Aram, Bethany & Yun-Casalilla, Bartolomé (Eds. 2014) - Global Goods and The Spanish Empire, 1492-1824. Circulation, Resistance and Diversity PDF

Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824
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Global Goods and the
Spanish Empire, 1492–1824
Circulation, Resistance and Diversity
Edited by
Bethany Aram
Ramón y Cajal Scholar, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
Full Professor of Early Modern History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain
Editorial matter and selection © Bethany Aram and Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla 2014
Remaining chapters © Respective authors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-32404-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-45891-2 ISBN 978-1-137-32405-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137324054
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Global goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824 : circulation, resistance and diversity / edited
by Bethany Aram (Ramón y Cajal scholar, Universidad Pablo de Olavide of Seville, Spain) and
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla (full professor of early modern history, Universidad Pablo de Olavide
of Seville, Spain).
pages cm
Summary: “Drawing upon economic history, cultural studies, intellectual history and the
history of science and medicine, this collection of case studies examines the transatlantic
transfer and transformation of goods and ideas, with particular emphasis on their reception in
Europe. It critiques and enriches Atlantic history and the history of consumption by highlighting
a degree of resistance to unfamiliar goods and information as well as the asymmetrical and
violent nature of many types of exchange. It considers agents who forged networks and
relations within and beyond the Spanish Empire, including Jesuit missionaries, Sephardic
merchants, African laborers and farmers from Oaxaca to Santo Domingo to the Piedmont. While
uniting increasingly homogenous and connected societies, the expansion of European horizons
also generated diverse interests and divergent material cultures”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-349-45891-2
1. Spain—Commerce—History. 2. Spain—Colonies—America—Commerce—History.
3. America—Commerce—History. 4. Consumer goods—Spain—History. 5. Consumer
goods—America—History. 6. Material culture—Spain—History. 7. Material culture—
America—History. 8. Business networks—History. 9. Europe—Foreign economic
relations—America. 10. America—Foreign economic relations—Europe. I. Aram,
Bethany. II. Yun Casalilla, Bartolomé.
HF3685.G55 2014
382.094607—dc23 2014024811
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii

Acknowledgements viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
1 Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824:

State of the Art and Prospects for Research 1
Bethany Aram
Part I Cultural and Intellectual Constraints
2 The Early Modern Food Revolution: A Perspective
from the Iberian Atlantic 17
María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper
3 The Difficult Beginnings: Columbus as a Mediator
of New World Products 38
Consuelo Varela
4 Accommodating America: Renaissance Missionaries
between the Ancient and the New World 53
Antonella Romano
5 America and the Hermeneutics of Nature in Renaissance
Europe 78
María M. Portuondo
6 The Diffusion of Maize in Italy: From Resistance to
the Peasants’ Defeat 100
Giovanni Levi
Part II The Social Use of Things
7 Taste Transformed: Sugar and Spice at the Sixteenth-Century
Hispano-Burgundian Court 119
Bethany Aram
8 Diet, Travel, and Colonialism in the Early Modern World 137
Rebecca Earle
9 Asian Silk, Porcelain and Material Culture in the
Definition of Mexican and Andalusian Elites, c. 1565–1630 153
José Luis Gasch-Tomás
v
vi Contents
10 Interest and Curiosity: American Products, Information,

and Exotica in Tuscany 174
Francisco Zamora Rodríguez
Part III Connected and Contrasting Societies
11 Mexican Cochineal and European Demand for
a Luxury Dye, 1550–1850 197
Carlos Marichal
12 Hispaniola’s Turn to Tobacco: Products from Santo Domingo
in Atlantic Commerce 216
Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero
13 Global Trade, Environmental Constraints, and
Local Conflicts: The Case of Early Modern Hispaniola 230
Igor Pérez Tostado
14 The Resilience and Boomerang Effect of Chocolate:
A Product’s Globalization and Commodification 255
Irene Fattacciu
Final Thoughts
15 The Spanish Empire, Globalization, and Cross-Cultural
Consumption in a World Context, c. 1400–c. 1750 277
Selected Bibliography 307

Index 319
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
5.1 “Orbis tabula,” in Benito Arias Montano, Phaleg siue

De gentium sedibus primis, orbisque terrae situ (Antwerp, 1572) 86
5.2 Narcissus jacobeus, in C. Clusius, Rariorum plantarum
historia (Antwerp, 1601), 157 88
9.1 Japanese trunk decorated in mother-of-pearl with floral
and animal motifs and Taoist symbols, 1576–1625.
Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid 163
9.2 Figure of the infant Jesus from Cebu (Philippines).
Anonymous, 1601–1700. Museo de América, Madrid 166
10.1 Frontispiece of Francesco Redi, Esperienze intorno a diverse
cose naturali (Florence: All’Insegna della Nave, 1671) with
a drawing of a custard apple, p. 163 185
11.1 The cochineal commodity chain: from Veracruz
to Europe, c. 1780 207
11.2 The cochineal trade: mercantile networks in colonial Mexico 209
11.3 Annual production of cochineal by weight registered
at the Oficina del Registro y la Administración Principal
de Rentas, Oaxaca, 1758–1854 212
11.4 Annual value of cochineal production registered at
the Oficina del Registro y la Administración Principal
de Rentas, Oaxaca, 1758–1854 212
14.1 Weights of cocoa imported by the Dutch and by
the Spanish, 1700–78, with an estimate of
Europe’s cocoa imports 265
Tables
6.1 Distribution of production of main cereals in four provinces

of Piedmont and in the region, 1760–69 and 1780–89 110
9.1 Ownership of Asian goods in Mexico City, 1580–1630 157
9.2 Ownership of Asian goods in Seville, 1580–1630 158
vii
Acknowledgements
This book represents the culmination of a four-year research project directed

by Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and financed by the Regional Government ( Junta)
of Andalucía, P09-HUM 5330, “New Atlantic Products, Science, War, Economy
and Consumption in the Old Regime.” The chapters selected and revised for
publication have been presented and discussed at international workshops
held at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, from 11 to
12 December 2010, as well as at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide and
the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville, Spain, from 22 to
23 March 2011. The editors are grateful to all of the participants for their
contributions to these workshops. For reasons of space and coherence, it has
not been possible to include all of them in this book.
The editors are grateful to their colleagues and students at the Department
of History and Civilization at the European University Institute of Florence
and the Department of History, Geography and Philosophy of the
Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville. They have acquired a particu-
lar debt of gratitude to Ruth Mackay, for accepting delays and providing
attentive, expert translations of the chapters written in Spanish by Gutiérrez
Escudero, Pérez Samper, Pérez Tostado, Zamora Rodríguez and Varela. Her
work was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and
Competitivity, HAR2010-12073-E, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia,
guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen,” which also helped
meet the costs of the workshop held in Seville. The editors are also grate-
ful to José Luis Gasch-Tomás for translating Giovanni Levi’s chapter from
Italian and preparing the index. At the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, they
also acknowledge the assistance of Laura Borragán Fernández and Lucrecia
Johansson with the book’s notes and bibliography.
Finally, the editors would like to thank an anonymous reader at Palgrave
Macmillan for thoughtful suggestions—incorporated to the best of our
ability—as well as Fiona Little, Jen McCall and Holly Tyler for their patient
help and support overseeing the project’s completion. Above all, however, we
thank the authors contributing to this volume for enduring our multiple que-
ries and requests in the context of an exchange that has brought us together
without undermining the diversity of the perspectives developed here.
Bethany Aram and Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla

Seville and Florence, 2013–14
viii
Notes on the Contributors
Bethany Aram is a Ramón y Cajal scholar in the Area of Early Modern

History at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain. Her research
has focused on the early sixteenth-century Hispano-Burgundian monarchy
and the conquest of Central America.
Rebecca Earle is a cultural historian of colonial and early national Spanish
America at the University of Warwick. Her most recent work has been particu-
larly concerned with the construction of racial categories, with the construction
of national pasts in the postcolonial era and with the role of food in structuring
colonial society.
Irene Fattacciu is a research fellow at the University of Turin. She earned
her Ph.D. at the European University Institute in Florence with a thesis on
the mechanisms and implications of appropriation and diffusion of choc-
olate through eighteenth-century Atlantic and Spanish networks.
José Luis Gasch-Tomás, a member of the Area of Early Modern History at
the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, recently defended his Ph.D. thesis at the
European University Institute in Florence on the commerce, circulation and
consumption of Asian products in New Spain and Castile.
Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, Director of the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
Americanos (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in Seville, has
been a tenured scholar at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
since 1989. Serving on the editorial boards of prestigious journals, he has also
been President of the Asociación Española de Americanistas since 2000.
Giovanni Levi is emeritus professor of the Ca’Foscari University in
Venice. One of the founders of the mico-historical movement, he has also
co-founded and co-directed the graduate program in the History of Europe,
the Mediterranean World and its Atlantic Diffusion at the Universidad Pablo
de Olavide in Seville.
Carlos Marichal joined the Colegio de México’s Center for Historical
Studies in 1989, after obtaining his Ph.D. at Harvard University. An inter-
national expert on imperial finance and trade as well as global crises, he is the
co-founder and President of the Mexican Association of Economic History.
María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper is Full Professor of Modern History
at the Central University of Barcelona and was President of the Spanish
Foundation of Modern History from 2010 through 2014. She specializes in
courtly and daily life as well as cultural and culinary exchange.
ix
x Notes on the Contributors
Igor Pérez Tostado is a permanent lecturer in Modern History at the

Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville. His research deals with the relation-
ship between the British Isles and the Spanish Monarchy, the study of
exiles and their social and cultural integration, informal diplomacy and the
consequences of political and religious violence from a connected global
perspective. He is now finishing a book on Anglo-Spanish relations in the
first half of the seventeenth century.
María M. Portuondo is Associate Professor at The Johns Hopkins University,
where she earned her Ph.D., and now teaches the history of science and
technology. Her historical research focuses on the scientific enterprise in the
Hispanic world during the early modern era.
Antonella Romano directs the Alexandre Koyré Center for the History
of Science and Technology, affiliated with the École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. An
expert on Jesuit missionaries, Romano specializes in the history of early
modern European science, with an emphasis on science and religion as well
as science and empire.
Consuelo Varela has been a research scholar at the Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-Americanos (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in
Seville since 1990, serving on the editorial boards of prestigious journals and
giving seminars and courses around the world as an expert on Christopher
Columbus as well as early expeditions in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla has been Professor of Early Modern History
at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, since 1999. Yun was also a
professor at the Department of History and Civilization of the European
University Institute, Florence, between 2003 and 2013 and its Director from
2009 through 2012. Numerous publications reflect his expertise in global,
comparative and transnational history, as well as in the history of the
Spanish Empire, aristocratic networks, economic history and the history of
consumption.
Francisco Zamora Rodríguez joined the Centro de História de Além-Mar
in Lisbon as a post-doctoral researcher after completing his Ph.D. at the
Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, in 2011. His scholarly interests focus
on the analysis of the consular institution during the early modern period
and consuls’ commercial networks as private traders.
1
Global Goods and the Spanish
Empire, 1492–1824
State of the Art and Prospects for Research
Bethany Aram
Atlantic history, defined by Alison Games as global history applied to the

Atlantic world, has inspired debates and forums, scholarly journals, mono-
graphs and an impressive number of edited collections in recent years.1 The
ocean’s historiography, populated by prolific scholars, teems with synthetic
approaches and theoretical analyses, published continually.2 In such deftly
traveled waters, at first glance it would appear difficult to make an original
contribution.
The monumental Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, c.1450–c.1850,
edited by Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan in 2011, has provided an
indispensable reference, while focusing and renewing the state of the art.
In an extended review of the work, Cécile Vidal noted that Atlantic his-
tory continues to be centered mainly upon the Americas.3 Vidal relates
this “amerocentrism,” perhaps more precisely “north-amerocentrism,” in
present-day Atlantic history to the fact that many of its most prestigious
practitioners, and certainly most of those involved in recently published
collective volumes, are based at universities in the United States. The state of
the art, logically, has been shaped by the availability of academic funding.
Recently, it has also been enriched by the growing availability of primary
source material through the internet.
The Atlantic, as Karen Kupperman has pointed out, is an anachronism.4
Although scholars of Iberian empires developed Atlantic approaches as
early as the 1940s and 1950s, the field emerged explicitly an area of study
in the 1960s following the interest of Jacques Godechot, Robert Palmer
and Bernard Bailyn in “Atlantic revolutions.”5 In the aftermath of World
War II and at the onset of the Cold War, these scholars called attention to
the “democratic values” and “common political heritage” articulated in
the North American and French upheavals of the eighteenth century. Some
early proponents of the Atlantic approach, associated with the defense of
“Western civilization,” have even been seen as lending academic credibility
to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.6 Their emphasis on revolutions,
in any case, remains alive and well within Atlantic history, and has been
1
2 Bethany Aram
fruitfully extended to Haiti.7 At times, however, the field’s foundational

concern with the Enlightenment and “democratic” thought has privileged
the eighteenth-century north Atlantic world.8 Exacerbating this tendency,
the institutionalization of “Western civilization” at some United States
universities, also in the context of the Cold War, inexplicably marginalized
Ibero-America.
On the eastern coast of the United States, programs in Atlantic history
founded at Harvard University and at the Johns Hopkins University have
been especially influential, training and attracting generations of scholars.
Anchored slightly further south, the Johns Hopkins Program, whose found-
ing fathers in the 1970s included Philip Curtin, Jack Greene, Richard L.
Kagan, J. G. A. Pocock and A. J. R. Russell Wood, embarked upon a less pri-
marily Anglo-American trajectory toward global history. This tendency finds
continuity in Philip Morgan’s collaboration with Nicholas Canny, former
director of the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social
Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway.9
More surprisingly, each of the main North American schools of Atlantic
history published a collective volume in 2009. These collections, edited
by Bernard Bailyn and Patricia Denault on the one hand and Jack Greene
and Philip Morgan on the other, exemplified the divergence of the pion-
eering Atlantic schools in the United States. While Bailyn highlighted
northern “currents” in the field and derided “elusive Braudelians,”10 Greene
and Morgan addressed the major criticisms regarding Atlantic history.11
Meanwhile, dynamic contributions to the field have emerged at other
centers: New York University’s program in Atlantic History, founded in
1994; the Universidad Pablo de Olavide’s graduate program in “Historia de
Europa,” “El mundo mediterráneo y su difusión Atlántica,” inaugurated by
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, Cinta Canterla and Giovanni Levi in 2001; the
Centro de História d’Aquém e d’Além-Mar (CHAM) in Lisbon and the Azores
established in 2003; and Mondes Américains, Sociétés, Circulations, Pouvoirs
(MASCIPO), active in France since 2006. All of these complement an Ibero-
American tradition in Cologne, Hamburg, Graz and Munich, to name only
some of the most active centers.12
African and Iberian contributions to Atlantic history have prolifer-
ated, although specialists in the North American Atlantic world have not
always been receptive to them. A revival of scholarly interest in the African
Atlantic, led by Linda Heywood, John Thornton and David Eltis among
others, re-vindicates its cultural impact and demographic importance. The
compilation and use of an online database of over 35,000 slave voyages pion-
eered by Eltis continues to revolutionize the field.13 Subtly shifting Atlantic
history’s temporal and geographical orientation, recent efforts to write it
from the “bottom up” socially as well as geographically have made the field
more inclusive. The work of John Thornton and Herman Bennett, among
others, has gone beyond the model of the plantation complex to recover the
Global Goods and the Spanish Empire 3
agency of free as well as enslaved Africans in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-

century Iberian Atlantic world.14 Recent syntheses, emphasizing interactions
among Europeans, Africans and Native Americans, have also reflected this
growing interest in exchanges among different groups, defined according
to origin, occupation, religion or other affiliation, in a field where the ideas
of political theorists and governing elites previously occupied center stage.
In this way, Atlantic history would appear to be recovering its African and
Afro-American origins.15
In contrast to the African Atlantic, much important early work on the
Iberian Atlantic took place on the peripheries of self-proclaimed Atlantic
historiography, without invoking it explicitly. A touchstone for the Iberian
field, although detached from the impulses that inspired Palmer and
Godechot, remains Pierre and Huguette Chaunu’s 12-volume Séville et
l’Atlantique (1504–1650).16 Also predating the “Atlantic” label, the work of
Charles Verlinden proved particularly influential in connecting the medi-
eval Mediterranean to early Iberian expansion, while that of Antonio Rumeu
de Armas related Castile to the African Atlantic.17 Other contributors, led by
C. R. Boxer, Vitorino Magalhães Godinho and John H. Parry,18 emerged among
experts in Spanish American legal systems (including Lewis Hanke, Manuel
Giménez Fernández and Demetrio Ramos),19 migration (such as Magnus
Mörner, Peter Boyd-Bowman or Ida Altman)20 and historical demography
(represented by Woodrow Borah and the “Berkeley school”),21 in addition
to scholars of commerce and trade (Antonio Céspedes del Castillo, Antonio
García-Barquero, Carlos Martínez Shaw),22 culture (Robert Ricard, David
Brading, Carlos Alberto González Sánchez),23 and networks (Bartolomé
Yun-Casalilla, Ana Crespo Solana),24 as well as many others. In recent years,
scholars of the Iberian Peninsula and Ibero-America have become more
openly “Atlantic” and “global.”
Specialists in the Iberian Atlantic, including Kenneth Andrien, Jorge
Cañizares-Esguerra, J. H. Elliott, Felipe Fernández Armesto, Tamar Herzog,
Richard L. Kagan, Sabine McCormack, Anthony Pagden, Carla Rahn Phillips
and Stuart Schwartz have addressed, and in some cases even joined, the
New England establishment. They have emphasized that the early modern
Atlantic world was overwhelmingly African and Iberian.25 The innovative
work of these scholars and others—particularly Serge Gruzinski, Sanjay
Subrahmanyam and Pedro Cardim26—has begun to integrate the Ibero-
American world into a global perspective. The eighteenth-century British
Empire looks less ground-breaking as its Iberian predecessors become better
known.
For scholars of Ibero-America, and particularly Spain, the attempt to apply
the analytical model that Ferdinand Braudel developed for the Mediterranean
to the Atlantic makes a lot of sense.27 Interestingly enough, the Atlantic histor-
ians least receptive to Braudel’s work have been the most prone to inherit
problems long identified in his Mediterranean: a Euro-centric emphasis on
4 Bethany Aram
the “collective destiny” or unity of the oceanic world and an avoidance

of its internal frontiers.28 Conflict and violence, inevitably part of Atlantic
(or any) history, may be better approached through local, contextualized
scrutiny. Although few imperial histories have dared to overlook resistance,
Atlantic history, marked by an enthusiasm for circulation and exchange,
often avoids analysing impediments to it. Counteracting such impulses, the
transatlantic slave trade and the rise of plantation slavery have long received
attention, and scholars are now beginning to examine other, more ambigu-
ous, processes of destruction and coercion associated with the migration of
persons and the displacement of goods.
Another recommendation for elaborating Atlantic history from the “bottom
up” endorsed by Alison Games has been the idea of following commodities
around (and potentially beyond) the Atlantic.29 The commodity biography,
a genre pioneered by Sidney Mintz,30 has gained popularity in recent years.
Fruitful attention has been dedicated to products including chocolate and
tobacco, cod, cotton and even books.31 Such approaches to Atlantic his-
tory have traced and sometimes even celebrated the circulation of peoples,
products and ideas. Yet a resistance to change and innovation—rather than
a desire for exchange—may have constituted the norm and offered advan-
tages within many cultural, social, political and intellectual relations during
the Old Regime.
The present volume makes no attempt at comprehensive coverage of any

single territory or time period. Rather, it offers a multi-faceted collection
of case studies designed to engage issues of resistance, diversity and global-
ization in different proportions, depending on each chapter’s focus and its
author’s perspective. Like the compilation by Antonio Possevino studied in
Chapter 4, the present volume aspires to be “selective, not exhaustive.” The
editors have avoided imposing strict temporal or spatial frontiers in order
to encourage authors to follow the commodities and ideas. Moreover, pla-
cing the Spanish Empire from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century
at the core of our focus facilitates an understanding of its permeable and
shifting borders. In some cases, transgressing these boundaries proves cru-
cial in order to understand the role of the Spanish Empire in the process of
globalization.
Unlike monographs devoted to single commodities, the case studies
selected for this volume bring together original approaches to an empire
from within and without as a dynamic, evolving and contested entity rather
than a closed or complete framework. They explore how polities were cru-
cial for the circulation of goods and their rejection in some areas, as well as
how new products and forms of consumption, not to mention the divergent
impact of global expansion, transcended political units. All of the chapters
that follow explore asymmetrical processes of the acquisition, rejection,
appropriation and transformation of information and products from the
Americas. They suggest that the “conquest” of Europe by American goods

may have been just as negotiated, selective and varied as that of America
by European soldiers, settlers and missionaries. Along similar lines, the eco-
logical impact of the spread of plants and animals on lands new to them
remains an ongoing concern.32
In Europe, the products of Atlantic exchange were neither immediately nor
uniformly embraced. Some, in fact, were rejected and resisted for many years,
as in the case of American maize in Piedmont or Asian silk in Seville, discussed
in Chapters 6 and 9. Yet, in other cases, ruling elites, like the Burgundian
Habsburgs (Chapter 7) or the Medici (Chapter 10), competed to acquire novel
and rare goods of distant origins. A number of the studies collected here
focus on specific commodities, including cochineal, tobacco and chocolate
(Chapters 11, 12 and 14) in order to examine the choices and behaviors of
the groups that rejected, sought, used, transformed and/or consumed these
products. The need for concrete, local contexts has obliged many of the
authors to situate their studies in the areas they know the best. For this rea-
son, this volume applies the idea of examining the demand and uses for new
products mainly among southern Europeans in order to write history from
the “bottom up.” It could also, however, prove rewarding in future studies
of groups of African or American consumers. Africans and Native Americans,
often considered mainly as producers or even products (slaves), also exercised
agency as consumers of goods from around the world. Although the chapters
that follow focus primarily on the impact of American products in Europe, the
methodologies they develop may also prove useful for examining the choices
of Americans, and particularly Africans, as consumers of Atlantic goods.
A preference for the eighteenth-century British Empire, familiar in self-
styled Atlantic history, may be even more pronounced in the literature on
consumption.33 The consumer society that emerged in eighteenth-century
Britain, although the best known to date, has set the scale and even been
considered the norm for Europe and for the Atlantic world.34 From the
standpoint of Iberian empires, however, Britain’s “consumer revolution”
need not be a foregone conclusion.
A trans-national focus on commodities can place empires in a global
context, as recent studies of silver have demonstrated. Since silver has been
studied very well in connection with the Spanish Empire,35 the present
volume focuses on other products. Chapters that consider goods that have
been studied elsewhere, such as maize, spices or chocolate, do so in order
to say something new about them. A look at these goods and the people
who consumed them from diverse perspectives makes the Spanish Empire
appear more global, dynamic, diverse, porous and productive. This is a par-
ticularly welcome corrective to Dutch, British or even United States imperial
histories implicitly or explicitly written against a negative, extractive and
over-regulatory Spanish model. The Atlantic approach, like other forms of
trans-national history, undermines such stereotypes.
6 Bethany Aram
While highlighting attempts to control the circulation of peoples and

ideas, an imperial outlook is challenged and renewed by persons and prod-
ucts that resist regulation. The chapters that follow deliberately include
areas whose elites defined themselves in contraposition or even opposition
to the Spanish Monarchy. They show Jesuit missionaries, Sephardic mer-
chants, African laborers and Oaxaca peasants, among others, forging feeble,
flexible imperial frontiers. Far from being national history in new clothes, a
“bottom-up” approach to the empire enables these chapters to explore how
an empire’s weakness facilitated its survival. A sustained, explicit approach
to the Spanish Empire and its sphere of influence, including collaborators as
well as competitors, also enables researchers to chart very different responses
to the same goods in distinct regions, at particular moments and among
different social groups. This facilitates exploration of the prevalence and
longevity of Old World views, acknowledging the reluctant pace of adapt-
ation to change among many Europeans and examining how different
groups articulated and defined themselves by seeking and adapting or, on
the contrary, resisting “American” products. This approach emphasizes the
diverse responses, from reluctant to enthusiastic, to goods that became
increasingly accessible in Europe after 1492.
A focus on the Spanish Empire also offers the possibility of following
people and products beyond the confines of any single ocean to reach other
parts of the world. Europe’s early modern empires, whether Portuguese,
Spanish, Dutch, English or French, extended well beyond the Atlantic, as did
the products taxed, demanded and consumed within them. Along these lines,
imperial frameworks may facilitate more global approaches to the Atlantic.
They also offer specific strategies for “provincializing Europe,”36 as Giorgio
Riello has demonstrated in a recent study of cotton in which China and India
figure prominently.37
Far from imposing boundaries, unity or consensus, the present volume persist-
ently returns to the Spanish Empire in order to explore the nature of early
globalization, as well as its divergent results. It offers concrete perspectives
by considering specific agents at precise nodes of cultural and economic
exchange. In this way, the book hopes to complement some of the most
stimulating recent work that illuminates Iberian empires, which has taken
the form of sweeping, total history.38 The chapters selected and revised for
this volume demonstrate that the analysis of specific sources, problems and
networks still has a lot to offer.
Ranging from the late fifteenth century to the early nineteenth century,
the chapters that follow emphasize the impact of overseas experiences and
goods on different groups of Europeans. While certain lines of enquiry and
reflection run throughout the volume, three parts have been designed,
somewhat artificially, to emphasize the book’s most original and important
arguments, which its chapters develop from different perspectives. Against
the idea of an effortless, automatic diffusion of American products in

