once again discernible. He lamented the muddle of legal decisions, and that only in a very few matters of concern did the authorities actually possess noticia perfecta.13 León Pinelo carried out his work of compilation, while Tribaldos de Toledo, Tamayo de Vargas, and then González Dávila occupied the actual post of chronicler for the Council of the Indies, but either they wrote nothing or – like González 10 AGI, Indif. 874 (unpaginated); Paniagua Pérez, “Estudio introductorio,” 48. 11 Muro Orejón, Antonio de León Pinelo, 1–4. 12 BNE, Ms. 2939, fol. 179r. 13 Torre Villar, Antonio de León Pinelo; Sánchez Bella, “Estudio preliminar,” 18–19.



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Dávila – produced a compilation of church history riddled with errors and weak revisions. Starting in the 1640s, León Pinelo would have received support from an additional assistant at the Council of the Indies, an official who ultimately completed his description of America entirely without the official title of chronicler. Juan Díez de la Calle had been hired in 1624 as a temporary assistant in the Council’s secretariat for New Spain, and in 1647 he moved up to become the oficial mayor there.14 Two years earlier he had, on his own initiative, prepared a government handbook under the title Memorial, y noticias sacras, y reales del imperio de las Indias Occidentales, which was oriented around the model of the one book that was meant to provide the ruler with a comprehensive overview. It contained a description of all the authorities of Spanish America, taking into account demographic, fiscal, but also geographic data, and it was revised over and over again at least through 1659 by Díez de la Calle. The handbook illustrates how, ultimately, the project of scientific description was only conducted at the second tier of officialdom. While the official chronicler put together his Teatro ecclesiástico, Díez de la Calle was quietly working on his much more ambitious project. Interest in the instruments to be used for empirical recording had also shifted. In 1648 the official chronicler González Dávila had the question list that had already been used in 1635 by Tamayo de Vargas reprinted without revisions. For quite some time, actual interest in the answers no longer rested with him, but instead with Díez de la Calle. While he continued to work on ever-improved versions of his government handbook, he was also drafting a new question list for Spanish America, which has been preserved in two editorial stages at the Madrid National Library but was never actually used.15 Especially in the seventeenth century there was an increasing number of cases in which subaltern employees of the Council were the ones rendering the greatest services by way of descriptions, as did (for example) José de Veitia Linaje, who also published his Norte de la Contratación de las Indias Occidentales (Seville 1672) after decades of working in the secretariat for New Spain. All these developments, starting with historians who died without having written anything, and up to and including employees for the secretariat who took over the actual task of description, indicate that the policy of integrating “scientific” historians into the Council of the Indies did not really take hold. This failure could hardly have been attributable to the opportunities available for access to sources, given the privileges that the chroniclers for the Council of the Indies chroniclers were granted. Not only did the Council’s materials and those of private persons stand at their disposal; as the example of León Pinelo demon14 3 Nov. 1647, AGI, Indif. 436, L. 14, fol. 29v–31r; Gaudin, Penser. 15 BNE, Ms. 3048, fol. 85r–87v; BNE, Ms. 3047, fol. 18r–184r.

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strated, so did the archive in Simancas, into which files from the Council of the Indies were deposited in successive batches. There, in six days in October 1626, León Pinelo had worked his way through 17 boxes with over 400 sheaves, chiefly in the great hall of the archive, which was then called the sala de Indias. Alongside many reports about travels, discoveries, and conquests, he found records about Francis Drake, early reports by letter from Chile, lists of tax appraisals and tribute, the history books of Las Casas, as well as extensive bundles with descriptions of land and relaciones geográficas from the end of the 1570s. These items – barely used – had already entered into the archive. After the middle of the seventeenth century, the answers to the question lists from 1604, 1635, and 1648 were also handed over to Simancas.16 The first official chronicler, Juan López de Velasco, had also already been presented with extensive materials for his Geografía y descripción de las Indias. Yet, in composing the writing, he seems to have concentrated on preliminary works, especially those of Santa Cruz. The Council of the Indies reported to the king in December 1576 that some improvements had been undertaken on the manuscript. Overall, the work was evaluated positively, although not exactly overwhelmingly friendly: The book … is well-ordered and nicely wrought, even if he [López de Velasco] had made use of the papers and books of Santa Cruz, the former Chronicler of His Majesty for America. These had been, when the latter died, taken from the heir on the order of His Majesty and handed over to Juan de Velasco so that he might use them, as he might also [use] other papers that had been brought from America.17

By the papers from America what was basically meant were answers to Juan de Ovando’s question lists sent out in 1569. Santa Cruz’s papers, which Velasco received in 1572 from Seville, were as extensive as they were important: they contained (as an inventory reveals) not only materials on geography in general – including about forty maps of France, Italy, the British Isles, several maps of Europe and the world on parchment, illustrations of the coasts of America and Africa, some islands, and Mexico City, as well as the Islario by Santa Cruz and the Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster – but also genealogical and heraldic tables, several tree diagrams on grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, and logic, as well as history books, travel reports, and a cookbook. One hundred sixty-nine illustrations of provinces, islands, the mainland, and harbors should have been of special relevance. On the margins of the inventory the notation is found: “take 16 BNE, Ms. 2939, fol. 179r–182r; Bustos, Libro de las descripciones, 41. 17 Consulta, 7 Dec. 1576, AGI, Indif. 738, n. 249, fol. 1r. On the critical expert opinions of Juan Bautista Gesios, see: Portuondo, Secret Science, 186–193 and 197–207.



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those that are related to the harbors of America.” Fifty-three descriptions of the Viceroyalty of Peru were also handed over. Alongside a report about the conquest of Peru and a sheaf with forty-eight descriptions of Panama and Nicaragua, in turn, there is the short notation “let it be brought” (trayese).18 By contrast, López de Velasco first received the actual relaciones geográficas, the first one hundred thirty-three answers to the question lists from 1577, in 1583 when they were handed over by the Council of the Indies.19 This bundle had been perused by Velasco, in the course of which the chronicler must have recognized the significance of the source, though without evaluating the source for his own work. Instead, during the following year a new edition of the 1577 question list, only slightly modified, was sent out again, which produced additional relaciones geográficas. In case López de Velasco excerpted these sources, individual data from them could have entered into Antonio de Herrera’s work of history by way of this detour. We will return to Herrera’s history shortly. In two additional cases it is possible to reconstruct with relative precision which materials were available to the chronicler for the Council of the Indies and which were not. An inventory from 1597 illustrates how certain relaciones geográficas were not accessible to the chronicler, in this case to Antonio de Herrera. After being used by the so-called Junta de Contaduría Mayor – a commission assembled in 1579 out of councilors from the Councils of the Indies, Finances, and Castile that dealt with the perpetuity of the encomienda but that also took an interest in such things as the creation of an Atlantic armada for the protection of the colonies – these relaciones geográficas became part of the holdings of the Council’s cameral chancellery.20 A second insight is afforded by a memorial of Antonio de León Pinelo that was written after 1612. It is entitled “concerning the papers that I have for the description of America.”21 In the list, adding up to a total of one hundred and five documents, there is a variety of relaciones geográficas from the late 1570s and 1580s, but there are also additional geographical descriptions that had been written between 1608 und 1612.22 With this material León Pinelo had access to a very wide spectrum of materials. Also listed, for example, is a 1524 report (No. 34) by the companion of Cortés, Alonso de Grado, fragments of handwritten stories about the customs of the natives (No. 62), and lists, for example, about the “Pueblos de Indios de Nueva España” (No. 22).23 18 Minuta del inventario de los papeles, 12 Oct. 1571, AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 16, fol. 7r–8r. 19 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 16, fol. 11r–14v. 20 AGI, Contaduría 7A (unpaginated). 21 BNE, Ms. 3064, fol. 7r–8v. 22 E.g., from Santa Marta, see AGI, Patr. 27, r. 20. 23 BNE Ms. 3056, Nr. 34, fol. 7v–8r.

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Not listed, by contrast, are more comprehensive historical works in manuscript form to which the Council of the Indies also had access, increasingly so after the confiscation policy started in the 1560s. It affected all manner of texts that dealt with American natives, especially with their religious beliefs, though on a case-by-case basis the policy could also be extended to every kind of historical or geographical description. In 1572 the American audiencias were instructed to list all persons in their jurisdiction who had written or compiled any kind of history or who possessed historical reports or geographical descriptions. They were also instructed to search for analogous materials in the local archives, offices, and writing rooms. Subsequently, the originals, and in exceptional cases also copies, were to be sent as expeditiously as possible to the chronicler for the Council of the Indies in Spain.24 In this way, major sections of the missionary orders’ chronicles – such as Bernardino de Sahagún’s Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España – disappeared into the archives of the Council of Indies, where they were first rediscovered in the nineteenth century and then published. The royal order aimed in this case at suppressing additional reports about the rituals and religions of the natives. Thus, it was explicitly envisioned that the entire work be sent “without an original or a copy allowed to remain behind.” When, at the request of the Council of the Indies in 1575, the already published work Repúblicas del mundo by the Augustinian Jerónimo Román y Zamora was banned, this happened expressly because the writing dishonored the conquistadors and questioned the rulership rights of the Spanish.25 In Castile, too, works were confiscated or bought up, whether to keep them under lock and key or to facilitate the work of the official chronicler for the Council of the Indies. As early as 1553, for example, an order went out for the complete confiscation of all copies of the Historia de las Indias y conquista de Méjico by Francisco López de Gómara, the former house chaplain of Hernán Cortés. Then, in 1566, presumably at the behest of Alonso de Santa Cruz, the heirs of the Inquisitor Andrés Gasco were asked to hand over the chronicle of Pedro Cieza de León to the court. As early as 1571 the works of Las Casas, who had left these to the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid, had been handed over to the Council of the Indies. In 1579 they were then presented to López de Velasco and in 1597 came into the possession of Antonio de Herrera. In 1572 there was a renewed and intensive search for papers belonging to López de Gómara, this time in his home village. Whatever was found there went to the Council of the Indies. In 1578, finally, the American audiencias were again sent letters requesting that histori-

24 Baudot, Utopía, 471–502; AGI, Indif. 427, L. 30, fol. 233v–234v. 25 García Icazbalceta, Nueva colección, vol. 2, 267; Adorno, Censorship, 812–815.



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cally interesting material from across the land be sent to the chronicler for the Council of the Indies.26 A notable special case is presented by Antonio de Herrera’s term of office, in which it would not have been so much the suppression of works like these that was so conspicuous as it was the opportunity, which went hand in hand with these measures, to make use of these texts. In 1597 the nieces of the late Francisco Cervantes de Salazar received forty ducats so that they could hand over the manuscript of his Crónica de Nueva España. Herrera then transcribed extensive passages into his Décadas, not only from the Crónica but also from the Historia general de las Indias by Las Casas and from Cieza de León’s chronicle, that is, from all the manuscripts that had been collected by the Council of the Indies in the preceding years. Another work (including the maps it contained) stored in the Council of the Indies archive in manuscript form that Herrera used was the Sumario by López de Velasco. Herrera furnished it with his own insignificant comments and placed it as the introduction to his Décadas under the title Descripción de las Indias.27 This completes our overview of the office’s development and of the chronicler’s materials. The question that remains to be answered is why the chroniclers for the Council of the Indies, in spite of all the opportunity they had to obtain of information, were comparatively unproductive. To start with, it should be noted that the procedure had its dysfunctional sides. The sheer magnitude of the subject to be described was problematic: How should one individual historian and cosmographer describe all of Spanish America from afar and, at the same time, take into consideration additional aspects of such things as natural history as well as specifics about the indigenous peoples? The relaciones geográficas allowed for serial insights into important aspects of these questions, yet on the whole they hardly made a homogeneous set of sources available. For example, descriptions of a variety of places and regions were missing, while others overlapped and contradicted each other, especially in cases in which there were answers from several initiatives about a single region. In addition, to what degree the data were current varied quite a bit. While certain aspects of what was being asked, such as geographical details, basically had to be clarified only once, other matters, such as demographic information, needed to be updated from time to time. Certain sections of the answers therefore aged 26 AGI, Indif. 425, L. 23, fol. 8r–8v; AGI, Indif. 425, L. 24, fol. 290r; BL, Add. 33983, fol. 317r; AGI, Indif. 426, L. 25, fol. 134v–135r; AGI, Indif. 426, L. 26, fol. 178r; AGI, Indif. 427, L. 29, fol. 1r; AGI, Indif. 427, L. 30, fol. 281r–282r. 27 AGI, Indif. 427, L. 31, fol.  29v; Portuondo, Secret Science, 147; Ballesteros y Beretta, “Proemio,” LXIV– LXXIX; Arocena, Antonio de Solis, 37; Berthe, “Juan López de Velasco,” 164–165.

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rapidly, which would explain the inclination to keep sending new inquiries over and over again. The material thus tended to continue to grow and become confusing. The variations in detail that resulted from the different misunderstandings and self-interpretations of the respondents did the rest. The Count of Lemos, President of the Council of the Indies from 1603 to 1609, reacted to this typical problem of serial lay descriptions by revising one report that had arrived from what is today Ecuador. In this way he hoped to produce a kind of model report that the on-site describer could use for orientation.28 Basically, it would have been more realistic if he had taken into account several stages of editing for the material from the outset and thereby employed a team rather than one individual cosmographer-chronicler. Yet these are all technical problems for which there were already contemporary solutions. At the time, for example, one certainly did have recourse to techniques of compilation with which one could have assembled all the available information and have it published as a kind of register. The Teatro ecclesiástico by González Dávila showed how this could be done. The reason for this low productivity must therefore be sought in a methodical constellation beyond the mere material, which one may characterize as the dilemma of court-centered official chronicling. One of the main features of this dilemma can be deciphered from the words that Fernández de Oviedo prefixed to his General y natural historia de las Indias: But at least what I am writing will be a truthful history, far from all the fables that other writers boast of writing with elegant and unusual words, Latin or vernacular, without seeing it, from out of Spain, not getting their feet wet, on the basis of information provided by many people with very different powers of judgment. Thus they produce stories that are more oriented toward good style than to the truth, for just as little as the blind man can distinguish colors, in the same manner can the absentee bear witness about materials as he who views them.29

The polemic was directed against his predecessor, the humanist Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, yet it points to a structural problem that affects every kind of description made from afar, namely the problem of inadequate personal acquaintance with the subject. Since ancient times, historical descriptions were supposed to be based on appropriate testimony, as a rule by making sure that one had seen or heard something personally, or at least had access to trustworthy witnesses who had been present at the events or could report about them. For premodern authors this was not an exclusively learned concept, since the legal system did

28 Ponce Leiva, Relaciones, vol. 2, 98–100. 29 Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general, vol. 1, 9.



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cultivate comparable standards with its serial interrogations of witnesses.30 Interestingly, almost every chronicler of America availed himself of the legitimating phrase of “having reliable witnesses at [one’s] disposal,” even if the particular form of testimony varied from case to case. The attacks against court historians who hoped to describe the New World without crossing the Atlantic – “without getting their feet wet” – intensified in tone after a downright monopoly on historical descriptions became apparent as the office of the Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler was created and other people’s writings were confiscated in the 1570s. The official chronicler was not simply accused of personal ignorance in this context. Rather, as a rule, it was asserted that there was a structural impossibility of describing from afar. This had quite substantially to do with the communicative setting of the court. Pedro Cieza de León, chronicler of the conquest of Peru, characterized historical reports about America as “the most fantastic of all and things that never existed.” And Jerónimo de Mendieta, who was upset about the confiscation of the writings of his fellow Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, like his student, Juan de Torquemada, directly questioned the methods of the chronicler for the Council of the Indies. The latter was not familiar with America, the charge went, and was dependent on a few authors. Even worse: it was a mistake to have carried out the informaciones and inquisiciones only with Spaniards instead of questioning the Indios, for the latter were the goal to which the entire Conquista should be oriented.31 As early as the 1630s, another Franciscan working in Bogotá, Pedro Simón, defended his own historiographic work against that of the chronicler for the Council of the Indies. Since he was well acquainted with the Venezuelan provinces, he confidently asserted: I have been able to inform myself about the local things by visual inspection. I believe that without this I would not dare to tackle this work, so that I might not risk the danger of laughter, as others have done who write about the geography or the terms of these lands without mastering them because they have neither seen them nor been well informed and have to rely on reports of every kind.32

In his case, too, we again discern the structural argument of dependence on reports – the argument about being badly informed. But Pedro Simón went

30 Shapiro, Culture of Fact, 13, 35; Adorno, “History, Law and the Eyewitness;” González Echevarría, “Humanismo”; Herzog, “Sobre la cultura juridical.” 31 Cieza de León, “Chronica del Peru,” fol. A3a; Ramos Pérez, Chronicles, 46–47; Torquemada, Monarquía indiana, vol. 1, 59, and 379–380. 32 Simón, Noticias (1992), 17.

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further in stating his argument more precisely, whereby another, political aspect of the problem stood out: For certain truths one should not rely on all memories and even less on those that are sent by interested parties to the Royal Council and are located in the Royal Archives. Since they are made and sent out in order to request favors, they include the biggest frauds. They are pushing with their intention to have success, and so they ascribe deeds to everyone that they … have not done. In these countries I have seen reales cédulas that declared favors (mercedes) for persons and rested on intolerably false reports.33

The opportunities for the chronicler to obtain information, therefore, ran up against the same limits as the barriers facing the ruler. Neither epistemic setting suffered so much from the technical problem of how to transmit information precisely over long distances or via lengthy chains of mediators as they suffered from the unavoidable contamination of sovereign political communication by interests. Permanently blended into the desire of key sovereign authorities to know was the desire of petitioners to inform. The summons to submit objective descriptions of the situation, offices, and persons was gratefully taken up, since this sovereign request provided not just a garden-variety occasion for communicating one’s own interests, but also a rare opportunity to address the highest-level objectifying authority, that is, the very person whose job it was to write a royally authorized version of events. The other side of the coin to this privileging of officials therefore consisted in how the official became the object of interested parties to the highest degree. The unintended side effect of this privileging was that it asked for subjective representations and encouraged personal expectations; this was a side effect that ultimately rendered impossible the chronicler’s actual scientific assignment, the making of objective descriptions. This dilemma is inherent in the very construction of the office. Traditionally, one of the jobs of a royal chronicler was describing memorable and noteworthy deeds (res gestae) of the king. The very function of a cronista de Castilla or de Aragón went beyond this in that it increasingly also had to document the deeds of the great noble families in service to king and country.34 But what was actually meant to be described by the royal chronicler whom official instructions obligated to commemorate memorable and noteworthy deeds (memoria de los hechos memorables) in situations where both the king and the great noble lineages were absent? Under colonial circumstances, classical narrative models, like those of the genealogy or biography of a king, would not work. These models were, in any event, not suited to adequately capturing the special circumstances of these ter33 Simón, Noticias (1892), 343. 34 Nader, Mendoza Family, 19–35.



