Negotiating Pearls in the Early Jesuit Missions of California

Abstract

This contribution aims to shed light on the conceptions through which natural resources were negotiated in an emerging colonial setting: the Jesuit missions in the region now known as Baja California in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The essay explores the polyvalence and contrasting perceptions of pearls as “resources” through letters, reports, accounts, and other bureaucratic records related to mission management, particularly in the region of Loreto. It argues that pearls were spiritual, political, and material expedients. Their different values were not commensurable yet were mutually dependent in the colonial project.