Europe, Chapters 2 through 6 consider cultural and intellectual constraints
that conditioned or impeded the acceptance of new ideas and goods. María
de los Ángeles Pérez Samper considers an Atlantic revolution in food—one
that took centuries and had a broader impact than the Atlantic revolutions
dear to Palmer and Godechot. Taking a long-term approach to the ques-
tion of cultural and culinary exchange, Pérez Samper indicates that, while
Europe’s elites embraced adaptations of American products, like chocolate,
peasants initially rejected others, such as maize and potatoes. Pérez Samper
weaves diverse testimonies, including those of chroniclers, ambassadors and
travelers, into a wide-ranging overview of the transformations in food and
culture that originated in the wake of 1492 and in some cases met oppos-
ition as late as the eighteenth century.
In Chapter 3, Consuelo Varela contrasts the expectations of Christopher
Columbus with the realities that he encountered in four voyages to the
Americas. She explores the “difficult beginnings” of European colon-
ization with particular attention to tobacco, recorded in the explorer’s
diary; Caribbean pearls presented to Queen Isabel; cacao, which enabled
Columbus and his crew to survive their third voyage; other early exports
including brazilwood (used to extract red dye); and indigenous slaves. On
early journeys to obtain such exotica, Varela notes, sugar cane, livestock and
sewing needles crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction. Rather than
transforming their worldview, the Atlantic experience reaffirmed the faith
of Columbus and his contemporaries in the existence of sirens, Amazons or
the fountain of eternal youth.
Missionaries who crossed the Atlantic after Columbus, particularly the
Jesuits studied by Antonella Romano, produced reports and books that
enabled Europeans to begin to assimilate “the Indies,” East and West,
within their (inevitably Euro-centric) worldviews. Examining volumes
compiled by Antonio Possevino and José de Acosta, Romano highlights the
crucial role of networks of learned missionaries in the transmission and
“accommodation” of information about the Americas, spread through the
impact of Jesuit writings and Jesuit education on many European elites.
Like Possevino and Acosta, Benito Arias Montano, who is studied by María
M. Portuondo in Chapter 5, sought to accommodate the American experience
within Biblical tradition. For this reason, Portuondo argues, Arias Montano’s
‘hermeneutics of nature” minimized the impact of Atlantic products and
American novelty in general. It is precisely the resilience of this classical and
Catholic European intellectual framework that this book contributes to a
more nuanced, circumspect view of European responses to American goods.
Concluding Part I, in Chapter 6, Giovanni Levi offers a new perspective
on the diffusion of maize by addressing multiple levels of cultural and
social resistance to its diffusion, followed by the spread of pellagra, an ill-
ness caused by niacin deficiency, in northern Italy. Although peasants and
8 Bethany Aram
landowners initially refused to plant maize, the agrarian crises of the 1590s,
1620s, 1630s and 1690s led to its diffusion. By the eighteenth century, maize
comprised some 45 percent of agricultural production in the Piedmont
region, a shift reflected in contracts that often stipulated the payment of
salaries in maize. The ensuing widespread, and even exclusive, reliance of
peasants on polenta led to the ravages of pellagra, which inspired a lively
medical debate from 1770 and into the 1800s. While authors recommended
35 different cures for pellagra, including the importation of American spices,
the evolution of medicine away from homeopathic remedies led maize-eaters
to overlook the most obvious solutions to their malady. As Levi indicates, the
spread of “new” products catalyzed and challenged the development of
science and medicine. The diffusion of Atlantic products, far from being
immediate and beneficial, could encounter important barriers and produce
unforeseen disasters.
The divergent effects of early globalization remain crucial to Part II, on
the social use of things, which emphasizes the role of specific groups of
consumers in rejecting, adapting or transforming new and newly-available
goods. In Chapter 7, Bethany Aram examines the ostentatious and cere-
monial role of spices in early sixteenth-century receptions and representations
of Hispano-Burgundian rulers. After propelling European expansion and
becoming more accessible, however, spices lost value as an exclusive symbol
of sovereignty. Customs changed, and the ship that once displayed edible
spices on the banquet table acquired new uses. Humoral understandings of
health, which informed the demand for spices, also shaped early modern
European attitudes toward travel and dietary change. In Chapter 8, Rebecca
Earle explains that Spanish travelers identified familiar foods with their
homeland, while considering certain products, particularly meat and wheat
bread, as essential to their good health. They understood travel and dietary
change as physically disturbing, hazardous experiences. While confront-
ing their own fragility, Spanish conquerors also attributed the illnesses of
Africans and Native Americans to the disruptive effects of travel and new
foods. The agents of early modern globalization suffered its consequences
first-hand.
As consumers, however, such agents made clear choices and developed
distinct tastes. In Chapter 9, José Luis Gasch-Tomás compares the use of
imported luxury goods, especially silks and porcelains, among elites in
Seville and Mexico City from 1581 through 1620. Based on a statistical and
anthropological analysis of post-mortem inventories, Gasch-Tomás argues
that Mexican elites were eager to adopt Asian luxuries, especially for religious
garments and home furnishings, while those of Seville preferred more
Italianate styles. Unlike the elites of Seville, according to Francisco Zamora
Rodríguez, the rulers of Tuscany eagerly sought information and goods from
the Americas. In Chapter 10, Zamora examines how merchants, consuls
and Jesuits catered to the Medicis’ demands for American products and
information about them. Watching over Atlantic trade, these consuls and
their networks connected Lisbon and Cadiz to Livorno. Like Romano and
Levi, Zamora views the Spanish Empire’s permeable and contingent nature
from beyond its political frontiers.
Part III of this book puts the accent on the asymmetrical processes and
results of early globalization: connected and contrasting societies on both
sides of the Atlantic. In Chapter 11, Carlos Marichal uses data on the export
of cochineal from Oaxaca, Mexico, to argue that European demand for lux-
ury textiles drove an increase in the cultivation of the nopal plants breeding
the insects crushed to produce the high-quality red dyestuff, as well as to a
rise in the trade in this low-weight, high-value commodity. While officials
in Mexico required indigenous communities to pay tribute in cochineal,
Marichal explains, the Spanish Crown attempted to limit the spread of
information about its production and prohibited upon pain of death the
export of the nopal cactus, maintaining a virtual monopoly on cochineal
until 1820. According to Marichal, Oaxaca peasants responded to falls in the
price of cochineal by intensifying nopal cultivation.
Unlike Oaxaca peasants, the Española planters studied by Antonio
Gutiérrez Escudero in Chapter 12 confronted setbacks by trying to cultivate
a succession of different export crops. Their struggle to survive culminated
in the “turn to tobacco,” which became, like cochineal, an important
monopoly for the Spanish Crown. Remaining on the island of Hispaniola
(Española), in Chapter 13 Igor Pérez Tostado examines the role of Atlantic
products—mainly sugar, cattle and slaves—in the construction of an inter-
imperial frontier. He considers the impact of environmental constraints
and low-scale violence on the self-definition of contrasting, interdependent
identities on both sides of a contested border between Spain and France.
A “bottom-up,” interactive approach to the formation of identities can
also be seen in Irene Fattacciu’s study of the proliferation and diversification
of chocolate consumption in Chapter 14. Fattacciu examines the increased
demand for and production of chocolate in eighteenth-century Europe,
especially after the Spanish Crown granted the Guipuzcoana Company a
monopoly over the export of cocoa from Caracas in 1728 in an attempt to
reclaim the trade from the Dutch. The increased demand for Caracas cocoa
in Europe also led to an increase in the production of Guayaquil chocolate,
whose competition with the Caracas variety kept prices low, facilitating
chocolate’s further diffusion and diversification. Together, the chapters in
this part raise important questions about the impact of war, the alleged
“civilizing missions” of imperial powers, the role of contraband and the defin-
ition of identities through the differentiation among products and tastes.
To conclude the volume, Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla offers some final thoughts
in Chapter 15. Reaching beyond an Atlantic framework, his reflections high-
light the book’s contribution to the fields of trans-national history and the
history of consumption. Yun’s emphasis on “cross-cultural consumption,”
10 Bethany Aram
rather than “cultural transfer” or “exchange,” facilitates attention to the

diverse responses to and results of early modern globalization in an Atlantic
framework. He argues that the temporal, geo-political and geo-cultural
dimensions of the Spanish Empire with its Portuguese connections are crucial
to understanding global processes of the diffusion, adaptation and rejection
of new products. Placing this volume’s chapters within the wider recent
literature, Yun highlights their contributions to a more nuanced understand-
ing, neither triumphant nor condemnatory, of the history of Europe in the
world. Rather than a “new product,” he offers a promising approach to the
Spanish Empire, European history and global history.
Considered together, the 15 chapters of this volume provide new per-
spectives on questions that have mainly been examined to date from the
standpoint of political history. The transversal themes of new products and
European responses to them cut across and enrich a variety of disciplines.
Drawing upon economic history, cultural studies, the history of consump-
tion, the history of medicine and the history of science, the chapters depict
a more complex, poly-faceted Atlantic. This volume, more than the sum of
its chapters, leads to a remarkable convergence of perspectives and opens
paths for future research.
Notes
The thoughtful advice of one of Palgrave’s anonymous reviewers has guided the
re-formulation of this chapter, as has that of Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla. It has been
supported by the Junta of Andalusia’s “Proyecto de Excelencia” P09-HUM 5330, “Nuevos
productos Atlánticos, ciencia, guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,”

American Historical Review 111 (2006), 741–57, as well as the other contributions
to the American Historical Review (AHR) forum in the same issue. Also in 2006,
the William & Mary Quarterly published a forum on Atlantic and world history
with contributions by Alison Games, Philip J. Stern, Paul W. Mapp and Peter
A. Coclanis, “Forum: Beyond the Atlantic,” William & Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 63:7
(2006), 675–742. Among the journals featuring Atlantic history, Nuevo Mundo,
Mundos Nuevos was founded in 2000 and Atlantic Studies in 2004. See, for example,
Federica Morelli and Alejandro E. Gómez, “La nueva historia Atlántica: Un asunto
de escalas,” Nuevo Mundo, Mundos Nuevos (5 April 2006), and William O´Reilly,
“Genealogies of Atlantic History,” Atlantic Studies 1:1 (2004), 66–84. An important
overview can be found in Nicholas Canny, “Atlantic History, 1492–1700: Scope,
Sources and Methods,” in Horst Pietschmann, ed., Atlantic History: History of the
Atlantic System, 1580–1830 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 55–64.
2. For an excellent state of the art, see Cécile Vidal, “Pour une histoire globale
du Monde Atlantique ou des Histoires connectées dans et au-delá du Monde
Atlantique?,” Annales, histoire, sciences sociales 2 (2012), 391–413. Most recently,
see Harold E. Braun and Lisa Vollendorf, eds, Theorizing the Ibero-American Atlantic
(Aldershot: Brill, 2013).
3. Vidal, “Pour une histoire globale,” 410.
4. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Atlantic in World History (Oxford University Press,
2012), 4 and following pages (ff.), for an admirable synthesis.
5. See Robert R. Palmer and Jacques Godechot, “Le problème de l’Atlantique du
XVIIIème au XXème siècle,” in Relazioni del X Congresso Internazionale di Scienze
Storiche, vol. V: Storia contemporanea (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1955), 219–39;
Robert R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution, 2 vols (Princeton University
Press, 1959, 1964); and Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American
Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992 [1964]).
6. Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2005), 6–21; Canny, “Atlantic History, 1492–1700,” 55–64, esp.
55–6, O´Reilly, “Genealogies of Atlantic History.”
7. Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Wim Klooster, Revolutions in the
Atlantic World: A Comparative History (New York University Press, 2009). See also
Manuela Albertone and Antonio de Francesco, eds, Rethinking the Atlantic World:
Europe and America in the Age of Democratic Revolutions (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009).
8. In recent years, leading voices for the centrality of Iberian experiences to Atlantic
history have been Eliga Gould and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra. See Eliga H. Gould,
“Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish
Periphery,” American Historical Review 112:3 (June 2007): AHR Forum: Entangled
Empires in the Atlantic World, 764–86, and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Entangled
Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New Clothes?,” American Historical Review
112:3 (June 2007): AHR Forum: Entangled Empires in the Atlantic World, 787–99.
9. Nicholas P. Canny and Philip D Morgan, “Introduction: The Making and
Unmaking of an Atlantic World,” in Nicholas P. Canny and Philip D Morgan, eds,
The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, c.1450–c.1850 (Oxford University Press,
2011), 1–17.
10. Bernard Bailyn, “Reflections on Some Major Themes,” in Bernard Bailyn and
Patricia L. Denault, eds, Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual
Currents, 1500–1830 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 1–43, esp. 7.
11. Philip D. Morgan and Jack P. Greene, “Introduction: The Present State of Atlantic
History,” in Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds, Atlantic History: A Critical
Appraisal (Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–33.
12. Renate Pieper and Peer Schmidt, eds, Latin America and the Atlantic World / El
Mundo Atlántico y América Latina (1500–1850): Essays in Honor of Horst Pietschmann
(Cologne: Böhlau, 2005).
13. Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and
the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660 (Cambridge University Press, 2007). See
also www.slavevoyages.org.
14. See John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–
1800, 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press, 1998 [1992]) and Herman L. Bennett,
Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness,
1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
15. Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans, Indians and their Shared
History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and John K. Thornton,
A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
16. For the Iberian Atlantic, the pioneering and indispensable work remains Pierre
and Huguette Chaunu, Séville et l’Atlantique (1504–1650), 12 vols (Paris: SEVPEN,
1955–60).
12 Bethany Aram
17. Among other works see Antonio Rumeu de Armas, España en la África Atlántica
(Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1956) and Charles Verlinden, The
Beginnings of Modern Colonization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970).
18. Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, L’économie de l’empire portugais aux XVe et XVIe si-
ècles (Paris: SEVPEN, 1969); C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825
(Manchester: Carcanet, 1991); and J. H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (London:
Hutchinson, 1966).
19. Manuel Giménez Fernández, Nuevas consideraciones sobre la historia, sentido y
valor de las Bulas Alejandrinas de 1493 (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
Americanos, 1944) and Lewis Hanke, Bartolomé de las Casas, 1474–1566 (Santiago,
Chile: Fondo Histórico y Bibliográfico José Toribio Medina, 1954). Among other
works by Demetrio Ramos, see his edited collection La ética en la conquista
de América: Francisco de Vitoria y la escuela de Salmanca (Madrid: Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas, 1984).
20. Peter Boyd-Bowman, Indice geobiográfico de cuarenta mil pobladores españoles de
América en el siglo XVI (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1964); Ida Altman,
Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain & Puebla, Mexico, 1560–
1620 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).
21. Sherburne Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History: Mexico and the
Caribbean (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).
22. Antonio García-Barquero, Andalucía y la Carrera de Indias (1492–1824) (University
of Granada, 2002 [1986]); Carlos Martínez Shaw and José Oliva Melgar, eds, El
sistema atlántico español (siglos XVII–XIX) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2005).
23. Robert Ricard, La conquista espiritual de México (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1994); David A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe,
Image and Tradition across Five Centuries (Cambridge University Press, 2002);
Carlos Alberto González Sánchez, Los mundos del libro: Medios de difusión de la
cultura occidental en las Indias de los siglos XVI y XVII (Universidad de Sevilla, 2001),
trans. as New World Literacy: Writing and Culture across the Atlantic, 1500–1700
(Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2011).
24. Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla conceived of the present project as a continuation of
the volume he edited, Las redes del imperio: Élites sociales en la articulación de
la Monarquía Hispánica, 1492–1714 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2009). See also Ana
Crespo Solana, Mercaderes atlánticos: Redes del comercio flamenco y holandés entre
Europa y el Caribe (Córdoba: Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Córdoba,
2009).
25. See Carla Rahn Phillips, “The Iberian Atlantic,” Itinerario: European Journal of
Overseas History 23:2 (1999), 84–106, and Amy Turner Bushnell, “Indigenous
America and the Limits of the Atlantic World, 1493–1825,” in Greene and
Morgan, eds, Atlantic History, 191–221, esp. 192.
26. Serge Gruzinski in La pensée métisse (Paris: Fayard, 1999), trans. as The Mestizo
Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization (New York:
Routledge, 2002); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Sobre comparaciones y conexiones:
Notas sobre el estudio de los imperios ibéricos de Ultramar, 1490–1640,” in Roger
Chartier and Antonio Feros, eds, Europa, América y el mundo: Tiempos históricos
(Madrid: Marcial Pons, Ediciones Jurídicas y Sociales, 2006), 239–62.
27. Ferdinand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Time of
Philip II, 2 vols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 [1947]).
28. Such criticisms of Braudel’s model were articulated in Andrew C. Hess, The
Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (University
of Chicago Press, 1978). See also John Marino, “The Exile and his Kingdom: The
Reception of Braudel’s Mediterranean,” Journal of Modern History 76:3 (September
2004), 622–52.
29. Games, “Atlantic History,” esp. 756.
30. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York:
Penguin, 1986).
31. Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate
in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); Regina Grafe,
Distant Tyranny: Markets, Power and Backwardness in Spain, 1650–1800 (Princeton
University Press, 2012); González Sánchez, Los mundos del libro.
32. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900
(Cambridge University Press, 1986). Since François Chevalier’s classic, La formación
de los Latifundios en México (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999
[1952]), much work has focused on Mexico, including Arij Oouweneel, Shadows
over Anáhuac: An Ecological Interpretation of Crisis and Development in Central Mexico,
1730–1800 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), and Elinor G..
K. Melville, “Conquest Landscapes: Ecological Consequences of Pastoralism in the
New World,” in Le Nouveau Monde –Mondes Nouveaux: L’experience americaine (Paris:
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1996), 99–113.
33. For this critique, see Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and Fernando Ramos Palencia,
“El sur frente al Norte: Instituciones, economías políticas y lugares comunes,”
in Fernando Ramos Palencia and Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, eds, Economía política
desde Estambul a Potosí: Ciudades estado, imperios y mercados en el Mediterráneo y en
el Atlántico ibérico, c.1200–1800 (University of Valencia, 2012), 11–38.
34. For the centrality of the British model, see Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, eds,
Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2003) and Veronika Hyden-Hanscho, Renate Pieper and Werner Stangl,
eds, Cultural Exchange and Consumption Patterns in the Age of Enlightenment: Europe
and the Atlantic World (Bochum: Dieter Winkler, 2013), esp. 11.
35. See Carlos Marichal, “The Spanish-American Silver Peso: Export Commodity
and Global Money of the Ancient Regime, 1550–1800,” in Steven Topik, Carlos
Marichal and Zephyr Frank, eds, From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity
Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000 (Chapel Hill, NC: Duke
University Press, 2006), 25–52; Alfredo Castillero Calvo, Los metales preciosos y la
primera globalización (Panamá: Banco Nacional, 2008).
36. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference (Princeton University Press, 2000).
37. Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (Cambridge
University Press, 2013). For a more theoretical framework see Chakrabarty,
Provincializing Europe.
38. By Felipe Fernández-Armesto see, for example, Near a Thousand Tables: A History
of Food (New York: Free Press, 2004), or Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2007).
Part I
Cultural and Intellectual
Constraints
2
The Early Modern Food Revolution
A Perspective from the Iberian Atlantic
María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper
From Spain to America
The encounter between the Old and the New Worlds marked the beginning of
extraordinary changes in the history of humans and their food. The discovery
of America in 1492 during the search for a new spice route was the start of
an important nutritional innovation. Plants and animals crossed the Atlantic
from shore to shore, traveling enormous distances and setting in motion a
true revolution that affected how millions of people ate.
Europe’s expansion around the globe took place over decades using
various and complementary routes. In the lead were Portugal and Spain.
Portugal followed the eastern routes, circumnavigating Africa to reach India
and the Spice Islands, and then China and Japan. Spain, excluded from
Portuguese routes, chose a new way to travel east by going west. Thanks
to Columbus it reached America: first the Caribbean islands, then Mexico,
and later Peru. Subsequently, Portugal also would expand in America, par-
ticularly in Brazil, which was the part of America assigned to it by the 1494
Treaty of Tordesillas. Spain also increased its scope, crossing the Pacific to
reach the Philippines, a bridge to China and Japan.
The great Spanish and Portuguese world empires were far more than
simple or lucky accumulations of territory. They each had their own internal
logic and objectives. The Spanish Empire was a complex whole comprising
European territories in Italy and the Netherlands, its American dominions,
and a few strategic points in Africa and Asia, specifically the Philippines.1
The Portuguese Empire stretched from the small Iberian kingdom to the
ends of the world via a series of African and Asian bases that ensured its
trade position, while Brazil was the product of territorial incorporation. To
understand the Spanish and Portuguese Empires not as disaggregated terri-
tories but rather as wholes whose networks spread through four continents is
to see their globalizing impact.2 These two empires were immense territories
with complex connections and relations both internally and externally,
through nodes such as Seville, Lisbon, and Antwerp, as well as among the
17
18 María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper
various peripheries. The two empires were temporarily joined in 1580 and
then separated in 1640 to continue their slow evolution through the cen-
turies, examples of the phenomenon of globalization in the early modern era.
There were many complex human, economic, social, institutional, and
cultural transfers, among which the exchanges of flora and fauna were some
of the most important. Landscapes, ecosystems, lifestyles, and eating habits
were transformed on four continents. The spice trade played a key role when
expansion began, but later many other products began to be traded. Plants
and animals were transported by the Portuguese to Africa and Asia. Others
were taken from Asia and Africa to Europe. There also were exchanges within
this vast empire, beyond its center on the Iberian Peninsula. America also
participated, through interconnected Portuguese and Spanish routes that
constituted a true world empire; this was consolidated once Portugal and its
overseas possessions became part of Philip II’s Spanish Monarchy during a
crucial period of European history.
The impact of European expansion on the world of food was not limited
to the usual economic, political, social, and cultural factors. Ecological
changes must also be taken into account.3 Understanding what happened
entails incorporating biological variables, the exchange of flora and fauna,
and contagion among human populations. The interaction of humans and
nature was a two-way process: humans change the natural habitat, but
nature imposes its laws.
One of the mechanisms that made Europe’s domination of America
possible was ecological transformation through biological means that the
colonizers brought with them, and which ended up making the new spaces
more European. “Little Europes” were created in America; after all, Mexico
was called New Spain.
As a result of the new relationships among continents, the diet of
Europeans, Africans, Asians, and Americans underwent enormous changes. In
America, wheat began replacing maize, and a wide variety of European fauna
were introduced that made new agricultural and livestock development pos-
sible.4 Thus it was not simply the flora and the fauna that were new, but also
techniques related to agriculture and, subsequently, culinary applications.5
The encounter between Americans and European colonizers generated
diverse reactions. Perceptions were essential.6 Food is a useful way of cap-
turing identities, with varied possibilities. In some cases food can be a way
of affirming or resisting identity; such was the case with Mesoamerican
women’s age-old daily custom of making maize tortillas, which was capable
of resisting all outside change and technological modernization.7 But given
that the flow and consumption of goods, specifically food, between the two
worlds was structured by power relations, the norm was the more or less
effective imposition of European civilization onto America.8
Eating always involves a choice. One does not accept or incorporate every-
thing available. Instead, one might seek out distant foods that are difficult to
The Early Modern Food Revolution 19
obtain. The discovery of new foods is always positive, bringing with it new
possibilities and greater variety. But it may also be negative, as unknown
foods imply risks and may be dangerous, even fatal, if consumed. The rea-
sons behind food choices are complex and varied and often have little to do
with nutrition and far more to do with social and cultural values.
In this great Atlantic exchange, Europe provided America with rich stores
of flora and fauna, both from Europe itself and from other continents.
Europeans carried plants and seeds to the New World so that they could
continue eating their own foods, which were unknown in America. Grains
such as wheat, barley, rye, and oats were transported, and quickly spread
throughout the New World, as they were essential for the colonists, who
refused to switch to maize. In his Historia general de las Indias, Francisco
López de Gómara wrote, “Wheat grows easily, though they do not grow it
much, because corn is easier and more reliable ... When they first planted
wheat, the stalks were stout and strong, producing two thousand grains, an
abundance never seen before.”9
Spaniards, convinced that wheat was the superior grain, were surprised
that Indians preferred maize. The Carmelite Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa
noted in his Compendio y descripción de las Indias Occidentales (1629) that
Indians preferred their traditional food: “This city of Angels [Puebla de los
Ángeles in Mexico today] is crowded, inexpensive, pleasant, and bustling.
Wheat is harvested twice a year, once in season and once from irrigated
land, and there is an abundance of corn from which the Indians make their
daily bread. Everyone eats corn in that land because it is very nutritious, and
therefore they do not eat good wheat bread.”10
Along with grains, Spaniards took many other plants with them to America:
legumes such as lentils, garbanzos, and broad beans; vegetables such as let-
tuce, escarole, edible thistles, chard, cabbage, cauliflower, artichokes, spinach,
eggplant, turnips, radishes, beets, and carrots; fruits such as quince, peaches,
cherries, pomegranates, melons, mangos, and, especially, citrus fruits includ-
ing oranges, lemons, and grapefruit. The chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de
Oviedo provided a list: “Among the trees they have brought from Spain are
orange and lime and lemon and citron, figs, pomegranates, some palm trees
with dates, and some cañafístola [cassia grandis], and bananas ...”11 What
began in the Caribbean islands spread quickly throughout the continent. At
the end of the sixteenth century, José de Acosta wrote about the success of
citrus fruits in America: “The most common trees are orange and lime and
citron and fruits of that type.”12 Citrus fruits became commonly used in trad-
itional American cooking.
Along with the wheat came those other Mediterranean icons, grapes
and olives. Grapes and wine became popular in many parts of America;
Christopher Columbus planted the first vines in the Antilles on his second
voyage, though they did not do well there.13 In Mexico they were more
popular, though not of high quality. From Mexico they were taken to Peru
by Hernando de Montenegro, who in 1551 produced the first major grape

harvest.14 Pedro Cieza de León wrote that grapes quickly spread throughout
Peru, and Acosta also provided information: “The most fertile valleys for
grapes are Víctor, near Arequipa; Yca, in the district of Lima: [and] Caracato,
near Chuquiavo.”15
Olives also were important, not only for their oil but also for serving on
their own, as they were in Spain. Acosta wrote about how popular olives
were becoming: “Olives and olive trees can be found in the Indies, mean-
ing Mexico and Peru, but so far there is no oil mill, and none is being built,
because people prefer eating them, and they flavor them very well.”16
Then there were “round-trip” products such as sugar and bananas, which
Spaniards took to the New World and which quickly caught on in the warm
climate, so much so that rapidly they began competing on European markets
with products from their own place of origin.
A noteworthy and early example is sugar.17 Columbus was the first to
introduce sugar cane in America. Though clearly he did not know how suc-
cessful it would be in the New World, he minimized the competition that
American sugar might pose for European sugar: “It will have little effect in
Andalusia and in Sicily ... judging from the few [canes] that have been har-
vested.”18 But it was a success. On the island of Hispaniola, canes adjusted to
the climate and grew very well. According to López de Gómara, “Sugar has
increased mightily, and there are 30 factories and sugar mills. The very first
Spaniard to plant sugar cane was Pedro de Atienza, and the first to harvest
it was Miguel Ballestero, a Catalan.”19
From Hispaniola, sugar spread to the neighboring islands starting with
Cuba, and then to the continent. From a very early date, Antillean sugar
displaced production on the Atlantic archipelagos and on the Iberian
Peninsula itself. The first Antillean sugar arrived in Spain in 1515 according
to Fernández de Oviedo: “They sent six male Indians and six female Indians
in very good condition (they were Caribs) and many parrots and six sweet
breads and 15 or 20 cañafístola branches, and this was the first time the king
had seen sugar and cañafístola from these lands and it was the first to arrive
in Spain from these parts and islands.”20
Banana trees also triumphed. Originally from Asia, they first arrived in
Spain with the Muslims and adapted to the peninsula, though they did
not yield fruit. Once they were transported to the Canary Islands they did
very well, but their true success came only once Spaniards took them to
America. A Dominican missionary, Father Tomás de Berlanga, introduced
them into Hispaniola in 1516, and their growth was spectacular. From there
they spread throughout America and would become a key ingredient of New
World cooking. In the late sixteenth century, Acosta wrote, “There are dense
banana forests, which are very productive, because it is the most commonly
used fruit in the Indies and is found nearly everywhere, though they say it
first came from Ethiopia, and indeed the blacks use it widely and in some
places it is their bread. They also make wine from it. They eat bananas raw
and they also grill and cook them and make various stews and preserves,
and it is all good ...”21
The greatest part of the Columbian exchange lay in flora, though there
also was considerable exchange of fauna. Because Spaniards wished to con-
tinue their own customs while in America, they took with them not only
fruits and vegetables but also those animals necessary for maintaining their
existence such as horses, asses, mules, cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and barnyard
fowl. Some would become key ingredients of American cuisine.
During the earliest colonial times, most bovine livestock came from breeds
referred to as serrana (from the mountains), caçareña (from Cáceres), canaria
(from the Canary Islands), and, especially, the retinta or Guadalquivir, all
of which were good draft cattle and yielded meat, though not much milk.
Over time they were interbred to create “creole” hybrids, and gradually new
breeds that produced more milk were introduced. Spaniards also brought
with them ibérico pigs and several strains of sheep, for both their meat and
their wool, including the churra sheep and later the famous merinos. Thus
the Old World gave the New World a substantial number and range of live-
stock, and meat became more common in American diets.
Pigs, the cerdo ibérico, were a huge success. Fernández de Oviedo wrote in
1535, “a ship from New Spain joined two others at sea, and the ship from
New Spain was loaded with bacon [tocino], which is something quite new
because just 15 years ago there were no Spanish pigs there, and those from
these islands have multiplied and their numbers have grown so much,
with countless wild pigs, that today the ships are loaded with bacon.”22
Fried pork rinds served with potatoes (papas), sweet potatoes (camotes),
and maize—all indigenous products—were very popular in Peru. Francisco
Pizarro was fond of chicharrón, a syncretic dish. The rapid spread of pigs in
America had the positive effect of providing more meat for human con-
sumption; New World inhabitants previously had had insufficient animal
protein. But the negative effect was that the prevailing ecological equi-
librium was upset. The introduction of Old World flora and fauna in the
New World led to the expansion of many animals and plants, which had a
negative impact on native species.23
Domesticated fowl also were introduced. López de Gómara wrote, “there
are an infinite number of birds here that are not found in Spain, and some that
are, though there were no turkeys or geese. Turkeys, of which there were few,
were raised badly, but geese did well and could not be distinguished from
those here.”24 Of the animals that were brought from America to Europe,
turkeys, or guajolotes, were among the few that were cooked, and were very
popular.
Culinary exchange had an enormous impact on both the Old and the New
Worlds. Seeds grown on an experimental basis in Spain and the Americas
set off a true nutritional revolution as soon as the transatlantic ships were
unloaded. It was said that maize (discussed in Chapter 6) and potatoes, by