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ritories. On the one hand, this shortcoming contributed to an opening of colonial historiography toward other subjects and genres, such as those of natural history, anthropology, or cultural history. On the other hand, the role of the protagonist regarding “memorable deeds” here fell to the conquistadors, and ultimately also to those leading officials, judges, governors, etc. who administered large tracts of territory and participated in the creation and conservation of colonial rule. At the same time, these groups of persons had an enormous interest in being taken into consideration by the official historiography since this historiography offered the opportunity to inscribe their personal achievement in the official, royally authorized memoir. At stake here was not merely honor or posthumous reputation, but also securing social and economic privileging. The writing of official colonial history thus had a potential for constituting the social division of (colonial) society since royal historiography could provide a safeguarded directory of meritorious deeds (méritos) for those who were working at such a great distance from court and were afraid of not being recognized so far from the center of power. It therefore fell to royal history-writing to handle matters of distributive justice by guiding the gratification of royal favors. It was political in a dual sense: On the one hand, macropolitically, it could justify the work of conquest and missionizing ideologically and, in this way, protect dynastic or “national” claims and interests. On the other hand, micropolitically, it could play into the everyday business of the premodern world, which included rewarding meritorious deeds and securing political loyalty. As a consequence of this function of history writing – the function of regulating claims to the dispensation of favors, posthumous family reputation, and thereby social betterment – historical works became a highly political subject. Accordingly, too, it could not be treated adequately using learned techniques, but required instead political procedures for moderating interests. By way of two examples from the working practice of Juan López de Velasco and Antonio de Herrera, it will now be illustrated more concretely what these procedures involved. Shortly after his accession to office, López de Velasco was asked to become active as an expert evaluator in a dispute that had flared up over the history of Peru. In Seville the history of Peru by Diego Fernández de Palencia had already gone to press with a large print run of fifteen hundred copies when Hernando de Santillán raised objections to this book’s account of the Peruvian civil war. He succeeded in getting a restraining order to suspend the publication and sale of the work. Santillán’s accusation stated that Fernández de Palencia had depicted many critical events differently from the way they actually happened. Other things were concealed even though they should have been reported, according to Santillán. “Authority and the truth” would incur “great damage” as a result, especially since many persons performing loyal service were deprived of an account of their mer-

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itorious achievements in this chronicle, while others who accomplished nothing had achievements attributed to them. His Highness, according to Santillán, should therefore not pay them any heed. Santillán proposed having the work examined by the Chief Chronicler for the Council of the Indies, who would then either erase what was untrue or correct it.35 For his examination López de Velasco received an edition of the work furnished with the plaintiff’s marginal notes as well as a reply by the author, who made an effort to refute Santillán’s objection point by point. It was not only the history of Peru that was being tested, but also fundamentally the authority of the official chronicler: López de Velasco needed to show that he was also in a position to implement his superior access to sources in the practice of historical work and whether he could, to put it briefly, distinguish right from wrong descriptions of the past. Yet the evaluation finally submitted by López de Velasco shows that, owing to a lack of knowledge, it was simply impossible for him to reach a decision. Initially he asserted that in some cases it would be the author’s accounts, but in other cases those of the plaintiff, that would prove “convincing [on] grounds of probability.” But as a result of the documents submitted, neither the one nor the other position was provable. Before any possible printing one would have to conduct additional investigations in order to establish the truth. But, to all intents and purposes, these investigations could not be made, according to López de Velasco, since the witnesses, papers, and trial documents were all located in America. López de Velasco saw even more problems: One cannot make this investigation without stirring up a lot and scratching at scars, which would be damaging to the honor and the reputation of many persons in general and in particular.36

The evaluation was addressed to the king. It therefore emphasized the political dimension of historiographic work, but then it also got around to discussing the methodological consequences for the official historiography: If what was meant could be found out and it were correct and everything were true, then it still seems appropriate to take into consideration if it would be of use to His Highness to characterize these provinces and persons – with regard to the loyalty that one should expect in the future from those provinces in a public and royally certified history – as disloyal and suspicious. They would be dissatisfied with the leniency of Your Majesty and disinclined with regard to that which could be offered them in the future.37

35 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 19, Block 2, fol. 1r. 36 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 19, fol. 1r. 37 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 19, fol. 1r.



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The official chronicler was thus asserting that a description could be historically correct but simultaneously politically damaging. Taking into consideration both political opportunity and his own, methodologically precarious isolation from actual circumstances and sources, therefore, he found it impossible to undertake the necessary distinction between the “true” and “false” report. In case a printing of the work were to be considered, according to López de Velasco, the first thing that should take place – so that this could happen “free of troubles” – would be to send a few sample volumes to the Peruvian audiencias. In the hands of trustworthy persons there, the volumes should be read out to the elders on-site who knew something about the events and could warn about errors, misrepresentations, and gaps. This kind of caution might not be necessary in the case of “historias antiguas,” but in the case of histories “de tiempos presentes” it would, “owing to the danger of erring and insulting.” Otherwise, the entire print run should be completely withdrawn so that individual copies of the book would not reach America.38 For the moment, we may note that the dilemma of the court chronicler consisted in a dual impossibility of producing objective descriptions. On the one hand, he was charged with handling descriptions that were freighted with interests; on the other hand, the task of composing an authoritatively valid chronicle stood under the pressure of enormous political expectations. Naturally, both aspects had to do above all with contemporary history, which as a result was avoided by the chronicler for the Council of the Indies. López de Velasco switched to the comparatively nonpolitical area of describing land, and Antonio de Herrera only executed his Décadas, published between 1601 and 1615, for the period through 1554. Neither Velasco nor Herrera could avoid applying procedures meant to ensure that a political consensus could be achieved and that the different interests at stake were mediated: López de Velasco had proposed an alternative to censoring the actual volumes produced by Fernando de Palencia; instead, he suggested letting them circulate among a selected circle of readers at the site of the events. This would also have meant that a participatory procedure would have been applied within the realm of the episteme, like the procedure with which we have already become acquainted, whereby political decisions made at the center were sent back to commissions, such as those of the viceroy’s court. What was Antonio de Herrera’s solution? In order to answer this question, one first needs to make it clear that Herrera was the first chronicler for the Council of the Indies who even put a work into print. Because only a royally authorized description of the “Deeds of the Castilians” could go to press, political attention to the content of the book was bound to grow – indeed, so much so that Antonio de Herrera, even before the volume in question came out, had to stand trial. The charge came from Francisco Arias 38 AGI, Patr. 171, n. 1, r. 19, fol. 1r.

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Dávila y Bovadilla, the Count of Puñonrostro, a consejero of the Royal War Council and grandson of the conquistador Pedrárias Dávila.39 Dávila has been regarded (down to this day) as particularly cruel, among other reasons because he had beheaded Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the Spanish discoverer of the Pacific, his own son-in-law. Yet Puñonrostro contradicted this assessment and intended to restore the honor of his house through the courts. But how could the results of a royal chronicler’s researches be rebutted? At first, the count pointed to procedural errors. Herrera, he claimed, had illegal access to papers of his grandfather, in that these documents had been delivered to the chronicler by the secretary for the Council of the Indies, Pedro de Ledesma, without a comprehensive and notarized registry of the materials being made prior to the handover. He demanded that the papers be returned: all one needed to do was carry them across the street, from the house of the chronicler into the house of the count.40 The chronicler defended himself by referring to the prerogatives and duties of his office, which forbade him from taking away the papers at the instigation of a private party. The accused could also not be deprived of something necessary to his defense. He had first gotten around to his work in 1531, still had much to do, and was busy “with a lot of work studying, viewing, commenting on, sorting, and comparing.” To deprive him of these papers would be tantamount to robbing him of his office.41 Puñonrostro, in order to substantiate his own position historically, was now even demanding papers from Simancas. Both sides also had their positions on the case printed and circulated. In order to prove Pedrárias Dávila’s cruelty, a matter of some controversy, Herrera cited older remarks by historians, including Las Casas’s unpublished Historia. Sharpening his argument by pointing to one case of special cruelty suited the royal chronicler just fine inasmuch as this distracted from the larger issue of the kings’ and the nation’s responsibility. Even Theodor de Bry, the Flemish engraver who had fled Spanish prosecution, now had the honor of being cited as an authority by a Spanish colonial historian. Whether and how incidents that went back more than eighty years could be proven was something a judicial expert opinion from Bologna should clarify.42 Right at the start of that report’s introduction it was asserted that the main job of the historian was to depict deeds in a precise and truthful manner. Here Antonio de Herrera was more conciliatory. On a notepad was recorded what he wanted to say by way of answering the demands of Count Puñonrostro. There it says that the historian had made the count an 39 Case record in AGI, Escribanía 1012A and AGI, Patr. 170, r. 19. 40 AGI, Escribanía 1012A, fol. 1r–24r. 41 Antonio de Herrera, 26 Sept. 1602, AGI, Escribanía 1012A, 7, fol. 1r. 42 Caso que se consulta en conciencia, AGI, Patr. 170, r. 19 (unpaginated).



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offer of toning down some details of his picture, though admittedly without really touching the matter itself. He would rather let himself be torn into a thousand pieces. He requested that one should take into account his position as official chronicler who had to defend the truth and honor of kings, the nation, and the Council. But it would also be more just if the atrocities committed in America reflected on those who had committed them rather than on the kings or the entire nation.43 In one of Herrera’s letters the argument for distributing historical guilt was sharpened once again: If one were to save Pedrárias, it would have to look as if the Catholic Kings had agreed to exceeding their most pious directives.44

On September 19, 1603, almost a year later, a judgment was rendered. The judge Gil Ramírez de Arellano decided in favor of the chronicler and stipulated in which form and with which formulations the history work of Antonio de Herrera might be published. At first glance this appears like an early victory for science and scholarship, yet the appearance is deceptive. At the same time Herrera was at work writing an Historia del mundo (as if America were not enough), and he made sure he was well paid for the positive portrayal of Alessandro Farnese in this world history. Farnese’s son, Ranuccio, who had far-reaching career plans, had been confronted about the behavior of his father by way of two middlemen with incriminating documents. In return for payment of a sufficient sum, these sources were not taken into account. Instead, Ranuccio was allowed to read along, passage by passage, about how Herrera fabricated the historiographical picture of his father. A final payment was negotiated for a favorable conclusion of the volumes. Herrera, moreover, viewed payments of this kind as both appropriate and customary, as one can see from his correspondence with one of the two negotiators: other princes had paid up to one thousand scudi.45 Antonio de Herrera, who insisted in the manner of the times on the objectivity of the historian in methodological tractates, could be counted among the “writers paid for lying,”46 yet this need be of interest to us here only to the extent that it brings home how the pressure of interests on the genre of historiography increased with the degree to which the author had authority. In this respect, pre43 AGI, Patr. 170, r. 19 (unpaginated). 44 AGI, Escribanía 1012A, 23, fol. 1r. 45 AGI, Patr. 170, r. 19 (unpaginated); Ballesteros y Beretta, “Proemio,” XXXVIII–L; Kagan, Clio & the Crown, 191. 46 BNE, Ms. 3011, 141r–149v, esp. fol. 146r; Girolamo Conestaggio distanced himself from history writers: “che non sono scrittore condotto à mentire,” see Conestaggio, Dell’unione, fol. 8a; this had already been discussed by Kagan, Rey, 51.

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modern official history writing suffered from a conflict of goals. To the extent that it fulfilled its political function, its methodological opportunities for being able to elicit objective descriptions melted away. The Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of the Council of the Indies reacted to the intense pressure of interests by introducing a series of measures, measures like the participatory cooperation of the affected parties, by judicial-like decisions, or just – and this proved to be the actual fate of the official historiography on America – by low productivity and a complete omission of contemporary history.

2 Everyday decision-making: The epistemic setting of the Council At the beginning of this book I recounted how, in 1518, Magellan sought out King Charles in Valladolid in order to convince him that the Molucca Islands fell into the Spanish domain and could be reached by a westerly route. Astonishingly, he succeeded in making his case even though the “beautifully painted globe” that he had brought along, and on which he traced the route to be sailed with his finger, still had a blank white patch covering the decisive location. The anecdote draws attention to the blind spot of all attempts to write a history of knowledge about the political when the decision itself, of all things, cannot be seen. All that remains is the possibility of describing the setting within which the decision was reached. Part of this setting is the globe with the white patches and Magellan’s appearance before the king. Whenever the following account turns to everyday decisions at court, three aspects of the conditions built into the decision-making apparatus need to be understood. First, it needs to be determined what function material carriers of knowledge had, whether maps, globes, sketches, but also accounts, calculations, or written reports were at hand and were actually used or requested. These material carriers of knowledge modified the epistemic setting, but they did not operate autonomously. As in the case of Magellan’s globe, human actors needed to be added, people who could persuade with words (or gestures). Secondly, therefore, when it comes to assessing the relationship between knowledge and decision-making, one needs to pay attention not only to the material conditions, but also and always to the concrete acts of communication and the performative interaction between media and actors. Thirdly, there are interpreters who immediately show up on the scene offering rationalizations of the decision-making process, like Las Casas and Pigafetta in this case. They seem to be describing decision-making processes from the outside, but they themselves are also suggesting that Charles’s advisers and Charles himself let themselves be persuaded by the globe. Analogous state-



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ments seem to point, like evidentiary clues, to the inside of the black box, yet at the same time they weave interpretative patterns that lie over the events like a hermeneutic veil. Their contemporary function just was not to elucidate analytically a decision-making process. They served much more to ensure a proper fit between events and contemporary interpretations or rationalizations, that is, to create a high level of plausibility. They informed about contemporary interpretations, about modes of plausibility and discursive possibilities for integrating events into larger narratives, which we have to read carefully against the grain. They did not represent any kind of key to the black box of decision-making. The world simply does not, as Foucault said, turn a readable face our way.47 Contemporaries were already making a “texture” out of this.

2.1 The little tools of colonial knowledge To enumerate, even if only summarily, the “little tools of knowledge” that the Council of the Indies had at its disposal, seems impossible. Potentially, the Council could know almost everything. León Pinelo discovered a half thousand register volumes in the 1620s when he took up the work of legal codification, and these volumes document only the correspondence of the Council, even if they do so with the complete wording. No minutes were taken of actual Council meetings, but the resulting consultas, the resolutions passed, the bulls discussed, or the descriptions on hand in the Council were written up and registered in inventories. In addition, there are extensive registry books that, for example, register the petitions submitted,48 as well as diverse everyday bureaucratic tools meant to facilitate access to the Council’s own stocks of documents and registers. As the Casa de la Contratación was subordinate to the Council of the Indies, it would even have been possible for the latter to fall back on its comprehensive stores of information, such as its collections of passenger data. In practice, though, such cases of administrative data exchange were quite rare; it was more common for there to be correspondence about operational questions, especially about seafaring, trade, and also about the postal system, since letters from America went via Seville to the court. While the number of register volumes belonging to the Council of the Indies grew constantly, the correspondence stored there and additional files, such as those relating to the conduct of trials or to visitations, entered either into the Council’s own archive or ultimately into the archive at Simancas in batches. The 47 Foucault, L’ordre du discours, 55. 48 AGI, Indif. 1084, L. 1–2; 1085, L. 3–5, and 1086, L. 6–7.

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first delivery of files by the Council of the Indies can be demonstrated as early as 1544.49 At the end of the sixteenth century, the required voyages to Simancas were conducted by the porter of the Council, later also by subaltern members of the secretariats. They bought or made their own crates and chests for the transport. Once the official regulations of 1636 went into effect, the deliveries to Simancas were supposed to take place at the end of each year. With regard to the central archive at Simancas, a new policy of concentrating archival material, a recogimiento general de papeles, commenced in 1572.50 The policy was justified by pointing out that the king often lacked documents to assert his legal claims within the church patronage system (patronato real). Papers from posthumous estates and archives in Burgos, Oviedo, Valladolid, Valencia, Toledo, and Rome were recorded in order to withdraw holdings and relocate them to Simancas. In 1573 the archivist of Simancas, Diego de Ayala, also visited Madrid with a royal commission to acquire court documents. He succeeded in doing this only in the case of the Contaduría de Cuentas, some secretariats, and the Council of the Indies, yet Ayala did begin his return journey with one hundred twenty chests of material. In 1577, there are renewed reports of a transport, this time in which a good ton and a half of documents from Madrid were handed over to Simancas. Theoretically, the documents submitted were not withdrawn from the clutches of the Council of the Indies. For a complete inventory of all writings was to be kept in the Council, an inventory that itemized the individual call numbers of the destination. A key to the crates and chests of Simancas was also kept in the Council.51 All this creates the impression that orderly and easy access to all documents in the Council, the Council archive, and in Simancas might have been possible. The road to Simancas, however, was long and quite rarely taken.52 And the archive of the Council had been established “because experience shows that many important papers have gone lost.”53 Shortly before, Alonso de Santa Cruz had complained about losses in the Council of the Indies. In his capacity as royal cosmographer, he had requested writings from the estate of the inquisitor Andrés Gasco. These writings did arrive at the Council of the Indies, but after just a few days they were already nowhere to be found. A description of “all the places, regions, and harbors” of New Spain that had been made under Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza had also disappeared. Ovando summoned the porter of the Council, 49 AGI, Indif. 427, L. 30, fol. 18r–18v. 50 Briefly on this, Diego de Ayala, 6 April 1577, IVDJ, envío 16, doc. 25, fol. 56r. 51 IVDJ, envío 16, doc. 27 and 61; IVDJ, envío 16, doc. 59, fol. 3r; AGI, Indif. 427, L. 30, fol. 18r– 18v. 52 Bouza Álvarez, “Guardar papeles,” 9. 53 Recopilación L. II, tít. II, ley Lxvii.



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who was still able to recall the description of New Spain but knew nothing about its whereabouts.54 For the sixteenth century, at least, it is misguided to imagine the archive for the Council of the Indies as a department or even a room of its own. It is more likely to have involved a domain of official rooms belonging to the Council with shelves of its own and lockable chests. Nor did locking away papers in the Council archive always indicate that a document possessed information of high value. Over and over again, pieces moved into the Council archive that, although one did not wish to see them circulating outside the Council, no longer had any value even for the Council itself. The archive served in such cases as a secure site for forgetting and for the non-use of information. The nine-volume legal codification of Diego de Zorrilla, for example, was already ready to print at the beginning of the seventeenth century. But since it displeased the Council, it was not presented to the king so that he might approve its printing; instead, it was put into the archive of the Council. To this day the manuscript is nowhere to be found.55 A somewhat better fate was in store for the work of the Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler Juan López de Velasco: When the Council of the Indies rendered its final expert opinion in 1576 on the Geografía y descripción de las Indias, among the reasons it recommended the work was because it “was appropriate that Your Majesty and the Council have it, for the things that present themselves every day.” Ultimately, Velasco’s work was available to the Council of the Indies in eight handwritten copies, which is only known, however, because this made Philip II apprehensive. In 1582 he ordered that it was better to store the work in a chest and only bring it out in case of need. Henceforth, then, it was no longer ready at hand in the working rooms or meeting halls of the Council of the Indies, but stored instead in a closed chest, presumably also in the archive of the Council. A copy of the Geografía y descripción had been handed over to the king himself.56 On the whole, documents more closely followed their compilers, they circulated at court and among the consejeros, so that one must assume that, instead of their being a topographically fixed system of storage, the administration of files was more personal. This gave rise to small, hard-to-control private archives (archivillos) in the homes of the consejeros and secretaries, collections whose precious content often only came to the attention of the Council again when the estate of the person concerned was inventoried. The presumably original last will of Isabella the Catholic was first found in 1573, for example, by Diego de Ayala, 54 Presumably, the work in question was the chronicle by Cíeza de León, BL, Add. 33983, fol. 317r–318r. 55 Manzano Manzano, “Proceso recopilador,” 14–15. 56 AGI, Indif. 738, n. 249, fol. 1r; AGI, Indif. 740, n. 91; Portuondo, Secret Science, 196.

