{"title":"House of Trade: Mestizo Children, Merchant Networks, and Sixteenth-Century Empire Building in Early Modern Colombia","authors":"Katherine Godfrey","doi":"10.1080/14701847.2022.2140955","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, dozens – if not hundreds – of mestizo, or mixed-race, children and adolescents journeyed to and from the Iberian Peninsula from Spain’s American territories. A significant number of them hailed from northern South America. Born from the often-violent encounters between Indigenous and European peoples, mestizo children facilitated the forging of merchant networks both in the service of their Spanish fathers as well as other non-related, legal guardians. These children – and in particular male youths – assisted their stewards during terrestrial and transatlantic travel, and in the process, became familiar with trading practices, kinship networks that spanned vast distances, and the crucial recognition that having access to the monarch’s ear held immeasurable worth. Documents culled from Colombian and Spanish archives, and in particular travel licenses from the Casa de la Contratación in Seville, Spain, provide rich and often harrowing accounts of the multidirectional movements of mestizo children. Pressed into a peripatetic life at the behest of Spanish fathers and the pulse of the Carrera de Indias fleet system, I contend that mestizo children, while perhaps small in physical and legal stature, were crucial, human components in the building of empire.","PeriodicalId":53911,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies","volume":"7 1","pages":"403 - 420"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14701847.2022.2140955","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT Over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, dozens – if not hundreds – of mestizo, or mixed-race, children and adolescents journeyed to and from the Iberian Peninsula from Spain’s American territories. A significant number of them hailed from northern South America. Born from the often-violent encounters between Indigenous and European peoples, mestizo children facilitated the forging of merchant networks both in the service of their Spanish fathers as well as other non-related, legal guardians. These children – and in particular male youths – assisted their stewards during terrestrial and transatlantic travel, and in the process, became familiar with trading practices, kinship networks that spanned vast distances, and the crucial recognition that having access to the monarch’s ear held immeasurable worth. Documents culled from Colombian and Spanish archives, and in particular travel licenses from the Casa de la Contratación in Seville, Spain, provide rich and often harrowing accounts of the multidirectional movements of mestizo children. Pressed into a peripatetic life at the behest of Spanish fathers and the pulse of the Carrera de Indias fleet system, I contend that mestizo children, while perhaps small in physical and legal stature, were crucial, human components in the building of empire.
从16世纪到17世纪初,数十名(如果不是数百名的话)混血儿童和青少年从西班牙的美洲领土往返于伊比利亚半岛。他们中有相当一部分来自南美洲北部。混血儿出生在土著和欧洲人经常发生的暴力冲突中,他们促进了商人网络的建立,既为他们的西班牙父亲服务,也为其他无亲属的法定监护人服务。这些孩子——尤其是年轻的男性——在陆地和跨大西洋的旅行中协助他们的管家,在这个过程中,他们熟悉了贸易惯例,跨越遥远的亲属网络,并认识到能够进入君主的耳朵具有不可估量的价值。从哥伦比亚和西班牙的档案中挑选出来的文件,特别是从西班牙塞维利亚的Casa de la Contratación获得的旅行许可证,提供了关于混血儿童多向流动的丰富而往往令人痛心的描述。在西班牙父亲的命令下,在卡雷拉·德·印度舰队体系的脉搏下,我被迫过着四处漂泊的生活,我认为,混血儿童虽然在身体和法律地位上可能都很小,但在帝国的建设中却是至关重要的人类组成部分。