far the most important of American crops, helped to end famines in Europe.
Spaniards and other Europeans who settled in America never adopted
indigenous diets, nor did they try to (see Chapter 8). From the very start,
Indian cuisine struck them as inferior, and they imported their own culinary
practices from across the ocean. Pedro Mártir de Anglería, in his Décadas
del Nuevo Mundo (1530), pointed to the inferiority of maize and cassava in
Hispaniola: “They say the local bread is not very nourishing for those who
are used to our wheat bread and that men grow weak eating it. Therefore
the king recently ordered that [wheat] be grown in several places at several
times of the year ...”25
In the early years, all sorts of provisions were sent to America, and quickly
traditional Spanish products spread through the conquered lands. In 1525
the Venetian ambassador in Castile, Andrea Navagiero, wrote, “The land
surrounding Seville is very beautiful and full of wheat, vineyards, olive oil,
and many other things ... All the wine and wheat grown here is sent to
the Indies ...”26 Oil was also sent in large quantities. During the first half
of the sixteenth century, food constituted a large portion of Spain’s trade
with America: wheat, wine, oil, and livestock of all sorts. Later, as farm-
ing and ranching spread throughout America, imports and exports shifted
accordingly.
In the mid-sixteenth century, Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote about how
well European products were doing in Mexico: “Before we came to New
Spain the natives lived off the land, and today they raise all sorts of cattle
and domesticate oxen and till the land and plant wheat and they harvest it
and sell it and bake bread and biscuits, and on their land they have planted
crops and all sorts of fruit trees that we brought from Spain and they sell
the fruit they harvest ...”27
Another traveler, Leonardo Donato, in his Relación de España (1573), also
wrote about the transplantation of Spanish food products to America to
please the colonists: “It is easy to believe that the products of these new
American lands are sufficient to live on for the inhabitants, because for
thousands of years we did not know of their existence and they lived like
this until now, and perhaps with greater abundance ... [But] Spaniards do
not seem to like the cornbread made there, so from Spain they take rye,
wine, and other products not found in the Indies. But, as I said, this is not
done out of necessity but rather because the new inhabitants wish it so.”28
Over time, boundaries were blurred and new, syncretic cuisines were
created, giving rise to various hybrid cooking styles. There were many
American influences on Spaniards’ kitchens in America, and Spaniards, in
turn, had an impact on American cooking. Spain’s presence in America
encouraged inter-American relations, creating new culinary exchanges among
the various regions. The arrival of colonists from other European countries, as
well as African slaves, made the situation even more complex.29
From America to Spain: the impact of new things
Contact between the two worlds resulted in amazement. But Spaniards and
other Europeans arriving in the Indies gazed upon the new reality and inter-
preted it based on their conviction that they were superior and belonged to
a society destined to conquer the world. American peoples and their food
in general were considered by the discoverers to be primitive and inferior.30
And when the first American food products reached Europe, the amazement
was repeated.
Europeans who went to the Indies could not help but be familiar with
American food; they ate it to survive, or because they ran out of their own
stock, or out of simple curiosity or scientific interest, which was the case
with Francisco Hernández’s expedition to New Spain during the reign of
Philip II. Once American foods reached Europe, Europeans grew increasingly
familiar with them and slowly began incorporating them into their own
nutrition and cooking.
According to López de Gómara, when Columbus returned from his first
voyage he took with him several items from the recently discovered New
World to give to Ferdinand and Isabella: “He took 10 Indians, 40 parrots,
many turkeys, rabbits (which they call hutias), sweet potatoes [batatas], pep-
pers [ajíes], corn to make bread, and other things that are strange and different
than our own, to show what he had discovered. He also included all the gold
he had retrieved and loaded onto the boats ... He gave the monarchs the gold
and the things he had carried from the other world, and they and those with
them were amazed that all of it, except the gold, was as new as the land it
came from ... They tried the ají, an Indian spice, which burned their tongues,
and the batatas, which were sweet, and the turkeys [gallipavos], which were
better than the turkeys and hens here. They were amazed that there was no
wheat there and that everyone ate cornbread.”31
The King and Queen of Spain had the privilege of being the first to see
and taste the new foods from America. In addition to trying the products
that López de Gómara listed (maize, peppers, sweet potatoes, turkeys),
Ferdinand the Catholic was the first person in Spain to taste American
pineapple, which he liked very much, according to Mártir de Anglería:
“Another fruit from those lands that the unconquered King Ferdinand was
said to try has scales and looks like a pine cone but is as soft as melon and
tastes better than any fruit from the orchard, but it does not grow on a
tree but rather appears like a thistle or acanthus. The king himself praised
it ... Those who ate them freshly picked where they grow were delighted
at how delicate they are.”32 American pineapples were offered as well to
Charles V, according to Acosta: “The Emperor Charles was offered one of
these piñas, which must not have been easy to transport whole from the
Indies but could not be carried any other way; he liked the fragrance but
did not wish to taste it.”33
The monarchs’ surprise at the new foods illustrates the difficulty that
Spaniards and other Europeans had in understanding and accepting change.
Faced with novelty, they reacted with ambivalence. As Claude Fischler has
shown, when two food systems meet, both attraction and rejection ensue.
People are attracted by the new, which means broadening and diversifying
traditional ingredients and exploring new, previously unknown products
and integrating them into one’s own culinary system. But at the same time,
people are suspicious of and even reject unknown and potentially danger-
ous foods from a different system, regarding them as inferior, and they are
unable to integrate them into their own diet.34
The encounter between America and Europe constituted a food revo-
lution. Though Europeans were seeking precious metals, the true treasure
they found was the food, and, in turn, they offered the inhabitants of the
Indies many of their own products. But the process of discovery and adap-
tation was not easy for either side. Products began circulating immediately,
and foreign visitors wrote of their first experiences. Ambassador Andrea
Navagiero, for example, wrote in 1525, “In Seville I saw many things from
the Indies and I tasted the roots they call batatas, which taste like chestnuts.
I also saw and tasted a beautiful fruit that arrived fresh and is called ananá
and that tastes somewhere between a melon and a peach, with a strong
fragrance, and it was truly very nice.”35
Botanists also learned of the new products; they studied them and tried
to transplant them. Nicolás Monardes published his Historia medicinal de las
cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales in Seville between 1564 and
1575. Other important studies from that time remain unpublished, such
as those by a late sixteenth-century Aragonese doctor named Bernardo de
Cienfuegos. Contact with a plant did not mean it was immediately incorpor-
ated into the human diet, but was a crucial first step. It also could be an
obstacle if the botanists did not approve of the plant.
New American products began being incorporated into European diets,
but in almost all cases they assumed a new role. Removed from their original
context, products function in a new way and with new meaning, which may
have less to do with their nutritional value than with their cultural value.
Europeans did not pay much attention to the age-old indigenous experi-
ence as they incorporated New World products into their Old World diet.
Sometimes there was a radical disjuncture, for example in the case of maize,
in terms of its preparation and its association with other food products.
Only in a few cases was the indigenous example followed, as with tomato
sauce, which was inspired by Aztec cooking.36
Tomatoes were very important to Mexican diets. Díaz del Castillo, who
participated in the conquest, wrote that when the conquerors went through
Cholula on their way from Veracruz to Tenochtitlan, “the Indians wanted
to kill us and eat us, and they had prepared a sauce of tomatoes and pep-
pers and salt ...”37 The colonists acquired tomatoes from the Aztecs and took
them back to Spain. In the seventeenth century, tomatoes commonly were

purchased by individuals and institutions in Andalusia such as hospitals,
convents, and monasteries. The first recipe for tomato sauce appeared in
a late seventeenth-century Italian cookbook, Lo scalco alla moderna, by
Antonio Latini, published in Naples in 1694. It was based on Spanish-style
tomato sauce, with pepper, onion, salt, oil, and vinegar.38 Later on, recipes
did not include chiles, marking a separation from that most Mexican of
ingredients. Tomatoes would not be entirely accepted in Spain until the
eighteenth century. The first recipe for tomato sauce in a Spanish cookbook
was in Arte de repostería, by Juan de la Mata, published in 1747. He published
two recipes, in fact, saying, “There are different ways of making these sauces,
according to one’s taste, which are so common that they are omitted here,”
which shows how widespread and diverse tomato sauce had become.39
Time and rhythm
Food systems are always very conservative, resisting change and the intro-
duction of novelties, even more during the early modern period than today.
It appears crucial to distinguish, moreover, between knowledge and even
cultivation of a product and its regular incorporation in the human diet,
which requires, in any case, attention to the groups affected and the spe-
cific conditions of its inclusion. Some American products were incorporated
very quickly, such as the pepper and paprika among the popular classes,
or the turkey, initially by the upper classes. Other products were adopted
more slowly, as in the case of chocolate or the tomato, which did not really
triumph until the eighteenth century. Chocolate had been consumed in the
court earlier, especially in the seventeenth century. Although reduced to
limited circles, its consumption expanded to the point that there were already
chocolate manufactures in Madrid by the late seventeenth century. The
tomato, which began as a decorative plant, was widely consumed only from
the eighteenth century, when it became very successful. Moreover, the prod-
ucts most slowly adopted were the most important nutritionally: the potato
did not enter Spanish cuisine until the nineteenth century, and maize not
until much later. Initially, these foods were given to animals, and the poorest
people began to eat them in years of subsistence crisis.
The pace at which American food products were incorporated was highly
variable. Most were discovered on Columbus’s first voyages, though some,
such as cacao and potatoes, would become important only later on. The
first European to record contact with cacao was Columbus himself. On
22 December 1492, on his first voyage, he wrote in his diary, “They put a
bean in a bowl of water and they drank it, and the Indians whom the admiral
[Columbus] brought said it was very healthy.”40 But cacao became important
only after the conquest of Mexico; in his second letter to Charles V, written
on 30 October 1520, Hernán Cortés wrote, “Cacao is a fruit like almonds
which they grind and then sell, and they like it so much that it is used as
currency throughout this land, and with it they buy everything they need in
the markets and elsewhere.”41 Díaz del Castillo also wrote about how much the
Indians liked cacao: “They cook it and make it a lot, and it is the best thing
they drink ...”42 Cacao was used in many drinks, most notably what they
called chocoaltl.43 Spaniards were struck by the use of chocolate at the Aztec
court. Díaz del Castillo wrote of one of Moctezuma’s meals: “They served
a drink made of cacao in fine gold cups. They said it was to have access to
women, so we did not participate, but I saw that they had 50 large jugs full
of good cacao, with froth, and I drank that.”44
The discovery of potatoes, however, came much later. In 1492 potatoes
were unknown in the Antilles and Central America, but as the conquest
spread, Spaniards discovered areas near the Andes where they were culti-
vated. Along the coast, potatoes were eaten less frequently, but in the high
country (the altiplano) they were people’s principal source of nutrition and
were especially important because dehydrated potatoes (chuños) could be
frozen so as to protect people against hunger. Juan de Castellanos, who
explored present-day Colombia around 1537, said that when he entered
people’s homes he found maize, beans, and “truffles” (potatoes), which he
said were “floury root plants with good flavor, given as presents by Indians
and considered delicious even by Spaniards.”45 One of the first published
references to potatoes was made by Cieza de León, who wrote in his Crónica
del Perú, “Other than corn, there are two other local products that are basic
to the Indians: one is called papas ... which after being cooked is as soft
inside as cooked chestnuts.”46
Spain played a key role in this exchange, acting as a bridge between
America and Europe, and it was a pioneer in incorporating American prod-
ucts, controlling their arrival and circulation through its trade monopoly.
Products went from the Indies to Seville, which, as Father Tomás de Mercado
stated, was the “door and port [puerta y puerto] of America.”47 From Spain,
American products moved to Europe as well as to Africa and Asia along the
routes opened by Portugal in circumnavigating the African coasts past the
Cape of Good Hope through the Indian Ocean and then on to India, China,
and the Pacific. The circle was completed by the Manila galleons that sailed
from Acapulco to the Philippines.
Social, economic, and cultural factors affected the rhythm and means
with which food products were incorporated. Two that were immediately
successful and would become mainstays of modern cooking—peppers and
chocolate—had different social significances and, thus, different trajectories.
While at first only the privileged and powerful had access to chocolate,
whose use later spread throughout society, peppers generally were con-
sumed among all social classes, particularly the common people.
Peppers and paprika constitute a good example of a popular new food.
Columbus discovered peppers on his first voyage, and on 15 January 1493
he wrote in his diary, “There is a lot of axí, their pepper ... no meal is
complete without it, and it is very healthy.”48 Pepper in all its varieties tri-
umphed in Spain, as it was cheaper than the pepper imported from Asia.
A chile trade was organized, though it was not as successful as Columbus
had predicted, as Spanish farmers themselves began planting peppers, which
had immediate and overpowering success. Bartolomé de las Casas in 1552
wrote of peppers’ popularity both in America and in Spain: “Everything
these people eat, whether it be cooked or stewed or raw, has a pepper they
call axí ... which is known throughout Spain. It is regarded as a healthy
spice, according to our doctors.”49
Monardes confirmed peppers’ widespread use in cooking and medicine:
“The pepper imported from the Indies not only has medicinal uses but is
very excellent and is known throughout Spain, and there is no garden or
orchard or pot where it does not grow, given how beautiful its fruit is ...
They use it in stews and soups to give flavor, which is better than common
pimienta. Sliced and put into broth, it makes an excellent sauce. They are
used wherever aromatic spices from the Moluccas or India might be used.
They are different, in that those from India are very expensive. These simply
have to be planted, and they provide spices all year long, with less trouble
and greater benefit.”50
Francisco Hernández also took note during his expedition to New Spain in
the 1570s: “It was a long time ago that chile [also known as ají or pimiento]
was taken to Spain, where it is highly regarded and grows in gardens and
planters for decoration and for eating,” he wrote, adding that it could be
bad for one’s health “if used to excess or very frequently, either as food, like
the Indians do, or as a condiment.”51 In 1590, Acosta also compared chiles
and peppers, saying they were well known in Spain: “The natural spice that
God gave the West Indies is called Indies Pepper in Castile, and in the Indies,
using the name in the first conquered islands, it is called axí ... It is eaten
raw and dry, ground and whole, and cooked in soups and stews. It is widely
used in sauces throughout the Indies. Eaten in moderation, it helps with
digestion, but over-eating can have disastrous consequences.”52
Spices were highly prized, and from the start pepper was a popular prod-
uct, both for eating and as a spice, being used as a condiment and for color.
It improved the flavor of poor people’s daily meals, it went well with bread
and stews, and it added color to cooked meals and cold meats. Like the
American Indians, Spaniards grew very fond of this new flavor.
Turkey also became popular and was quickly adopted, and it has the great
honor of being the only American species included by Cervantes in Don
Quixote. In the book, Sancho Panza mentions it as being emblematic of
good eating: “I’d rather sit in my corner, not bowing to anyone, eating just
bread and onion, than eat the gallipavos they eat at other tables ...” Turkey
was one of the first American products to appear in royal cookbooks. In
Spain, Francisco Martínez Montiño, who cooked for Philip III and Philip
IV, described how to carve a turkey, published recipes for roast turkey and
turkey pastry, and included several turkey dishes in his menus for important
celebrations.53 While the nobility could eat turkey frequently, the lower
classes ate it only on special occasions. Turkey showed up repeatedly in
seventeenth-century festivals and feast days, and its presence on menus for
such traditional holidays as Christmas confirms that it was highly thought
of. Turkey also triumphed in the rest of Europe. Jean Anthelme Brillat-
Savarin, in his Fisiología del gusto, wrote that “turkey surely is one of the
most beautiful gifts from the New World to the Old.”54
American food products were incorporated at different times and with
different rhythms. Some were accepted quickly, like peppers, beans, sweet
potatoes, chocolate, and turkey. Others took longer, even centuries, to become
accepted: tomatoes did not triumph until the eighteenth century, and maize
and potatoes were not widely accepted until the nineteenth century.
Although American foods are frequently considered a homogeneous group,
in fact each product had its own history and uses. The reasons for this diver-
sity might be economic, depending upon the possibilities of production and
commerce and based on the product’s price; social, according to the meaning
and prestige that diverse social classes accorded it; or scientific, based on the
value that botanists and doctors ascribed to it; as well as cultural, according
to the culinary applications and the predominant tastes.
Resistance
Maize, the principal staple of the Americas, did not do well when it arrived
in Spain. It was grown first in the early sixteenth century in the Canary
Islands and Andalusia, which had close ties to America. It also was found in
parts of Castile. Fernández de Oviedo wrote that he had seen a good maize
field in Ávila in 1530. Francisco Hernández, however, lamented how poorly
maize was doing: “I find nothing wrong with it; on the contrary, I praise
it enormously, and I do not understand how Spaniards, who are excellent
imitators abroad and who are so good at adapting foreign inventions, still
have not accepted corn nor planted it ... It is extremely nutritious, both
for the well and for the sick, easy to plant, growing anywhere and suffer-
ing little from drought and other punishments of the heavens and the
earth, [maize] could free people from hunger and the endless maladies it
causes.”55
There were parts of the Peninsula where maize became an important crop.
In sixteenth-century Valencia, for example, it was adapted by the Moriscos
(Spaniards of Islamic heritage officially converted to Christianity), and by the
eighteenth century it had replaced other summer grains, though it was never
as important as wheat. It was used to feed livestock as well as humans.56
But it was above all in the north of Spain that maize became a basic food
product. Asturias and the Cantabrian regions appear to have been the first to
adopt it, and later it spread to the Basque Country and the Galician coast. In
the interior of Galicia, however, maize encountered difficulties. In general,
its spread brought with it demographic and economic transformations.57
From the start, maize was used in Europe to feed both humans and
animals. Despite the positive images that the Indies chroniclers painted,
maize did not mean the same thing to Spaniards as it did to Americans. It
was not even known exactly where it came from. Cienfuegos referred to the
problem of identifying “Indian corn, which Leonardo Fuchsio for no good
reason called Turkish or Saracen corn; it should be called Indian corn, hav-
ing come to Europe from the West Indies ...”58
In Europe corn was eaten only in times of dire necessity, and it was only
hardship that made it appetizing. The fact that it was so easy to grow, which
gave it an advantage over more traditional cereal plants, was not enough. Even
in regions where it was most widely planted, it was considered poor people’s
food. It saved many lives, yet endangered others, as seen in Chapter 6 below.
There was considerable resistance in the face of novelty. American prod-
ucts that were incorporated into European diets did not change the cuisine
but rather sought their own place alongside similar, existing products. Such
was the case with turkey, given that fowl was a highly regarded meat at
that time; or maize, which joined other cereals though it was subordinate
to wheat; or pepper, which established itself among vegetables or as a
condiment, an alternative to paprika, and a complement to expensive Asian
spices. Alternatively, new foods might create their own, new place, as was
the case with chocolate, which became a prestigious beverage.
Staples like maize and potatoes were looked down upon and took a long
time to become accepted in European diets. It is interesting to consider how
new products were prepared. In the case of maize and potatoes, which formed
part of poor people’s diet, people were obsessed with transforming both into
bread. Spaniards saw how important maize was in the Mexican diet, like
wheat in Spain, though the Indians did not eat bread but rather tortillas.
The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega wrote, referring to Peru, “The most important
of the crops grown above ground is the one that Mexicans and barloventanos
call corn ... They eat it instead of bread, toasted or cooked in water; kernels of
hard corn have been brought to Spain, but not the tender corn.”59
Once maize reached Spain, American traditions were forgotten.
Spaniards tried to make bread, with poor results. Madame d’Aulnoy wrote
in 1679–81, after visiting towns in Burgos, “They make bread with corn
from the Indies ... It is quite white, and one would say it is mixed with
sugar, as it is very sweet, but it is badly made and undercooked and is like
a lump of lead once swallowed. It is shaped like a flat cake and is barely
thicker than one’s finger.”60
In the late eighteenth century, while traveling in Asturias, the British
physician Joseph Townsend encountered maize, which he considered to
be unhealthy: “The usual diet consists of corn with broad beans, peas,
chestnuts, apples, pears, melons, and cucumbers. Bread made with corn
meal is unleavened, unfermented, and like dough.”61
Cornbread also was common in Galicia, where villagers in Lugo said that
poor peasants “don’t earn enough to eat any bread other than cornbread
[which is] dry and tastes bad, but when, as in Salnés and Pontevedra, it is made
with at least one-third rye and is well cooked it is nutritious and has good
substance. Just out of the oven, it is as tasty as rye bread, or even more so.”62
Maize frequently was made into porridge, for example as polenta in Italy.
In the late eighteenth century Asturians ate it both as bread and as porridge.
According to the Enlightenment statesman and writer Gaspar Melchor de
Jovellanos, during drought years Asturian migrant cattlemen (vaqueiros de
alzada) would eat maize when they did not have potatoes: “Those who lack
[potatoes] must buy corn, and they live off the potatoes or a sort of por-
ridge made with corn meal.”63 Maize production sometimes spread because
it allowed people to save on grinding and bread-making, and they spent
less time processing and boiling the maize to make porridge. It also offered
the possibility of a hot meal. Yet despite its advantages, maize continued
encountering prejudice throughout Europe.
Obstacles also arose to the diffusion of potatoes. Cienfuegos devoted a
chapter of his history of plants to potatoes, entitling it “Papas of Peru, whose
bread the Indians call chuno.” He wrote, “Papas are what they are commonly
known as in Castile, where their roots are eaten, and the best ones are called
Peru papas because they are abundant in that province, from where they
were brought to Spain, and in Madrid’s marketplace they are sold with the
name papas ... They are eaten raw, cooked, baked, and in different stews
with peppers and spices ... Their quality can be seen from the delicacies with
which they are cooked.”64
Starting in the early eighteenth century, public officials concerned about
drought and famine tried to encourage people to plant and eat potatoes.
Enlightened scientists published works on the subject, highlighting pota-
toes’ advantages and depicting them as the solution to hunger. Nevertheless,
only in years of extreme want or warfare were they widely eaten. The excep-
tion was Ireland, where potatoes fed the people for many years. In the early
nineteenth century, the famines resulting from the Napoleonic wars finally
led to the widespread adoption of potatoes in Spain and throughout Europe.
A passion for chocolate: the allure of sweetness
Taste had a great deal to do with the success of new foods.65 In America,
chocolate was a light, frothy drink with a bitter taste, though sometimes
it could be thickened with cornstarch or sweetened with honey. In Spain,
the drink became very sweet, very hot, and very thick. In order to appeal
to European tastes, large amounts of cane sugar were added. Over time
it became thicker, the froth was reduced, and it was no longer poured
from on high (the system of encanciado, as with cider) but, rather, the
mixture was obtained by using a mill. Some American ingredients, such
as vanilla to strengthen the aroma and achiote (a flowering bush) for
coloring, were maintained, and Asian spices were added, along with dried
fruits and aromatic ingredients such as anise and orange blossom water
(agua de azahar).
Juan de Cárdenas published a recipe for hot chocolate that synthesized
ingredients from the Old and New Worlds: “In addition to cacao, this wonder-
ful, medicinal drink has spices that we call Castilian. They are cinnamon,
pepper, anise, and sesame ... And a spice that the Indians call queynacatzle and
the Spanish call orejuelas is added ... which gives this drink its good fragrance
and makes it smooth ... Then you add mecazúchil ... Third, the mildest and
the most fragrant, with our scented vanilla, is called tlixochil ... Achiote is also
considered a spice ... Some people add toasted chiles or culantro [Mexican
coriander] ...”66
Antonio de León Pinelo, who wrote a treatise on the moral considera-
tions involved in using chocolate to break one’s fast, explained chocolate’s
accelerating introduction in Spain: “Native Indians in New Spain ... had
many drinks ... and among them was chocolate, which was, or appeared to
be, the best, the tastiest, and it was inexpensive and able to be modified and
improved upon, so not only did Spaniards embrace and drink it wherever
it was introduced, but they took it with them to other places in the Indies,
either as plants or to trade. Both the plant from which the drink is made and
the powder made with it were brought to these kingdoms, and they have
been so well received that in many cities they are used as gifts, especially in
this court [i.e. Madrid].”67
León Pinelo also described how hot chocolate was made. He described
the various ingredients that the Aztecs added to cacao, such as achiote
and vanilla, adding that in Spain some Indian ingredients had been
retained while new ones were added, such as dried fruits and nuts and,
especially, Asian spices such as cinnamon, clove, black pepper, ginger,
and nutmeg. The way in which it was cooked was also important: “The
Indians who invented it added honey to lots of water to sweeten it and
not very much cacao, and nothing else, so that it would be frothy, which
is what they like ... Spaniards made it sweeter by adding sugar and other
ingredients to the cacao, making it more flavorful ... and thicker than the
Indians did.”68
By the eighteenth century, drinking chocolate was a widely practiced
social custom, and Spaniards were passionate about it. Traditional Spanish
chocolate was made with water, though at the end of the century it became
fashionable to make it with milk, as the French did.69 Juan de la Mata
described how to make it in his Arte de repostería.70 The surgeon Antonio
Lavedán included a chapter on how to make and drink chocolate in his
treatise on tobacco, coffee, tea, and chocolate, published in 1796.71
Foreign travelers considered chocolate to be a product signifying identity.