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the archivist of Simancas, among the materials of Quintana the secretary. A handwritten book about the dioceses of Granada was initially found in the hands of a secretary of Charles V who then had lent it out to the Archbishop of Seville and the General Inquisitor Fernando de Valdés. The latter gave it to Diego de Espinosa, who then bequeathed it to Mateo Vázquez. We know the pathway taken by this book because Diego de Ayala was following its tracks in order to requisition it for Simancas.57 The fate of this one book brings home how documents and books wandered around at court. They helped secure and cultivate relationships and patronage networks. It was not their actual content but their symbolic value in the exchange of gifts that functioned as the purpose driving these writings. A key role in this kind of transaction belonged to the secretaries, so that one must differentiate between whether they were handling information as “courtier” or as functionary. This competition of roles may be illustrated by the case of the secretary Antonio de Eraso, who reported the Council’s consultations to the king between 1571 and 1586. After his death the contents of his desk were inventoried. Found listed there were leather-bound, handwritten books on the commentaries of Pope Paul IV, but also books on the manufacture of clocks. In addition, there were works by Labrit de Navarra, the former Bishop of Comminges, but also (the list continues with printed books) the Politics of Aristotle, then an edition of Virgil, as well as a collection of Spanish expressions from the fifteenth century. At most, the only writing truly related to practical work appears to be one about holding visitas.58 None of the documents concerned America. The contents of the desk belonging to Antonio de Eraso apparently served more to stabilize the secretary’s standing at court than to facilitate bureaucratic working processes. They may be contrasted with contemporary efforts at orienting secretaries entirely toward the functionalistic problem of bureaucratic information management. In the draft of a secretarial instruction guideline written by Juan López de Velasco in 1585, for example, it is recommended that secretaries keep especially important papers under lock and key and not entrust them to anyone. Members of the secretariat’s staff (oficiales) might be in possession of ordinary documents, although these assistants were supposed to have sworn an oath to store papers securely and secretly. Everyone was supposed to keep an exact list about his documents so that everything could also be located and nobody was hiding papers others were seeking. Originals were to be copied and then handed over to the archive. In no instance should an original be removed from the offices or desks of the secretaries without making an entry in a book 57 IVDJ, envío 16, fol. 45r; IVDJ, envío 16, doc. 20, fol. 1r. 58 IVDJ, envío 16, fol. 55r–55v.



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listing borrowed items, even if a consejero or president of the Council were the one making the request. Papers were also supposed to be stored in crates or closets so that they could not fall victim either to humidity or mice.59 Where the working practice of the Council was concerned, one cannot assume that the entire holdings of documents had relevance in equal measure. Instead of proceeding from the assumption that there was, as it were, a flat structure for the papers, it makes more sense to assume a pyramid-like structure for the archival finding aids, that is, a structure consisting of a few books, lists, or graphic tools that were used with great frequency and either partially replaced the rest of the documentation or facilitated access to it. Yet the futile search for documentation remained an everyday problem whose consequences José de Veitia Linaje briefly addressed in 1678 when he completed a register for the consultas of the Council of the Indies: After I have kept the papers of the New Spain Secretariat for about 30 years and seen the diversity of the materials that exist there, the different resolutions, and the risk that one [resolution] contradicts another because the older one is not available, … it seems to me that I could invest my zeal and my work into nothing more useful than the production of this volume … To follow [the older orders of the king] there is no other means than to keep all of these in mind like a sketch map. 60

These remarks by Veitia Linaje provide the occasion for taking a closer look at three resources – first, books that were at hand at the workplaces of the Council; secondly, the archive of the Council; third and last of all, maps and globes. With regard to the books, it is helpful to look at the inventory lists of the council that were regularly kept every time there was a change in office for the porters. In 1606, accordingly, the Council owned only eighteen books, including one on clerical and secular law, an edition with commentary of the Siete Partidas, the legal codification of the laws of Castile, the legal codification of the laws of America by Diego de Encinas, a book about the Council of Trent, the official instructions for the Casa de la Contratación, the Leyes de Indias, and a dictionary of the language of Peru.61 The content of the archive and the private book holdings of the Council were, however, not counted. Presumably, too, the only books itemized were those kept at the conference hall. The archive of the Council was not inventoried prior to the eighteenth century, but it was also rarely consulted in the daily routine of the Council’s sessions and the issuing of documents. Evidently, its content was repeatedly reduced from two 59 BME, Ms. L. I. 12, 2, fol. 187r–188v: Advertencias para instrucciones de secretarios. 60 AHN, Codices L. 752, fol. 1r. 61 Muro Orejon, “Libros,” 6.

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different directions, until it reached the point where the only material left was more or less meaningless. For one, the secretariats developed their own archives that picked up materials essential to their operations. For another, the material that was historically valuable entered into the archive at Simancas, so that the archive that actually belonged to the Council of the Indies soon stopped being of interest either on historical grounds or for reasons having to do with the practicalities of rule. In 1709, when an audit of the Council’s archives was sought, those seeking to undertake the review found themselves somewhat at a loss as they stood in front of only three crates with a few Papal bulls, briefs, and notices.62 Consequently, permanent archivists were first hired for the burgeoning archives of the secretariats, and in 1785 (the Council of the Indies was now located outside the royal palace in the former Palacio de Uceda) the motion to appoint an archivist for the Council’s own archive was rejected. The Council’s archive consisted only of a large cabinet in which there was a disorderly collection of printed books, medals, and coins. In 1766 Manuel José de Ayala proposed moving the Council’s archive to one of the meeting halls and entrusting the key to a consejero. The secretariats would get their own archives; the books, maps, plans, and documents on the three shelves in the conference halls and in the archive’s cabinets were to be inventoried.63 It was not until the nineteenth century that the holdings of the different archives at the Council of the Indies were brought back together and inventoried. Now, too, it became evident which books and documents had been located in the archives of the secretariats in the meantime. The only items left over from the early colonial period were a few reports about travels and expeditions. Among the handwritten and printed books, religious-clerical themes were dominant, followed by books on history (José de Acosta, Juan de Torquemada, etc.) and on law. Completely missing were the relaciones geográficas, which had been transferred to the archive in Simancas after the middle of the seventeenth century. Among the works of earlier Council Cosmographer-Chroniclers, only an edition of Herrera from the eighteenth century could be verified. As a helpful reference work for geographical questions about America, there was Joseph Antonio de Villaseñor’s Teatro americano.64 Cartographic representations of America as well as globes do not get mentioned either at the level of official instructions or in Juan de Ovando’s writings on reform. There are however, many indications that the Council had cartographic tools with which it worked. Since the 1530s, the Council of the Indies insisted that the nautical charts created in Seville be brought to Madrid for viewing by 62 Gómez Gómez and González Ferrín, Archivo secreto, 191–192. 63 Muro Orejon, “Libros,” 8–9. 64 Gómez Gómez and González Ferrín, Archivo secreto, 195, 202–212.



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the Council. In 1533 the court bought a world map from the Sevillian cartographer Diego Gutiérrez.65 Shortly thereafter Council Secretary Juan de Sámano confirmed that Charles V and the Council of the Indies were pleased to have a globe of Sebastiano Caboto’s along with two additional maps that had apparently also been acquired from Seville.66 In 1534 the president of the Council tried to obtain instruments from the estate of the cartographer Diego Ribero, specifically an armillary sphere or globe. That same year, the Council of the Indies had presumably sent a globe coming from Caboto to Seville for repairs.67 Shortly thereafter there was a request for the map that Hernando Colón had been charged with making in 1526. It was to be issued in two copies, one for the Casa de la Contratación, one for the Council of the Indies. Likewise, in 1535 an esfera de bronze was purchased from Domingo de Alcega “in service to the Council,” presumably an armillary sphere or a celestial globe.68 This way of dealing with maps and globes was apparently regarded as a matter of course, so much so that this helps to explain why these tools were not described in great detail. Alonso de Santa Cruz depicts the fate of a map at court that illustrates this iridescent status of maps caught between everyday media matters, questionable representations, or else valuable “mirror reflections of the world.” The map in question is apparently a copy of that padrón real that had been produced in 1536 at the instigation of the visitator Juan Suárez de Carvajal but which occasioned a heated dispute among the participants in the project. Alonso de Santa Cruz had participated in the making of this nautical map, but even then he had distanced himself from it under protest because of the procedure that had been ordered by the visitator. Here he depicts what then befell this padrón real at court: Carvajal took [the map] along to court, and some among the Council [of the Indies] who understood something about this, since they knew from me in what manner it had actually been made, did not think much of it and saw to it that little attention was paid to it. For in that it was passed on from one person to another, they caused it to fall into pieces. I then had it hanging on the wall of my lodgings in my home in Toledo almost a year long.69

In this case, then, the latest cartographic product from the Sevillian Casa de la Contratación, had the whiff of an inglorious dispute among its producers clinging to it. And one of these, Alonso de Santa Cruz, saw to it that this map was not even 65 AGI, Indif. 422, L. 15, fol. 109r; AGI, Indif. 422, L. 16, fol. 48, 4 Nov. 1533. 66 Medina, Veneciano Sebastián Caboto, vol. 1, 333–334. 67 AGI, Indif. 1961, L. 3, fol. 126v; AGI, Indif. 1961, L. 3, fol. 161. 68 AGI, Indif. 1961, L. 3, fol. 276r–276v; AGI Indif. 434, L. 7, fol. 146v. 69 AGI, Just. 945, fol. 168–169.

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used in the Council of the Indies, but was instead devalued bit by bit. Afterwards he hung it on the wall like a trophy. All this Santa Cruz relates to the consejero of the Council, Hernán Pérez de la Fuente, thirteen years after the events. Pérez had just gotten the assignment of visiting the Casa de la Contratación once more, and two weeks after the letter from Santa Cruz he received a second letter, this time from Charles V, in which the assignment was specified with regard to the maps. Pérez should convene a junta of cosmographers and improve the padrón real, but in so doing he should take into consideration more than just the ocean and the coastline: Some things from geography should also be put on it, places and settlements that are not in the padrón because it is nautical. And in this regard much depends on a map that the Viceroy of New Spain has sent from these lands and that is also in the possession of Secretary Juan de Sámano.70

In this connection Charles V speaks explicitly of the “padrón that is located in our Council of the Indies” and orders that the extensive changes to the Sevillian copy also be adopted for the one belonging to the court. Then a difference in perspectives on usage comes into focus: The padrones are not “universal” because they lack more than thirty degrees in the direction of both poles. Their makers were probably thinking that the rest would never be necessary, and so they left the padrón blank beyond the sailing routes. This remark is followed by an indication of why Charles V is so concerned at this moment about the missing regions near the poles. The letter gets around to discussing the Arctic Ocean and the Codfish Islands – usually a reference to Newfoundland – and then adds: “to which, as it is said, Sebastián Caboto would like to go.” The former Piloto Mayor and opponent of Santa Cruz had already deposed himself by this time and was in service to the English.71 With regard to how the Council of the Indies was cartographically equipped, it may be shown that the Council received one of the two copies of a world map (padrón universal) that had been made in 1553 by Jerónimo de Chaves. The second copy went to the Casa de la Contratación.72 In 1611 some maps also show up in the inventory of the Council, specifically two large parchment maps and six smaller ones by Andrés García de Céspedes. The maps by Céspedes seem to show that the padrones particulares that became established in the Council’s everyday usage were the very ones that he himself (as we saw above) had approved only after 70 AGI, Indif. 1964, L. 11, fol. 287v. 71 AGI, Indif. 1964, L. 11, fol. 287v; Sandman and Ash, “Trading Expertise,” 830–832. 72 AGI, Indif. 1965, L. 12, fol. 8r–8v.



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years of wavering. In 1626, finally, we have evidence of two globes in the large meeting hall of the Council.73 To what extent Council members also had something to do with cartographic aids outside the Council’s office rooms must have been substantially determined by their involvement in learned circles. Ovando, in any event, had not only astronomical instruments and nautical charts in the Mercator projection at his disposal, but also a world map of Sebastián Caboto’s.74 It is hard to determine when and for what particular purpose Council members resorted to aids like this. The next section will nonetheless attempt, first, to establish some specific scenarios of media usage and, finally, take a closer look at the forms and social conditions framing decision-making situations.

2.2 The performance of media and mediators Maps and globes, then, were available at court. But when were they really “consulted”? At first we must draw attention to a problem with sources. Precisely because cartographic aids represented everyday media that one could literally consult en passant, for example in order to locate a place or illustrate geographic facts, their usage is hardly reflected in the sources. Access to maps and globes was only expatiated when the thresholds of the everyday and trivial had been crossed, that is, when a specific geographic space had become highly politicized (we had seen this in the wake of the Treaty of Tordesillas) or when problems arose, even if the problem was simply finding the proper tools. In complicated cases, at any rate, not only were maps presented; experts were also invited. As early as the end of the 1530s, Sebastián Caboto had been consulted by Charles V several times on geographic questions. Twice in 1537 he was admonished because the globe sent to Seville for repairs had not yet become available again. The following year, finally, he was personally summoned along with map materials and the globe – repaired or not – to court. Charles V ordered him with these words: Because I want to inform myself through you about some matters useful to me, I order you that you … come to this court and bring along a new nautical chart when you have finished making one, as well as a globe.75

This is also interesting because at this time Caboto had already had his scientific authority called into question. It may therefore be suspected that Charles V was 73 Muro Orejón, “Libros,” 13. 74 BME, Ms. L. I. 12, fol. 257r–260r; BFZ, Altamira 2, D 53; or CODOIN–E–94, 391. 75 AGI, Indif. 1962, L. 5, fol. 153r, 5 May 1537.

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especially interested in Cabato’s personal familiarity with the North American coasts, which he had attained on one of his trips to Labrador while he was still in service to the English. In August 1554 Alonso de Santa Cruz and the cosmographer Alonso de Chávez were summoned in haste to court, yet once again the reason was not mentioned.76 The haste may be explainable by the impending departure of Charles to Brussels; in any event, as early as the autumn of 1554 there was a cosmographic junta convened at court in which Alonso de Chaves ultimately did not participate, although those in attendance included his son Jerónimo along with Alonso Santa Cruz, Pedro de Medina, Pedro de Esquivel, Pedro Ruiz de Villega, and the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at San Zoilo, Rodrigo de Corcuera.77 This personnel composition points to the conclusion that the junta was deliberating about scientific questions with political utility, presumably questions like the possibilities for determining longitude at sea. The abbot, for example, had certainly been invited because he had supposedly invented an apparatus for determining longitude. On the basis of a note from early 1588, Geoffrey Parker was able to show how the Spanish resorted to geographic tools in preparing the Armada’s attack on England. In order to identify the place names of a route list, the secretary in charge had looked them up in the “teatro,” that is, had consulted Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis. The king himself had also consulted two maps. The engravings of the maps from Ortelius’s atlas were, in any event, hanging on the walls of El Escorial.78 In a second instance from 1566, appropriate maps could not be found initially. Miguel López de Legazpi, who had started researching the Philippines from out of Mexico, asked for supplies to equip a fortified site on the Philippines. At court a junta of cosmographers had been convened again, this time to examine whether the Philippines fell within the domain of the Spanish. Seville had been asked to send precise maps.79 Those maps belonging to the court could not be found. On the margin of the consulta from the Council of the Indies, Philip jotted down a few annotations directed to the attention of the issuing secretary, Francisco de Eraso: Tell them that they should make an effort to find the papers and nautical charts on this subject and store them in the Council of the Indies – the originals are to be brought to Simancas and copies to the Council. I believe that I have some, I recently wanted to search

76 AGI, Indif. 1965, L. 12, fol. 188v–189r; AGI, Indif. 425, L. 23, fol. 96r–96v. 77 AGI, Indif. 425, L. 23, F. 109–109v. 78 Parker, Grand Strategy, 24. 79 Goodman, Power, 58–61; Portuondo, Secret Science, 184.



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for them in Madrid, for when I have them, then they must be there. Upon my return I will search for them should I think of it and have the time, which was not now the case. You, Eraso, could also have something of this. It would be good if you look after this and give it to them, so that it is stored in the way I am saying and copies are always available in the Council.80

The cartographic materials also did not always stay at fixed sites. They followed the logic of the media at court that circulated with persons or were stored in archivillos or individual desks. Over and over again, little notes like this are found, jottings that testify to the search for material carriers of knowledge at court. The dispersal of different documents across the court may be characteristic of the epistemic setting, yet another factor is structurally more significant, namely the constant intervention of advisers, experts, and representatives of interests. The entera noticia of the decision-maker was constituted, generally speaking, as a composite. And it was constituted situationally, namely whenever media and acts of communication gelled into a specific constellation that suggested certainty to the ruler. This is easy to see by looking at a statement made in 1599 by the young Philip III, whose political inexperience and extreme dependence on advisers also (incidentally) comes to light in the remark. He had received news of the arrival of the fleet in Seville. His comment elucidates the connection between the act of (written) reporting, the process of (oral) advising, and that of a sovereign decision: Thank God that the fleet has arrived and at such a convenient time, I thank you for the zeal with which you have sent me this report, and it would be good if you were also to alert (avisarme) me about everything else, as one says here, and when I have seen, I will order that which one advises (acordarme) me here, for I can [then] do this with full notice (entera noticia).81

But if this situational concurrence of papers and acts of advice was so characteristic of the decision-making setting, it hardly seems appropriate to follow the paths of written communication and those of oral and personal interventions separately and successively, as if the papers were moving of their own accord and in silence; instead, it makes sense to focus more intensely on the scenarios of concurrence. This seems plausible since the phenomenon of concurrence between (frequently oral) advice and (written or cartographic) media was already built into the procedures of the Council and consultation with the king. The handling of documents, the procedure of the consulta, and the role of additional circles of persons – these 80 AGI, Indif. 738, n. 82, fol. 1r. 81 AGI, Indif. 745, n. 236.

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interrelated processes need to be examined here anew and with greater precision. Only in this way can we discern how the connection between proposals (supplications, expert opinions, expressions of opinion) and Council decisions, and then again between the Council’s proposal and the king’s decision, were brought about in practice within the framework of the consultation. A whole book could be written just about the different techniques of everyday bureaucratic business – the business of receiving, opening, reading, summarizing, forwarding, and discarding letters and documents. Here we merely note that there was a change in the way incoming letters were handled. In the ordinances of 1571 it was still emphasized that all arriving letters be read one after another in the Council and that this business of opening and reading should be given precedence over all other Council activities. Only thereafter should the cameral scribes produce an excerpt, which presumably was then also used as a basis for the actual hearings of the Council. In later ordinances a complete reading of letters in the Council is no longer envisioned. A summary was supposed to be produced immediately.82 In Council meetings members were then supposed to comment on those portions of letters or excerpts from letters that required a sovereign response. At this juncture a distinction was made between those letters or sections of letters that were “merely” informative – here, occasionally, the words “one need not respond” (no hay que responder) were written on the margins – and other letters or excerpts that demanded a reply. Political advising, thus, was preceded by a process of reduction that summarized the often lengthy letters under some main headings. This technique of excerpting, the sacar relación, is easily comprehended because the summaries by major heading are often found as dorsal notes on the back page of the actual letter. This task was carried out by relators or secretaries, whereby very different degrees of summarizing may be found. Basically, a distinction may be drawn here between marginal or dorsal notes that were concise, so-called brevetes, and dorsal notes that were more comprehensive. Brevetes are concise catchword-like descriptions of a document that do not extend beyond one to three lines.83 For that reason they were affixed on the lower margin of the front page (of reales cédulas etc.) or outside on the reverse page, since in this way it was easy to leaf through a bundle of documents in the manner of a flipbook. This allowed the king to make a quick thematic perusal of the documents submitted to him, and for secretaries and oficiales it facilitated rapid access to individual documents within larger bundles. The example shown here displays two dorsal notes from different states of a document’s processing. First, 82 Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas,” 375 (§13). 83 Gómez Gómez, Forma, 224;



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the words “ovando, visita de Indias” were set down on the back. Later, apparently when the document got to be bundled with others from the visita, a more precise and differentiating designation was added: “N[úmer]o 9. Apuntamie[nto] acerca de las ordenanças de la visita del Consejo” (“No. 9: Notes recorded on the Ordinances of the Visita of the Council”).84 While these kind of brevetes, therefore, should actually be understood as something rather like an instrument for orderly arranging writings, longer dorsal notes point in the direction of an intermediate area between the written and the oral. The following example depicting a dorsal note shows (initially) how a quick overview about the basic data contained in the letter could be accomplished. It is translated here in the interest of better legibility.85

Figure 12: Example of a short dorsal note (brevete) (IVDJ, envío 88, doc. 542, 3, fol. 1v)

Short summaries like these were meant either to provide the king himself with a quick overview or to be read out by the secretary or reciting consejero. Even when they were not read out, owing to Philip’s preference for written consultations, they did represent the basic structure of a conversation, for the king could use the spaces left free for comments or answers; in other words, he could make a “dialogue” out of the document. This phenomenon of an oral form represented in written form deserves closer scrutiny, especially since it allows insights into the concurrence of information and decision-making. The central document in this respect is the consulta, that written version of Council recommendations that was submitted for a decision or read out to the king. It organizes the dialogue between the Council and the king, since the king’s answers were immediately set down on the free spaces of the pages. It is called a resolución and seems to document the moment of decision-making, that is, to represent a spontaneous but binding reply of the king to the immediately preceding exposition of the issue.

84 IVDJ, envío 88, doc. 542, 3, fol. 1v. 85 IVDJ, envío 16, n. 115.

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Figure 13: Example of a more comprehensive dorsal note (IVDJ, envío 16, n. 115)

To His Majesty Simancas 1574 Diego de Ayala, 16 July - that he know that the writings that the Secretary Quintana had already brought to court, among them, as he believes, there may be found the original Testament of the Catholic Kings and a section of the Investiture of the aforementioned Kings in the Kingdom of Naples - that His Majesty order that they be brought into the Archive of Simancas, owing to their importance for the royal demesne His Majesty orders on 30 August of the same year that one remind him



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The king’s answer then motivated – in case the matter was finally decided – the issuing of a real cédula, real provisión, or other documents in which parts of the wording of the actual inquiry or preceding supplication were frequently also entered. Simple communications or news about recent developments were communicated in the same manner. The consulta shown on the next page shows how Philip II was informed on September 9, 1578 about the arrival of the fleet. It also provides, in passing, a little insight into how materials were forwarded to the Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler, for Diego de Frías had arrived with the fleet, bringing along a description and pinturas of Tierra Firme. By way of a comment from the king, we find this notation: This is all good and I was pleased to hear about it, and give Juan de Velasco the description for those that he makes himself.86

The procedure of the consulta gives the impression of being strongly regulated, as if very little leeway for variations or for exerting influence was left to those engaged in the actual consultation meetings with the king. Here we may single out a case in which it can be seen that this impression is misleading. On August 1, 1577, Philip II was presented in El Escorial with a matter that a relator from the Council of the Indies had summarized in a series of key points. Above the summary the reciting secretary or consejero of the Council had jotted down an unusual stage direction: Which I take along as a note, in order to say this verbatim to His Majesty without getting into greater detail – that is, unless he inquires about it.87

The background was a multiple questioning of the conditions for communication between America, the Council, and the king. If one turns the page, one finds a notation about an oral presentation that an agent of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo had apparently given at the Council. Concerning the viceroy, who had been subjected to acts of hostility on the part of the Council since his appointment, the note says that he was not able to commit everything he knew to paper. He feared that not all important messages would get through to the king. This is followed by a critique of the Council’s governing style and indirectly also of the king’s: And he [the viceroy] cannot comment in writing about how great the confusion is with which [the Council] replies and wants to do justice to some matters he writes and warns about, because [the Council] does not understand them, so that it causes more damage

86 AGI, Indif. 739, n. 108, fol. 1r. 87 1 Aug. 1577, IVDJ, envío 25, doc. 43.

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Figure 14: Example of a consulta, 9 September 1578 (AGI, Indif. 739, n. 108)



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than if [the Council] would not even reply. Often one does not dare show or carry out [royal] provisions. His Majesty would be best served if all that which one cannot understand satisfactorily here would either be ignored or sent back. This would be a lesser damage.88

Aside from the way that this report again illuminates the fundamental problem of the adequacy and enforceability of decisions that were made at the center but needed to become valid in America, the report also serves to point out the room for maneuver available to the Council and to reporting secretaries or consejeros. What, then, did the Council do in order to defuse this complaint, which was aimed in particular at its own work? It did not manipulate the content of the presentation, but it certainly did tinker with the situational framework of the presentation: For one, the unnamed agent of the viceroy did not succeed with his plan to present the viceroy’s complaints to the king in person. For another, the viceroy’s accusations were not presented alone but were combined with another report that was more compromising to the viceroy and that was presented first. The occasion for this was provided by a letter that Mateo Vázquez had received from Seville. There the consejero for the Council of the Indies, Benito López de Gamboa, had been talking with a number of passengers who had just arrived with the fleet and told this to Mateo Vázquez: In conversations with these and other passengers, I was able to arrive at a general opinion, namely that the viceroy [Francisco de Toledo] is not well-suffered by almost all people in these provinces, and that they are infuriated about this how little and how badly he grants them audience.89

Gamboa went so far as to suggest replacing the Peruvian viceroy with a new one; the incumbent viceroy of New Spain, Martín Enríquez, struck Gamboa as particularly qualified. In that the presentation recommending the viceroy be deposed owing to dissatisfaction in the land came first, and only then was followed by a report about the viceroy’s complaint, the complaint was situationally devalued. By no means did the Council of the Indies suppress the report, but it did combine it adeptly with a second one, so that the viceroy’s report lost plausibility and effectiveness. The hearsay of the passengers, the opinión común of the Indianos, was successfully played off against the presentation of the viceroy’s agent. Similar opportunities for micromanaging information, for processing that information, and for translating it into conversational situations show how difficult it is to draw conclusions from individual paper documents about their impact on 88 IVDJ, envío 25, doc. 43bis, fol. 1r; IVDJ, envío 25, doc. 43. 89 IVDJ, envío 25, doc. 44, fol. 1r.

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a particular consultation involving the king. These papers were not only translated from the written into the oral form, but they were also transferred into a specific situation and transformed in a performative sense. Only in exceptional cases were explicit “stage directions” placed in the margins, yet the secretaries and councilors making presentations would, in any event, have been familiar with their role patterns and opportunities to exert influence. It is inappropriate to conceive of efforts like this merely as manipulation, since evaluating and commenting on news and information are, after all, activities that properly belong to the set of tasks carried out by those close to the king, as was already made apparent at the level of contemporary treatises on proper behavior for secretaries and counselors. This was expected and demanded by kings, for very different reasons, sometimes simple ones, in order to have criteria for decision-making: in 1579, for example, when Philip II had received consultas from the Council of the Indies, he had a note sent to Mateo Vázquez: I will look at these consultas de Indias as soon as possible, and it would be good – in order to save time – to know the opinion of [Benito López de] Gamboa about them.90

Not only did the “intelligent sheath” of the ruler need to be used for forwarding information; it also had to be put into service for selecting, grouping, evaluating, and transforming that information into proposals. It was constantly producing pictures of the situation whose quality did not consist in a virtually complete transparency about what happened – that did not consist, to put this another way, in entera noticia – but rather in leading contingent matters to the threshold of the decision. The required bricolage of information and interests produced comfortable suggestions that would take too much effort to contradict. In a discourse from the first half of the seventeenth century about what the ruler needs to know, the king is indeed advised that he should occasionally break out from the prefabricated funnels of decision-making. Yet he is counseled to escape these confines only in order that the field of decision-making not be left entirely to the consejeros. The discourse included a discussion of how the king should deal with lists proposing candidates for official positions: If His Majesty were always to select those who get a first-place mention, he would give the consejos to understand that they are the lords and that they decide the consultas, and that they can award the positions to those whom they want … and therefore it would be good on occasion to appoint persons that are not mentioned in the consultas but with whom His Majesty is extremely pleased.91

90 Riba García, Correspondencia, 201–202. 91 RAH, Salazar K–19, fol. 55r–63r, fol. 57r.



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In that the consejeros were permanently assisting, they had an effect on the mediation of interests. One needs to make it clear that the extent of their own power grew when the ruler trusted them to a high degree and, at the same time, his own and immediate knowledge of things was dwindling. For then the business of awarding offices and privileges, so important for patronage politics, was easier to steer. Once again, this allows us to discern that structural conflict of goals that characterizes the corridors of power. That conflict consists in the way that the advisers, experts, and mediators surrounding the king are always also deluding him to some extent, whether on pragmatic grounds (that is, in order to prepare and facilitate decisions) or in order to improve their own standing as mediators of interests. Not least, the medium of the junta provided a political procedure adequate to the task of including and presenting interests in the decision-making process. A rare insight into how interests were subsequently incorporated into the process of decision-making is provided by the consulta of October 9, 1590.92 To help with a discussion in El Escorial, Juan de Ibarra, the issuing secretary, had brought along a four-column document that synoptically summarized the different positions of a phased procedure and thus offers us an opportunity to see how a lengthier process for mediating interests was organized. This allows us to discern not only the different stages of oral and written communication, but also to see the broad circle of participants involved in this particular case of interest mediation. The background was provided by the installation of the so-called Armada de la Guardia de la Carrera de Indias, a military escort for the trans-Atlantic fleet. It had emerged out of the Andalusian escort fleet and started to guard the Atlantic passage for the first time in 1567. This kind of naval installation was, understandably, both in the interest of the Crown and of Seville’s merchants, yet as early as 1572 there was a first big scandal. The commander of the escort fleet, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, used the storage room of the armed galleons in order to export foodstuffs and wine to America while bypassing customs on the trip over and conducting business no less lucrative on the way back. The position of the merchants’ consulate was split: On the one hand, there was a competing fleet that remained untaxed and had lower costs. The Council of the Indies also, for this reason, called for legislation to be enforced and requested official assistance from the Casa about surrendering bills of lading and invoices. But, on the other hand, this went too far as far as the merchants were concerned, so that fundamental considerations dictated following a policy of protecting trade interests and maintaining independent jurisdiction. Ultimately, the Casa behaved passively, since Menéndez de Avilés was well-connected with the most important families of Seville.93 For this reason, the Council’s claim to enforce 92 IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 523. 93 Chaunu, Séville, vol. 1, 109.

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legislation could not penetrate the Sevillian network. Let us return, however, to the consulta in El Escorial.

Figure 15: Detail of a consulta, 9 October 1590 (IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 523)

By the time of the 1590 consulta we are facing a transformed situation. In 1583 a courtly junta had been installed that was meant to deal with matters relating to the escort fleet. It had arisen as the result of a petition from the governor of Puerto Rico, who requested assistance against attacks from corsairs, which is why the group was called the Junta de Puerto Rico.94 The specific impetus for a consultation with the king was then given by the proposal to renew the escort fleet that had arrived from Seville. The omnipresent Council secretary Juan de Ibarra had 94 Caballero Juárez, Régimen jurídico, 85–86.



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negotiated there with the leadership of the merchant’s consulate in the presence of the judges of the Casa. There was also a concrete offer for shipbuilding from Juan de Uribe Apallúa, an offer that he had also delivered to Ibarra. Ten galleons, two smaller warships, and four land boats with a total of 3,000 men for the crew was the mix of naval equipment regarded as appropriate. In April 1590, when Philip II was presented a first consulta from the very secretary, Juan de Ibarra, who had been handling negotiations in Seville, his answer was hesitant: “It would be good to look at this carefully in the Council and inform me what people think.”95 This provided the opening shot for the elongated negotiation process that finds graphic expression in the document depicted above: The first column records the outcome of the conference in Seville, the second the position taken by the Council of the Indies and an initial comment by the king about this position. This was followed by three additional positions that are entered under each other in the third column: one position again from the Sevillian merchant consulate, then one from the Junta de Puerto Rico that convened at court, and an additional one from the Junta de acá that had been established ad hoc and was presumably convening in El Escorial at the beginning of October 1590. In the run-up to the Junta’s meeting, the president of the Council of the Indies had advised the king to look around for other persons who could be consulted for advising. He would do the same himself.96 The decisive thing here is not the content of the negotiations – the merchants’ consulate insisted, for example, that a merchant’s books could not be confiscated – but rather the procedure for political decision-making nicely delineated by this episode. Two opposing tendencies may be discerned. One tendency was that an ever wider circle of interested parties was included. In substantive terms, this was undoubtedly appropriate in this case, and it was structurally in the offing inasmuch as the merchants’ consulate constituted a corporative representation of interests. Only after a hearing was given to all and after interests were successfully presented – the Council of the Indies, for example, would allow merchants’ books to be confiscated but could imagine a provisional regulation, something the king also ultimately approved – did the king decide. This, however, is where the second tendency may be observed: For thirty-five of the thirty-six points under consideration, however, this decision consisted in a simple así (see the fourth column), which points toward the conclusion that the overwhelming share of decisions had already been made in the run-up to the presentation for the king, or at least it points to how the decisions were prepared in advance to such a degree that the king could no longer evade them. Although the extent of interest 95 AGI Indif. 741, n. 219a (unpaginated), 16 April 1590. 96 IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 523.

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in mediation may have been unusually high in this particular case, the general image of the withdrawn king and his lonely decisions in El Escorial stands in need of correction. But what did the communicative and epistemic conditions at court look like? In conclusion, we focus again on the Council of the Indies and its personnel, since it has to be assumed that what the consejeros and secretaries of the Council knew was not simply the result of intensive reading but was also strongly shaped by social engagements and concrete negotiations with interested parties. It needs to be recalled that it was not only contemporary theoretical tracts that portrayed the consejero as a mediator whose main job was listening to negotiants. The Council’s instructions from 1571 also explicitly envisioned this role for the consejero: The [consejeros] of the Council of the Indies are to remain in their homes during the hours and days when they are not at the Council, and there they are to grant the negotiants a simple and pleasant audience so that these can inform them about their affairs and complaints.97

As can be seen from these paragraphs, audiences like these were understood as part of the consejeros’ official duties, not as part of their evasion. A second provision stresses the limits of accessibility: The [consejeros] of the Council of the Indies shall neither let themselves be accompanied by the negotiants and litigants nor grant them a service, unless it be on the way to or from the Council, to offer them an opportunity to inform them about their affairs. It is not allowed for the negotiants to accompany their wives.98

Such procedures of private consultation, of permanent pressure on residences, on commuting routes to work, and especially on the wives of the consejeros represented, as clearly emerges from other sources, a thoroughly customary procedure of communication regarding colonial policy; indeed they characterize the setting of the imperial capital city Madrid. The consejeros were permanently being encountered by agentes and pleiteantes, representatives of political and litigants’ interests, but also of claimants contending for offices and benefices. Ovando explicitly justified the above-mentioned measure, reserving the right to fill offices to the Council president, by pointing to the social consequences that including all the councilors in this business would have entailed:

97 Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas,” 22 (§ 40). 98 Muro Orejón, “Ordenanzas,” 22 (§ 39).



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If the consejeros have a vote, then there will be many inconveniences, recommendations, and negotiants, above all when they are married, owing to the means and ways that the supplicants, to everyone’s utmost annoyance, are seeking.99

The consejeros and their wives would otherwise award the majority of offices in favor of their family and their friends, which would give rise to the suspicion of insufficient “cleanliness.”100 Although the communicative openness of the consejeros toward petitioners and agents represented a gateway for attempts at bribery, it could not be shut. It guaranteed a communicative penetrability of the court to the requests and concerns of subjects, the kind of porousness that legitimated the system overall. That this should take place in an easy and pleasant manner, in the form of a fácil y grata audiencia, shows that the audiences of the consejeros were understood as part of a sovereign responsiveness in which one of the things that always mattered was the gesture of listening. A similar kind of behavior was also expected on the part of Indianos and agents, as the case of Bartolomé Vázquez illustrates. When he was questioned in the course of Ovando’s visitation about his experiences with the Council of the Indies, he spoke especially critically about the departing president of the Council, Francisco Tello de Sandoval. Vázquez came from Nata in today’s Panama, had been staying at court for ten months at the time of the questioning, and reported about this in August 1567 to the visitator Ovando: When I arrived at this court, I immediately went to Mr. President, Tello de Sandoval, kissed his hand, … and I was in business … but then six months went by in which he is always asking [again] who I am and what I am thinking of requesting. And when I told many people how bad he was making this for me, I discovered that everyone is complaining about him and wished that he should no longer be in the Council.101

The concern of Bartolomé Vázquez was distributive justice. He was the son of the governor and conquistador Francisco Vázquez, whose children had already asked the Crown in 1562 by way of letter to provide compensation for the expenditures and services of their father. They wrote that his services were, as it was said at the time, “known and obvious” to His Majesty and the Council of the Indies,102 yet Bartolomé first had to travel to Spain in order to represent his family interests personally at court. This would have made the poor responsiveness of the Council president all the more upsetting to him, even though at this time he was already 99 IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 432, fol. 1r; IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 440. 100 IVDJ, envío 23, doc. 432. 101 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 178r. 102 AGI, Patr. 150, n. 14, r. 4, fol. 1r.