Townsend included a recipe in his writings:
In Spain they mix six pounds of the nut with three pounds or three and
a half of sugar, seven pods of vanillas, one pound and an half of Indian
corn, and half a pound of cinnamon, six cloves, one drachm of capsicum,
some roucou nut, to improve the colour, and a small portion of musk, or
ambergris, to give it a pleasant scent. Some people, however, use only the
nut, with sugar and cinnamon. The Indians, to one pound of the nut, put
half a pound of Indian corn, with an equal quantity of sugar and some
rose-water.72
Sweetness was also key to the acceptance of sweet potatoes. In 1526

Fernández de Oviedo wrote, “The Indians live on sweet potatoes ... and a
preserved batata is as good as exquisite marzipan ... I have taken them from
this city of Santo Domingo, on the island of Hispaniola, to the city of Ávila,
and though they did not arrive in the state in which they left, they were
regarded as very unusual and good and were greatly appreciated.”73
Sweet potatoes spread quickly throughout Spain. Monardes wrote in 1574,
“Sweet potatoes, which are common in those lands, are very nutritious, some-
where between meat and fruit. They do produce gas, but this can be remedied
by roasting them, particularly if sherry is added. Made into preserves they
are excellent, like quince. They also can be used for sandwiches, or grated for
soups and excellent pastry. They can be used in any preserve or stew. There are
so many in Spain that every year 10 or 12 shiploads of them come to Seville
from Vélez Málaga. They propagate themselves ... and grow easily, and in eight
months’ time the roots are very thick, and they too can be eaten and used.”74
Sweet potatoes also appeared in cookbooks, indicating how popular they
were. Diego Granado’s seventeenth-century collection included “meat with
lemon and sweet potatoes.” In the eighteenth century, Juan de la Mata pub-
lished three recipes for “Málaga sweet potatoes,” and cookbooks stated that
sweet potatoes were best roasted on coals or cooked with wine and sugar or
served in syrup.75
American fruits also were widely appreciated, though it was difficult to
grow them in Spain or to transport them across the Atlantic. Pineapple was
especially remarked upon, and Fernández de Oviedo praised its qualities:
“It is one of the most beautiful fruits I have seen anywhere in the world.
It is lovely to look at, mild-tasting, has excellent flavor, and it is the most
fragrant and tastiest of all fruits.”76 Acosta also wrote about the fruit’s uses
and appearance: “Except for the outside peel, the entire pineapple is edible.
Its aroma is excellent and it is very inviting to eat. It has a sweet-sour flavor
and is juicy. It is eaten in slices, soaked in salt water.”77
Other fruits were equally praised. Acosta mentioned sapota and custard
apples (anonas or chirimoyas): “Some people who praise the Indies said there
was a fruit whose flavor was as good as quince or blancmange ... The ones they
call sapotas, or chicoçapotes, are very sweet and are the color of quince. Some
Creoles say ... it is better than all the fruits in Spain. I do not think so. ... The
blancmange is the custard apple, or guanavana, found on the mainland. Anonas
are the size of large pears ... the inside is white and as soft as butter and sweet,
with a very select taste. It is not blancmange, though it is very delicate ... and
some believe it is the best fruit in the Indies.”78
Fruits in America were eaten raw, while in Spain they were preserved. In
his play La villana de Vallecas, Tirso de Molina listed several exotic fruits,
including preserved American pineapple: “For dessert / we have Indian pre-
served pineapple / and three or four barrels / of mameyes and cipizapotes ...”
From the exotic to the ordinary
America did not substantially change Old World diets, but it enriched them
to an extraordinary degree. Without any abrupt change, there appeared
new variety, flavors, and, above all, colors, intense and eye-catching colors.
Before the discovery of America, the colors of medieval cuisine were sub-
dued greens, browns, or yellows. These changed radically with the addition
of brightly colored ingredients, especially red tomatoes and peppers, which
today are so typical of Mediterranean cooking.
To judge from the writings of foreign visitors to Spain, American products
such as peppers and tomatoes had become elements of traditional Spanish
cuisine by the eighteenth century. Their strong and particular flavors
marked many Spanish dishes—to an excessive degree, in the opinion of
unaccustomed visitors. The French ambassador to the Spanish court from
1777 through 1786, Jean-François de Bourgoing, unhappily recorded various
elements of Spanish cooking, including those that had arrived from America:
“Spanish cooking, which they have inherited, is not generally pleasing to
foreigners. Spaniards like strong condiments such as pepper, tomato sauce,
hot peppers, and saffron, which color or infect nearly all their dishes.”79
Three centuries after the discovery of America, Spanish cuisine had acquired
some of its most noteworthy attributes through products imported from the
New World. A similar process took place in other European countries and in
America. America had become European. Europe had become American. Food
that was at first regarded as exotic became ordinary and traditional on both
sides of the Atlantic. The bridge for this extraordinary exchange had been
Spain, and Spanish cooking is the outcome of that most fortunate synthesis.
The expansion of Europe in the fifteenth century brought about changes

throughout the planet. As a result, an avant-garde globalization took place.
Transfers were ecological, economic, scientific, technological, social, political,
institutional, cultural, and culinary. Though there were limitations and contra-
dictions, a world system was created that guided the historical evolution
of the human race during the early modern era and laid the foundations for
contemporary experiences of globalization.80
Exchanges of people, products, ideas, and practices were innumerable and
went in all directions, back and forth, creating a dense network of relation-
ships with many principal centers or geo-political, economic, social, and
cultural spaces that generated initiatives guiding the historical process. There
were many of these centers on the four continents, and as well there were
many peripheries, meaning geopolitical, economic, and social recipients of
these initiatives. Furthermore, interesting and complex linkages developed
among the peripheries, thus creating new centers and new horizons.
As a result, there were new hybrids and cross-breeding, original syntheses
that brought about new realities. The changes were transformative, even
revolutionary. In the area of food, new cooking styles brilliantly mixed
products and techniques from different and distant places to create new
identities. New products were at first in the minority but gradually gained
acceptance until they were popular across wide areas, both socially and geo-
graphically. Today the tomato is a fundamental ingredient of Mediterranean
cooking. Grilled steaks today are one of the best-known Argentine dishes.
The Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon together account for 70
percent of the world’s production of cacao, of which the United States is the
principal consumer. China is one of the world’s leading producers of pep-
per, an ingredient often found in Chinese dishes. Foods and dishes traveled
from one part of the world to another. Though at first they were considered
rare and exotic, they were eventually totally accepted and even considered
traditional. Today’s globalization of transport and communication, the tech-
nological revolution, the push for innovation, and the internationalization
of a new, creative, open, revolutionary, and trans-national cooking that
goes beyond older syntheses are again giving rise to even greater worldwide
transformations in food. Yet despite all progress, too many people still go
hungry. Nevertheless, a revolution is under way to ensure that everyone eats
and that everyone (at least the privileged) eats better. The new cuisine is the
spearhead of a process that today is still small but that, with time, may have
unexpected results.
Notes
This chapter was translated with support from the Spanish Ministry of Economics
and Competitivity, HAR2010-12073-E, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia, guerra,
economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, ed., Las redes del imperio: Élites sociales en la articulacion de
la Monarquía Hispánica, 1492–1714 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2009); Bartolomé Yun-
Casalilla (with Angeles Redondo), ‘“Localism,” Global History and Transnational
History: A Reflection from the Historian of Early Modern Europe,” Historisk
Tidskrift 127:4 (2007), 659–78.
2. A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808: A World on the Move

(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998).
3. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900
(Cambridge University Press, 1986).
4. Marcello Carmagnani, The Other West: Latin America from Invasion to Globalization
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
5. Laura María Iglesias Gómez, La transferencia de tecnología agronómica de España a
América de 1492 a 1598 (Madrid: Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, 2007).
6. Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture (Cambridge
University Press, 2001).
7. Arnold J. Bauer, “Molineros y molenderas,” in Enrique Florescano and Virginia
García Acosta, eds, Mestizajes tecnológicos y cambios culturales en México (Mexico
City: CIESAS, 2004), 169–99.
8. Arnold J. Bauer, “Cultura material y consumo en Hispanoamérica,” in Chile y algo
más: Estudios de historia Latinoamericana (Santiago: Instituto de Historia, Centro
de Investigaciones Barros Arana, 2005).
9. Francisco López de Gómara, Historia general de las Indias, 2 vols (Madrid: Orbis,
1985 [1552]), vol. I, 55.
10. Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, Compendio y descripción de las Indias Occidentales
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1948 [1629]), 126.
11. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia natural y general de las Indias, islas y Tierra
Firme del Mar Oceáno (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1955 [1535–57]),
142–3.
12. José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Seville: Juan de León, 1598), 271.
13. Manuel Lucena Salmoral, “Las transferencias agrícolas del Mediterráneo a
América, s. XVI–XVIII: Imperialismo verde y formación de la agricultura mes-
tiza iberoamericana,” in José Morilla Critz et al., eds, Impactos exteriores sobre el
mundo rural mediterráneo: Del Imperio romano a nuestros días (Madrid: Ministerio de
Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación, 1997), 347–74.
14. Marquis de Rafal (Alfonso Pardo Manuel de Villena), “Datos inéditos para la
biografía del Capitán Hernando de Montenegro, compañero de Pizarro en la con-
quista del Perú,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 100:2 (1932), 807–13.
15. Acosta, Historia natural, 273.
16. Ibid., 274–5.
Penguin, 1986).
18. Cristóbal Colón, Textos y documentos completos: Relaciones de viajes, cartas y memo-
riales, ed. Consuelo Varela (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1982), 147–61.
19. López de Gómara, Historia general, vol. I, 55.
20. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia natural, 53.
21. Acosta, Historia natural, 250–1.
22. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia natural, 320.
23. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism, 171–3; J. R. McNeill, “The Ecological Atlantic,” in
Nicholas P. Canny and Philip D. Morgan, eds, The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic
World c.1450–c.1850 (Oxford University Press, 2011), 289–304.
24. López de Gómara, Historia general, vol. I, 55–6.
25. Pedro Mártir de Anglería, Décadas del Nuevo Mundo (Madrid: Polifemo, 1989
[1530]), 107.
26. José García Mercadal, Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal, 3 vols (Madrid:
Aguilar, 1952), vol. I, 851.
27. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España
(Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1955 [1632]), 669.
28. García Mercadal, Viajes, vol. I, 1237.
29. Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race, and the Colonial Experience
in Spanish America, 1492–1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Rebecca Earle,
“‘If You Eat their Food …’: Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America,”
American Historical Review 115:3 (2010), 688–713.
30. María Ángeles Pérez Samper, “España y América: El encuentro de dos sistemas
alimentarios,” in Las raíces de la memoria: América Latina (Barcelona: Universitat
de Barcelona, 1996), 171–88.
31. López de Gómara, Historia general, vol. I, 49–50.
32. Anglería, Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, 150.
34. Claude Fischler, El (h)omnívoro: El gusto, la cocina y el cuerpo (Barcelona: Anagrama,
1995).
35. García Mercadal, Viajes, vol. I, 851.
36. María Ángeles Pérez Samper, “La integración de los productos americanos en los
sistemas alimentarios mediterráneos,” in XIV Jornades d’Estudis Històrics locals: La
Mediterrània, área de convergència de sistemes alimentaris (segles V–XVIII) (Palma de
Mallorca: Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics, 1996), 89–148.
37. Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 171.
38. Rudolf Grewe, “The Arrival of the Tomato in Spain and Italy: Early Recipes,”
Journal of Gastronomy 3:2 (1988), 67–81.
39. Juan de la Mata, Arte de repostería (Valladolid: Editorial Maxtor, 2003 [Madrid, 1747]).
40. Colón, Textos y documentos, 94.
41. Hernán Cortés, Cartas de relación de la conquista de México, 5th edn (Madrid:
Espasa-Calpe, 1970), 63.
43. Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in
the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).
45. Redcliffe N. Salaman, Historia e influencia social de la patata (Madrid: Ministerio de
Trabajo y Seguridad Social, 1991), 43–4.
46. Pedro Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú (Madrid: Sarpe, 1985 [1553]), 57.
47. Tomás de Mercado, Suma de tratos y contratos (Madrid: Ministerio de Economía
y Hacienda, 1977).
48. Colón, Textos y documentos, 118.
49. Bartolomé de las Casas, Apologética histórica de las Indias (Madrid: Nueva Biblioteca
de Autores Españoles, 1909 [1552]), 436.
50. Nicolás Monardes, Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la Historia medicinal de las
cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales (Madrid: Ministerio de Sanidad y
Consumo, 1989 [1580]), 127–8.
51. Francisco Hernández, Historia de las plantas de Nueva España, 3 vols (Mexico City:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1942 [1615]), vol. II, 136.
53. Francisco Martínez Montiño, Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcochería y conservería
(Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1611).
54. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Fisiología del gusto o meditaciones de gastronomia
trascendente (Madrid: Aguilar, 1987 [1825]), 77.
55. Hernández, Historia de las plantas, vol. III, 869.
56. Manuel Ardit, Els homes i la terra del país valencià (segles XVI–XVIII), 2 vols
(Barcelona: Curial, 1993), vol. I, 283–6.
57. José Manuel Pérez García, “Le mais dans le Nord-Ouest de la peninsule ibérique
durant l’ancien régime,” in Plantes et cultures nouvelles en Europe occidentale, au
Moyen Age et à l’epoque moderne, Flaran, 12 (Auch: Comité Départemental du
Tourisme du Gers, 1992), 81–102.
58. Bernardo Cienfuegos, “Historia de las plantas,” Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Ms. 335.
59. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas, ed. Aurelio Miró Quesada
(Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1985), vol. II, 170.
60. Relación del viaje de España, cited in García Mercadal, Viajes, vol. II, 952–3.
61. Viaje a España hecho en los años 1786 y 1787, cited in García Mercadal, Viajes,
vol. III, 1448.
62. Pegerto Saavedra, La vida cotidiana en la Galicia del Antiguo Régimen (Barcelona:
Crítica, 1994), 139.
63. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, “Carta novena,” in Obras publicadas é inéditas,
Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (Madrid: Rivadenyra, 1859), vol. II, 303.
64. Javier López Linage, ed., De papa a patata: La difusión española del tubérculo andino
(Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación, 1991), 76–7.
65. Sophie Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate (New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2000); Louis E. Grivetti and Howard-Yana Shapiro, Chocolate: History,
Culture, and Heritage (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2009).
66. Juan de Cárdenas, Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Madrid: Alianza
Editorial, 1988 [1591]), 140–6.
67. Antonio de León Pinelo, Question moral: Si el chocolate quebranta el ayuno eclesiástico
(Madrid: Viuda de Juan González, 1636), fol. 1.
68. Ibid., fol. 8.
69. María Angeles Pérez Samper, Mesas y cocinas en la España del siglo XVIII (Gijón:
Trea, 2011), 383–93.
70. De la Mata, Arte, 163–4.
71. Antonio Lavedán, Tratado de los usos, abusos, propiedades y virtudes del tabaco, café,
té y chocolate: Extractado de los mejores autores que han tratado de esta materia, a fin
de que su uso no perjudique a la salud, antes bien pueda servir de alivio y curación de
muchos males (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1796), 219–21.
72. Joseph Townsend, A Journey through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787; with particular
attention to the agriculture, manufactures, commerce, population, taxes, and revenue of
that country; and remarks in passing through a part of France (London: C. Dilly, 1791),
vol. II, 376.
73. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Sumario de la natural historia de Indias (Madrid:
Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1955 [1526]), vol. I, 234–5.
74. Monardes, Primera y segunda, fols 94v–95v.
75. Diego Granado, “Carne de limón y batatas,” in Libro del arte de cocina (Lérida:
Pagès Editors, 1991 [1614]), 383–4; de la Mata, “Batatas de Málaga en seco y en
líquido” and “Compota de batatas de Málaga,” in Arte, 48 and 67.
76. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia natural, vol. I, 280.
78. Ibid., 257–8.
79. Cited in García Mercadal, Viajes, vol. III, 997.
80. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, vol. I: Capitalist Agriculture
and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2011 [1974]); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern
World-System, vol. II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-
Economy, 1600–1750 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011 [1980]).
3
The Difficult Beginnings
Columbus as a Mediator of New World Products
Consuelo Varela
From the early fifteenth century onward, the westward voyages undertaken
by various European nations were aimed at economic expansion. As Vitorino
Magalhães Godinho showed, the fifteenth-century geographic discoveries
largely followed the exhaustion of Northern European fishing grounds,
which forced the fleets to explore more southern seas.1 The southern routes,
in turn, led to the discovery of the Madeira, Azores, and Canary Islands.2
Volcanic eruptions in Greenland and Denmark’s decision to close its canal
deprived Europe of supplies just as it was expanding, and when the Church
was requiring Catholics to eat fish 166 days a year. During the reign of the
Catholic monarchs, Spain largely subsisted on fish. Basque and Cantabrian
fishermen caught whale and cod, leaving from the famous “seven ports”
of Castile: Santander, Laredo, Castro Urdiales, Vitoria,3 Bermeo, Guetaria,
San Sebastian, and Fuenterrabia. The Galician and Andalusian fleets caught
smaller fish. But Europeans did not just need fish. They also wanted spices
with which to preserve their foods, luxury items to decorate their homes
and churches, and slaves who would till the fields and whose services might
impress their neighbors.
As for the other products sought by Europeans, both Aragon and Castile
were deficient. Some slaves entered the ports of Valencia and Seville due to
the Medici, whose principal agent on the Iberian Peninsula, Bartolomé
Marchioni, sent his “merchandise” from Lisbon to Juanoto Berardi in Seville
and to Cesar Barchi in Valencia.4 The port of Malaga saw some gold dust,
Berber leather, drugs, spices, dyes, weapons, and luxury fabrics, in a trade
largely controlled by the Centurion and Ytalian families of Genoa.5
The Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, were not keen on being
left behind in the battle for overseas expansion, in which the neighboring
kingdom of Portugal had a huge advantage. While Castile had barely begun
the conquest of some of the Canary Islands, Portuguese efforts were far
advanced, starting with Gil Eanes’s achievement in 1434 of reaching Cape
Bojador on the northern coast of Western Sahara. In 1444 the Portuguese
discovered Cape Verde, in 1482 they built the San Jorge de la Mina fortress,
38
The Difficult Beginnings 39
Diego Cão reached the Congo River the following year, a commercial outpost
was established in Nigeria in 1486, and Bartolomé Díaz reached the Cape
of Good Hope in 1488, thus discovering the link between the Atlantic and
Indian oceans.
This was the context in which Ferdinand and Isabella issued author-
izations (capitulaciones) for overseas voyages of discovery. These were contracts
between the crown of Castile and trusted sailors that clearly specified the
terms of their travel.6
The exchange of products in the age of Columbus
As soon as he arrived in the Indies on 11 October 1492, Columbus set out

to find all the wonders that were believed to lie in the East. During his
first trip, Columbus captured Indians on the island of Guanahaní to act as
interpreters and guides; later on, he took them back with him to Castile so
that they could learn the Spanish language. Only one survived; he would
be named Diego Colón and would remain a loyal servant of Castile on
Española years later.7 None of these Indians was considered a slave.
Later, in Haiti, Columbus sent a small expeditionary group to find the
Great Khan. The quest was unsuccessful. As soon as he had arrived in San
Salvador, Columbus observed that some of the natives chewed herbs, which
they offered him as something of great value. But it was not until the
Spaniards reached Española, where Columbus dispatched Rodrigo de Jerez
and Luis Torres to inspect the territory, that they first saw Indians smok-
ing tobacco (they reported seeing “women and men with embers in their
hands”8). Neither Columbus nor, years later, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas
gave the custom much thought. Las Casas in 1527, in his Apologética historia,
described natives breathing in the smoke from rolls of lit leaves, saying he
did not understand how it could produce pleasure: “I knew Spaniards on
the island of Española who used to smoke, and when they were scolded for
it, because it was a vice, they said they could not stop. I do not know what
flavor or benefit they found in it.”9
During four months in the Antilles, Columbus’s crew found some gold. The
islands were very fragrant, as was the productive island of Quío, which the
Genovese called the island of the thousand flowers. The men took samples of
aloe and branches and roots of trees. They saw few animals, though one that
especially caught their eye was the iguana; Columbus ordered one preserved
and taken to Castile. The hungry sailors ate manatee when they crossed the
sea, and some dried pieces may have reached Seville, where it surely appalled
those who tried it, unsure if it were meat or fish. There was an important corol-
lary to this dilemma: if it were fish, manatee could be eaten even on Maundy
Thursday. That matter was debated well into the eighteenth century.
The expectations that Columbus encouraged clashed with the reality
encountered, which he struggled to rationalize. In his letter to the king and
40 Consuelo Varela
queen announcing his discoveries, published in Barcelona in May 1493,

Columbus reiterated the wonders the Indies contained. There were large
quantities of gold to be found. The spices were magnificent. The possibilities
for slave trafficking were immense.10 Things were so promising that just six
months after the discoverers’ return, a second voyage began in September
1493. This time there were 17 ships, carrying between 1,200 and 1,500 men
and women. Such was the success of Columbus’s propaganda. It quickly
became apparent that the spices were not spices and the gold was not good.
But there was no reason to despair; the admiral could not have been mistaken.
For over a year on his second voyage, from late 1493 until spring 1495,
Columbus tried to prove the naysayers wrong. The plant cuttings had not
grown because they had been picked during the wrong season, he said.
Fortunately, he could now send a small cutting of brazilwood, which one
day would be a lucrative crop, as it was of better quality than Asian wood,
which was generally sold in decomposed form and used in the textile trade,
especially to dye velvet. As for gold, Columbus insisted his men were close
to finding the Cibao mines, which were said to be of the highest quality.
Two ships that returned to the Iberian Peninsula at this time carried slaves
and brazilwood.11
When Columbus returned to the New World in 1498 on his third voy-
age, he discovered one of the products that he sought. In his copy of Marco
Polo’s Il milione, which he had received from the English merchant John
Day,12 Columbus had made marginal notations alongside the Venetian’s refer-
ences to precious Asian pearls. In Paria he saw how easily the natives dove
for the abundant gems, whose quality amazed him (he wrote in his diary
that they were “finísimas”—most fine), as did the way the natives drilled
them, just as Venetian jewelers did.13 Christopher Columbus asked his son
Diego to present Queen Isabella with a large pearl, instructing him to give
it to her after lunch, so that she would feel satisfied and therefore be more
likely to grant his requests. The sources do not indicate what Columbus
sought from her.14
In December 1492 Columbus tried cacao for the first time and described
how it was prepared: “They put a bean in a bowl of water and they drank it,
and the Indians said it was very smooth.”15 In 1502, on the coast of present-
day Belize, his ships met a canoe from Yucatan, and the admiral ordered its
capture. Among the food on board, according to Hernando Columbus, who
accompanied his father on the trip, was “a kind of wine made from corn,
similar to English beer, and many seeds that they use as coins and appear to
greatly value, because when they were loaded onto the ship I noticed that
when some of these almonds fell, they all tried to pick them up, as if they
had lost an eye.”16 These were cacao beans, which the inhabitants of Yucatan
indeed used as coins. Thanks to the Indian Yumbé, who showed them how
to prepare cacao, the Spanish crew did not perish on their trip along the
Veragua coast.
Columbus saw and tried other products, including peppers, pineapple,

maize, and casaba, but he took them back with him to Spain, like the
iguana, only to show them off as exotic specimens. He never saw potatoes
or tomatoes, to mention just two American products that would become
staples in European and Mediterranean diets. By 1500, when Columbus was
removed as viceroy, the only products arriving in Spain from the New World
were slaves, brazilwood, a small amount of gold, and a few pearls. It was not
much. Going the other way, certain products would be immensely success-
ful in the Indies, including sugar cane, of which Columbus said as early as
1494 that it would grow wonderfully, and livestock.
Indigenous American slaves
Although Columbus’s actions regarding slaves have been studied elsewhere,