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quite old and apparently no longer in full possession of his faculties. Another witness also reported about the “great complaints of the negotiants” and about the fact that Sandoval’s deputy, the longest-serving consejero, got more accomplished in a single session than the president had gotten done in two months: And this was how one spoke publicly [about the president] in the court of the palace, and when the said president arrived, they wasted their water on the mill and he kicked up a lot of dust without anything at all being accomplished.103

Juan López de Velasco was also interrogated in the course of Ovando’s questionings. He went into detail about the problem of how to deal as professionally as possible with the need of petitioners for audiences and opportunities for access. He had cut his teeth as secretary to Council of the Indies president Tello de Sandoval, in whose house he had observed how negotiants were treated, as well as later in years-long dealings with the consejeros in the Council. In the course of his dealings he had become convinced that it would be advisable not only to post specific hours for visits to the Council, but to do the same as well for private audiences in the houses of the consejeros. López de Velasco proposed professionalizing interactions with interested parties in the consejeros’ houses. These interactions should be limited in time and structured differently in situational terms so as to provide greater satisfaction for the negotiants. To this end visiting hours should be selected in the following manner: Such [hours] in which there is neither a porter nor a page who guards the entrance and who neither offers a chair nor allows an [additional] visit … One would enter without special permission … and then, standing on one’s feet and without digressions, say what the business was about. Then one would leave and another would come in.104

In this way a large amount of business could be done in a short amount of time. López de Velasco wanted porters and pages to be kept out of audience situations on grounds of discretion: [One would be] negotiating with greater secrecy if neither pages nor other visitors were present, since they would make it impossible for negotiants to say openly what they want to say. Otherwise the friendships and business matters would be overheard by porters, pages, and servants of [other] masters who frequently, in order to show they are industrious and being of service to somebody, fabricate activities for their masters, although there actually aren’t any.105 103 BL, Add. 33983, fol. 180r. 104 BL Add. 33983, fol. 294v. 105 BL Add. 33983, fol. 294v.



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Finally, López de Velasco got around to talking about the experiences that he had gained over several years of dealing with the councilors at the Council of the Indies. They were all (he wrote) good Christians, men of good will in the service of God and His Majesty, and of lucid understanding. He had indeed convinced himself that the councilors were in error, and indeed for lack of experience. But the blame did not lie with them: For one does know what knowledge (noticia) of American matters they could possess if they are deployed. And in order to counter this deplorable state of affairs (if that is how it appears), he believes that His Majesty … should appoint people from the audiencias of these lands for these posts.106

In this way one would be better able at court to take care of business with America “quicker and with better understanding.”107 That this argument for filling the Council of the Indies with consejeros who had American experience did not catch on should undoubtedly be made out as a fundamental weakness of Ovando’s reforms. Here Ovando was running up against resistance at court, so that other main points and making available knowledge about America, were brought to the fore with full force. But then what kind of personal knowledge was left for the Council? In what way could there be a concentration of knowledge at the Council, could expertise growing out of experience take shape? As already indicated, the consejeros for the Council of the Indies took office there, as a rule, at a relatively old age. In addition, they were generally interested in being promoted to the higher-ranking Council of Castile. Being a consejero at the Council of the Indies was, therefore, something one did for a limited period of time. Although the usual kind of pre-employment at higher Castilian courts did lead to preparatory judicial and administrative training, by no means did it result in knowledge specific to America. To be a consejero for the Council of the Indies was, consequently, not a profession, but rather a rung along the career ladder of courtly offices. That promoting councilors for the Council of the Indies to other offices also entailed a loss of their acquired expertise was something Juan de Ovando had already criticized, although he could not prevent it. If one is searching for council members who had acquired their expertise through lengthy experience, one needs to look at those who were really permanently employed, that is, at the subaltern members of the Council. Of these, there were a few, especially the secretaries and those doing legwork, and relators, who 106 BL Add. 33983, fol. 294v–295r. 107 BL Add. 33983, fol. 295r.

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dealt continuously and ex professio with the processing of information. Among this group, real dynasties took shape, so that experiences and methods of working could be transmitted across generations. A good example of this is presented by the Madrigal and Díez de la Calle families: Juan Fernández de Madrigal had been employed since 1575 in the Council of the Indies as a staff member for the secretariat (oficial). In 1623, when his daughter Angela gave birth to her first child, the new son-in-law Juan Díez de la Calle was integrated into the secretariat of the Council, initially helping out with temporary jobs. After Magridal’s death in 1632 the son-in-law advanced into the newly available position.108 With this move Juan Díez de la Calle succeeded not only in ascending from oficial segundo to oficial mayor (1647); he ultimately also secured the installation of his own son, Juan Díez de la Calle y Madrigal. The latter was finally awarded the honorary title of a secretario del rey, became Knight of the Order of Santiago, and in 1685 was able to broker an appointment for his own son, Juan Ambrosio de la Calle y Madrigal, in the Council’s New Spain secretariat. This position was explicitly awarded him “in view of the loyal services of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.”109 Another part of the de Madrigal family was also represented in the Council: in 1647 Francisco Fernández de Madrigal became Contador of the Cámara de Indias, and in 1670 he managed to make the leap from oficial to consejero at the Council. His son, José Fernández de Madrigal, was then active in the Council of the Indies as late as 1726, so that we have evidence here of a family tradition lasting a good one hundred fifty years. If, then, there were bureaucratic carriers and mediators of knowledge about a specific subject, then one is more likely to suspect that they were located among the subaltern Council members. It was Juan Díez de la Calle who worked quietly on the aforementioned governing handbook for the Americas and redacted new question lists himself. If one is searching for “heroes” who worked with the quill at the survival of the colonial empire, one should look for them among the Madrigals, the de la Calles, or Antonio de León Pinelo.

108 AGI, Indif. 764, Consulta from 27 Oct. 1645; AHN, OM – Caballeros Santiago, exp. 2453. 109 AGI, Indif. 964, (unpaginated), entry from 1 Oct. 1685.

IX Conclusions But how should we assess the official hero, the inventor of bureaucratic entera noticia? Let us have his contemporaries do the talking: at the time when the Council of the Indies was being reformed, Arias Montano, the aforementioned fellow student of Ovando from his university days, was in Antwerp, where he was supervising the production of a five-language edition of the Bible in the workshop of Christoph Plantin. Initially he had been an ardent admirer of the Duke of Alba, but soon he began to have doubts about the policy of the governor-general. In August 1571 he reported to Ovando about the time-consuming invitations issued by the duke. Recently (the report said) word had come to the President of the Council of the Indies, which prompted the Duke of Alba to a monologue that Montano reproduced in his letter: Alba held the duties of the Council of the Indies president in higher esteem than those of any other office. The office of Council president called for a man of distinction who was not only a jurist but also pious, religious, and full of ardor, for in America a new Church had to be built: He also said that one would have to be an engineer who knows how to present lines, measurements, angles, harbors, fields, animals, plants, and natural spaces of which he has not seen many and that do not conform to those at home ... for all this … is the subject of government, and those who are located there can deceive the one who rules from here.1

The arts of war should also not be something foreign to the president of the Council of the Indies, he should comprehend the customs and governing ways of the native inhabitants, he should either be a merchant or at least know their practices, and also (of course) be a pilot in command of the arts of navigation. Not least, he should understand clerics and monks, jurists and scribes, soldiers and lords, the rich and the poor. All things considered, he will need patience, talent, God’s help, “and very many good friends whom he trusts and from whom he receives help.” “I,” Arias Montano added, “listened to all of this until the end – it was much longer than I am reporting here – and after half an hour I told him about Your Qualities.” Ovando could be regarded as a man who investigated all affairs from the ground up and analyzed the design of a thing from foot to head (“haziendo anatomías”) until he had mastered it completely.2 Thus, in this conversation, both dialogue partners linked the humanist ideal of broad education and discernment – the image of an uomo universale – with the vision of a kind of governing competence enhanced to the point of entera noticia. Ovando’s reform, 1 IVDJ, envío 78, caja 103, doc. 17, fol. 140r–140v. 2 IVDJ, envío 78, caja 103, doc. 17, fol. 141r.

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which at first glance looks like a functionalist program to increase the efficiency of government and administration, also resonated with the vanities of power and erudition. Ovando, in any event, boasted in the same exchange of letters about having a better astrolabe than the king did, and he was also encouraged in his self-aggrandizement by other fellow students from his university years at Salamanca. Pedro Moya de Contreras, who in the meantime had become Archbishop of Mexico, wrote Ovando in 1574 that “the government of the New World depends” on him alone.3 In the course of this study it has become clear that efforts like this to idealize an “all-knowing ruler” had a number of functions beyond mere flattery or the stabilization of elite groups’ identities. The question as to what concrete functions “knowledge” had in early modern Spanish colonial rule will now serve as a central organizing theme to combine the different partial findings of this book. As a finding of the first chapter, which dealt with the history of ideas and concepts, we may note that the idea of the “knowing ruler” was intimately bound up with the model of pastoral vigilance. What was stressed here was not the idea of some kind of empirical-statistic “all-knowingness” on the part of the ruler or the court; this was not about “centers of calculation” making decisions in the most rational way possible. It was not the maximization of political rationality through a high degree of empirical reference that was idealized, but rather the attentiveness of rulers as a basic condition of social justice. For, in order to be just, the ruler needed to punish and reward in an adequate fashion, and this also meant being in a position to notice the behavior of his subjects, no matter how remote they were. This power to punish and reward on the part of the royal court motivated a noteworthy epistemic effect. Without having to demand or even compel it, the court was constantly being supplied with information. Those who wished for a sovereign act of punishment or reward strived, in any event, to “inform” the center. The court, in turn, did not have to be interested in individual cases and details, but it did have to take an interest in this basic orientation of information streams, which were, after all, an indicator of its power, of its continuous invocation as a power that rewarded and punished. This may be a relatively trivial finding, since it basically just reformulates the fact that, in the course of early modern state-formation, there were many places where state builders succeeded in concentrating judicial power and the authority to distribute offices, benefices, and favors at the larger royal courts. That these courts also became a preferred recipient of denunciations and supplications, that the periphery was constantly pushing papers toward the center, may be under3 IVDJ, envío 78, caja 103, doc. 146, fol. 1r; Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario, vol. 11, 234.



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stood as a secondary effect of a structural change in early modern politics. At this level of description, the growth in power and the accumulation of information seemed to go hand in hand. Yet as soon as one asks about the impact on the epistemic setting, a different, opposite finding emerges: it then appears that the accumulation of power goes hand in hand with what early modern tractates call “the blindness of the king.” “What blindness, what ignorance of the prince who, locked up in his palace as if in a cave, cannot see the details with his own eyes?”4 Here, Juan de Mariana was formulating the first dilemma of growth in royal power, understood as an increasing tendency for the exercise of power to be mediated. Alfonso the Wise had already expressed what the consequences were: since kings cannot see for themselves (no ver) and are dependent on exercising large portions of their power (usar poder) through deputies, they must increasingly entrust (fiarse) their perception and exercise of power to the mediators. The fact that these mediators participated in power may have been structurally necessary and politically advantageous. It rendered a dubious service, however, to the ruler’s epistemic situation. “Corridors of power” arise that incapacitate the ruler informationally. The information about loyal and disloyal behavior streaming in from outside was already essentially biased, freighted with interests. It purported – as in the case of the relaciones de méritos – to be reporting about facts, but it was actually striving to guide decisions. Even the authorities, councilors, and courtiers surrounding the king used similar techniques. At different levels, in this way, a technique was applied that, abstractly speaking, consisted in the translation of “interests” into “information,” of the “subjective” into the “objective,” and which shapes political business to this day. Its basic operation consists of portraying the run-up to decisions in such a way that the resulting decisions seem to emerge logically therefrom. The palette of techniques of this kind is large. For our context the only thing to stress is how an appropriate picture of the “matter” must also be created, for which a selective recourse to things empirical takes place. Ideally, this “exonerating empirical reference” helps first to motivate the decision, then to legitimate it, and finally to keep it permanently clear from any suspicion of arbitrariness. It smooths out contradictions, calms doubts, and nourishes an inner conviction that the procedures applied are correct. This exonerating empirical reference does not automatically make political decisions “worse,” but it does split their structure into a tendentially invisible side of interest mediation and a visible side of objectivity. The second epistemic dilemma for the increase in power, hence, consists in the way that its reference to things empirical essentially serves the visible side, that it does not fundamentally 4 Mariana, De rege, 28–29 (Book I, Ch. 2).

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rationalize actions but instead disguises interests. Empirical references are thus potentially always a part of political dissimulatio, not a corrective to dissimulation. As could be seen, the council bodies of the court in particular should not, in any case, be understood as processors of information; rather, they need to be seen as the inner circle in a web of social networks that made the exercise of power possible in the first place. The job of this inner circle therefore did not consist simply in rationalizing decisions or even shaping them objectively, but rather in doing things like proposing people for offices, cultivating their own relationships, or listening to petitioners. The consejeros had to advise the king, who for his part was dependent on having clear decision-making criteria, knowing the view of the council, and receiving lists of proposals. In the course of conducting everyday political business, he had to be interested in a smoothly operating organization of decision-making processes, which is why, to exaggerate the point somewhat, one of the things that also was of service to His Majesty was showing him a reductionist, retouched picture of the situation. Even if the goals vary: in order to achieve this, manipulation always takes place. It is not knowledge as such that is produced; rather, knowledge is selected and deployed with a view toward the decisions that have to be made. Expressed in more positive terms, this means that wider circles participate in the process of decision-making. The communicative and epistemic conditions therefore imply that decisions are not, not even in the case of Philip II, truly made in isolation. One needs to rethink the metaphor: One should pay attention not to the “spider” in El Escorial, but to its position in a net. This net, in turn, was not made up of “threads” that forwarded information; it consisted, instead, of an association of people at court and of its ramifications that extended well into the peripheral reaches of the empire. But the great achievement of social associations (like those networked groups of people at court) does not lie in their capacity to perfect the transmission of information, but rather in the way they instigate processes for balancing interests and facilitating micropolitical participation. For the premodern period, therefore, it is worth noting that its political makeup was not suited to attaining a goal like that of entera noticia. There were obstacles more fundamental than mere lack of technologies, an absence of media, or a dearth of imaging or mathematical procedures. This makes it all the more remarkable that early modern Spain nonetheless began to refer to knowledge as a matter of legitimacy. Outwardly, this reference to knowledge helped to dispel the suspicion that the king was acting “blindly” (and was thus basically disempowered). Within political processes, the reference to knowledge became crucial as it helped to counter the speculation that decisions were made with levity or under the influence of personal interests. In situations of colonial rule,



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finally, the postulate of being informed, the king’s porque-soy-informado, had the purpose of supporting his decisions in terms of legitimacy and enhancing the chances for their implementation. At the same time, however, a reference to the fragility of the king’s state of knowledge was kept that eventually brought to mind the possibility of questioning the informational foundation underlying his decision. This possibility found expression in the principle obedézcase-pero-no-se-cumpla (“obey but do not comply”). With the aid of this legal formula, the practice of colonial rule could become more flexible in particular cases at the same time that it protected the king’s general claim to rule. This happened because orders were interpreted casuistically. One proceeded from the assumption that one was dealing with a specific (not a fundamental) lack of knowledge. And, because the knowledge deficiency was specific, only individual, concrete orders were suspended, not obedience as such. At the same time, this kind of flexibility made room for forms of local, micropolitical participation. But then what was the status of an entera noticia project like that undertaken by Juan de Ovando? Here we must first recall the point of departure: The third epistemic dilemma of the ruler must be sought on the margins of the court, in the attempts to decipher incoming information from afar and form a picture of the remote. Naturally, this dilemma affected the field of colonial rule in particular and determined its communicative and epistemic setting. The factor of distance should not be misunderstood here as a technical problem about the transmission of information. The more problematic issue requiring our attention, rather, is a qualitative overstretching, a strain with two important consequences: For one, relationships of loyalty to on-site actors become weak. And, for another, the comprehensibility (and thus governability) of the faraway land is called into question. Both of these threats were countered politically by structural measures, which we recall once more. A policy to prevent neo-feudalist tendencies had started even in the earliest years of the colonial era. Such a policy required, for one thing, that the conquistadors, who were de facto powerful, be accompanied by watchers, monitors who could report loyalty or disloyalty to the Crown. Only in this way could the conquistadors’ room for maneuver be limited. For another thing, it was important to see to it that, over the medium term, career advancement only be sought and secured along the circuitous pathway leading through the court. The royal court had to remain the most reliable source of punishment and reward, especially for people living in the distant territories of Spanish America. A whole series of measures may be identified as the result of this policy. Thus, for example, the question of the perpetuity of the encomienda was held in abeyance because the court could neither afford to take the radical step of depriving the class of encomenderos of their privileges, nor could it stabilize their advance-

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ment in a manner that would have made it independent of the king’s favor. The first option threatened to suspend the principle of distributive justice and strain the political loyalty of the encomenderos to the breaking point, the latter to deprive the Spanish court of its prerogative to keep distributing privileges. Of greater relevance to the questions we have posed are the measures that affected the communicative setting: thus, there was an early start at setting up administrative-judicial authorities. Looking at that setup reveals how administration and information meshed with each other functionally and, in the course of so doing, constituted rule. Yet – especially when it comes to the conditions of colonial rule – one needs to dispense with a rigid institutional concept, to conceive of rule not as something inside the image of an organigram, an organizational chart assigning fixed tasks, but rather as a formation of political communication. We may then say, to be sure, that the ruler’s domination only extended as far as those places where representatives of royal rights and interests were present and functioned as observers and reporters for the Crown. Yet we also have to note that this status of observer and reporter could be acquired on one’s own initiative, since the Crown desired denunciations, services, or attestations of loyalty that were spontaneous. At bottom, everyone could be an assiduous eye or ear of the ruler, even if the validity of one’s voice depended, in the medium term, on being in agreement with the judgments of officials. This shaping of political communication that grew dynamically out of the inquisitorial principle facilitated the formation of vigilant triangles even in places where no (or only weak) authorities existed. It is therefore a constitutive condition for the Spanish model of colonial rule penetrating wide spaces. Its price is a permanently politicized use of communication and information: a primary and inevitable goal for the flow of communication was to document loyalty or disloyalty, not to provide information in the sense of objective descriptions of reality. This basic function of political communication led to a situation where the court and the Council of the Indies were constantly being sent types of texts that were structurally ambivalent. The irony is that this was especially the case when the court or Council explicitly demanded a “true report,” that is, requested objectivity. In particular, the officially established authorities for objectifying information, whether those authorities were the audiencias or the Chief Chronicler, became the logical goal for interests since they offered the opportunity to transform interests into an officially authorized type of information – to “wash” them. The case of the office of Chronicler shows that these conditions made it impossible to conduct the writing of contemporary history ex officio. Even if this effect of a permanent contamination of information by interests emerges as especially dominant in the situation of colonial rule, the effect was linked in a very general sense to contemporary practices of knowledge and



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administration. “Information” came into the world as a hybrid creature, which can be explained by looking at the common procedure by which it was created. At all levels, the problem of verifying empirical statements in the premodern world was met with the instrument of witness testimony. The informationes arising therefrom, the records of testimony, contained knowledge based on what witnesses had observed. Witnesses’ observations, however, usually rested on their personal proximity to what had happened. They knew the persons, places, or circumstances, and were entangled with the stakes involved. A dilemma existed because, in the systematic requirement to create objective statements, persons had to be included who, in extreme cases, were friends or foes. Even in cases of statements about geography, nautical charts, or nautical instruments, it was, as we have seen, critical whether one was a Portuguese or a Spaniard, a pilot or a cosmographer, or whether mapmakers were present or not present in the room during witness testimony. But who should be judging something without knowing it? Who, that is, could really be “objective”? Officialdom is an attempt at answering this question, in that it endeavors to guarantee objectivity through a kind of social extraterritoriality for officials. For example, the viceroys, oidores, corregidors, and alcaldes mayores, and even the children of these officials, were forbidden from marrying persons coming from the particular administrative district where they served. Oidores were not allowed to acquire a house or a residence; they were accommodated in their official residences. In 1588, moreover, Philip II expressly ordered that oidores and their wives were not to cultivate any friendships. They were also not allowed to take part in weddings or burials or even act as godfather.5 This was meant to prevent them from being tied in to local societies (and their loyalties) and, as a consequence, to make partisan decisions. These premodern measures had thus already laid the groundwork for Max Weber’s “dehumanization” of the civil servant.6 But they were not aiming so much at maximal objectivity as they were at keeping the loyalty of the official as weak as possible toward his social environment and as strong as possible toward the king. In a more long-term perspective, therefore, it is not fixation on the cause that seems constitutive, but rather a structural distance to life. It is important to elucidate the consequences for our topic. Spain had adopted colonial policy measures that entailed structural unfamiliarity with the subject. In that both higher-level officials in America and the councilors for the Council of the Indies were predominantly socialized in Spain, one could weaken their cli5 CODOIN–1–17, 457. Comparable regulations had already been promulgated by Emperor Frederick II, see Kantorowicz, Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite, 250–251. 6 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 563.

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entelistic integration into the societies of Spanish America under their authority, but only at the price of an equally weak familiarity with these societies. The paradoxical result of this structural lack of familiarity was not simply poor government, but also a de facto displacement of decisions from the Council to mid-range and local authorities in the territories. As we have seen, commissions were convened at the audiencias and the courts of the viceroys. By no means were they set up simply to supply information; instead, they were to produce opinions, that is, to hand over proposals for decisions. Lack of familiarity at the center thus actually entailed a trans-Atlantic widening of the circle of those who “gave counsel” and, to this extent, participated in power. The fact that, at the same time, information about circumstances was also always demanded should be regarded more as a compensatory measure. The de facto displacement of power was countered by a form of control. The Council collected information about circumstances – such as about Indian tribute and repartimientos – in order to keep on-site decisions or pre-decisions controllable ex post. Although this meant that information was constantly flowing to the political center, the direction of the information flow is no indicator of “growing power” at the center. On the contrary: in this case, information represented compensation for power, not power itself. Its purpose was to safeguard the center’s chances, however minimal in practice, to control decisions that had been taken (or prepared) in the periphery. Whether control actually was implemented or not, in that the empirical foundations for decisions were meant to be documented, empirical data attained a new status in the explanatory and exculpatory economics of official written culture. It is important to be clear, then, that the premodern state did not essentially collect information so that it could actively shape policy. The rationale behind these information flows, rather, was to bind both actors and procedures to rules. A large portion of these administrative masses of paper – even including the portion that stands under suspicion of being pro-statist, such as tribute and encomienda lists – were therefore not created in order to satisfy the center’s political curiosity or actually base decisions on entera noticia. The objective of these records was much more to maintain the explanatory effort required to make decisions abroad at a high level. Administrative writers were forced to spell out the whole procedural path and elaborate on the reasons for decisions. The effort to produce these records was meant to set limits on those who made decisions in the periphery. To put it another way, then, an important function for the centralization of information consisted in limiting local authorities’ room for maneuver through a reporting obligation. That this did not really succeed, that political stability in the new territories remained precarious, that there were still broad areas not regulated by law, and that regulations to protect native inhabitants did not take hold – all this (in addi-



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tion to the clientelistic maneuvers just explained) must have contributed to the Council of the Indies ultimately being subject to a visitation and Juan de Ovando’s reforms. Against this background, the project of a governing style based on entera noticia acts like a promise to reestablish the ability of the Council to exercise control. In this context the fault line between what Ovando was capable of carrying out and the reform proposals that remained unfulfilled is a meaningful demarcation. Thus, in the context of the visitation, some witnesses proposed moving the Council of the Indies either entirely or partly to Central America. Ovando himself supported at least the idea of giving preference to staffing the Council with Indianos. None of these proposals could be realized; in this way, greater personal familiarity on the part of decision-makers would have been purchased at the cost of a stronger personal (and thus also potentially clientelistic) tie to America. Even worse, it would be the fundamental alignment of loyalties, their orientation toward court, that would have been called into question. Remarkably, it was the technical-administrative part of the reform, the part that seems so innovative to us today, comprising the different measures to change the conditions for using the media of knowledge in the Council, which was implemented by contemporaries without discernable resistance. That technical-administrative part, of course, did not have the same potential to change the political structure; instead it promised to conserve that structure. What can we say about more general questions in the history of knowledge? What about empirical knowledge in the narrower sense? Seafaring and navigation were practices with a strong empirical component. But the functions of these empirical observations changed under conditions of expansion. Simply owing to the politicization of space as a consequence of the Treaties of Tordesillas, the positional data of ships acquired a new, political quality. The establishment of the padrón real represented an attempt to “socialize” the experiences of individuals, to provide all Castilian pilots a common orientation in the form a model nautical chart. Individual observations needed to be translated from the sphere of immediate practice and individual experiences into the grid of a universally binding language. The institutional authority of the Casa and the scientific competence of the cosmographers were meant to compel this new standardization and regularity of nautical practice. This standardization failed to happen in many cases. But the effort to force it does allow us a valuable insight into contemporary practices regarding knowledge. It could be seen that, even here, “facts” were essentially established through the procedure of witness testimony, and then the only way to implement them sustainably in practice was by including the participants in a junta-like formation. The decisive thing here was not some kind of “truth,” however it might be ascertained, but rather a sufficiently acceptable consensus about the statements made in the testimony. The high sense of operative urgency

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surrounding seafaring brings to light an additional peculiarity about this way of dealing with things empirical: even the improved nautical charts were always just interim results of a continuous process of emendation. They hardened fragmentary, uncertain, yet probable details into an image of the world that was not to be measured by the standard of scientific perfection, but rather based on how operational it could be in practice. For the cosmographer, the padrones reales were geographic hypotheses meant to be corroborated, disproved, or corrected in detail by new nautical experiences in the future. For the pilot, these maps had to stand the test in the here and now. To be sure, one cannot reduce the relationship between knowledge and power to a simple formula. But the observations collected here do permit a clarification with greater precision. In the context of Spanish colonial rule, knowledge was essentially ascertained by way of interrogatory procedures and put into effect by way of consensual procedures. “Power” via knowledge was most likely to be had by someone who organized these procedures, especially if he could control the opportunities for communication and, in this way, suppress counter-knowledge. In the summer of 1494, Columbus was in Cuba. On the day before his return voyage to the court he wanted to make sure that none of the other eyewitnesses contradicted him on a central assertion, namely that they were standing on the continent and had thus reached Asia. Everyone had to swear an oath to this effect, that Cuba was not an island, but was mainland instead. Cutting off the tongue was set as punishment for asserting the opposite.7 The actual dilemma of the Spanish Crown was this: one actually had procedures at hand for combating these kinds of attempts at gatekeeping, at suppressing dissenting voices. But in order to set “tongues” free – this is a legacy of the inquisitorial principle of protected denunciation – one needed to do more than simply facilitate “free” communication. One needed to train a powerful ear. Precisely because the ear was so powerful, however, it did not get to hear the truth, only to hear loyalty and disloyalty. It was not sent information; instead, it was sent interests. The real choice, therefore, was not between lying and truth, but between two variants of a political-communicative structure, each of which admitted differently structured groups of (lying or tactically speaking) informants. If one trusted the de facto powerful – a Colón, Cortés, or Pizarro – these powerful men would have taken over large shares of the spoils to be distributed. If, by contrast, one invited counterspokesmen to make denunciations, by creating the communicative conditions for vigilant triangles, the result was that larger groups and broader social strata participated in power and the distribution of goods. The latter option 7 12 June 1494, CODODES I, 621.



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seemed more advantageous to the Spanish Crown because it allowed the Crown to exercise its power of punishment and reward, because the Crown was permanently addressed in a spirit of loyalty, and certainly also because this contributed to limiting the power of local actors. Entera noticia was never achieved in this manner, but what was created was a colonial empire that lasted well into the nineteenth century.

Appendix 1 Abbreviations ACA AGI AGN AGS AHN BFZ BL BME BNE BPR BPT CODOIN–1

CODOIN–2

CODOIN–3 CODOIN–E CODODES IVDJ NCODOIN RAH

Archivo de la Corona de Aragón Archivo General de Indias Archivo General de la Nación Archivo General de Simancas Archivo Histórico Nacional Biblioteca Francisco Zabálburu British Library, London Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial Biblioteca Nacional de España Biblioteca de Palacio Real Biblioteca Pública, Toledo Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceania. Madrid 1864–1884, ND Vaduz 1964–1966. Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar. Segunda serie. 25 Bde. Madrid 1885–1932, ND Nendeln 1967. Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de Hispano-América. Madrid 1927–1932. Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España. 112 Bde. Madrid 1842–1895. Colección documental del descubrimiento (1470–1506). 3 Bde. Madrid 1994. Instituto Valencia de Don Juan Nueva colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España y de sus Indias. 6 Bde. Madrid 1892–1896. Real Academia de la Historia

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4 Index Aachen 82 absolutism 13, 19, 20, 59, 60, 64, 138 Academia de Matemáticas 75, 198–200 Accademia dei Lincei 210 access 6, 10, 30, 36, 38, 41, 47, 51–53, 71–73, 92, 93, 110, 127, 130, 135, 138, 180, 182–184, 214, 226, 229, 235, 236, 239, 241, 242, 244, 247, 248, 250, 253, 254, 257, 261, 264, 274; accessibility 72, 274 Acolhuacan 104 Acosta, José de 258 Acuña, Juan de 175 administration 2, 12, 13, 45, 48, 51, 55, 56, 68, 87, 106, 107, 110, 118, 137, 161–163, 167, 180, 188, 190, 216, 238, 255, 280, 284, 285 Africa 88, 99, 240 agents 4, 6, 44, 95, 102, 114, 132, 138, 147, 157, 158, 175, 267, 269, 274, 275 Aguilar, Marcos de 139 Alba, Duke of 279 Albert V (Duke of Bavaria) 77 Alcáçovas 87 Alcalá de Henares 82; University of Alcalá 85, 160, 162, 163 alcaldes mayores 110, 142, 149, 190, 223, 227, 285 Alcega, Domingo de 259 Alderete, Pedro de 159 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 208 Alexander III (Pope) 60, 66 Alexander VI (Pope) 88 Alfonso V (King of Aragon) 68 Alfonso X, the Wise (King of Castile) 14, 26, 34, 40, 44, 68, 69, 131, 182, 281 Alhambra 73 altepetl 104 Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, Fernando see Alba, Duke of Antequera 167 Antilles 200 Apian, Philipp 77 Aragon 14, 68, 69, 82, 106, 246 Aragon, Supreme Council of 69 Aranjuez 73

archive 3, 9, 14, 24, 30, 40, 68, 74, 168, 181, 190, 214, 233, 235, 236, 240, 242, 246, 254–258; of the Indies 9, 96; of Simancas 14, 75, 181, 235, 238, 240, 250, 253, 254, 256, 258, 262, 266; of the Council of the Indies 100, 168, 182, 184, 242, 243, 253–255, 257, 258; archivillos 255, 258, 263 Arezzo 34 Argote de Molina, Gonzalo 211 Arias Dávila, Pedro see Pedrárias Dávila Arias Montano, Benito 159, 160, 238, 279 Aristotle 27, 39, 45, 59, 61, 256 armada 38, 80, 241, 262; de la Guardia de la Carrera de Indias 271 Asia 238, 288 Assyrian empire 44 Athalaric (king of the Ostrogoths) 38 Atlantic 2, 14, 40, 63, 86–89, 91, 108, 138, 182, 189, 192, 193, 201, 203–207, 216, 241, 245, 271, 286 attention 7, 24–26, 32, 35, 39–41, 47, 50, 62, 65, 113–115, 127, 146, 147, 157, 175, 187, 191, 201, 210, 216, 225, 249, 255, 259, 262, 280 audiencia 45, 100, 106, 107, 109, 116–120, 129, 132–134, 139, 140, 142, 144, 146–148, 160, 168, 170, 172, 175, 177, 179, 186, 189–191, 213–215, 223, 226, 229, 242, 249, 275, 277, 284, 286 audience 1, 18, 49, 53, 62, 71, 72, 96, 149, 269, 274–276 Augustine 22 Augustinians 155, 164, 167, 242 Augustus 43, 52 authentication 116, 197, 199, 207 auxilium 5, 55 Ávila 83 Ayala, Diego de 254–256, 266 Ayala, Manuel José 258 Aztecs 104, 105, 127, 228 Bacon, Francis 12, 14–16 Bacon, Roger 60 Badajoz see Junta de Badajoz Barcelona 84



Barrionuevo, Hernando de 155 Benedict XII (Pope) 57, 58 Bentham, Jeremy 25 Bermúdez de Pedraza, Francisco 45 Bogotá 107, 245 Bolivia 107 Bologna 34, 250 Bonilla 84 booty 107, 108, 125, 128, 288; see also rewards Borja, Francisco de 159 Botero, Giovanni 234 boxes 34, 209, 210, 240, 253–255, 257, 258 Braudel, Fernand 20, 21 Brazil 89, 92 brevete 264, 265 Briceño, Francisco 172 Briviesca de Muñatones, Diego 169–171 Brussels 74, 79, 197, 262 Bry, Theodor de 250 Burgos 92, 254 Burgundy 18, 77 cabildo 110, 132 Caboto, Giovanni 196 Caboto, Sebastiano 196, 197, 259–261 Cabrera de Córdoba, Luis 19 calpolli 104 Cámara de Castilla 98 Cámara de Indias 98, 278 Canaries 91 Cape Bojador 88 Cape of Good Hope 90 Cape Verde 88, 89, 91 Caribbean 91, 107, 123, 127, 153, 182 Don Carlos 164 carta real 179 Cartagena 200 cartography 3, 9, 73, 76–78, 80, 81, 83, 125, 184, 196, 198, 204, 206, 258–261, 263; see also nautical cartography Casa de la Contratación 2, 5, 77, 86, 87, 92, 93, 124, 195, 210, 237, 239, 253, 257, 259, 260 Cassiodorus 38, 57 Castile 2, 24, 16, 40, 62, 64, 68, 69, 87, 88, 90–92, 111, 174, 178, 182, 238, 242, 257

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 311

Catherine (Queen of Portugal and sister of Charles V) 79 cazoncí 106 censorship 14, 160 center 14, 19, 21, 36, 53; centralization 13, 43, 60, 66, 114, 145, 160, 191, 192 Cervantes de Salazar, Francisco 243 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de 56, 68, 86, 217 Céspedes see García de Céspedes, Andrés Charcas 107, 226 Charles V (emperor) 1, 8, 14, 17, 18, 34, 43, 61, 63, 70, 71, 77, 79–82, 89, 91, 94, 96, 97, 117, 151, 152, 172, 179, 183, 197, 219, 235, 252, 256, 259–262 Chaves, Alonso de 192, 195, 196, 262 Chaves, Jerónimo de 210, 260 Chiapas 156 Chiericati, Francesco 80 Chila 228 Chile 238, 240 Christoph (Duke of Württemberg) 77 church 28, 30, 34, 38, 43, 45, 57, 60, 66, 72, 101, 106, 126, 147, 154, 164, 166, 167, 175, 190, 191, 218, 233, 238, 239, 254, 279; church patronage 106, 154, 164, 254 Cicero 57 ciencia 4, 61 Cieza de León, Pedro 242, 243, 245, 255 Cistercians 57 climate 4, 167, 187, 225 Cobos, Francisco de los 71, 94, 96 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 24 Colegio Imperial de San Isidro 75 Colima 105, 130 Colón, Bartolomé 82, 193 Colón, Christóbal (Christopher Columbus) 65, 69, 81, 88, 102, 111, 120–124, 193, 219, 221, 288 Colón, Diego 65, 82, 116 Colón, Hernando 81–83, 90, 195, 196, 247, 259 colonial rule see rule communication 2, 3, 4, 8, 13, 21–23, 26, 32–34, 37, 38, 40, 43, 44, 46–49, 53, 54, 63, 71, 97, 100, 102, 110, 112–121, 138,

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140, 141, 153, 157, 169, 176, 206, 214, 216, 222, 232, 234, 246, 252, 263, 266, 267, 271, 274, 284, 288 compilation 24, 58, 83, 163, 168, 179, 180, 234, 238, 239, 244 Conchillos, Lope de 94 confession 32, 35, 43, 76, 188, 190 conquest 40, 68, 80, 102–104, 107–109, 111, 129, 130, 182, 183, 187, 225, 235, 240–242, 245, 247; conquistadors 39, 103, 108, 109, 111, 116, 123–126, 130, 131, 142, 144, 145, 153, 156, 157, 169, 182, 188–190, 225, 228, 242, 247, 250, 275, 283 conscience 21, 25, 26, 76, 154, 157, 207 consejeros 46, 47, 49, 94, 98, 100, 102, 156, 158, 171–173, 236, 250, 255, 257, 258, 260, 265, 267, 269, 270, 274–278, 282 consensus 33, 50, 90, 91, 145, 199–201, 249, 287 consultas 96, 98, 179, 183, 253, 257, 262, 263, 265–268, 270–273 Contreras y Valverde, Vasco de 233 controll 2, 4, 35, 36, 48, 53, 87, 107, 116, 118, 122, 125, 135, 137, 145, 200, 286 Corcuera, Rodrigo de 262 corregidores 110, 127, 132, 142, 146, 147, 190, 222, 223, 226, 227, 285 correspondence 2, 8, 19, 21, 24, 61, 63, 70, 71, 94, 106, 118–123, 132, 140, 166, 175, 176, 178, 183, 186, 208, 211, 212, 219, 221, 232, 251, 253 Cortés, Hernán 103–107, 109, 111, 124, 125, 127–130, 132, 149, 229, 241, 242, 288 Cortés, Martín 153 Cosimo I de’ Medici (Grand Duke of Tuscany) 77 cosmógrafo cronista mayor, see historiography cosmography 7, 74–76, 84, 187, 236, 254; see also historiography Council of Castile 69, 81, 94, 98, 101, 155, 158, 169, 171, 182, 241, 277 Council of crusade 69 Council of finance 71, 96, 160, 241 Council of the Indies 2–5, 8, 11, 15, 52, 70, 71, 75, 93–102, 118, 126, 128–130, 133–136,