certain points appear relevant to the consideration of “new” commodities.
Although much criticized, Columbus’s attitude toward indigenous slavery
reflected the norms of the slave-owning society of his time. In Renaissance
Europe, slaves constituted profitable merchandise. For this reason, both the
admiral and his brother Bartolomé sent as many indigenous American slaves
as they could obtain to Seville. The Columbus brothers arranged several
shipments before Christopher was removed from office. A first consign-
ment, sent to Seville in February 1495, comprised 500 vassals of the leader
(cacique) Guatiguaná of Española, taken from him in reprisal for having
ordered the death of ten Christians. The second shipment, of 600 Indians,
had been captured by 80 Christians sent by Columbus to the province of
Cibao to take revenge against another chief, Caonaobó, himself captured
by Alonso de Hojeda and on board the Isabela waiting to be shipped to
Castile. As Las Casas wrote, a storm destroyed the fleet before it could leave.
The cacique drowned and the fate of the 600 natives is unknown. During a
raid in La Vega, in the center of the island, in March 1495, Columbus and
Hojeda, assisted by the cacique Guacanagarí, captured an unknown number
of people who were put on board the Isabela to be sent to Spain as quickly as
possible. In late 1496 or early 1497, Bartolomé sent his brother Christopher,
in Castile at the time, a shipment of 300 slaves; he had received a letter from
Christopher, which is lost, saying the monarchs had ordered him to ship
out those Indians guilty of killing Christians and who had been captured
in just war.17 By September 1500 the Columbus brothers had sent around
1,500 indigenous Americans to Castile to be sold as slaves. Soon after, the
monarchs’ moral scruples prompted them to limit slave trafficking, and
from then on the Indians of Santo Domingo, who were considered vassals,
could not be sold as slaves.18
Columbus behaved according to prevailing codes, which he had seen
implemented not just in Portugal and Guinea but also in Castile. He had
no need to justify himself. He had promised to bring back riches, and this
42 Consuelo Varela
merchandise brought positive yields. Thus in his letter to the monarchs that
arrived with the first shipment of slaves, he asked if he should continue cap-
turing them. Columbus appeared to have no doubt on the matter, claiming
that Caribbean slaves were three times as intelligent and strong as slaves
from Guinea.19
As soon as Ferdinand and Isabella heard about the first shipment, they
ordered Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, bishop of Cordoba and one of the archi-
tects of the royal policy toward America, to sell the captives in Andalusia,
where they thought the slaves would fetch the best price.20 But quickly the
monarchs grew doubtful; just four days later, on 16 April 1495, they wrote
the bishop again, instructing him to set aside the money from the sale until
they had consulted “theologians and canonists of good conscience” to
determine if the traffic was licit.21 Their scruples, of course, did not please
Columbus, whose agent requested that he be paid what he was owed on
1 June. The king and queen, still unsure of how to proceed, ordered Fonseca
to tell the agent secretly that the matter was on hold and that payments
should not go forward. Given that all the slaves had been sold, there was
no point in alerting their owners until a final decision had been reached.22
Seeing that part of his business was in peril, Columbus wrote a long let-
ter to the monarchs on 14 October from Vega de la Maguana, on Española.
He assured them that Indians could and should be sold as slaves, and, to drive
home the point, promised them that the natives transported to Castile were
not Christians, and so were eligible for sale. Having established this first and
crucial premise, he went on to clarify a few questions in case Ferdinand and
Isabella had doubts regarding the Indians’ needs and character. First, buyers
should not worry about the change in climate; the cold would not hurt the
native Americans. According to Columbus, the Caribbean islands also fre-
quently became cold, and therefore their inhabitants could be sold anywhere
on the Iberian Peninsula without danger to their health. As for their labor,
Columbus said the women were not well suited to domestic service but could
carry out artisanal work, especially weaving cotton. The men were so talented
that they could even learn to read. Finally, Columbus warned the monarchs,
it was best not to feed the Indians too much, for on the islands they ate little.
“If they become full,” he wrote, “they fall ill.”23
The king and queen did not know what to do. Three years later, in 1498,
Columbus continued writing them in defense of the slave trade. On his way
back from his third trip to the Indies, he passed by the Cape Verde Islands
and, once again, saw how unprofitable the Portuguese black slaves were:
“They tell me they can sell four thousand, which might bring in twenty
cuentos.” Columbus did the math: while the Portuguese were asking 8,000
maravedíes for the most useless slave, he could sell an American slave for
5,000 maravedíes in Castile. To cut costs, he suggested that the officers and
sailors on his five ships returning from the New World be permitted to
return with slaves valued at 1,500 maravedíes each. In this way, the sailors
would become rich, and the crown would save the cost of their salaries and
board. Columbus admitted that some indigenous Americans might die on
the journey, as had happened at first with black slaves and those from the
Canary Islands, “but it will not always be like that,” and soon they would
figure out how to make the transport more efficient.24 Las Casas included
this letter in his Historia, making the following comment: “[Columbus] was
determined to load the ships from Castile with slaves and sell them in the
Canaries, the Azores, and Cape Verde or wherever else they could fetch a
good price, and with the profits he could cover his expenses and reduce
those of the monarchs.”25
The slave trade did not cause much enthusiasm in Castile. Las Casas
wrote that Columbus, in an effort to quiet his critics, tried to ensure that it
would not cost the monarchs much. Not only would it cover the expenses
of the Indies voyages, but he himself could front his men’s salaries. In a later
inquest, Columbus reiterated continually that the Indians belonged to him
and to the monarchs and that he could do what he wanted with his prop-
erty, according to his capitulación. Therefore, before attending to his debts
to the colonists, in February 1494 Columbus asked that the royal officials in
Seville who were in charge of the Indies trade contract with merchants to
send a wide range of supplies to Española, adding that he would pay for the
merchandise with “cannibal slaves,” which, in his opinion, were “better
than any other slaves.” He proposed that a trustworthy person be assigned
to each ship to watch over the merchandise, which would be loaded and
unloaded at the port of La Isabela, though the monarchs would receive
their cut in Castile.26 The king and queen replied by saying the matter was
on hold for the time being. The sources do not indicate exactly when they
resolved to prohibit the traffic in indigenous Americans, whom they con-
sidered vassals, but it is possible that the deciding factor was Columbus’s
announcement, soon after writing the above letter, that each of the 360
colonists in Española would receive an Indian slave. The Genovese had gone
too far; according to Las Casas, the queen was indignant. “What right does
the admiral have to give away my vassals?” she was said to have exclaimed
when she heard the news.27
Among the documents that Columbus deposited in the Carthusian
monastery of Las Cuevas in Seville was a description of “a letter from Queen
Isabella saying that those men who wished to go to the Carib Islands could
have [slaves] and capture them and own them.” It is undated but must
have been written before 1500. It is a pity the original is lost. Columbus
undoubtedly kept it carefully to quiet any criticism and to demonstrate the
monarchs’ indecision in those early years.
Once Francisco de Bobadilla was appointed governor of Española in
September 1500, a series of decrees were issued to reorganize the traffic. It
was then that the monarchs ordered that all the Indians whom Columbus
had sent to Castile should be returned on the first ships sailing back to the
44 Consuelo Varela
New World.28 The orders were quickly carried out, and in April Bobadilla
received the first 25 slaves, who would return with him five months later.29
Las Casas reported that his father had to return one slave whom he had
brought him years earlier.30 Las Casas wrote that the queen believed what
Columbus had told her, that the slaves had been captured in a just war and
therefore could be sold as slaves. If the captains who received capitulaciones to
discover new lands could take slaves under that condition, how could they
be prevented from benefitting from such a quick and profitable business?
What information reached the Iberian Peninsula regarding the traffic? Were
the captains (and Columbus) lying when they said the Indians had all been
captured in just war?
Royal policy vacillated between contradictory aims. The queen wished to
protect her Indian vassals but also wanted to benefit from them. Two solu-
tions were found to this tricky situation. On the one hand, Fray Nicolás de
Ovando, who had been appointed governor in 1502, was instructed to have
the Indians in Española help Christians in their “labors and farming,” for
which they would be paid a proper wage.31 At the same time, however, Isabella
decreed that all captains authorized to discover new lands could capture can-
nibals, especially on the San Bernardo Islands, on Isla Fuerte, in the port of
Cartagena, and on Barú Island.32 The royal orders appear contradictory; while
Crístóbal Guerra was forced in December 1501 to repatriate the natives he
had brought to Castile to sell, many other mariners were authorized to sell
their captives.33 The case of Rodrigo de Bastidas is instructive. According to
his capitulación, he owned one-third of the value of the slave he had brought
to the peninsula, while one-quarter belonged to the crown. Bastidas claimed
his part, and the monarchs willingly agreed that once he paid, he could own
the unfortunate captive in his entirety.34
Columbus was merely following the guidelines of his 1492 capitulación
regarding slavery, which referred to rescate (trade). On his first voyage he did
not bring back a single slave; the six natives who accompanied him were
baptized in Guadaloupe and were not slaves. Upon his return to the New
World, when he learned that the Christians he had left in the La Navidad
fortress had been murdered, Columbus faced Indians at war for the first
time. If previously he had recommended capturing cannibals on other
islands, the Española natives’ resistance now made the matter easier, and
raids commenced throughout the island. Columbus made the mistake of
not considering the natives vassals of the crown, and became a victim of his
own logic. After all, upon reaching Española, Columbus had told his rulers
that its inhabitants were their best and most loyal vassals.
Expectations and realities
The sailors and the crown hoped to profit from other merchandise in addi-
tion to slaves. Since 1499 the crown had been drawing up capitulaciones with
shipowners to undertake voyages of discovery despite Columbus’s complaints

that his rights were being infringed upon. These were the so-called lesser, or
Andalusian, voyages. There are few account ledgers from these early years
of the colonial era, and the ones that survive are incomplete. Curiously,
more information remains about the products on board than recorded in
the accounts, because the products exported were carefully noted when the
capitulaciones were notarized. Often the merchandise was listed simply as ropa
(clothing). There was also food — garbanzos, rice, dried fruit, honey — linens,
tools, shoes, sewing needles, weapons, medicine, and a few animals, which
required special permission. These were all subject to very close control to
avoid prohibited or inappropriate objects being taken to the Indies. In 1498,
for example, Columbus wanted to take a good number of blankets to La Isabela.
The shocked ship’s accountant (contador), Jimeno de Briviesca, removed them,
saying they were not necessary in those latitudes. The incident spun out of
control and, according to Las Casas, the admiral threw Briviesca off the ship.
When the explorers returned to Seville, officials listed only those prod-
ucts subject to duty charges, which varied. Even so, we can get an idea of
the growing importance of the Indies trade by looking at these accounts.
After Alonso de Hojeda’s voyage in 1499, participants submitted their
declarations; Amerigo Vespucci said he had taken 119 marcos of pearls in
exchange for some trinkets worth less than 40 ducats, as well as an emerald
and an amethyst. Hojeda returned to Seville carrying 200 slaves; 32 had
died en route. Of the other travelers we know only that they carried “fine
pearls and base gold [guanines] and a great deal of very fine brazilwood.”
Cristobal Guerra’s 1501 trip ended in Bayona (Galicia) and was the occasion
for a major smuggling lawsuit, according to the chronicler Pedro Mártir de
Anglería; the men had 96 pounds of pearls on board that they had swapped
for junk worth just five ducats.35
Vicente Yañez Pinzón’s trip in 1498 was a financial disaster despite the 350
quintals of brazilwood, cinnamon, and ginger, which he proudly reported.
But it turned out not to be worth much. He also had 36 slaves and a stuffed
manatee, which greatly pleased Mártir de Anglería and probably disgusted
courtiers. Diego de Lepe returned from his 1501 voyage carrying one ounce
of pearls (aljófar). Not much, but things went better the following year along
the pearl coast when just one ship returned to Cádiz with 60 slaves, 300
quintals of brazilwood, and 50 marcos of pearls.36
Pearls and brazilwood became the most valuable merchandise, though
they were subject to ups and downs. Bastidas in 1503 loaded 56 marcos,
two ounces, and a media ochava, with an unknown quantity of gold and
brazilwood that was requisitioned in Española. A year later he carried only
seven marcos and five ounces of guanines, one-quarter of which went to the
monarchs.
In this first phase of contact between two such different worlds, the
commercial balance sheet was very unequal. Spaniards could not accustom
46 Consuelo Varela
themselves to the Indians’ food and, as a result, starting with Columbus’s

second voyage, pigs, cattle, and fowl were transported. The colonists continu-
ally requested seeds, which rarely were successful, clothing, and medicine.
Men who mostly were unwilling to work the land found life so difficult that
many chose to return to Spain, and in 1500 there were only 360 Spaniards
living on Española.
Years passed before many of the food products that Columbus tasted
were accepted in Europe. For example, cacao, which he possibly took back
to the king and queen, did not do well, maybe because of its bitter flavor.
Hernán Cortés wrote that when one drank chocolate (cacao diluted in
water), “one could work all day without getting tired or feeling the need to
eat,” and in 1528 he carried some to Emperor Charles V. It was marginally
popular at court. But it was the friars who popularized the beverage when
they returned from the New World, and there is a legend that the first (and
best) chocolate in Spain was made (with sugar) in the Monasterio de Piedra,
in Zaragoza. By the seventeenth century, chocolate in the New World was
served on mancerinas, a sort of tray with handles used by the Marquis of
Mancera (1620–1715), viceroy of New Spain, when he entertained guests.
It was a controversial drink, and there were many who preferred not to try it,
wondering whether it was licit to drink it before receiving communion or
it violated the rules of fasting. The physicians Juan de Cárdenas in 1591 and
Juan Barrios in 1607 dealt with this matter, saying that, indeed, chocolate
did violate a fast because it was as nutritious as any other food.37 In reply,
the Indies chronicler Antonio de León Pinelo (1598–1660) wrote a booklet
in 1636 showing that chocolate did not break a fast and was not a food
product but simply a drink.38
While the Church questioned the nature of chocolate, the Inquisition
expressed concern about tobacco. In fact, Rodrigo de Jerez was imprisoned
upon returning to Spain and accused of witchcraft, because “only the devil
could give a man the ability to expel smoke from his mouth.” The first
tobacco plants were taken to Spain in 1559 by the chronicler and natural-
ist Francisco Hernández, at the request of Philip II. Soon afterward, Nicolás
Monardes (c. 1493–1588), a physician in Seville, tried to cultivate the plant
for medicinal applications in his botanical garden on Calle Sierpes.39
As for American animals, Columbus was surprised at the absence of domesti-
cated animals in the Antilles other than gozques, “dogs that never bark,” which
the Indians roasted. Among the animals that most caught the Spaniards’ eye
were guajolotes, which they called turkeys (pavos) because that was what they
looked like, though they also looked like peacocks when they lifted their tail
feathers. Though guajolotes are native to Mexico, it is possible that Columbus
saw them in 1502 among the cargo on the Indian Yumbé’s canoe. Cortés prob-
ably took them to Spain, where they became part of the cuisine. As Bartolomé
Leonardo Argensola noted in the early seventeenth century, by then they
were part of ordinary eating fare.40 Other than turkeys, however, few American
animals were transported to Europe, and then only as examples of exotic

species, except for hawks, which Columbus highly praised and sent to King
Ferdinand so he could use them and give them as gifts to other monarchs. The
king must have liked the hawks, as he quickly ordered that a master falconer
be sent to Española.41
Though Columbus in 1501 was allowed to bring 111 hundredweight
of brazilwood from Española as one-tenth of the 1,000 quintals that were
expected to arrive annually, it was only in 1503 that large-scale brazilwood
farming began. The monarchs ordered that a large distribution warehouse
be established in Cádiz, whose port was useful for both Atlantic and
Mediterranean trade. A monopoly also was created, prohibiting transport
of brazilwood from points outside the kingdoms of the Catholic monarchs
so as to avoid the introduction of wood acquired from the Portuguese, who
also had begun trading in it. From the start, Cádiz was in the hands of
Genovese merchants from the Cataño, Castellón, and Riberol families, who
turned a nice profit from warehousing. We know that in 1506 the Cataños
charged storage fees of 20 maravedíes per hundredweight of brazilwood.
From there, Franco Cataño and his successors shipped the wood to Genoa
and Flanders.42
Despite Columbus’s promises to the monarchs, the gold did not flow,
and the mines were disappointing. The accountant Sancho de Matienzo
recorded small quantities until 1504, when the caravels of Bermúdez and
Nortes carried 40,000 pesos’ worth. Juan Gil Fernández’s accounts show
that in 1505 the amount reached 48,000 pesos, and 35,585 pesos in 1506.43
Logically, merchants wished to import more or less exotic products from
America to sell in Iberia. It was not easy. Europeans did not like the gold
jewelry from America, which as soon as it arrived was sold to goldsmiths in
Seville, and later to the foundry in the Casa de la Contratación, to be melted
down. Merchants also smuggled precious stones, which were hidden with
pearls inside their doublets. The wily Bastidas (not for nothing did he start
off as a ragpicker) once brought in 42 hammocks, saying he was going to sell
them in Seville. He was ordered to take them back to Santo Domingo and
try and sell them there.44
The Italian Michele de Cuneo, who accompanied Columbus on his second
voyage, observed women in America wearing strings of pearls around their
necks, but it was not until 1498, on his third trip, that the admiral him-
self could admire the quality and quantity of the pearls that the natives
fished along the Cubagua coast. Mártir de Anglería wrote that the natives
who rowed out to meet the Spaniards had their arms and necks covered
with gold and pearls, which seemed as ordinary to them as the strings of
glass beads worn by Spanish women.45 Asked where the stones came from,
the natives indicated along the coast, and, showing that the pearls were
of no great value, “they picked up baskets, seeming to suggest that, if the
Spaniards wanted, they could get basketfuls.” The admiral had no trinkets
48 Consuelo Varela
with which to barter, so he left the matter for another time and took just a
few as samples. It was not a good decision, because it meant he could not
get credit for the décimas (royal tenth) by bringing the merchandise back to
Spain. The Paria coast, known as the “pearl coast,” was the continent’s major
pearl region, and King Ferdinand ordered the construction of a fortress in
Cubagua to protect the oyster beds in order to extract pearls.46 Europeans’
first responses to American products were governed by an interest in eco-
nomic benefits.
A successful product: the Indian illusion
One must not forget that Columbus and other discoverers harbored not
only commercial desires but also the desire for adventure. They were drawn
by the unknown and the fascination of uncovering a fantastic new world.
Thus another crucial “product” arrived in Europe from America: the illusion
of the Indies. Without this mirage, the conquest and the subsequent colon-
ization would have taken far longer.
Columbus did not set out to discover a new world but rather to find a
route to China and Cipango, the supposed home of amazing sights and lost
cities. News of these places had been picked up here and there as sailors
talked in taverns or gazed at illustrated maps, and educated people had
heard the stories of John Mandeville, Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, Marco Polo,
and so many others. The discoverers might bump into Antillia, the myth-
ical island located somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Spain. It was
a fabulous place that, some people believed, formed part of the legendary
islands where the Irish monk St Brendan had sought the Earthly Paradise
in the sixth century. Other explorers thought the territories encountered
might be the seven cities that contemporary maps showed to the west of the
Canaries. An old legend had it that when the Moors conquered the Spanish
city of Mérida in 713, the city’s seven bishops fled, taking valuable relics to
a place “beyond” the known world.47
The Earthly Paradise had formed part of the mythical imagination ever
since Genesis, and nobody doubted that it existed. It generally was thought
to be somewhere to the east, lush with plants, with a temperate climate,
wide rivers, and inhabitants who were eternally young and lived a simple
life. Columbus believed in all these characteristics, which all held true in the
Antilles. But he did not find the place until his third voyage, in 1498, when
he sailed by the Paria coast, unsure of his exact coordinates. He knew he was
close, very close. “If the Earthly Paradise exists somewhere, it cannot be far
from here,” wrote Amerigo Vespucci in Mundus Novus (1501) after traveling
along the Veragua coast. In the seventeenth century, León Pinelo wrote a
hefty tome proving that the Earthly Paradise lay in the heart of America and
that its four rivers, mentioned in Scripture, must be the River Plate (including
the Paraná and the Paraguay), the Orinoco, the Magdalena, and the Amazon.
The search for the Earthly Paradise was linked to another messianic trope,
the quest for eternal youth. Columbus was amazed at how healthy the
Antilleans were. No one seemed older than the perfect age, which was 30.
In 1513 Juan Ponce de León organized an expedition to find the Fountain
of Youth.
Other explorers sought Amazons, who Columbus believed to inhabit the
island of Martinique. On 6 January 1494 he heard talk of “an island where
only women lived,” and he decided that there must also, logically, be one
where only men lived.48 The natives confirmed his hunch on 16 January,
telling him that “at a certain time of year men went to this island of the
women ... and if boys were born they were sent to the men’s island and if
they were girls they stayed there.”49 Columbus weighed whether or not to
go there and take five or six women back to Spain to show the monarchs,
but he opted not to do so. In 1518, Juan de Grijalba searched for the Island
of Women along the Yucatan coast; Diego Velázquez and Hernán Cortés also
wondered about it, and many years later Francisco de Orellana thought that
he had found the same women in the Amazon region.
In the late afternoon of Tuesday, 8 March 1493, the fleet was off the north
coast of Española at 72 degrees longitude, floating amid masses of turtles
that the sailors were attempting to catch. Suddenly the men were stunned
to see, in the distance, three strange fish that the admiral, without consider-
ing that they might be an unknown and strange species, identified as mer-
maids.50 There were three of them, just as there were three sirens in the story
of Ulysses. But, alas, upon further inspection they did not appear at all like
those Columbus had seen in Guinea, along the Malagueta coast, when he
had sailed with the Portuguese. “They were not as beautiful as they appear
in paintings,” he wrote in his diary, and as their faces appeared masculine,
there was no doubt that they must be mermen, not mermaids.51 Regardless
of their sex, they were sirens. Pliny, whom Columbus often consulted,
doubted that sirens existed,52 but Columbus had seen them drawn on maps,
perhaps some similar to the Catalan Cresques map of 1375 that situated
them along the Trapóbana coast and the island of Jana, in a region called
Regio femarum (an incorrect transcription of Regio feminarum), the province
of women. There is no shortage of sirens, whether greeting ships or greeting
visitors, in engravings by De Bry and others in sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century travel books.
Columbus had, in fact, seen manatees, not sirens. But he was in good
company, as many travelers made the same mistake. For example, on
24 October 1533 Captain Hernando de Grijalva, whom Cortés had sent to
explore the southern sea, saw a monster on his way back from the island
of Monjes to New Spain; he drew a picture of two sirens with men’s faces,
strong arms, and hands with five fingers. Pedro Mexía described a more
attractive siren in his Silva de varia lección (1540), a story later repeated by
Antonio de Torquemada; when the siren became entangled in fishing nets,
50 Consuelo Varela
Mexía wrote, “she showed such sadness in her face” that her captors, full of
compassion, set her free.53
Columbus was surprised not to have encountered anyone with physical
deformities. On 4 November 1493 he wrote that he believed the Indians had
told him that “in other islands there are men with one eye and others with
dogs’ snouts that eat men, slitting their throats and drinking their blood
and cutting their manhood,” though “so far I have not found monsters in
these islands, as we had thought.”54 He clearly expected to find them sooner
or later. Diego Velázquez, after all, told Cortés to explore the regions where
men had dogs’ ears. Many of these hybrid beings would be sought years
later; Sir Walter Raleigh, for example, believed there were headless creatures
in the Amazon jungle.
Yet the “Indian illusion” that Columbus encouraged does not pertain
exclusively to the past. Even today, inhabitants of the Canary Islands say
that on especially clear days they can see all the way to Antillia, St Brendan’s
island, which Columbus made such efforts to discover.
Few American products arrived in Europe during the years in which Columbus
was viceroy, and it would be many years before the Indies began proving com-
mercially viable. What did take root in the European mentality was American
magical realism, which, as can be seen, was not born in the twentieth century.
For many years, intellectuals held debates and tried to explain the more or less
fantastic myths and legends: St Augustine and the other Fathers of the Church,
along with all the travelers, could not have been wrong. Some of the myths
vanished quickly: sirens, for example, were replaced by manatees (which
themselves had mythical origins in the lore of some American peoples). The
Amazons first lived on islands, then on the continent, but were the subject of
stories for centuries. Monstrous men were never found, but Patagonian giants
were. According to Columbus, New World inhabitants lived in harmony, with
no need for police or personal property; it was probably this myth that gave
rise to subsequent theories and discussions about the “noble savage.” The
Fountain of Youth was never located; yet tourist pamphlets tell us today that
on the Nicoya peninsula, in present-day Costa Rica, people live more than 100
years thanks to the waters of the rivers running through their town.
Notes
I would like to thank Professors Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and Bethany Aram for their
valuable suggestions after reviewing an earlier version of this chapter. It has been
translated with support from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitivity,
HAR2010-12073-E, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia, guerra, economía y con-
sumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economía mundial, 4 vols
(Lisbon: Presença, 1984), vol. I, 20ff.
2. The Portuguese explorer Juan Gonzales Zarco discovered the island of Porto Santo
in 1418, and in 1427 his compatriot Diego de Silves reached the Azores. That year
the eastern islands (San Miguel and Santa María) were discovered, followed by
the central islands of Terceira, Graciosa, San Jorge, Pico, and Faial. In 1452, João
de Teive discovered the western islands, Flores and Corvo. Though the Canary
Islands were known in antiquity, we know that after 1312 they were rediscovered
by a Genovese fleet led by Lancelotto Malocello, who reached Lanzarote.
3. Vitoria is not a sea port but had recognition as such.
4. Consuelo Varela, Colón y los florentinos (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988), chap. 1.
5. José Enrique López de Coca Castañer and Maria Teresa López Beltrán, “Mercaderes
genoveses en Málaga (1487–1516): Los hermanos Centurión e Ytalián,” Historia,
instituciones, documentos 7 (1980), 95–124.
6. Christopher Columbus signed his on 17 April 1492.
7. Esteban Mira Caballos, “Caciques guatiaos en los inicios de la colonización: El
caso del indio Diego Colon,” Iberomericana: América Latina, España, Portugal:
Ensayos sobre letras, historia y sociedad 16 (2004), 7–16.
8. Cristóbal Colón, Textos y documentos completos: Nuevas cartas, ed. Consuelo Varela
and Juan Gil Fernández (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1992) (hereafter Textos), 109.
9. Bartolomé de las Casas, Apologética historia sumaria (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1992).
10. Ibid., 219–26.
11. For this shipment see the letter from the monarchs to Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca,
12 April 1495, in Juan Pérez de Tudela et al., eds, Colección documental del descu-
brimiento (1470–1506), 3 vols (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia–Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1994) (hereafter Col. doc.), vol. II, 783.
12. See Cartas de particulares a Colón y relaciones coetáneas, ed. Juan Gil Fernández and
Consuelo Varela (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1984) (hereafter Cartas), 266–70, for
a letter from Day to Columbus.
13. Textos, 396–9.
14. Ibid., 363.
15. Ibid., 174.
16. Hernando Colón, Historia del Almirante (Madrid: Historia 16, 1991), 294.
17. Textos, 250.
18. Col. doc., vol. III, 1367ff.
19. Textos, 250.
20. 12 April 1495, in Col. doc., vol. II, 783.
21. Ibid., 789.
22. 20 June 1495, in Col. doc., vol. II, 789.
23. 14 October 1495, in Textos, 329–30.
24. Ibid., 407–8.
25. Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1994),
book 1, chap. 50.
26. Textos, 261.
27. Las Casas, Historia, book 2, chap. 29.
28. One year later, in 1501, the monarchs ordered an investigation of the where-
abouts in Spain of all Indians given as gifts by Columbus. Col. doc., vol. III, 1367ff.
29. The Indians are listed in ibid., vol. II, 1192–3.
30. Ibid., 1212–14.
31. Ibid., vol. III, 1590ff.
32. Ibid., 1579ff. In 1505 Ovando asked King Ferdinand to specify which Indians could
be enslaved, and once again the monarch sent him the same cédula: ibid., 1809.
52 Consuelo Varela
33. Ibid., vol. II, 1358 and 1362; and vol. III, 1364.
34. Ibid., vol. III, 1631.
35. Juan Gil Fernández, “Marinos y mercaderes en Indias (1499–1504),” Anuario de
estudios americanos 42 (1985), 297–499, esp. 433ff.
36. Ibid., 311.
37. Juan de Cárdenas, Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Mexico City:
Pedro Ocharte, 1591), was dedicated to the viceroy Luis de Velasco; the second of
its three books deals with chocolate. Juan de Barrios, Verdadera medicina, cirugía y
astrología en tres libros divida (Mexico City: Fernando Balli, 1607).
38. Antonio de León Pinelo, Question moral: Si el chocolate quebranta el ayuno eclesi-
astico: Tratase de otras bebidas i confecciones que usan en varias provincias (Madrid:
Viuda de Juan Gonzáles, 1636).
39. Jose Manuel Rodríguez Gordillo, Historia de la Real Fábrica de Tabacos de Sevilla
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2005), 17. According to the dictionary of the Spanish
Royal Academy, the first use of the word tabaco was by Bernal Díez del Castillo,
in his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, ed. Carmelo Carmelo
Sáenz de Santa María (Madrid: Biblioteca Castro, 2012), 257 and 263.
40. I am grateful to Juan Gil for this information; see Bartolomé Leonardo Argensola,
Rimas, ed. José Manuel Blecua, 2 vols (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1974), vol. I, 148.
41. Textos, 240.
42. Juan Gil Fernández, “Las cuentas de Cristóbal Colón,” Anuario de estudios ameri-
canos 41 (1984), 425–511.
43. Ibid., 464–75, includes the amounts from 1504 to 1514. The highest was in 1512,
when 72,247 pesos of gold arrived from the mines of San Juan.
44. Ibid.
45. Cartas, 101.
46. Visitación López del Riego, El Darién y sus perlas: Historia de Vasco Núñez de Balboa
(Madrid: Incipit Editores, 2006), 35.
47. On his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus believed he was near the Earthly
Paradise. The seven cities, said to be full of riches, particularly gold and precious
stones, were the goal of Spanish explorers for many years.
48. Textos, 189.
49. Ibid., 199.
50. Consuelo Varela, “De sirenas a manatíes,” in Kataryna Marciniak, ed., Birthday
Beasts Book: Where Human Roads Cross Animal Trails. Cultural Studies in Honour of
Jerzy Axer (Warsaw: Artes Liberales, 2011), 443–53.
51. Textos, 191.
52. Pliny, Natural History, books 10 and 9.
53. Antonio de Torquemada, Jardín de flores curiosas (Lérida, 1573), 223.
54. Textos, 131.
4
Accommodating America
Renaissance Missionaries between the Ancient
and the New World
Antonella Romano
When one thinks of American products and their impact in Europe, there
is a temptation to consider a unidirectional flow of mainly material goods
that contributed to transformations in Europeans’ lives. This chapter
pursues a different direction by examining cultural goods, whose circulation
was both material and dematerialized, because it took place through books,
manuscripts, visual representation and artifacts and developed into new
ways of thinking. Ideas about America and the ways in which Europeans
accommodated them to their own intellectual frameworks are the focus of
this chapter. Such ideas and representations provided bases for the reception
of material goods: they were in themselves a cultural product that impacted
European lives in many ways, including Europeans’ views of their world
and themselves. This chapter also suggests that European efforts to compre-
hend American peoples and products should be understood in relation to a
contemporary and parallel rise of European interest in Asia.
Along these lines, the present chapter makes a twofold contribution:
from a historiographical perspective, it pleads to engage topics belonging
to the field of the history of science and knowledge in the more general
framework of social, political and economic history. In terms of its contents,
it contributes to an increasing amount of work dedicated to the multiple
circuits through which new items from the natural world as well as from
other societies reached Europe during the early modern period and were
discussed, rejected and (mis)understood among a huge range of social
groups.1 This will be particularly true, in this chapter, of a set of knowledge
developed within the framework of the missionary enterprise that started
as early as the end of the fifteenth century through the confrontation
between Iberia and America. This chapter argues that the items or things2
that missionaries transmitted are both different from and complementary to
those circulated by other agents who cooperated with them in long-distance
exchanges.3 Although missionaries contributed quantitatively and economic-
ally to forging a renewed world in the Americas and Europe,4 their main
impact has been qualitative, and thus much more difficult to measure. The
53
54 Antonella Romano
cultural goods that missionaries transmitted were incorporated into the

traditional European framework to such an extent that historians including
Serge Gruzinski have recently called for a reading of this process in terms of
“Americanization.”5 In this sense, the intellectual input of America in the
making of Europe forms part of the volume’s general enquiry.
In pursuit of these goals, this chapter will first analyze major changes
that have taken place within the last decades in the history of science, and
that have contributed to a closer dialogue with history. It will then turn to the
role of missionary orders in the reshaping of the Iberian reading of the
(new) world and draw from this example some conclusions about the vari-
ous forms of intellectual resistance and rejection that America inspired for
Europe. The focus on missionary networks, particularly those of the Jesuits,
will illuminate two elements that contributed to Europe’s “accommodation”
of the New World: the cultural framework for the reception or rejection pro-
cess in Spain and, more generally, Europe, where the broad diffusion of some
of the texts discussed shaped knowledge and representations of America;
and second, the different circuits for the transmission of information, not
only the ones forged by merchants and the crown, but also those fueled by
the Catholic Church. The representations of America mostly circulated in
books, but also through images and material goods, which are considered in
other chapters of this volume.6
Renaissance, revolution and science: old paradigms

and new questions
The standard narrative about European modernity developed up to the

1990s has quite systematically taken for granted that modernity, seen
from a conceptual point of view, was rooted in what Alexandre Koyré
(1892–1964),7 among others, termed the “scientific revolution.” For eco-
nomic historians, in particular, this category was used in order to refer to
the world’s linear progress toward present-day globalization, and the scien-
tific revolution was understood as one of the steps on this path, being fol-
lowed at the end of the eighteenth century by another one, the industrial
revolution. For historians of science, such as Koyré, this conceptual change
presented novelty as a feature of scientific advance, and this innovation led
to a concept of historical time characterized by ruptures and discontinu-
ities according to a unique epistemological scheme.8 In the reading of
Renaissance sources, Koyré’s work, like that of his contemporaries, aimed
at emphasizing elements of rejection of the Aristotelian framework that
had been constantly re-elaborated during the Christian Middle Ages.9 One
of Koyré’s models for this big fresco among nineteenth-century historians
may have been Jules Michelet’s Renaissance et réforme (1853), which devel-
oped a chronology based on scientific developments, and referred to the
Renaissance as the moment of a scientific restoration, which had started
Accommodating America 55
in the twelfth century but had been blocked by religious obscurantism in

the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.10 Michelet dedicated an entire
subsection of his introduction (section 7) to the “proscription of nature”
during the Middle Ages, in order to stress the discontinuity between this
period and the Renaissance, opening the path for further elaborations such
as Koyré’s.11
These positivist understandings of European development and science
have relied not only on an implicit claim to European domination of the
world, but also upon another assumption: the location of modernity in
specific areas of Europe, excluding the Iberian Peninsula. If global circum-
navigations disclosed the world, Copernicus and Galileo were credited with
demonstrating the “infinite universe.” In other words, twentieth-century
historiography of the scientific revolution endorsed a historiographical
motif inherited from the Enlightenment, the “black legend” that associated
“Spanishness” with ignorance.12 Against this background, the Iberian world
has recently gained visibility in the history of science,13 providing evidence
of more complex processes related to long-distance contacts and their con-
sequences and the multiplicity of actors involved in such phenomena. Not
only was the rupture represented by the Renaissance moment deeply rooted
in large-scale interactions between Europeans and non-Europeans, but,
furthermore, the contribution of non-Europeans was crucial in the making
of Europe. Indeed, apart from the recent claim to “Iberianize science” that
developed in a broad post-colonial context in the United States,14 other
attempts to disconnect Renaissance science and knowledge from the narra-
tive of the scientific revolution since the 1970s have led to a reassessment
of the Iberian empires’ roles.
In other words, new approaches to the Renaissance and the early modern
world have contributed to a better understanding of the complex exchange
that took place between the Moderns and the Ancients through the inten-
sive process of rereading, reorganizing and making sense of the world.
Examining this exchange in the Americas, Sabine MacCormack’s masterly
On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru analyzed the con-
ceptual framework based on the Ancients that guided Spanish colonizers in
their reading and writing of Andean history.15 MacCormack’s work, and that
of others, has demonstrated that a reading of the Renaissance as a uniquely
self-referential European phenomenon, based on a confrontation between
the Ancients and the Moderns, cannot survive, analytically speaking, as the
principal or sole working paradigm. At the same time, scholars have begun
to consider the “new” world and the circulation of objects, plants, natural
specimens, histories and cosmologies previously unknown to both Ancients
and Moderns in Europe and, more broadly, in the world.16 To summarize,
scholarship taking into account the Americas in the last two decades has
reassessed the Iberian contribution to the Renaissance and the early modern
shaping of the world as a global phenomenon.
56 Antonella Romano
The history of science may contribute more to understanding the production

of knowledge that took place through the encounter between Europe and
America than to the history of the encounter itself.17 This is not to deny the
“darker side of the Renaissance” that emphasizes the massive destruction
of people, natural resources and cultural diversity,18 and, more generally, the
post-colonial criticism of this history. Instead, moving beyond the Saidian
paradigm of knowledge production as a colonial tool and output aims at ana-
lyzing knowledge of and from the Americas as a new cultural and intellectual
commodity arising from the Atlantic world.19 As indicated, the geographical
framework of the Spanish Empire requires attention not only because of the
huge diversity of American products circulating within it, but also because of
the mixed agency involved in such a process. This agency, located both in
America and in Europe, included the colonizers and the colonized as well as
different types of metis, whose variety would be depicted in the pinturas de
castas which developed mostly in the eighteenth century.20 Thus the presence
of American products in Europe resulted from processes that cannot be limited
to the binary opposition of Europeans and Americans considered as two homo-
geneous and antagonistic groups, where the “Europeans” would be limited to
the group of merchants interested in commercial benefits, or administrators
applying the rules made in the metropolis, and the “Americans” to subaltern
“Indians.” Not only was Africa part of this process, as the shift toward Atlantic
studies has shown, but many of the social groups active in knowledge pro-
duction were the result of complex cultural mixtures and influences.21
Missionary knowledge networks
Although for many years the historiography neglected the Spanish Empire’s
missionaries as relevant actors in such processes, they undertook a certain
type of scientific intermediation and transmission between an intellectual
training that was rooted mostly in Europe—where knowledge about America
among scholars was still limited—and a “duty of knowledge”22 within the
colonial framework that entailed an obligation to acquire information
about the societies to be evangelized. The demand for information about
these “new” countries and their inhabitants emerged from the metropolis,
following the logic of colonial expansion, as well as from Rome, where the
reappraisal of papal policy toward the growing pagan world constrained
the authorities to have their agents acquainted with the novelties of the
New World. These two political and possibly competing logics helped make
missionaries privileged agents in the creation of new knowledge. Their most
relevant productions—reports, books, images and objects—circulated within
the Atlantic region and beyond, thanks to missionary networks, which con-
tributed to the reframing of early modern Europe.
During the “spiritual conquest”23 that followed the “discovery” of
America, missionaries provided histories, chronicles and other writings that
complemented other texts produced within the Iberian monarchies or by

independent travelers thanks to the development of writing and the print-
ing press.24 Travelogues and exotica circulated and became new cultural
goods displayed in new cultural institutions such as Wundercamera (cab-
inets of curiosities) or royal libraries. The case of the Escorial is paradigmatic
of this new use of American culture in the establishment and legitimization
of the new lieux de savoir. At a conceptual level too, America contributed to
the definition of Europe’s cultural and epistemological foundations.
As is well known, the Valladolid controversy regarding the nature of
indigenous Americans introduced into European law, theology and political
thought a series of new concepts that powerfully redesigned the intel-
lectual panorama of the second half of the sixteenth century from Spain
to the United Provinces and beyond confessional borders, giving rise to
new juridical traditions and philosophical conceptions about humankind
and its history.25 Less spectacular but equally crucial, the example of Vasco
de Quiroga (1470–1565) provides a set of ideas that fed the Spanish legal
and conceptual framework, as well as a case in which circulation processes
cannot be assessed in quantitative or material terms. As a member of the
second Audiencia of New Spain (1530), as well as the first archbishop of
Michoacán (1538)—the land of the ancient Tarascan state, the second state
of the Mesoamerican period, after the Aztec period—Quiroga had previously
worked in North Africa, in the city of Oran, and Granada, where he faced
the burning issue of the Reconquest and, through it, the problems of evan-
gelization that he would have to deal with in New Spain. Since his time in
Oran, Quiroga had constantly interacted with the crown’s lawyers and polit-
icians, as well as with the representatives of the regular and secular clergies:
although he wrote no substantial book, his manuscripts circulated in these
different circles, and helped shape a specific knowledge about America that
permeated classical legal theory in Spain. In Salamanca, where he had been
trained, his Información en derecho or his Carta al Consejo de Indias (1531)
had an audience, which encouraged him to develop his utopian concep-
tions of the Americas.26 It is not a coincidence that Quiroga supported and
favored the entrance of the Jesuits onto the American stage by the 1560s as
well as a different style of evangelization that would more systematically
favor “accommodation.” As a matter of fact, the Jesuits supported important
changes on both sides of the Atlantic.
One century after 1492 and following the incorporation of the Portuguese
possessions in 1580, the Hispanic Monarchy dominated the world, offer-
ing the first historical example of a global empire.27 At the same time, the
conclusion of the Council of Trent, in 1563, provided the Catholic Church
with a new missionary agenda, which in these years was mostly carried out
by the young Society of Jesus.28 The Society, committed to the East Indies
since its foundation in 1540 in the path of Francis Xavier’s apostolate to
India, Japan and China, also launched an American orientation, following
58 Antonella Romano
the Spanish general Francisco de Borgia and structured by the general

Claudio Acquaviva, in the framework of the Spanish patronato (ecclesiastical
patronage).29
Wherever their apostolic activity took the Jesuits, they produced know-
ledge about those places, their histories, either moral or natural, their
languages and their beliefs or “superstitions.” This activity was part of the
Jesuits’ mission as a corporate body. China, Asia and the Americas were
thus the places from where they circulated information, and their writings
can now be considered as one stratum of early modern European culture,
Catholic or not.30 As many of the Jesuits who wrote about the Americas were
Iberians, their contribution consequently demands a reassessment of the
“black legend” in the history of science and knowledge.31 More importantly,
and owing to the institutional context of their activity, embedded in both an
Atlantic geopolitical framework corresponding to the Spanish Empire and a
global sense of evangelization defined by the Roman pontificate, the Jesuits
introduced in Europe, and more precisely in the Spanish Empire, a different
idea of America, not only as a New World, but also as a part of the world tout
court, where both the Oriental and Occidental Indies constituted frontiers
of the same unique horizon.32 Missionaries contributed to the integration
of America and its inhabitants, products and history into a global setting
sustained by the Spanish Empire. Such a global incorporation followed
routes different from the classical one of the Spanish monarchy: the Roman
missionary network could easily take advantage of various regional circuits,
established mainly by the Spanish and the Portuguese, which converged
in the capital of Christendom, as the work of José de Acosta and Antonio
Possevino will illustrate.33
America between civilization and barbarism: José de Acosta
The production of the Jesuit theologian, philosopher and natural historian

José de Acosta illustrates the intellectual process of encompassing America
in a global world and system of knowledge. Normally approached as an
iconic case of the “invention of America,” as the first anthropologist avant
la lettre of the Amerindians,34 the Jesuit procurator of the New World, whose
great experience in the Andean area and more limited contact with the
Mexican world shaped his authority, may also be examined in the global
context of the 1580s. For the Catholic powers—and here it may be relevant
to examine the Spanish Empire in a phase of absorption of the Portuguese
one as well as the Papacy—this period was characterized by an attraction
to Asia. In terms of the post-Tridentine agenda at precisely this time, the
revival of the old evangelization program on a global scale contributed to a
twofold strategy of expansion, toward both the East and the West Indies.35
The Spanish crown and the Papacy were committed on both fronts, and
Japan and China, which became closer to Spain after the settlement in
the Philippines, offered new horizons for Christianization in competition

with the Americas.36 Although he never went to Asia and never crossed the
Pacific Ocean from Callao or Acapulco to Manila and beyond, Acosta had
different ways of being acquainted with the Oriental Indies. Among the differ-
ent channels of data available to Acosta, his direct personal contact with
another Jesuit involved in Manila’s affairs, Alonso Sanchez, provided him
with the most direct and fresh information.37 Considering the importance
of such experience, an accurate reading of Acosta’s Historia natural y moral
de las Indias Occidentales sheds light on the importance of his indirect con-
frontation with the Oriental Indies.
In both his practice and his writings, Acosta aims at encapsulating America
in the Christian world, in order to make it one of the four parts of the world,
following the expression coined a few decades later by the first secretary of
the newly created Roman Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith,
Francesco Ingoli.38 This is the major goal of his Historia natural y moral de
las Indias Occidentales, a book that underwent numerous translations, new
editions and citations throughout Europe, Catholic as well as Protestant,
during the early modern period. The first edition, published in Seville in
1590, sanctioned Acosta’s authority as a theologian—in his long journey
to America, among many other tasks, he endorsed the organization of the
Third Council of Lima (1582–83) that marked the decisive implementation
of Tridentine reform in the Spanish crown’s Peruvian territories,39 and also
as a philosopher and expert committed to field experience of the Indians.
Acosta’s journey back to Europe, starting in Peru, led him to Mexico, where
he spent one year, moving from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic one; he then
embarked at Vera Cruz in order to sail to Seville. The two major places where
he spent time were Mexico and Puebla, during a period that facilitated his
acquaintance with this other American reality as well as with an Asian one, as
already mentioned. Upon returning to Europe, Acosta’s functions within the
Society of Jesus and the Spanish church under the king’s patronage explain his
direct access to the king, the pope and the general of the Society. His books,
consequently, emerged from an interstitial position among three institutional
actors with highly intricate influence and control over Acosta and each other.
Hence Acosta’s work can be situated at the core of a triangular political and
theological configuration whose three peaks correspond to Lima, Madrid and
Rome, between the tiara and the crown, secular and regular clergy, America
and Europe. Acosta is not unique in this regard: on the contrary, he em-
bodies a position typical of his role as a missionary, distinct from that of other
agents of circulation, such as merchants or administrators. Nevertheless, the
uniqueness of his case is due to the extraordinary resonance of his writing,
which was immediately translated into many vernacular languages up until
the Enlightenment, and far beyond the Catholic world.
This peculiar position grants Acosta, as he suggests in the prologue to
the reader that opens the Historia natural, the opportunity to do something
60 Antonella Romano
different from adding another description of the New World to those already
available. He aims at developing a philosophical analysis, using the tools
provided by natural philosophy within the conceptual framework of his own
intellectual training and understanding of the world. In so doing, he traces
an epistemological border between his book and those of his predecessors
that annihilates any possible textual genealogy among them, and opens a
new area that moves from history as a narrative genre to history as a philo-
sophical genre, as expressed by the formula “natural and moral history.”
From Acosta’s perspective, America provided Europe with new knowledge,
but also gave European scholars the opportunity to coin new concepts. He
acknowledges that, on the one hand, he is part of a tradition of historical
writings about the New World:
Many have written sundry bookes and discourses of the New World at the
West Indies, wherein they describe new and strange things discovered in
those partes, with the actes and adventures of the Spaniards, which have
conquered and peopled those Countries.40
Nevertheless, Acosta wants to do more than to gather information for a

European audience: his intellectual scope is to move from story to history,
giving the status of philosophy not only to his own work—as a strategy to
strengthen his own position in the European scholarly world—but also to
the history of the Indians themselves:
But hitherto I have not seene any other Author which treates of the causes
and reasons of these novelties and wonders of nature, or that hath made
any search thereof. Neither have I read any booke which maketh mention
of the histories of the antient Indians and naturall inhabitants of the New
World. In truth, these two things are difficult. The first being the works
of Nature, contrarie to the antient and received Philosophy, as to shew
that the region which they call the burning Zone is very moist, and in
many places very temperate, and that it raines there, whenas the Sunne is
neerest, with such like things. For such as have written of the West Indies
have not made profession of so deepe Philosophic; yea, the greatest part
of those Writers have had no knowledge thereof. The second thing it
treats of is of the proper historic of the Indians, the which required much
conference and travaile among the Indians themselves: the which most
of them that have treated of the Indies could not doe, either not vnder-
standing the language or not curious in the search of their Antiquities; so
as they have beene contented to handle those things which have beene
most common and superficial! …41
Acosta’s explicit goal is to incorporate America into a new conceptual frame-

work that would integrate Americans, their customs, their languages and
their histories. This is where Acosta’s work is path-breaking compared with

that of his predecessors and contemporaries: he is less interested in adding
a new account of history than in building philosophically on the basis of
their examples. Acosta places American Indians on the same stage as other
peoples who, historically and conceptually, were already considered part
of humankind. His work is less about the otherness of the strangers than
about their familiarity. In order to incorporate America into a European
analytical framework, Acosta borrows two arguments from the traditional
intellectual map of knowledge. The first is that American nature is part of
a natural world that expanded from the parts of the world already known
by the Ancients (with implicit references to Aristotle and Pliny in the above
quotation) to that recently conquered by the Spaniards. The intellectual
consequence of this expansion is that natural history and natural phil-
osophy must accommodate the American world: there is no epistemological
discontinuity between the Ancient and the New, and herein lies the quin-
tessence of the modern. Having ascertained the absence of discontinuity,
Acosta consequently concludes that American peoples and nature belong to
God’s realm. Furthermore, he considers American people not only as part
of humankind, but also part of a universal history, as demonstrated by their
ancient culture, their Antiquity. This is where Acosta claims to be innova-
tive, implicitly referring to the conquerors’ destruction of the vestiges of the
Amerindian past.
So, as although this new World be not new, but old, in respect of the much
which hath beene written thereof; yet this historic may, in some sort, be
held for new, for it is partly historicall and partly philosophicall ... In the
first two bookes mention is made of that which concernes the heavens,
temperature and habitation of the world, which books I had first written
in Latine, and now I have translated them into Spanish, vsing more the
liberty of an author than the strict bonds of a translator, to apply my self
the better to those for whom it is written in the vulgar tong[ue]. In the two
following books is treated of that which concernes the Elements and nat-
urall mixtures, as Mettalls, Plants, Beasts, and what else is remarkable at
the Indies. The rest of the bookes relate what I could certainely discover,
and what I thought worthie memory of the Indians them selves, their
Ceremonies, Customs, Governments, Wars, and Adventures. In the same
Historie shall be spoken (as I could learne and comprehend) of the figures
of the ancient Indians, seeing they had no writing nor characters as we
have, which is no small industry to have preserved their Antiquities with-
out the vse of letters. To conclude, the scope of this worke is, that having
knowledge of the workes of nature, which the wise Author of all nature
made, we may praise and glorifie the high God, who is wonderfull in all
things and all places. And having knowledge of the Indians customes, we
may helpe them more easily to follow and persevere in the high vocation
62 Antonella Romano
of the Gospel; to the knowledge whereof the Lord would draw this blinde
nation in these latter daies.42
In this passage Acosta presents the structure of his work in greater detail.
Emphasizing the idea of a new genre of writing, he offers a “natural and
moral history”: intellectually speaking, he accommodates America to
Europe, inscribing American humankind into a time that encompasses the
period before the conquest, which we could identify as a Christian temporal
framework.43 Because Acosta intends to give another status to his book, as a
philosophical contribution rather than historical testimony, America can be
incorporated into a Biblical chronology, meaning also a Christian epistem-
ology of history.
Acosta’s attempt to include the Americans within the Catholic world is
mirrored in the structure of the work itself, which consists of seven books
(corresponding to the number of days needed to create the world): Acosta
is engendering a world that is new because of the New World and—herein
lies his global scope—based on the philosophical nature of the genre he is
designing and inventing. The first two books, in the classical Aristotelian
tradition of natural philosophy, are about the globe, the “sphere,” which
corresponds to the setting where he locates America (books 3 and 4) and
then the Indians (books 5 to 7).
Acosta’s intellectual project, seen from an Aristotelian perspective, is thus at
the crossroads between natural philosophy and natural history, and this
also constrains him to engage Pliny and Euclid.44 As soon as Acosta moves
from one category to the other, he also has to switch from “natural history”
to “moral history,” clearly rooted in his direct experience of these peoples
unknown to the Ancients. At this point, the last part of the volume corres-
ponds to a revised version of his previous book, De natura Novi Orbis libri
duo, et de promulgatione Evangelii, apud barbaros, sive De procuranda Indiorum
salute, first published in 1588 and based on a text that Acosta had started to
write in Peru in 1576.45
The addition of this previous text, albeit rewritten, introduces a shift
in analysis from learned and erudite tradition to direct field experience,
from the textual legacy of the Ancients and the Fathers of the Church, in
whose wake the missionary Acosta is expected to build the bridge from
savagery to salvation, to another new legacy that he aims to legitimate.
His direct experience from the missionary field, which can be understood
as a “contact zone,” facilitates a shift from abstract science to direct know-
ledge.46 In incorporating the De procuranda into the Historia natural, Acosta
also makes a literary coup that transforms the status of the information
delivered by and about the Indians into a new category of “indigenous
knowledge.” From being basic knowledge provided for theological use, it
becomes a learned and scholarly analysis of the New World’s inhabitants.
The mutation authorizes the encapsulation of the New World in the world
tout court. No previous text about America had succeeded in performing this
transformation.
Acosta’s return to Europe enabled him to draw upon resources beyond
his previous books and his direct experience in the New World. He would
learn about recent encounters with Asia through conversations with Alonso
Sánchez, and because Philip II asked him to write a memorial about the
military conquest of China. At this time, new materials about far Asia,
circulated mainly by the Jesuits, were making Spaniards more familiar
with that part of the globe. Acosta’s counterpart for the Oriental Indies,
Alessandro Valignano, had sent memorials about China and Japan through
the “Japanese embassy,” and, more significantly, the official historiographer
of the Jesuit society, Gian Pietro Maffei, had published his Historiarum
Indicarum libri XVI (1590), whose sixth volume is entirely devoted to
China.47
It is in the De procuranda’s prologue that Acosta seeks to shape a general
definition of the “barbarian” as indicated by the title of the treatise itself.48
In the Historia natural, Acosta returns to the same subject, offering a general clas-
sification of the “barbarians” based on the Ancient authors and emphasizing
the broad range of barbarians in order to justify the need for diverse evan-
gelical techniques.49 In this context, Acosta situates American Indians among
other uncivilized peoples, concluding that “they are not all of the same
kind.”50 He thus identifies three classes of barbarians, the first being char-
acterized by reason and manners, political stability, fortified cities, a juridical
system and “what is the most important, a renowned use of letters.”51 Within
this category of barbarians, Acosta lists the Chinese, whose writing system he
compares to that of the Syrians, and in whose cultural system he praises the
abundance of books, the importance of schools and education, the magis-
trates and the beauty of the monuments.52 Immediately below China, Acosta
ranks Japan, and then other peoples from the East Indies.53 In Acosta’s view,
these peoples were comparable to the Ancient Romans and Greeks, being,
like them, prepared to receive the gospel. Here the text may echo his position
against the military invasion of China,54 and, more generally, other mission-
aries’ descriptions of Asia.
In the second category of barbarians, Acosta places peoples who had govern-
ments although they lacked a written culture: they were provided with
some light of reason, as were the Mexicans or the Peruvians,55 whose lack
of letters (“literarum inopiam”) was compensated by their ingeniousness in
finding other techniques for accounting and memorizing.56 In terms of their
results, Acosta considers these techniques equivalent to arithmetical calcu-
lations.57 Nevertheless, Acosta understood that the evangelization of these
peoples, who were considered far from God’s word, required a combination
of authority and accommodation.
The third type of barbarians in Acosta’s scheme consists of savage
peoples who live as animals and look like them: the anthropophagic “Caribs,”
64 Antonella Romano
naked and shameless, correspond to the inhabitants of Brazil, Florida and