141, 145, 146, 149, 151, 152, 154–163, 165–169, 171–174, 176, 177, 179–191, 198, 200, 205–207, 210–213, 220, 222, 223, 228, 230–232, 234–245, 248–250, 252–255, 257–260, 262, 267, 269–271, 273–279, 284, 285, 287 Council of the state 70 councilmen see consejero Consejo de Órdenes 69 counsel 5, 46, 54, 64, 92, 95, 96, 98, 102, 107, 126–132, 140, 143, 144, 162, 171, 175, 183, 199, 200, 206, 227, 235, 236, 253, 256, 257, 261–268, 270–274, 286 court 1–4, 8, 12–14, 17–19, 23, 26, 29, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47–49, 52–54, 64, 68–77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 86, 93–95, 99–103, 111–113, 117–119, 121, 122, 125, 128, 131–134, 138, 139, 140–142, 144–146, 148–158, 160, 165, 168, 170, 171, 173, 175–180, 182, 183, 187, 195, 198, 199, 205, 206, 208–211, 214, 217, 221, 233, 235, 237, 238, 242, 244, 245, 247, 249, 250, 252–256, 259–263, 266, 272–277, 280–284, 286–288; court etiquette 18, 49, 71, 72; viceroy’s court 141–150 Cozauhtepec 227 Creoles 153, 154, 164 Cuba 65, 103, 125, 288 curiosity 6, 69, 120–122, 136, 204, 286 Cuzco 233, 234 d’Anghiera, Pietro Martire 182, 183, 192, 193, 210, 235, 244 Darién 221 Dávila y Bovadilla, Francisco Arias see Puñonrostro, Conde de Dear, Peter 14 decision 1, 2, 4–7, 10–12, 17, 19, 21–23, 25, 29, 42, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 58–61, 63–65, 67, 70, 81, 93, 94, 96, 102, 103, 125–127, 130, 133–135, 137–140, 142, 145, 146, 149, 151, 154, 164, 165, 170, 171, 175–179, 181, 182, 197, 200, 208, 217, 219, 229, 238, 248, 249, 252, 253, 261–265, 269–271, 273, 274, 280–283, 286, 287 Dee, John 78



de la Calle y Madrigal, Juan Ambrosio 278 demography 4, 108, 126, 127, 135, 166, 225, 226, 228, 229, 239, 243 denunciation 30, 31, 33–35, 37, 54, 116, 117, 140, 166, 198, 218, 280, 284, 288 derecho indiano 105, 178; leyes de Indias 178, 257, 293; recopilación 180 descriptions of the land 2–4, 68, 77, 78, 80, 83, 85, 86, 125–135, 128, 129, 132–134, 168, 174, 184–187, 191, 208, 209, 212, 214, 215, 219–222, 225, 231, 234, 236, 239, 240, 241–243, 245, 249 Díez de la Calle, Juan 52, 239, 278 Díez de la Calle y Madrigal, Juan 278 discourse 3, 10, 11, 17, 22, 26, 41, 42, 43, 81, 108, 113, 151, 169, 206, 270 dissimulatio 138, 282 distance 11, 13, 21, 29, 38, 41, 45, 57, 66, 72, 82–85, 105, 112–114, 121, 124, 130, 138, 140, 149, 156, 165, 194, 197, 222, 231, 243–245, 246, 247, 283, 285; rule from a distance 66, 105, 112–114, 117–119, 122, 123, 135, 170, 189, 200, 280, 283; see also space distributive justice 38, 39, 41, 71, 131, 134, 247, 275, 284 Domínguez, Francisco 208, 209, 211, 212 Dominicans 43, 119, 129, 155, 164, 167 Donato, Leonardo 21 Drake, Francis 80, 240 ear 22, 27, 30, 32, 36, 42, 44–47, 53, 62, 102, 142, 157; see also listening Ecuador 213, 244 Egypt 25, 44 Elizabeth I (Queen of England) 27, 80 El Salvador 105 Empoli 34 Encinas, Diego de 181, 257 encomienda 107–110, 126, 127, 133–135, 144, 149, 153, 169, 187, 218, 241, 283, 286; encomenderos 108, 109, 125, 132, 133, 153, 157, 169, 190, 229, 283, 284 England 27, 77, 78, 153, 196, 197, 260, 262 Enríquez de Almansa, Martín (viceroy of New Spain) 143, 161

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 313

entera noticia 3, 17, 38, 56, 57, 121, 133, 147, 148, 151, 181, 186, 211, 215, 219, 263, 270, 279, 282, 283, 286, 287, 289 entera relación 123, 124, 129, 135, 137 Eraso, Antonio de 97, 256 Eraso, Francisco de 97, 263, 263 erudition 38, 75, 174, 175, 196, 234, 251, 280 Escorial 17, 19, 20, 73, 75, 85, 160, 211, 262, 267, 271–274, 282 escribanos 36, 139 Espinosa, Diego de 11, 155–162, 164, 171 Esquivel, Pedro de 85, 262 estates (cortes) 5, 61, 71, 87, 91, 126, 152, 178, 254 ethnology 13, 128 Europe 1, 9, 14, 19, 25, 68, 70, 74, 77, 80–84, 97, 105, 111, 183, 240 excerpt 144, 179, 180, 206, 228, 232, 236, 241, 264; see also relator ex certa scientia 56, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67 expedition 22, 80, 82, 92, 102, 103, 123, 150, 192, 196, 200, 208–212, 219, 220, 235 experience 5, 22, 68, 86, 92, 93, 112, 147, 149, 157, 162, 165, 166, 168, 170, 172–176, 183, 194, 196–198, 201, 204, 207, 219–221, 229, 233, 238, 254, 263, 275, 277, 278, 287, 288 experiment 60, 168, 197, 208 experts 6, 45, 89, 112, 121, 134, 140, 148, 153, 158, 162, 165, 169–177, 181, 182, 195, 197, 199, 205–207, 209, 216, 221, 235, 236, 238, 240, 247, 250, 255, 261, 263, 264, 271, 277 eye 22–28, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44–46, 50, 52, 53, 62, 73, 114, 128, 143, 173, 197, 215, 235, 281, 284; eyewitness 80, 122, 175, 221, 288; blindness 42, 50, 63, 104, 113, 143, 281; see also seeing and inspection facts 6, 28, 31–33, 36, 57, 64, 66, 137, 139, 158, 203, 221, 261, 281, 287 Faleiro, Rui 1 Falero, Francisco 198 Farfán, Pedro 160 Farnese, Alessandro 251 Farnese, Ranuccio 251 fauna 4, 73, 210

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favor 38–41, 49, 54, 76, 94, 98, 115, 118, 119, 130, 139, 141, 145, 154, 173, 175, 189, 218, 220, 234, 246, 247, 280, 284 favoritism 42, 43, 47, 49, 53, 61, 71, 97 Fénelon, François 24 Ferdinand II, the Catholic (King of Aragon) 65, 69, 82, 94, 116, 120, 182 Ferdinand I (emperor) 80 Ferdinandy, Michael de 18 Fernández de Castro, Pedro see Lemos, Conde de Fernández de Madrigal, Francisco 278 Fernández de Madrigal, José 278 Fernández de Madrigal, Juan 278 Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo 106, 182–184, 235, 244 Fernández de Palencia, Diego 247 Fernández de Quirós, Pedro 212 Fernández Navarrete, Pedro 38, 39, 41, 43, 46 Flanders 38, 86 flora 4, 73, 210, 225 Florence 34, 77, 78, 192 Flores, Juan de 182, 235 Florida 200 Fonseca see Rodríguez de Fonseca Foucault, Michel 25, 28, 38, 41, 253 Fournier, Jacques see Benedict XII France 23, 60, 71, 77, 208, 240 Franciscans 129, 155, 164, 167, 172, 245 Frederick II (emperor) 285 Frías, Diego de 267 Frisius, Gemma 78 Fuenleal, Sebastían see Ramírez de Fuenleal, Sebastián functionality 10, 21, 59, 151, 197, 198, 256, 280 Furió Ceriol, Fadrique 40, 47, 49 Gallego, Juan 203 García de Castro, Lope 164 García de Céspedes, Andrés 15, 75, 193, 198, 200, 201, 205–208, 237, 261 Gasca, Pedro de la 154 Gasco, Andrés 242, 254 gatekeepers 47, 117, 139, 142, 189, 289 Gattinara, Mercurino 97 Genoa 77, 196

geographical knowledge 4, 22, 68, 69, 75, 77–81, 85, 88–91, 96, 104, 125, 127, 147, 148, 181, 184, 187, 194, 195, 197, 198, 204, 207, 219, 221, 224, 225, 231, 234, 236, 239–243, 245, 258, 260–262, 285, 288; chorography 78, 221, 222, 225; see also descriptions of the land Gesio, Juan Baptista 240 Gibraltar 205 globes 1, 8, 51, 74, 77–80, 82, 90, 91, 100, 192, 252, 257–259, 261 Gómara, Francisco de see López de Gómara Gómez, Antonio 28 Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, Francisco see Lerma, Duque de González Dávila, Gil 233, 237–239, 244 Grado, Alonso de 241 Granada 256 Greenblatt, Stephen 8 Gregory VIII (Pope) 43 Gricio, Gaspar de 94 Grijalva, Juan de 124 Guadalajara 107, 157 Guatemala 130, 148, 229 Gutiérrez, Diego 196, 197, 259 Guzmán y Pimentel, Gaspar de see Olivares, Conde de Hanke, Lewis 117 Harrison, John 88 Havana 199, 203 head 21, 24, 26, 27, 41, 42, 44, 45, 211, 279 Henry II (King of France) 77 Henry IV (King of Castile) 61, 182 hermeneutics 112, 113, 181, 253 Hernández de Liévana, Francisco 161 Hernández, Francisco 208–212 Herrera, Antonio de 230, 234, 237, 241–243, 247, 249–251, 258 Herrera, Juan de 199, 206, 211 Hespanha, António Manuel 39 Hieronymites 168 Hippocrates 28 Hispaniola 82, 89, 109, 116, 126, 132 historiography 128, 182, 247, 248, 251, 252; cosmógrafo cronista mayor 4, 161, 181–185, 196, 198, 212, 233, 235–252, 255, 267, 284; natural history 168, 183,





184, 187, 208–212, 220, 225, 234, 243, 244, 247; history of science 14, 60 Hojeda, Alonso de 92 Holbein, Hans (the Younger) 79 Holenstein, André 54 Honduras 105, 204, 230 humanism 7, 14, 51, 75, 77, 81, 84, 159, 183, 184, 192, 210, 237, 238, 244, 279 Hurtado de Mendoza, Andrés (Viceroy of Peru) 150 Hurtado de Mendoza y Pacheco, Luis 220 Ibarra, Juan de 97, 98, 100, 102, 271–273 indianos 165, 173, 175, 275, 287 información 3, 36, 64, 84, 132, 136, 137, 139, 144, 181, 195, 245; de estado 59; de méritos y servicios 177; de oficio 59; de partes 59 information 1–6, 8–13, 16, 17, 21–24, 29, 30, 32, 35–40, 42, 44, 46, 49–53, 55–59, 61–64, 67, 69, 74, 82–84, 88, 97, 102, 113, 114, 117, 119–124, 126, 128–130, 132–139, 141, 144–149, 154, 156–158, 161, 163, 166, 168, 175–177, 181, 183, 185, 186, 188–192, 194, 195, 197, 200, 204, 205, 207, 209–211, 213–216, 218, 219, 221, 222, 224, 231, 234–236, 243–246, 253, 255, 256, 261, 264, 265, 269, 270, 273, 274, 278, 280–286, 288; informatorial processes 58 Innocence III (Pope) 30, 34 Inquisition 14, 29, 30, 35–37, 54, 55, 57–59, 69, 87, 112, 117, 158, 162, 164, 165, 182, 216, 217; inquisitio 34; papal inquisition 29, 35 inquisitorial procedure 28–32, 34, 35, 54, 57, 58, 169 inspection 41, 51, 63, 66, 107, 143, 147, 179, 222, 231, 245, inspector 45, 51, interests 2, 4–6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 26, 30, 32, 33, 37–42, 46, 48–54, 62, 64, 69, 74, 91, 92, 94, 103, 105, 107, 109, 119, 121–123, 125–127, 129, 132, 134, 136–141, 143, 145, 146, 151–154, 156–158, 176, 179, 205, 209, 210, 214, 218, 220, 239, 241, 246, 247, 249, 251, 252, 258, 262, 263, 270, 271, 273–277, 280–282, 284, 288

4 Index 

 315

Isabella d’Este Gonzaga (Marchioness of Mantua) 80 Isabella (empress consort of Charles V) 71 Isabella I, the Catholic (Queen of Castile) 69, 88, 120, 182, 256 Italy 18, 80, 182, 192, 210, 240 James I (King of Aragon) 14, 68 Jerusalem 73 Jesuits 24, 51, 75, 158 Jiménez de la Espada, Marcos 124 John II (King of Castile) 64, 178, 182 John III (King of Portugal) 79 Juan, Jaime 200, 211, 212, 231 judges 28, 29, 33, 34, 36, 37, 45, 53, 55, 58, 60, 87, 89, 90, 107, 110, 116, 119, 123, 128, 129, 147, 151, 157, 159, 170, 172, 174, 177, 214, 218, 222, 226, 235, 247, 251, 273 junta 98, 155, 160, 195, 199, 201, 205, 260, 262, 271, 272, 287; de Contaduría Mayor 241; de Guerra 98, 230; de Hacienda 98; de Puerto Rico 272–273; dos Mathemáticos 205; Junta Magna 152, 157, 160, 163–165, 167, 171; of Badajoz 90, 196 Justi, Carl 20 justice 18, 22, 29, 30, 31, 33, 37–41, 45, 53, 58, 71, 113, 131, 133, 134, 147, 149, 155, 173, 176, 180, 247, 267, 275, 280, 284 knowledge 1–14, 16, 17, 19, 21–23, 25, 26, 28, 30, 35, 37, 38, 42, 46, 51, 52, 55, 56, 58–62, 64, 66–69, 73–76, 81, 85–88, 91–93, 105, 110–112, 114, 120–128, 130, 140, 141, 144–149, 151, 161, 164, 165, 169–177, 181, 183, 186, 191, 192, 194–198, 204, 206–209, 216, 219, 223, 226, 227, 235, 252, 253, 277, 278, 280, 282–285, 287, 288; Arab/Moorish knowledge 14, 68, 73, 81; empirical knowledge 2, 14, 16, 22, 24, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, 56, 58–62, 64, 85, 134–138, 141, 162, 163, 167–169, 181, 185, 192, 216, 217, 221, 222, 234, 239, 280–282, 285–288; expertise 162, 172, 206, 216, 235, 277; indigenous knowledge 9, 126, 210; Jewish tradition 14, 68, 81; lack of knowledge 3, 140, 145, 149, 170,

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248, 283; local knowledge 13, 37, 121, 122, 140, 181, 206, 242; omniscience 3, 21–23, 38, 53, 149, 280; see also experience Labrador 262 Labrit de Navarra, (bishop of Comminges) 256 Lamb, Ursula 193 Las Casas, Bartolomé de 1, 152, 154, 155, 156, 160, 164, 171, 172, 240, 242, 243, 250, 252 Late Scholasticism 26, 39, 42 Latour, Bruno 10, 19 law 22, 29–32, 45, 47, 56, 60, 65, 67, 76, 103, 105, 109, 111, 113, 147, 149, 152, 159, 178, 181, 185, 186, 191, 192, 221, 238, 258, 286; codification of law 4, 161, 178, 179, 180, 257; legal culture 31, 44, 104; see also derecho indiano Lazarillo de Tormes 56, 236 Ledesma, Juan de 161 Ledesma, Pedro de 100, 250 Legazpi, Miguel see López de Legazpi Lemos, Conde de 98, 244 León Pinelo, Antonio de 180, 230, 238–241, 253, 278 Lerma, Duque de 42, 47, 98 letrados 94, 160, 170, 174 leyes nuevas 153, 158, 179 libraries 70, 74, 75, 83, 85, 233, 239 libro de las descripciones 161, 185 Lima 101, 106, 107, 123, 164, 165, 170, 231, 238 Lisbon 75, 201 listening 41, 45, 47–50, 62, 95, 141–143, 157, 162, 274, 275, 279, 282; see also ear lists 3–5, 9, 30, 50, 51, 63, 68, 74, 76, 77, 82, 108, 120, 122, 124, 125, 127, 130, 131, 135, 136, 144–147, 150, 159, 162, 163, 165–169, 178, 185–190, 192, 199, 201, 203, 204, 214, 216–229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 236, 238–242, 256, 257, 262, 270, 278, 282 literacy see writing Loaisa, Fray García de 93, 210 Loaysa, Jerónimo de (archbishop of Peru) 161 locality 4, 13, 31, 33–37, 57, 62, 63, 65–67, 84, 85, 90, 101, 102, 104–106, 108,



110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 118, 121, 122, 124, 127, 131, 133, 134, 135, 139–141, 181, 187–189, 191, 195, 206, 208, 211, 212, 214, 216, 218–220, 222, 229, 230, 242, 245, 283, 285, 286, 289; see also knowledge, local longitude 81, 83, 88, 89, 91, 121, 185, 195, 207, 220, 272 López de Gamboa, Benito 161, 269, 270 López de Gómara, Francisco 242 López de Legazpi, Miguel 261 López de Velasco, Juan 85, 161, 168, 180, 184, 210, 212, 222, 236–238, 240–243, 247–249, 255, 256, 276, 277 Louis XIV (King of France) 23, 24 loyalty 32, 33, 39, 71, 95, 103, 111, 112, 115, 116, 118, 119, 125, 127, 131, 135, 138, 153, 164, 233, 234, 247, 248, 283–285, 288, 289 Loyola, Arias de 75, 237 Luhmann, Niklas 48, 176 Luna, Álvaro de 61 lunar eclipse 185, 187, 189, 200, 207, 211, 212 Lyon 24 Machiavelli, Niccolò 23 Madrid 20, 36, 37, 41, 70, 72, 73, 75, 99–102, 111, 113, 119, 128, 138, 139, 141, 153–155, 164, 166, 169, 171, 175, 182, 184, 200, 205, 209, 211, 233, 234, 237–239, 254, 258, 263, 274; palace 19, 70, 72, 73, 78, 99, 100, 102, 258 Magellan, Ferdinand 1, 80, 89, 90, 124, 252 Maldonado de Buendía, Alonso 155 Mallorca 68 Manrique de Lara, Luis 54 Mantua 80 maps 51, 204; nautical 2, 76, 77, 83, 91, 192, 193, 195, 199, 201, 204, 207, 258, 261, 262, 285, 288; portolan 68, 81; see also padrón real March of Ancona 57, 58 Marcks, Erich 18 Mariana, Juan de 42, 281 Márquez, Francisco 204 Martínez Millán, José 69 Martyr, Peter see d’Anghiera, Pietro Martire Matthieu, Pierre 20



Maximilian I (Emperor) 77 Maximilian II (Emperor) 71 Mecklenburg 77 medium 6, 52, 74, 76, 80, 81, 94, 111, 114, 120, 121, 137, 179, 271; mediality 6, 75; mediators 6, 44, 47, 50–52, 102, 112–114, 246, 261, 271, 274, 278, 281 Medina, Pedro de 85, 198, 262 Mediterranean 14, 68, 207 Melaka 79, 89 Melfi, constitutions of 34 Mendieta, Jerónimo de 42, 155, 245 Mendo, Andrés 24, 26, 47 Mendoza, Antonio de (Viceroy of Peru) 106, 142, 143, 146, 149, 149, 172, 255 Menéndez de Avilés, Pedro 271 Menéndez de Quijada, Luis 173 mentidero 73 Mercator, Gerhard 261 merits 38, 40, 131, 139, 247, 281 Mexico see New Spain Mexico City 104, 106, 107, 116, 118, 128, 129, 132, 144, 167, 209, 211, 212, 240 Michoacán 106, 167, 209 Minas de Zultepec 226 Minas de Zumpango 226 mission 85, 105, 124, 153, 154, 156, 164, 166, 169, 199, 210, 242, 247 Moctezuma II 104, 125 modernity 7, 11, 29, 151 Molucca Islands 1, 79, 89–91, 196, 252 Montaillou 57 Morales, Francisco de 172 Moreno, Antonio 206 Moya de Contreras, Pedro (archbishop of Mexico) 160, 161, 231, 280 Muñatones, Diego see Briviesca de Muñatones Muñoz Camargo, Diego 233 Muñoz, Jerónimo 85 Münster, Sebastian 77, 240 Naharro, Diego Lorenzo 207 Naples 68, 266 Nata 275 nautical cartography 2, 81, 87, 92, 207, 208, 261, 262; see also cartography and maps Navagero, Andrea 210

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navigation 76, 80, 82, 89, 91, 92, 188, 192–195, 198, 200, 201, 206, 207, 220, 237, 279 Nebrija, Antonio de 81, 82 New Galicia (Nueva Galicia) 129, 166, 167, 229 New Granada (Nueva Granada) 132, 172 New Spain (Nueva España) 63, 96, 98, 104–106, 109, 110, 116, 127–129, 132, 141–143, 146, 153, 160, 166, 167, 172, 199, 203, 204, 208, 209, 211, 212, 228, 239, 241–243, 254, 255, 257, 260, 269, 278 news 4, 23, 62, 73, 112, 113, 117, 164, 186, 199, 210, 263, 267, 270 Nicaragua 132, 172, 229, 241 Nicolay, Nicolas de 77 Netherlands 38, 86, 97 noticia see entera noticia Notitia dignitatum 52 Núñez de Balboa, Vasco 250 Nuño de Guzmán 129 Nuremberg 80 obedézcase, pero no se cumpla 65, 66, 109, 283 objectivity 11, 29, 46, 135–137, 141, 177, 281, 284, 285 observation 20, 26, 28–41, 51, 53, 54, 59, 60, 63, 87, 106, 112–120, 123, 124, 127, 131, 134, 137, 139–141, 148, 161, 168, 184, 188, 192, 210–213, 218, 234, 276, 284, 285, 287; self-observation 32, 113; observer 29, 30, 32, 35, 51, 53, 63, 114, 116, 118, 119, 123, 139, 140, 148, 184, 192, 210, 218, 234, 284 oidor 45, 116, 117, 132, 144, 146–149, 160, 214, 215, 285 Olivares, Conde de (y Duque de Sanlúcar) 42, 97, 237 omniscience 3, 21–23, 38, 53, 149, 280 Ondériz, Pedro Ambrosio de 75, 198–201, 204, 207, 208, 212, 237 orality 18, 73, 96, 129, 158, 177, 204, 205, 218, 263, 265–267, 270, 271 ordenanza 179 Ortelius, Abraham 78, 262 Ortiz, Tomás 119 Orwell, George 25, 114

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Otalora, Miguel Ruiz de 161 Ovando, Juan de 2, 4, 10, 11, 17, 94, 141, 151, 152, 154, 159–163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 172–174, 177–181, 184, 185, 211, 212, 222, 229, 231, 240, 254, 258, 261, 265, 274–277, 279, 280, 283, 287 Ovando, Nicolás de (governor) 93, 123–125 Ovando, Nicolás de 160 Oviedo, Gonzalo de Férnandez see Fernández de Oviedo Pacific 1, 166, 209, 212, 215, 250 padrón real 92, 192–194, 196–199, 203, 204, 206, 207, 259, 260, 287, 288 Páez de Castro, Juan 74, 75, 222 Palatinate-Zweibrücken 77 Pamier 57 Panama see Tierra Firme Panama City 107, 171 Pánuco 208 Panza, Sancho 56 Papacy 45, 57, 60, 61, 112 ; papal documents 25, 60, 61, 66, 68, 88, 258; papal nuncios 80, 155, 164; papal inquisition 29, 35 paper 13, 17–19, 34, 68, 72, 83, 91, 96, 97, 107, 117, 141, 142, 154, 182, 193, 201, 214, 216, 217, 223, 226, 230, 235–237, 240–242, 248, 250, 254–257, 262, 263, 267, 269, 280, 286 parchment 192, 193, 240, 260 pareceres 134, 136, 137, 144, 145, 154, 181, 208 Parker, Geoffrey 262 patronage 11, 13, 80, 98, 115, 154, 159–161, 164, 171, 254, 256, 271; church patronage 106, 154, 164, 254; clientele 11, 155, 158, 287; scholary patronage 80 Paul IV (Pope) 256 Pedrárias Dávila 250, 251 perception 24, 44, 49, 115 Pérez de la Fuente, Hernán 260 Pérez, Juan 84 performance 81, 134, 252, 261, 270 perpetuity (perpetuidad) 153, 154, 164, 169, 170, 241, 283 Peru 37, 96, 98, 101, 106, 132, 141, 150, 152, 154, 158, 164, 165, 169–172, 208–210,



230, 234, 238, 241, 245, 247–249, 257, 269 Pescador, Valenzuela 174 pesquisa 34–35 Peter III (King of Aragon) 68 Philip II (King of Spain) 8, 17–22, 53, 61, 70, 71, 73–76, 80, 85, 96–98, 153, 155, 159, 160, 162, 164, 181, 200, 208–212, 233, 235, 255, 262, 265–267, 270, 273, 282, 285 Philip III (King of Spain) 38, 42, 76, 94, 238, 263 Philip IV (King of Spain) 38, 70, 98, 100 Philippines 93, 208, 211, 262 physicians 28, 29, 208, 209 Piedrahita 84 Pigafetta, Antonio 80, 252 pillars of Hercules 15, 16, 200, 237 pilotos 89, 200, 201; piloto mayor 92, 194–196, 198, 204, 237, 260 Pisa 34 Pizarro, Francisco 118, 123, 124, 288 Pizarro, Hernando 152 Plantin, Christoph 279 Pliny (the Elder) 183, 210 plurality 11, 46, 51 Pomponius Mela 81 Ponce de León, Luis 128, 129 Popayán 155–159 Portugal 1, 77, 79, 87–91, 192, 196, 200, 285 postal system 253; see also news power 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 17–21, 25, 30–33, 37–39, 41, 42, 44–47, 50–55, 61, 62, 64, 67, 87, 103–107, 110–114, 118, 122, 123, 131, 132, 136, 138, 140, 143, 145, 149, 158, 164, 173, 175, 218, 221, 236, 244, 247, 271, 280–282, 286, 288, 289 practices 2, 3, 7, 11, 17, 27, 28, 31–33, 35, 40, 41, 54, 55, 57, 59, 63, 83, 87, 93, 99, 101, 102, 105, 109, 117, 137, 141, 147, 148, 152, 156, 165, 171, 191, 192, 195–197, 201, 206, 207, 217, 219, 223, 235, 247, 248, 253, 257, 264, 279, 283, 284, 286–288 Prado 72 pragmática 178



procedures 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, 18, 28–38, 47–50, 54–59, 61, 63, 64, 68, 84, 92, 96, 107, 118, 120, 123–125, 129–131, 134, 135, 137–140, 142, 145, 158, 162–164, 169, 176, 177, 183, 194, 197, 198, 200, 212, 216, 217, 221–223, 230, 243, 247, 249, 263, 267, 271, 273, 274, 281, 282, 285–288 prudentia 17, 22, 24 Ptolemy 81 Puerto de Caballos 204 Puerta de Sol 73 Puerto Rico 272, 273 Puga, Vasco de 179 punishment 29, 34, 36, 38, 53, 103, 111, 114, 115, 142, 143, 156, 186, 187, 195, 280, 283, 288, 289 Puñonrostro, Conde de (Francisco Arias Dávila y Bovadilla) 250 questionnaires 4, 57, 58, 130, 202, 205, 216–218, 225, 226, 230, 232; lists of questions 3, 4, 9, 120, 124, 130, 131, 135, 147, 158, 162, 163, 165–169, 185, 186, 192, 201–204, 209, 216–229, 231–233, 236, 238–241, 278 Quintana (secretary) 256, 266 Quirós, Francisco de 230, 231 Quirós, Pedro see Fernández de Quirós Quito 107, 212–215, 232 Don Quixote 56, 68, 86 Ramírez de Arellano, Gil 251 Ramírez de Fuenleal, Sebastián 132 Ranke, Leopold von 20, 21 rationality 4, 10, 11, 17, 18, 22, 23, 33, 56, 58, 134, 141, 151, 252, 253, 280, 283 reading 18, 20, 42, 45, 52, 58, 62, 63, 65, 75, 76, 88, 95, 102, 122, 123, 131, 139, 155–157, 162, 181, 184, 194, 199, 204, 208, 213, 223, 232–234, 249, 251, 253, 264–266, 274 real acuerdo 107 real cédula 63, 65, 92, 96, 116, 125, 127, 129, 130, 132, 148, 168, 178, 223, 230, 246, 264, 267 real decreto 63, 178 real provisión 63, 178, 266

4 Index 

 319

Recchi da Monte Corvino, Leonardo Antonio 210 reconquista 14, 108 register 5, 68, 92, 93, 108, 166, 179, 180, 188, 194, 238, 244, 253, 257 relación 63, 132, 134, 136; entera 123, 124, 129, 135, 137; particular 146; verdadera 137; de causa 36; de méritos y servicios 40, 139, 281; relaciones geográficas 185, 222, 228, 235, 236, 237, 240, 241, 243, 258; relaciones topográficas 222; sacar relación 264 relator 45, 97, 180, 205–207, 230, 238, 264, 267, 277 relics 73 repartimiento 40, 74, 107–109, 125, 126, 128–130, 133, 136, 286 responsiveness 48, 62, 95, 117, 134, 275 rewards 38–42, 53, 71, 94, 102, 103, 107, 108, 111, 114, 115, 128, 130–132, 138, 144, 145, 217, 247, 280, 283, 289; rewards economy 39–42, 138; see also booty Rhenanus, Beatus 52 Ribero, Diego 195, 196, 259 Río de la Plata 219 Rodríguez Aguilera, Juan 204, 205 Rodríguez Docampo, Diego 232, 233 Rodríguez de Fonseca, Juan (bishop of Palencia) 1, 94, 192 Rodríguez, Juan 213 Rojas, Fernando de 56 Rome 25, 31, 74, 82, 88, 164, 254 Román y Zamora, Jerónimo 242 Rota 45, 58 Ruiz de Otalora, Miguel 161 Ruiz de Villega, Pedro 262 rule, colonial 2–5, 9–11, 14, 33, 36, 55, 63, 74, 87, 96, 104–114, 116–120, 123, 128, 135, 138–141, 153, 163, 166, 170, 176, 218, 230, 246, 247, 278, 280, 282–284, 288; feudal 41, 103, 107–109, 111, 283; pastoral 25, 26, 28, 36, 53, 62, 96, 126, 280 Saavedra Fajardo, Diego de 51 Sahagún, Bernardino de 210, 242, 245 Salamanca 24; university of 81, 157, 159, 161, 172, 174

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Salmerón, Marcos 27 Sámano, Juan de 97, 259, 260 San Zoilo 262 Sánchez, Andrés 203 Sánchez Arias, Pedro 204 Sánchez de Renedo, Antonio 210 Sánchez, Luis 155–159, 162, 164, Sandman, Alison 192 Sanlúcar de Barrameda 221 San Miguel de Corneja 84 San Pedro, Miguel de 227 Santa Cruz, Alonso de 76, 198, 219–221, 236, 240, 242, 254, 259, 260, 262 Santa Fe, capitulaciones de 102 Santa María, Fray Diego de 168 Santa Marta 119, 132, 241 Santillán, Hernando de 247, 248 Santo Domingo 93, 106, 107, 182, 183, 203, 235 sapientia 22 Saragossa, treaty of 91 Sauvage, Jean 1 Schmitt, Carl 52 science 7, 13, 14, 21, 36, 60–62, 75, 81, 93, 194, 197, 205, 208, 231, 251; scientific revolution 14 seafaring 2, 15, 74, 77, 87, 194, 196–198, 206, 207, 287, 288 secretary 18–20, 23, 38, 45, 46, 71, 72, 94, 96–98, 100–102, 142, 155, 157, 160, 161, 180, 182, 185, 232, 235, 237, 239, 250, 254–259, 262, 264–267, 271–276 secrets 20, 23, 74, 76, 92, 100, 125, 128, 138, 140, 152, 185, 232, 257 seeing 24–28, 31, 38, 50, 54, 65, 74, 93, 112–115, 118, 143, 147–149, 152, 191, 244, 283; all-seeing 6, 17, 21, 24, 27, 28, 29, 41, 53, 114; panoptic 6, 25, 28, 38, 39, 41; see also eye Segovia 83, 101 setting 7–9, 19, 111, 112, 140, 274; communicative 7, 19, 39, 42, 73, 114, 116, 120, 232, 245, 284; epistemic 7, 68, 69, 80, 81, 102, 120–122, 141, 235, 246, 252, 263, 281, 283 Seville 2, 5, 9, 77, 83, 84, 86, 87, 91–93, 96, 151, 159, 183, 192, 194–200, 202,



209–211, 219, 221, 237, 239, 240, 247, 253, 256, 258, 259, 261–263, 269, 271–273 Shapin, Steven 14 Sicily 68 Siete Partidas 34, 44, 68, 257 Simancas see archives Sobel, Dava 88 Solórzano Pereira, Juan de 24, 26, 27, 46 Soto, Domingo de 43 space 49, 72, 73, 79, 91, 100, 104, 113, 115, 123, 135, 138, 181, 194, 203, 261, 265, 279, 284, 287; see also distance specula principum 22, 24 Speyer 52 Spice Islands see Molucca Islands Spivak, Gayatri 9 state formation 12, 13, 54, 77, 280; institution-building 102–104, 108 statistics 12, 21, 68, 135, 190, 218, 229, 280 Stella, Tilemann 77 Suárez, Diego 227 Suárez, Gaspar 213 Suárez de Carvajal, Juan 259 Sucre see Charcas Suetonius 52 supplications 40, 140, 266, 280 surveillance 25, 35, 36, 39, 53, 113, 114 survey 4, 5, 14, 37, 83, 145, 166, 199, 221, 228; surveyor 82, 200; demographic 135; land survey 85; survey of coastlines 208 tables 2, 51, 81, 185, 188, 189, 195, 220, 240 Tacitus 52 Tamayo de Vargas, Tomás 237–239 Tarascans 106 Taxco 227 taxes 68, 87, 94, 102, 105, 109, 119, 144, 164, 170, 180, 190, 218, 222, 240, 271; tax assessment 5, 45, 109, 144, 222, 240 Tenguantepec 228 Tenochtitlan 104, 105, see also Mexico City Tello de Sandoval, Francisco 161, 172, 275, 276 Tepanecs 104 Tetiquipa 227 Theodoric 38



Thevet, André 77, 208 Thomas Aquinas 25, 39 Tiberius 43 Tierra Firme 107, 124, 125, 133, 172, 173, 204, 238, 242, 267, 275 tlatoani 104 Tlaxcala 130, 168, 233, 234 Todorov, Tzvetan 8 Toledo 28, 68, 77, 99, 211, 255, 260 Toledo, Francisco de (Viceroy of Peru) 155, 162, 165, 166, 171, 215, 231, 267, 269 Tordesillas, treaty of 79, 80, 88–90, 261, 287 Toro 92, 182 Torquemada, Juan de 245, 258 Totolapan 227 travel report 73, 80, 124, 183, 208, 240, 258 Trent, council of 160, 257 Tribaldos de Toledo, Luis 237, 238 Trujillo 204 trust 1, 4, 44, 50, 51, 70, 86, 90, 114, 119–121, 126, 127, 132, 133, 135, 140, 144–146, 148, 159, 197, 207, 214, 244, 249, 271, 279, 281, 288 truth 28, 30, 32, 33, 37, 42, 46, 59, 66, 86, 127, 129, 133, 137, 142, 156, 158, 177, 187, 197, 198, 244, 246–248, 250, 251, 287, 288 universities 81, 85, 155, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 238, 279, 280 Uribe Apallúa, Juan de 273 Valdés, Fernando de 159, 256 Valencia 40, 68, 211, 238, 254 Valencia, Pedro de 238 validity 33, 55, 60, 64, 65, 67, 86, 90, 105, 148, 178, 197, 233, 284 Valladolid 74, 100, 152, 183, 242, 252, 254 Valle, Juan del (bishop of Popayán) 155, 157–159 Vander Hammen, Lorenzo 20 Vázquez, Bartolomé 275 Vázquez de Alderete, Diego 159 Vázquez de Lecca, Mateo 18, 96, 159, 160, 256, 269, 270 veedor 54 Vega, Juan de 53 Veitia Linaje, José de 239, 257

4 Index 

 321

Velasco, Luis de (the Elder, Viceroy of New Spain) 142 Velázquez, Diego 103, 124, 129 Vélez de Mendoza, Alonso 92 Venezuela 92, 245 Venice 34, 77 Vera Cruz 103 Veracruz, Alonso de la 155 Vermeer, Jan 78 Vespucci, Amerigo 192 Viceroys 6, 96, 98, 101, 106, 107, 118, 119, 170, 141–150, 154, 161, 164, 165, 168, 170, 172, 186, 190, 208, 209, 213, 214, 219, 220, 223, 224, 230, 241, 249, 254, 260, 267, 269, 285, 286; viceroy’s court 142–151 vigilance 26, 41, 111, 113–116, 123, 135, 140, 218, 280, 284, 288 Villatoro 84 visita 4, 34, 57, 77, 119, 140, 143, 144, 147, 148, 152, 154, 157, 159–166, 168–170, 171, 173, 184, 185, 195, 196, 217, 218, 236, 253, 275, 287 visitation, see visita watchfulness 24–28, 31, 38, 112, 114, 147–149, 152 Weber, Max 67, 285 Whitehall 78, 80 witness see eye Worms 82 writing 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 18–20, 28, 35, 36, 55, 59, 64, 68, 84, 96, 97, 100, 102, 116–118, 124, 129, 132, 136, 138, 139, 141, 156–158, 161, 163, 176–178, 181–184, 187, 194, 203, 209, 210, 217, 222, 223, 230, 232, 234, 235, 236, 242, 244, 247, 251, 252, 253, 255, 256, 258, 263–267, 270, 271, 284, 286; literacy 7, 194 Württemberg 77 Wyngaerde, Anton van de 70 Yucatán 124, 199 Zamorano, Rodrigo 210 Zapata, Gómez 161 Zeno 66 Zorrilla, Diego de 255 Zuazo, Alonso de 89 Zultepec see Minas de Zultepec

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 Appendix

Zumárraga, Juan de (archbishop of Mexico) 116, 129

Zumpango see Minas de Zumpango