Paraguay. The recently discovered people of the Moluccan islands are the
only savages whom Acosta locates in the Oriental Indies.58 Barbarians in this
category could be treated using force.
Acosta forged the Historia natural according to this hierarchy, as its constant
reference to Asia indicates. Although there is no explicit mention of this
vision of otherness encompassed within the typology of barbarians, Acosta
sticks to the analytical framework he had been developing in his previous
work. Arguably, this tripartite classification of barbarians constitutes the cen-
tral node of the intellectual process by which Acosta connects a theological
reading of the world, a philosophical integration of America on the map of
humankind and a missionary pragmatism about evangelization. At least this
would be my reading of book 6, chapter 4, “That no nation of the Indies hath
beene found to have had the vse of letters”:
... that no Nation of the Indies discovered in our time, hath had the vse
of letters and writings, but of the other two sortes, images and figures.
The which I observe, not onely of the Indies of Peru and New Spaine, but
also of Iappon and China. And although this may seeme false to some,
seeing it is testified by the discourses that have beene written, that there
are so great Libraries and Vniversities in China and Iappon, and that
mention is made of their Chapas, letters, and expeditions, yet that which
I say is true ...59
Acosta aims at emphasizing the commonalities between China and Japan

on one side, and between Mexico and Peru on the other, not only to
strengthen the contrast with Europe, but also to (re)launch the evangeliza-
tion of America. The question of writing is crucial because it is the key to
assessing reason and intelligibility as necessary tools for conversion. But in
the following chapters, Acosta develops knowledge about China more pre-
cisely, providing a detailed description of its system of writing, and of the
literati (the mandarins) and their power in Chinese society (chapters 5 and
6). If Acosta clearly acknowledges an indigenous history previous to that of
the conquest, as well as a shared memory of it and a sense of its importance
to Amerinidians, he nevertheless outlines the gap between Chinese and
Mexican cultures when describing their techniques for conserving history.
A Roman missionary agenda? The New World, the Indies,

the globe
A Jesuit scholar based in Rome, Antonio Possevino, incorporated the work

of Acosta and others in his Bibliotheca selecta, an influential Catholic mirror
of all available knowledge at the time60 as a synthesis of the worldview into
which he incorporated American products and peoples. The analysis of a
work produced outside the Spanish framework highlights the permeability

of political borders as well as the flexibility of information networks when
cultural goods are placed at the core of the analysis. Conceived as the cata-
logue of the ideal library in support of the ratio studiorum, the program for
students of the newly founded Jesuit colleges around the world, Possevino’s
selection follows a clear path from one discipline to another, from the most
important one, at the top of the hierarchy of the time, theology, which is
defined as the science par excellence, down to rhetoric, which is understood
as the basic tool for managing knowledge.61 First published in 1593,62 this
book offers direct access to the intellectual system of references of one of the
most up-to-date learned men of his times: a theologian and an intellectual,
but also a diplomat who traveled to the East as a papal nuncio, and was the
first European to draw a map of Moscovia.63
In terms of its structure, the Bibliotheca selecta works as a book, library and
atlas.64 Indeed, it is first, and materially speaking, a book: in folio format,
published in Venice. However, it mostly corresponds to the catalogue of the
ideal library, divided into academic disciplines, one per chapter, where the
authors are listed following a twofold binomial hierarchical order: ancients/
moderns and clerics/lay. While organizing the selected books, the catalogue,
far from being a simple list, provides extensive commentary about the selec-
tion itself, its criteria and its contents. Displaying knowledge from a Catholic
point of view, it also aims to strengthen the central position of theology
in the hierarchy of the disciplines that structures the world’s intellectual
architecture. It provides an up-to-date library encompassing knowledge of
the entire world, full of commitment to the New World, but still leading to
God, through a twofold path.
At a first level, Possevino situates the origins of the history of mankind
in sacred history, thus explaining the central role of clerics in ensuring
Catholics’ salvation and then in struggling against heresies (the word “militia”
in the text, referring to the entire clergy, is important here) and, finally,
to launch the evangelistic conquest. In so doing, he writes a linear history
moving from God to his heirs, and to his opponents and enemies. He thus
implicitly develops a geography of humankind, from its European center
to its orthodox as well as its heretical borders (in the confessional meaning
of the term), which then becomes the non-European world, the world of
the gentiles. This is where otherness starts, both Eastern and Western, at
the borders of monotheism: the Indies share a polytheist understanding of
divinity, and their peoples are thus part of the same category of idolaters.
Based on this implicit understanding and division of humankind, Possevino
also deploys an intellectual path for the production of knowledge resting
upon the superiority of theology (as the discipline of those who live at the
center of Europe), a universal guide to terrestrial knowledge. He charts an
atlas of the world rooted in a theological vision of space, where distance and
discontinuities are measured in terms of irreligiousness. The others, from
66 Antonella Romano
either the Oriental or the Occidental Indies, as he writes, encompass the

Americans, who are definitely integrated in the European understanding of
humankind at this moment.65
As a result, the Bibliotheca selecta encapsulates an intellectual map of
humankind compatible with Tradition, although corresponding to a world
much broader than the one known by the Ancient sources, either biblical
or pagan. This scheme, adapted to the globe, directly derives from the mis-
sionary knowledge Possevino proficiently borrows. The sources he uses for
the pages dedicated to America are those produced within the Society as part
of an internal information strategy. They are also based on direct contacts
with missionaries back from the field whom Possevino could meet during
the years he resided in Rome and Padua after spending time in the Russian
world. Among other gatherings, the fifth general congregation was con-
vened in Rome in 1593, with representatives from all of the newly created
Jesuit provinces (including America and Asia). More generally, Possevino
could benefit from the cosmopolitan intellectual and political milieux of the
Holy City and also of Venice.66
Apart from the official opportunities provided by the Jesuit structure, Rome
was constantly full of travelers, foreigners and missionaries. Under these
circumstances, the Bibliotheca selecta may be understood as the mirror of a
renewed market for information and ideas, which the author immediately
integrated into the book, thanks to his ability to gather the information
provided by different missionary networks connecting Europe to the Eastern
as well as to the Western Indies, implemented by the traditional mendicant
orders as well as the new missionary orders created during the Counter-
Reformation. For example, Possevino mentioned a long piece by Michele
Ruggieri, back from China at the end of the 1580s, the Liber siensium de
moribus initium.67 Along the same lines, Possevino drew upon José de Acosta’s
observations and intellectual elaborations about America. Relying directly
on Acosta’s writings, Possevino simply copied them.68 The presence of Diego
Valdés, Juan Gonzales de Mendoza and many other members of the commu-
nity of Spanish Rome further enriched his project.69
The third source for Possevino’s knowledge corresponds to the books he
quotes directly. It is important to distinguish between available printed
sources and the books that he considers his readership should handle, which
is a selection of the former. Possevino’s project is selective, not exhaustive. For
the new geographical sources about America he cites Jesuits as well as non-
Jesuits, and classifies their titles in relation to the language of publication,
emphasizing the difference between Latin and vernacular sources.70 His list is
far from being extensive, and includes around 20 authors: the first is Levinus
Apollonius, from Flanders, with his two books, De navigatione Gallorum in
terram Floridam deque clade anno 1565 ab Hispanis accepta (Antwerp, 1568) and
De Peruviae, regionis inter Novi Orbis provincias celeberrimae, inventione, et rebus
in eadem gestis, libri V (Antwerp, 1556).71 Then Possevino mentions another
author with Flemish origins, Maximilianus Transsylvanus, a secretary of

Charles V, known (like Antonio Pigafeta, whom Possevino does not cite) for
his account of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe.72 The bishop of
Sylves in Portugal, Jéronimo Osorio, provides a third reference for the geog-
raphy of the New World, as his history of Emmanuel, the King of Portugal,
refers to Portuguese expansion in Africa and Asia.73 The Jesuit J. P. Maffei
dedicates the same kind of book to the history of India, and this is also
mentioned by Possevino.74 In adding the Epistolis Societatis Iesu, Possevino
tends to add to the great amount of erudition that Maffei invested in the
elaboration of this work, which is another kind of source more directly based
on observation and experience, as are the letters written by the missionaries.
Interestingly, nevertheless, these three citations bring together the Indies,
both East and West, and, at the same time, place geographical and historical
knowledge on the same level.
With Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, Possevino refers to one of the historians of
the discoveries, an Italian acquainted with the Spanish milieu of northern
Italy, who moved to Salamanca in the first years of the sixteenth century
and became a member of the Council of Indies in 1524.75 The other authors
considered are mostly Spaniards and Portuguese, with accounts by early
explorers including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca76 and Amerigo Vespucci;
the French Protestant André Thévet, as well as another Frenchman, Jacques
Cartier; the vice-governor of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, who left a
Relación del virrey de Nueva España, Antonio de Mendoza, a Luis de Velasco al
término de su gobierno; the famous chronicler of the conquest, Francisco
Lopes de Gomara,77 but not Bernal Díaz del Castillo; Francisco Vasquez,
another figure in the conquest of America; and many others.78 The men-
tion of less eminent mapmakers who took part in Abraham Ortelius’s
cartographic enterprise79 invites consideration of an interesting aspect of
Possevino’s synthesis: the absence from his list of the Protestant mapmaker
and inventor of the modern “atlas,” Ortelius himself, does not mean that
the Jesuit did not know of him. On the contrary, Possevino seems to quote
the text accompanying Ortelius’s map of America quite extensively and
directly.80
In short, the sources of Possevino’s geographical knowledge about America
are those of his world: mostly the big narratives of Portuguese and Spanish
colonization, with important additions from the major travelogues of the
time, not totally independently of their confessional origins, as the absence
of a direct reference to Ortelius suggests.81 Possevino’s sources, nevertheless,
are in constant dialogue with others that offer him the opportunity to locate
America in a worldview parallel to the one elaborated by the Jesuit order,
centered in Rome, one of the Renaissance world-cities where the accumu-
lation and re-elaboration of knowledge took place.82 The contributions of
Iberian authors figure prominently in the material that Possevino used to
include America in European representations of the world.
68 Antonella Romano
As pointed out in 1940 by François de Dainville, the first historian of the

Jesuit contribution to the development of Renaissance geography, the Roman
center of the Society depended upon the information gathered by those
who were in the field, the Lord’s vineyard. The Jesuits quickly elaborated
institutional norms governing its type, quantity and regularity. Thanks to
the systematic production of litterae annuae, whole sets of letters were sent to
Rome and circulated within the order.83 These materials, conceived as a
response to questionnaires about the members, the internal structures, the
state of evangelization and its implementation, and then about the places and
populations concerned, were forwarded to Rome through mercantile channels,
and were each sent in two copies, along different routes. This information,
re-elaborated in Rome for a broader external audience, provided the foun-
dations for the Society’s daily governance. It was also used to compose “feuilles
volantes,” which received broad diffusion and contributed to integrating the
(new) world into ordinary European horizons. In this respect, Possevino, the
learned man, diplomat and theologian, constitutes one of the major vectors
in the circulation of knowledge about America in the Catholic world, through
the presence of his Bibliotheca in each library of the Jesuit colleges and beyond.
In conclusion, when trying to compare the books by Acosta and Possevino,

it is possible to acknowledge that they both offer evidence for the relevance
of America in the Renaissance reshaping of the European conceptual frame-
work. They also provide details about the specific part played by the Spanish
Empire in this process, and by Catholic agency, against a longstanding
historiographical tradition discussed in the first part of this chapter. In par-
ticular, they invite us to look at the global stage upon which America was
invented during the entire sixteenth century, and the comparative frame-
work that such a global stage authorized.
In other words, this chapter suggests that a possible understanding of the
“European accommodation” of America should consider Asia. Situating the
Americas with reference to Asia, moreover, may be seen as missionary net-
works’ principal contribution to the process. The tri-polar dimension of the
analysis developed here, considering Europe, America and Asia, constitutes
the spatial framework within which American products as well as American
people entered European understandings of the world. Furthermore, at the
end of the sixteenth century, when America is compared with Asia, although
part of its nature and its products are praised as a potential resource to be
developed in colonial and asymmetric relations, its people are classified in
the low ranks of civilization.
Notes
This chapter would not exist without the warm support and the patient work of the
editors of this volume: I express my sincere gratitude to Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, who
has been a great colleague during the past eight years at the Department of History
and Civilization of the European University Institute, where we shared our comple-
mentary understandings of the circulation of goods and knowledge within the frame-
work of research seminars and other workshops, exchanging with our students and
colleagues; and to Bethany Aram, for her enthusiasm and generosity in commenting
on this chapter and polishing my English.
1. Among the extensive literature related to cultural exchange, and the vari-
ous paradigms through which the question has been approached, see Stuart
B. Schwartz, ed., Implicit understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the
Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge
University Press, 1994) and Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., America in European
Consciousness, 1493–1750 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995),
both produced in the context of the Columbus quincentenary.
2. These words refer to a consolidated tradition of research focused on the cultural
history of material goods. Starting with Daniel Roche, Histoire des choses banales
(Paris: Fayard, 1999), it developed, according to different national contexts, with
Renata Ago, Il gusto della cose (Rome: Donzelli, 2006), and is illustrated by the
collection of papers recently edited by Paula Findlen, Early Modern Things: Objects
and their Histories, 1500–1800 (London and New York: Routledge, 2013).
3. Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch
Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
4. An excellent example of this kind of involvement is provided by the works
dedicated to Brazil. In this Portuguese area, the development of a system of land
exploitation under the control of the Jesuit aldeias has been studied by Carlos
Zeron, Lignes de foi (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009).
5. Louise Bénat-Tachot, Serge Gruzinski and Boris Jeanne, Les processus d’américan-
isation, vol. I: Ouvertures théoriques; vol. II: Dynamiques spatiales et culturelles (Paris:
Fabrica Mundi, 2013).
6. On images, see Alessandra Russo, El realismo circular: Tierras, espacios y paisajes
de la cartografía novohispana (Mexico City: UNAM/IIE, 2005) and L’image intra-
duisible: Une histoire métisse des arts en Nouvelle-Espagne (1500–1600) (Paris: Les
Presses du Réel, 2013).
7. Among Koyré’s works, see Études galiléennes (Paris: Hermann, 1939); From the
Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1955); La révolution astronomique: Copernic, Kepler, Borelli (Paris: Hermann, 1961);
The Astronomical Revolution (London: Methuen, 1973); Introduction à la lecture de
Platon (Paris: Gallimard, 1994); Metaphysics & Measurement: Essays in the Scientific
Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); Newtonian Studies
(London: Chapman & Hall, 1965). On his trajectory and scientific production, see
Jean-François Stoffel, Bibliographie d’Alexandre Koyré (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2000).
8. This would be further conceptualized by Thomas S. Kuhn and the concept of
“paradigm” in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press,
1996 [1962]). The success of this concept among European historians in the 1970s
is noteworthy.
9. In this, he was opposing Pierre Duhem’s continuist perspective grounded in a
Catholic understanding of the history of astronomy. See Pierre Duhem, Le système
du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, 10 vols (Paris:
Hermann, 1913–59). This line of analysis leads to more general questions regard-
ing the philosophy of history and the concept of time, periodization and the
70 Antonella Romano
Eurocentric dimension of such a view. For the clearly Eurocentric dimension of

Koyré’s perspective, see From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, preface, vi.
For a totally different perspective, considering the Eurasian space, see Jack Goody,
Renaissances: The One or the Many? (Cambridge University Press, 2010); on alterna-
tive epistemologies of history, see Aziz Al-Azmeh, The Times of History: Universal
Topics in Islamic Historiography (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007).
10. One of his first comments, at the outset of the introduction, is: “Le XVIe siècle,
dans sa grande et légitime extension, va de Colomb à Copernic, de Copernic à
Galilée, de la découverte de la terre à celle du ciel.” Jules Michelet, Renaissance et
réforme (Paris: Bouquin, 1982 [1853]), 35.
11. D. R. Kelley, “France,” in Roy Porter and M. Teich, eds, The Renaissance in
National Context (Cambridge University Press, 1992), 123 ff.; Jerry Brotton, The
Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford University Press,
2002), 20ff.
12. Vicent Navarro Brotons and William Eamon, eds, Beyond the Black Legend: Spain
and the Scientific Revolution (Valencia: Instituto de Historia de la Ciencia y Docu-
mentación López Piñero, 2007).
13. Among the most important are Miguel de Asúa and Roger French, A New World
of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (London:
Ashgate, 2005); Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations
of the History of Science in the Iberian World (Stanford University Press, 2006);
Daniela Bleichmar, Paula De Vos et al., eds, Science in the Spanish and Portuguese
Empires, 1500–1800 (Stanford University Press, 2009); María Portuondo, Secret
Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World (University of Chicago Press,
2009). It is worth noting that these titles come from a history of science rooted
in the United States renewal of the field. A rich, much older tradition of works,
written in Spanish and emerging within the Spanish and Latin American academic
traditions, is still less visible. Here the issue of language has to be taken into
consideration: the fact that most of the production is available only in Spanish
or Portuguese, and that it has mostly been developed in the framework of the
“discoveries” discourse, self-celebratory as well as highly nationalist, even after
the democratic transition, for Spain. The Mexican contribution by Elias Trabulse,
who founded the field (see his Historia de la ciencia en México, 5 vols (Mexico City:
CONACYT, 1983–89)), is almost never quoted. Among the Spanish scholars who
have reshaped the field from an Atlantic perspective, José Pardo-Tomas and Juan
Pimentel are currently the most productive.
14. Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, “Iberian Science in the Renaissance: Ignored How Much
Longer?,” Perspectives on Science 12:1 (2004), 86–124. Against the nationalist bias
that framed the development of the field in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and
the United Kingdom, the current focus on empires or the approach to scientific
developments in terms of connected or transnational history allows scholars to
adopt new perspectives, as in the case of this volume.
15. Sabine MacCormack, On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru
(Princeton University Press, 2007).
16. Here a special mention has to be made of Serge Gruzinski, La colonisation de
l’imaginaire: Sociétés indigènes et occidentalisation dans le Mexique espagnol, XVIe–XVIIIe
siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1988); Serge Gruzinski, Les quatre parties du monde: Histoire
d’une mondialisation (Paris: Martinière, 2004). The major interest of Gruzinski’s
works lies in the fact that he studies the production and circulation of “mestizo”
objects—hybrid objects produced when cultures met or clashed as colonizers
interbred with colonized, Amerindians joined the Catholic Church or colonial

government, and local artists produced images of Jesus or Perseus. Gruzinski
sees sixteenth-century Iberian globalization as propelling the movement of these
objects between Europe, Asia, Africa and the New World, a worldwide circulation
partly dominated by European merchants, predators and art collectors. With this
approach, which moves from literacy to objects and material goods, Gruzinski
shapes a totally different spatial framework from which to rethink and reassess
the Renaissance.
17. The words used to qualify this historical situation are part of political lines of
analysis that opposed each other with particular strength during the commemor-
ation of the fifth centenary of the discovery. Among the large range of publications
that developed in this framework, the culturalist approach prioritized the notion
of encounter: see Stephen Greenblatt, ed., New World Encounters (University of
California Press, 1993); Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World:
From Renaissance to Romantics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
18. Walter Mignolo, “The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Colonization and the
Discontinuity of the Classical Tradition,” Renaissance Quarterly 45:4 (1992),
808–28, followed by The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and
Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). Some interesting
analysis is provided in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the
New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic
World (Stanford University Press, 2001). The foundational reference for these
works remains Michel de Certeau and his challenging L’écriture de l’histoire (Paris:
Gallimard, 1975), first published into English by Columbia University Press
in 1988, as well as the seminal work by Edmundo O’Gorman, La invención de
América: Investigación acerca de la estructura histórica del Nuevo Mundo y del sentido
de su devenir (Mexico City: FCE, 1958) and José Rabasa, Inventing America: Spanish
Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1993).
19. Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient (London: Routledge,
1978) has deeply informed criticism of the Eurocentric understanding of other-
ness in the post-colonial world. Along with the subaltern schools based in India
or in Latin America, Said has encouraged a shift toward non-occidental cultures.
For historians of science, these historiographies have informed new research
agendas paying attention to local agency and interactions. As a result, the presence of
the Americas in Europe and the trajectories of its artifacts from one side of the
Atlantic to the other have been at the center of new research. See for instance
Daniela Bleichmar, “Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic
Encounters with New World Materia Medica,” in Londa Schiebinger and Claudia
Swan, eds, Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern
World (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 83–99; Daniela
Bleichmar, “The Trajectories of Natural Knowledge in the Spanish Empire (ca.
1550–1650),” in Navarro Brotons and Eamon, eds, Beyond the Black Legend, 127–34.
20. On the role of the Creoles in this exchange, see O’Gorman, La invención de América
and, subsequently, David Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole
Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
21. The importance of natives as recipients and producers of knowledge has been
worked out by anthropologists as well as by historians of science: among many,
Miguel Leon-Portilla, Literaturas indigenas de México (Mexico City: FEC, 1992);
José Pardo-Tomás, “Conversion Medicine: Communication and Circulation of
72 Antonella Romano
Knowledge in the Franciscan Convent and College of Tlatelolco, 1527–1577,”

Quaderni storici 48:142 (2013), 1–21.
22. The expression “duty of knowledge” is borrowed and adapted from Luce Giard’s
“devoir d’intelligence,” defined as the major characteristic of the new-born Society
of Jesus, in the middle of the sixteenth century in the process of (or as the expression
of) the powerful movement of Catholic renovation, commonly defined as the
Catholic Reformation. The current expression “missionary knowledge,” developed
in French as “savoirs missionnaires” and in Spanish as “saberes missionarios,” is
traceable in different titles: Charlotte de Castelnau-l’Estoile, Marie-Lucie Copete,
Aliocha Maldavsky and Inés G. Županov, eds, Missions d’évangélisation et circulation
des savoirs: XVIe–XVIIIe siècle (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2011); Guillermo Wilde,
ed., Saberes de la conversión: Jesuitas, indígenas, e imperios coloniales en la frontera de la
cristiandad (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sb, 2012).
23. Robert Ricard, La “conquête spirituelle” du Mexique: Essai sur les méthodes mission-
naires des ordres mendiants en Nouvelle Espagne de 1523 à 1572 (Paris: Institut
d’Ethnologie, 1933).
24. Within the framework of the Spanish Empire, the work of Fernando Bouza has
deeply challenged the Eisensteinian view of the printing revolution, by insisting
on the twofold regime of circulation of information and knowledge, manuscripts
and prints. See Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain
(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Fernando Bouza,
Hétérographies: Formes de l’écrit au siècle d’or espagnol (Paris: Collège de France,
2010).
25. Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indians and the Origins of
Comparative Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
26. I refer here to Vasco de Quiroga, La utopia en América, ed. Serrano Gassent
(Madrid: Dastin Historia, 2003). See also Serrano Gassent, Vasco de Quiroga: Utopía
y derecho en la conquista de América (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica de
España, 2001); Francisco Miranda, Vasco de Quiroga: Varón universal (Mexico City:
Jus, 2006).
27. Gruzinski, Les quatre parties du monde.
28. Among recent contributions, see Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, Javier Burrieza
and Doris Moreno, eds, Jesuitas e imperios de Ultramar: Siglos XVI–XX (Madrid:
Silex Ediciones, 2012); on the new and global diplomatic agenda of the Papacy,
see Maria Antonietta Visceglia, “The International Policy of the Papacy: Critical
Approaches to the Concept of Universalism and Italianità, Peace and War,” in
Maria Antonietta Visceglia, ed., Papato e politica internazionale nella prima età mod-
erna (Rome: Viella, 2013), 17–62. See also Massimo Carlo Giannini, ed., Papacy,
Religious Orders, and International Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(Rome: Viella, 2013).
29. On the progress of the Jesuits in America, from Brazil to Mexico, see Manuel M.
Marzal, La utopia possible: Indios y Jesuitas en la América Colonial, 2 vols (Lima:
Pontifica Universidad Católica del Peru, 1992–94).
30. For the circulation of Jesuit texts in non-Catholic Europe, after the publication
of the originals, one can follow the translations published in Dutch or English in
order to trace their circulation beyond the borders of the Catholic world.
31. Regarding the Jesuits’ effective contribution to the field of natural history, a system-
atic enquiry has been achieved by Marzal, La utopia possibile. This contribution
offers a very interesting assessment of the effective printed work issued by the
Society of Jesus. Another interesting analysis is provided by Adrien Paschoud,
Le monde amérindien au miroir des lettres édifiantes et curieuses (Oxford: Voltaire

Foundation, Oxford University, 2000).
32. There is another dimension of the Indies that one may find in the Jesuit literature:
references to the European interior using the expression “our Indies” in relation to
the hinterland, perceived as equally savage, wild and distant, as the Indies are, can
be located in the correspondence of the Society. The impact of this comparison
explains the interest that anthropologists have developed in missionaries’ writings
in their own attempts to identify the origins of anthropology.
33. Antonella Romano, ed., Rome et la science moderne entre Renaissance et Lumières
(Rome: École Française de Rome, 2008).
34. León Lopetegui, “Padre José de Acosta (1540–1600): Datos cronológicos,” Archivum
Romanum Societatis Iesu 9 (1940), 121–31; León Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta y
las misiones (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, 1942); Fermín Del Pino Díaz, “Contribución del
Acosta a la constitución de la etnología: Su evolucionismo,” Revista de Indias 38 (1978),
507–46; León Lopetegui, “El misionero español José de Acosta y la evangelización de
las Indias orientales,” Missionalia hispanica 42 (1985), 122, 275–98; León Lopetegui,
“Humanismo renacentista y orígenes de la etnología: A propósito del Acosta, para-
digma del humanismo antropológico jesuita,” in Berta Ares et al., eds, Humanismo
y visión del otro en la España moderna: Cuatro estudios (Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas, 1992), 379–429; León Lopetegui, “La Renaissance et
le Nouveau Monde: José d’Acosta, jésuite anthropologue (1540–1600),” L’homme
32:122–4 (1992), 309–28; Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, 149–200.
35. “Totus mundus nostra fit habitatio,” 1554, in Gerónimo Nadal, Epistolae Nadal,
vol. V (Rome: IHSI, 1923), 54.
36. There is an extended literature on Portugal and Japan as well as China; see mainly
Rui Manuel Loureiro, Fidalgos, missionarios, e mandarins: Portugal e a China no
seculo XVI (Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2000). On the general issue of Asia as a new
Spanish frontier of interest in this period, see Manuel Ollé, La empresa de China:
De la Armada invencible al Galeón de Manila (Barcelona: Acantilado, 2002).
37. Ollé, La empresa de China, 106ff.
38. Francesco Ingoli, Relazione delle quattro parti del mondo, ed. Fabio Tosi with an
essay by Josef Metzler (Vatican City: Urbaniana University Press, 1999).
39. He is principally responsible for writing acts and decrees and compiling materials
on pastoral activities (catechisms, sermons, etc.), which were partially published
in Lima in 1584 and 1585 in Latin, Quechua and Aymara.
40. José de Acosta, The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies:
Intreating of the remarkeable things of Heaven, of the Elements, Mettalls, Plants and
Beasts which are proper to that Country; Together with the Manners, Ceremonies,
Lawes, Governements, and Warres of the Indians, trans. Edward Grimeston (London:
Edward Blount & William Aspley, 1604), prologue.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., xxiv–xxvi.
43. One could object that, regarding the historical dimension of Acosta’s intellectual
enterprise, he is not as innovative as he claims: in the same period, the Franciscan
missionary Bernardino de Sahagún gathered the pre-Colombian history of the
natives from the Mexican area, using codices and other indigenous “voices.”
But it is also true that Sahagún’s attempt is not philosophical. See Bernardino
de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, trans. and with
an introduction by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson as Florentine
74 Antonella Romano
Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, 12 vols in 13 books (Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press, 1950–82). On Sahagún, see John Leddy Phelan,
The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1970); M. León-Portilla, Bernardino de Sahagún: The First
Anthropologist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002). See also Pardo-
Tomás, “Conversion Medicine.”
44. This set of references is stabilized through the writing of the normative text for
Jesuit studies, the Ratio Studiorum (the definitive version of the rules issued in
1599), where Aristotle’s De caelo and Euclidian geometry are defined as the main
references for the classes of natural philosophy and mathematics. Pliny is quoted
only by Possevino, in his Bibliotheca selecta.
45. On the publication of the De procuranda, see José de Acosta, De procuranda
Indorum salute, ed. Luciano Pereña, Vidal Abril, C. Baciero, A. Garcia, D. Ramos,
J. Barrientos and F. Maseda (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas, 1984), vol. I, 19–28.
46. Regarding the “contact zone,” see M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and
Transculturation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). Although Pratt’s ana-
lysis refers to the eighteenth-century British Empire, her use of “transculturation,”
a concept she borrows from ethnography, is relevant here to demonstrate how
metropolitan cultures were shaped by the periphery.
47. On this text and its context, see Antonella Romano, “La prima storia della Cina:
Juan Gonzales de Mendoza fra l’impero spagnolo e Roma,” Quaderni storici 48:142
(2013), 89–116.
48. Here is the beginning of the book’s dedication to the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia,
daughter of Philip II, xix: “LADY, The King’s Majesty, our Lord, having given me
permission to offer to your Highness this small work, entitled The Natural and
Moral History of the Indies, it should not be attributed to me as want of consider-
ation, to desire to occupy the time which is so fully spent by your Highness in
matters of importance, by diverting it to subjects which, in treating of phil-
osophy, are somewhat obscure, and, as describing barbarous races, may seem out
of place. But as a knowledge of, and speculations concerning the works of nature,
especially if they are remarkable and rare, causes a feeling of pleasure and delight
in refined understandings, and as an acquaintance with strange customs and
deeds also pleases from its novelty, I hold that this work may serve as an honest
and useful entertainment to your Highness. It will give occasion to consider the
works which have been designed by the Most High in the machinery of this
world, especially in those parts which we call the Indies, which, being our terri-
tory, give us more to consider, and being the abode of new vassals, whom the
Most High God has given to the crown of Spain, a knowledge of it is not al-
together strange to us.” Acosta, De procuranda, xix.
49. Ibid., “Proemium”: “De procuranda salutate indorum recte atque apte dicere, per-
difficile est. Primum, quod barbarorum gentes innumerabiles sint, ut coelo, locis,
habitu, ita ingenio, moribus, institutis latissime dissidentes. Quibus omnibus
Evangelio conciliandis, instituendis regendisque aliquid commune praecipere,
atque in tanto hominum remrumque discrimine accommodate ac certo quid
expediat definire, magane cuiusdam facultatis est, quam profecto nos minime
consecuti sumus.”
50. Ibid., 58–60: “Etsi enim vocantur barbari omnes, quos nostrae aetate hispani
et lusitani suis classibus longissimo Oceano traiecto invenerunt (non solum ab
evangelica luce alieni, sed ab humanis quoque institutis abhorrentes), tamen non
omnes eiusdem ordinis sunt.” See also ibid., 60–1: “Barbaros autem probati auctores
eos esse definiunt, qui a recta ratione et hominum communi consuetudine
abhorrent. Unde barbarica stoliditas, barbarica feritas, barbaricae quoque opes et
opera apud nobiliores scriptores celebrari solent, quae et ab usu homnim caeter-
orum valde recedunt et sapientaie certaeque rationis vix quicquam habent.”
51. Ibid., 60: “Prima classis eorum est, qui à recta ratione, et consuetudine generis
humani non ita multum recedunt. Hi sunt potissimum, quibus et Republica
constans, et Leges publicae, et civitates munitae, et magistratus insignis, et certa,
atque opulenta commercia sunt, et quod omnium caput est, literarum celebris
usus. Nusquam enim literarum et librorum monumenta extant quine ea gentes
humaniores, et maximè politica sunt.”
52. Ibid., 62: “In hoc genere primi videntur esses Sinenses, quorum ego characteres
vidi Syriacis persimiles, qui librorum copia, Academiarum splendore, Legum et
Magistratuum auctoritate, publicorum operum magnificentia plurimum florere
dicuntur.”
53. Ibid.: “Secundum hos sunt Iapponenses, tum pleraque Indiae Orientalis provin-
ciae, ad quas Asiatica, atque Europée instituta olim pervenisse ego non dubito.”
54. Ibid.: “Hae gentes, quamvis barbarae re vera sint, et a recta et naturali lege pleris-
que in rebus diserepent, tamen ad salutem Evangelis non aliter fere vocandae sunt,
quam olim ab Apostolicias Graeci et Romani, caeterisque Asiae, atque Europae,
populi. Nam et potentia praestant, et nonnulla humana sapientia, atque a sua
ipsi ratione potissimum, DEO intus agente, vincendi sunt, et Evangelio subigendi,
quos si pergas, nihil aliud agas, quam ut a lege christiana alienissimos reddas.”
55. Ibid.: “Denique ratione quadam humana reguntur.”
56. Ibid.: “In hoc genere erant Mexicani, et Peruenses nostri, quorum imperia et
Republic, et leges, et instituta merito admirari quivis possit. Et quod incredibile
pene videatur, literarum inopiam, tanta ingenii dexteritate supplevere, ut et his-
torias et vitas et leges et quod est amplius, temporum cursus, et rationes numer-
orum ita teneant quibusdam à se excogitatis signis, et monimentis, quos ipse
Quipos vocant, ut nostri cum literum suis plerumque eorum peritiae cedant.”
57. Ibid., 64: “Nescio equidem an certiores Arithmeticos, cum quidvis est numeran-
dum, aut partiendum, literae nostrae faciant, quam hos signa illa sua. Memoriam
vero omnino est admirabile quam fidelem etiam rerum minutissimarum per
Quipos suos diutissime conservent.”
58. Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, Conqvista de las islas Malucas al Rey Felipe III
(Madrid: Alonso Martin, 1609).
59. Acosta, The Naturall and Morall Historie, book 6, chap. 4, 396–8.
60. Albano Biondi, “La Bibliotheca selecta di Antonio Possevino, un progetto di ege-
monia culturale,” in Gian Paolo Brizzi, ed., La Ratio Studiorum: Modelli culturali e
pratiche dei Gesuiti in Italia tra Cinque e Seicento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981), 43–75.
61. See Antonella Romano, “L’expérience de la mission et la carte européenne des
savoirs sur le monde à la Renaissance: Antonio Possevino et José de Acosta,”
in Massimo Donattini, Giuseppe Marcocci and Stefania Pastore, eds, L’Europa
divisa e i nuovi mondi: Per Adriano Prosperi (Pisa: Scuola Normale, 2011), vol. II,
159–69.
62. This chapter refers to the second edition (Venice, 1603).
63. Among the different activities he undertook as a pontifical diplomat, Possevino
was nominated the special legate of Pope Gregory XIII to the court of Sweden,
then nuncio and Vicar Apostolic of Scandinavia (1577–80). Subsequently, he
was sent as papal legate (1581) to negotiate the re-union of the Russian Church
76 Antonella Romano
with Rome and spent the following seven years in central Europe, mainly
Transylvania. As a theologian of the Society of Jesus, he first acted as the secre-
tary of E. Mercurian, the General of the Order at the beginning of the 1570s.
Then he took part in the important general congregations led by Mercurian’s
successor, Claudio Acquaviva, the general who re-founded the Society during his
long period in office (1580–1615). J. P Donnelly, “Antonio Possevino’s Plan for
World Evangelization,” Catholic Historical Review 74:2, 1988, 179–88, reprinted in
J. S. Cummins, ed., Christianity and Missions, 1450–1800, An Expanding World:
The European Impact on World History, 1450–1800, vol. 28 (Aldershot: Ashgate/
Variorum, 1997); Liisi Karttunen, Antonio Possevino: Un diplomate pontifical au
XVIe siècle (Lausanne: Pache-Varidel & Bron, 1908).
64. On the shaping of the Bibliotheca, see Luigi Balsamo, “How to Doctor a Bibliography:
Antonio Possevino’s Practice,” in Gigliola Fragnito, ed., Church, Censorship and
Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 50–78.
65. Book 9, chap. 15, 446–7.
66. The general congregation took place between 3 November 1593 and 18 January
1594, in the 13th year of Claudio Acquaviva’s generalate, and was faced with
internal dissidence and opposition, particularly among the Spanish Jesuits. It
had 64 participants: see John W. Padberg, SJ, Martin D. O’Keefe, SJ, and John
L. McCarthy, SJ, eds, For Matters of Greater Moment: The First Thirty Jesuit General
Congregations. A Brief History and a Translation of the Decrees (St Louis: Institute of
Jesuit Sources, 1994), 10–13. For the list of those present, see ibid., 717.
67. See Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta, book 9, chap. 26, and chap. 27, 455.
68. The piece corresponds to the proemium of De natura Novi Orbis libri duo, et de
promulgatione Evangelii, apud barbaros, sive de procuranda Indiorum salute, 3rd edn
(Cologne, 1596), 104–8 (first edn, Salamanca, 1588).
69. On Spanish Rome, see Thomas J. Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 1500–1700 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2001); Boris Jeanne, “Mexico-Madrid-Rome: Sur les pas de
Diego Valadés. Une étude des milieux romains tournés vers le Nouveau Monde à
l’époque de la Contre-Réforme (1568–1594),” Archives de sciences sociales des reli-
gions 160:4 (2012), 309–58; A. Romano, “La prima storia della Cina: Juan Gonzales
de Mendoza fra l’impero spagnolo e Roma,” Quaderni storici 48:1 (2013), 89–116.
70. Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta., vol. II, 298.
71. Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby, Netherlandish Books: Books Published in the
Low Countries and Dutch Books Printed Abroad before 1601 (Aldershot: Brill, 2010),
ad nominem.
72. Maximilianus Transsylvanus, Maximiliani Transyluani Caesaris a secretis epistola,
de admirabili & novissima hispanoru in orientem navigatione, que auriae, & nulli prius
accessae regiones sunt, cum ipsis etia moluccis insulis (Cologne, 1523).
73. Jéronimo Osorio, De rebus Emmanvelis Lusitaniae regis invictissimi virtvte et auspi-
cio … (Padua: Antonium Gondisaluum, 1571).
74. J. P. Maffei, Historiarum Indicarum libri XVI: Selectarum item ex India epistolarum
libri IV (Florence: apud Philippum Iunctam, 1588).
75. Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, De orbe novo, trans. with notes and introduction by
Francis Augustus MacNutt, 2 vols (New York: Putnam, 1912).
76. Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca: His
Account, his Life and the Expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez, 3 vols (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1999).
77. Francisco Lopes de Gomara, Historia general de las Indias y todo lo acaescido en ellas
dende que se ganaron hasta agora y La conquista de Mexico, y de la nueua España
(1553); La segunda parte de la Historia general de las Indias que contiene La conquista
de Mexico, y de la nueua España (1553).
78. “Franciscus Xeresius; Gonsalus Fernandus Oviedus; Hieronymus Benzonius
Italice; Jacobis Carterius, sive Cartier Gallice; Ioannes de Barros; Ioannes Stadensis
Germanice; Ioannes Verazzanus; Iosephus Acosta Societatis Iesu duobus libris
de Natura Novi Orbis et sex aliis de procuranda Indorum salute; Fr. Marcus
Nicaensis; Nunnius Gusmannus; Petrus Alvaradus; Petrus Ciecus Legionensis.”
Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta.
79. “Diegus Godoyus, Fernandus Alarconius, Fernandus Cortesius, Franciscus Ullaus.”
Ibid.
80. “This whole part of the world, except for the Northern tract, of which the coasts
have not yet been explored, has in recent times been circumnavigated. From
North to South, it stretches in the form of two peninsulas or demi-isles, con-
nected by a narrow isthmus. The Northern peninsula of the two contains New
Spain, the province of Mexico, the country of Florida and New-foundland. The
Southern one (which the Spaniards call Terra firma) contains Peru and Brazil.
Those who are studious in geography may read descriptions of all those regions
in Levinus Apollonius, Peter Martyr of Milan, and in Maximilianus Transylvanus,
who wrote in Latin about them. For our purpose, there also seems to be more in
the Epistles by the Jesuits. And Postel announces Comments on Atlantic matters.
The authors that follow here have all specifically written about America, but all
in their native language, for the most part Spanish, but more than half of them
have been translated into Italian. Cieça, Pedro de Léon, Oviedus, Gonsalvus
Fernandus or Ovetanus, Ferdinand Cortez, Pedro [de] Alvaredo, Diegus Godoyus,
Alveres Nunnez, Guzman, Nunnius, also called Pintianus, Ulloa, Francisco,
Vasquez, Francisco, Mendez, Antonio, Frater Marco di Nizza, Alarcon, Fernando,
Xeresius, Franciscus, Verrazzano, Giovanni,Vespucci, Amerigo, Lopez de Gomara,
Franciscus, Benzo, Hieronymus, Cartier, Jacques, & Thevet, André, who wrote in
French, Staden, Hans, in German.” Quoted from “AMERICAE SIVE | NOVI ORBIS,
NO:|VA DESCRIPTIO,” in Marcel Van den Broecke and Deborah van den Broecke-
Günzburger, eds, “Cartographica Neerlandica Background for Ortelius Map No.
9,” http://www.orteliusmaps.com/book/ort_text9.html.
81. On Ortelius see Jean-Marc Besse, Les grandeurs de la terre: Aspects du savoir géo-
graphique à la Renaissance (Paris: ENS Éditions, 2003), part 3; Jean-Marc Besse,
“Quelle géographie pour le prince chrétien? Premières remarques sur Antonio
Possevino,” Laboratoire italien 8 (2008), 123–43.
82. Romano, ed., Rome et la science moderne.
83. François de Dainville, Les jésuites et l’éducation de la société française, vol. II:
La géographie des humanistes (Paris: Beauchesne, 1940), 133ff.
5
America and the Hermeneutics
of Nature in Renaissance Europe
María M. Portuondo
The discovery of the American continent by Europeans entailed not only

the diffusion, consumption and cultural assimilation of new products, but
also a concurrent intellectual process that can be thought of in somewhat
analogous terms. Novelties from the New World had to be accommodated
into prevailing natural philosophical frameworks; they had to be “con-
sumed” by a European intelligentsia who interpreted the world mostly
through the hermeneutical lenses afforded by Aristotelian and in some cases
Neoplatonic natural philosophies. Although the American reality—its lands,
products and people—could be described and interpreted through descrip-
tive sciences such as cosmography and natural history, even these activities
required fundamental changes to the methodological and representational
tools associated with these disciplines.
The process of assimilating conceptually the reality of the New World has
been studied largely by tracking the “acceptance” (consumption?) of the notion
that “the ancients were wrong” about who populated and what constituted
the zones of the world that were formerly thought of as uninhabitable.1 Yet,
hiding behind the phrase “the ancients were wrong” lay questions of vastly
different magnitudes. At one end of the spectrum were questions that autoptic
statements from sailors of any stripe quickly dispelled, including those con-
cerning the inhabitability of the Torrid Zone. At the other end of the spectrum
loomed questions about the validity of the ancient philosophical canons to
explain the world. And yet, the alternatives proposed, such as adopting the
notion that the ancients had been overturned only on some minor points
of fact, or assuming a skeptical stance toward natural philosophical systems of
antiquity, or even turning to the new experimental science, were only some of
the possible responses to the philosophical questions posed by the discovery.
The focus of this chapter is a natural philosopher who took on this chal-
lenge, the Biblical exegete and polymath Benito Arias Montano (1527–98).
For thinkers like him, natural philosophy and its associated metaphysics were
a fundamental part of a hermeneutics of nature—or theory of interpretation
of nature—that demanded congruence between reality and the underlying
78
America and the Hermeneutics of Nature 79
metaphysical precepts—understood as first principles—upon which the

interpretive apparatus of natural philosophy was built. After the discovery of
the New World, this hermeneutics of nature also had to account for a global
torrent of novelties and propose a reasonable interpretation of American
nature. In Arias Montano’s case, there was no escaping setting forth such an
interpretation. He spent many years of his life in the borderland between the
Old and New World that was sixteenth-century Seville. His closest friends
were physicians, naturalists and cosmographers who were fascinated—we
may even say enthralled—by the constant commerce of products and news
from distant shores. Yet Arias Montano’s intellectual preparation also made
him at home in the rarefied world of antiquities and multilingual Biblical
studies of Rome, Leuven and Antwerp. Against this backdrop, this chapter
seeks to offer an explanation for the bewildering presence, or rather absence,
of American novelties in his published works: a response, I will argue, that
was informed by his distinctive hermeneutics of nature and how it addressed
questions posed by the encounter between the Old and the New Worlds.
Seville
As the other chapters in this book suggest, the circulation and reception of
products from the American Atlantic world were as much a cultural activity
as a commercial one, but they were likewise an intellectual activity. The locus
of these activities, at least for most of the sixteenth century, was the city of
Seville. Each ship arriving from beyond the Atlantic brought accounts of new
artifacts, tales of strange people and descriptions of distant shores. In many
cases, these were handed or told to the officials and cosmographers in the
House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación) in Seville.2 There began the task of
rationalizing and organizing the material so that it would serve the empire.3
Travelers might also make their way to the home of the physician Nicolás
Monardes (c. 1493–1588), bringing animals or plants from the Americas.
At his home and hortus medicus he studied the medicinal properties of the
plants and tried to accommodate them into taxonomies inherited from
Theophrastus and Dioscoridies. It was in Seville that Francisco Hernández
finally settled after seven years immersed in the natural and cultural world
of New Spain and where he tried to conclude his natural history of Mexico,
a task that included creating a novel botanical taxonomy based on Nahuatl
nomenclature.
To understand the role of Seville in the history of early modern science
it helps to think of the city as a site where American reality, in all convey-
able dimensions, came into contact with the apparatus of European natural
philosophy.4 Yet, the products of the Americas arrived in Seville largely
decontextualized; they were signs without referents. Perhaps the bearer
of an American product knew something about its use and shared this
information with Monardes when handing it to him. This may very well
80 María M. Portuondo
have been the origin of a phrase that Monardes uses so often in his work:
“they say that” (“dizen que”).5 The phrase manifests a desire to identify,
describe and begin to sketch a natural history of the product. If the bearer’s
description did not satisfy, then it was necessary to elaborate new methods
of observation that would re-create first-hand experience. Throughout the
early modern era we find these efforts in the historiography associated with
the phrase “to make an experience” (“hacer experiencia”).6 Monardes, in
fact, described this process of re-creating the experience others might have
had with the product with the phrase “seen by experience” (“visto de expe-
riencia”). By re-enacting the experience Monardes could begin to fashion a
referential narrative situating the product or artifact within the intellectual
framework of European science.
In most cases these processes of experiential re-creation coexisted comfort-
ably with the paradigms of Aristotelian natural philosophy and rarely
required venturing into the field of philosophical speculation. Aristotle suf-
ficed for a Sevillian empiricism that was largely operative but not theoret-
ical. Although it is true that Sevillian naturalists used empirical observation
as an epistemological tool that facilitated compiling useful information
about nature, for the most part this activity did not entail formulating new
natural philosophical postulates. Neither do we find in Seville a concerted
effort to create a new philosophy based on empiricism.7
Early modern science
The narrative of the history of science maintains that during the sixteenth
century empiricism became a fundamental tool in the effort to renovate nat-
ural philosophy, as natural philosophers faced a series of re-conceptualizations
of medieval positions that placed certain philosophical truisms in doubt.
This approach was adopted by Francis Bacon in his program of scientific reno-
vation based on inductive reasoning, and later in the seventeenth century
as the cornerstone of the new experimental science. In this climate of reno-
vation Ptolemaic and Aristotelian cosmological premises were the first to
crumble. Consider as an illustrative example the Aristotelian theory of the
incorruptibility of the heavens. Here, the point of inflection was the nova
of 1572 observed and studied by Tycho Brahe and by several Spanish astron-
omers, among them the Valencian Jerónimo Muñoz. In this case, an observed
phenomenon resisted fitting neatly with the Aristotelian tenet of celestial
incorruptibility when one of the astronomical observations associated with
it—the absence of measurable parallax—was taken into consideration. Toward
the end of the century, Galileo saw another Aristotelian truism as inconceiv-
able, namely, that the movement of an object in free fall was a consequence
of the object seeking its natural place. We could also add Ptolemaic geog-
raphy to this list of crumbling paradigms and the challenge that the discovery
of the New World implied to theories such as the inhabitability of the Torrid
Zone, the existence of the Antipodes and the ethnographic consequences

of geographical and astrological determinants.
As the cracks in the Aristotelian corpus became increasingly obvious,
several alternative systems were proposed in what could be considered an
increasingly busy arena of natural philosophical alternatives. We can con-
sider, just to name a few, the pure empiricism of Italian naturalism as advo-
cated by Bernardino Telesio, the Renaissance Neoplatonism of Francesco
Patrizi and the emergence of experimental philosophy within the Baconian
program. We also cannot set aside a more conservative alternative that
sought to keep Aristotelianism alive (albeit with some “clarifications”). Here
the field was led by the great Iberian Aristotelian Jesuits, Benito Pereira and
Francisco Suárez.8 Yet all these thinkers, disparate as their proposals might
seem, had one thing in common; their greatest preoccupation was to find an
unquestionable source on which to anchor their philosophies. Benito Arias
Montano should also be considered among this eclectic group of thinkers;
he would, however, choose a markedly different approach and anchor his
philosophy not in empiricism or another ancient philosophy but in the
Bible.
Although Arias Montano’s theological and exegetical works earned him
a place of prominence among European humanists, for over 20 years he
repeatedly expressed a desire to devote himself to developing a novel phil-
osophy of nature. When he finally did so, his work reflected the empiricist
approach characteristic of his Sevillian milieu, but also the disquiet of the
broader community of European philosophers who questioned the ability
of ancient natural philosophies to interpret nature. For Arias Montano,
these two approaches—the purely empiricist and the philosophical—if left
unreconciled, placed an untenable tension on how humanity understood its
place in what during the sixteenth century appeared to be a changing world.
Benito Arias Montano
A cosmopolitan man, with friends and ties that crossed borders and creeds,
Benito Arias Montano recognized that the philosophical foundation of his
world was undergoing a crisis and was in need of new alternatives.9 He was
a priest of the order of the Knights of St James and spent most of his life in
the service of the Spanish monarch Philip II as chaplain and in charge of
assembling books for the library at the Escorial. As Philip’s agent, he oversaw
the final stages of the publication of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible, or Biblia Regia,
the monumental achievement of Northern humanism published by the
Plantin Press beginning in 1569.10 Arias Montano became involved in the
project when the intellectual effort was already well on its way, but he con-
tributed a scholarly appendix or apparatus to the final volume that elucidated
on Biblical questions ranging from weights and measures and geography to
antiquities and the philology of Biblical Hebrew. He negotiated with censors
in Rome and Spain for the approval of the Bible and managed to assuage
their concerns about the “appropriateness” of his apparatus.
It is fair to say that the years spent in Antwerp were truly transformative
for Arias Montano and not for the confessional reason often cited by older
historiography.11 Indeed, during the on-and-off five-year sojourn in Antwerp
he witnessed first-hand the toll that confessional struggles took on the
scholarly community, but he held fast to a Catholic orthodoxy tinged with
Erasmian spiritualism. In Antwerp and under the protection of the ruling
Spanish governor, he was able to put his remarkable talent for languages
to good use in the Polyglot project—skills honed at the trilingual college of
the University of Alcalá—and to work closely with a group of scholars who
shared his passion for ancient languages, Biblical studies and natural history.
At Plantin’s press, Arias Montano worked with Christian Hebraists led by
Plantin’s son-in-law Franciscus Raphelengius (1539–97), as well as leading
specialists in Middle Eastern languages. In Plantin’s library, Arias Montano
would have had access to the massive revision by Johannes Isaac Levita—
professor of Hebrew at Leuven and Cologne—of Sanctes Pagnini’s Thesaurus
linguae sanctae, which, as recent studies have shown, brought together
Iberian and Ashkenazy traditions of rabbinical studies.12 In Plantin’s editing
room, he crossed paths with the cartographer Ortelius and the naturalists
Dodoens and Clusius.
It was in Antwerp that Arias Montano refined his exegetical approach
so that it melded erudition, philology and observation. His exegesis was
informed by the notion that Biblical Hebrew—when properly deciphered—
revealed the “arcane and occult properties, nature and forces” of things.13
Therefore, a literal interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures required command
of the Hebrew language. Thankfully, he explained, this language had been
transmitted through the ages with great care, so that its grammar and lexi-
con could be acquired easily by someone knowledgeable in Latin. He put
his approach on display in several of the treatises of the apparatus of the
Polyglot, in particular the Arcano sermone and the Phaleg.
The nature of the New World and Arias Montano
After several decades serving the king as envoy, librarian and ad hoc adviser
on a wide range of topics, Arias Montano settled in Seville in 1592. In
a house in town and in his nearby hilltop retreat, he assembled a large
library and natural history collection that became a gathering spot of some
of Seville’s leading doctors, cosmographers and naturalists, and prominent
members of the city’s commercial elite. It was during these last six years
of his life that he finally found the time and quiet to compose his self-
described Opus magnum where he explained his philosophy of man and of
nature. The project was conceived as a work in three parts, referred to as
the Anima, Corpus and Vestis. The first part appeared in 1593 as the Liber
generationis et regenerationis Adam, sive De historia generis humani, or Anima;

the Corpus or Naturae historia followed in 1601 (both were from the Plantin-
Moretus Press). The Vestis remains a mystery; either it was never written
or the manuscript has been lost. References suggest that the book would
have been on the “adornment of the human condition,” and would have
surely discussed language and perhaps religion.14 The proposal that Arias
Montano set forth in these books (discussed later in this chapter in some
detail) consisted of developing a new metaphysics and a corresponding
natural philosophy that was in complete concert with the Sacred Scriptures.
It entailed a rejection of the natural philosophies of antiquity—at least in
principle—and instead turned to a strict adherence to the Biblical text writ-
ten in the arcane language (arcano sermone) of the Hebrew Bible.
Arias Montano’s biographers have always noted his interest in natural his-
tory, as witnessed by his correspondence with the Flemish botanist Carolus
Clusius, his friendship with the Portuguese doctor living in Seville, Simón de
Tovar, and of course his friendship with the most important mathematicians,
cartographers and humanists of Antwerp.15 There is also ample testimony
about a collection of naturalia and artificialia that Arias Montano assembled
and which he would ultimately install in his homes in Peña de Aracena and
in Seville.16 The exchange of exotic objects with other collectors throughout
Europe brought him into the economy of friendship associated with learned
humanist circles. Exchanges with the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius
were the most frequent. The cartographer sent Arias Montano printed maps,
and the Spaniard reciprocated with manuscript maps of Spanish regions in
the Americas and Asia and bezoar stones, as well as American curiosities such
as silver nuggets, golden figurines of Amerindian deities and even a hand-
ful of fur from a vicuña.17 In a letter dated 1575 and addressed to Johannes
Crato—the Protestant doctor of Emperor Maximilian II—Arias Montano
expressed his enthusiasm for curiosities, an enthusiasm rooted in a desire to
study everything under the heavens.18 He thanked the doctor for gifts he had
received by way of Ortelius and mentioned to Crato that he had installed
them on a pyramid that he considered his small traveling museum (museolo).
What other artifacts made their way to Arias Montano’s museolo? Luckily
we have an inventory that Arias Montano wrote when he planned to donate
the collection to his assistants Pedro de Valencia and Juan Ramírez Ballesteros
in 1597.19 It was his desire that the collection not be dispersed, a wish that he
shared with many collectors of his time, who saw the whole of the collection
as a personal manifestation of their learning. It was an impressive collection,
indeed, not because of the sheer number of objects but rather because of the
exquisite selection. The inventory highlights the monetary and artistic value
of Arias Montano’s mathematical instruments, both those he had collected
over the years and those he acquired from the estate of Simón de Tovar. He
had celestial and terrestrial globes by Gerard Mercator and Gemma Frisius,
the most outstanding cosmographers of their time, as well as three astrolabes
engraved in Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. Alongside these he displayed other

artificialia such as polished precious and semi-precious stones, and over
250 items described as being either “old” or “new.”20 Artifacts that he con-
sidered products of nature unaltered by human hands resided in the “natural”
studio, among them “soils, stones, metals, minerals and mineral samples
[medios minerales] of different types, resin woods, liquors and roots, fruits,
large animals, parts of animals and a number of forms and types of natures,
and likewise maritime and marine things that I have in my studio called
‘the sea.’”21 The donation also included oil and tempera paintings by Pedro
de Villegas, Pedro Borcht and Francisco Aledo, as well as a great number of
prints. In addition to the artifacts, the collection also had antiquities, an
essential component that revealed the collector’s humanistic sensibility and
desire to historicize the material legacy of the past.22
Sadly, the inventory does not mention the provenance of these artifacts, but if
we take into consideration the many references in Arias Montano’s correspond-
ence to the procurement of New World products, we can safely assume that
many of them came from the Americas. Take as a case in point Arias Montano’s
15-year search for the “ungüento de Bálsamo” mentioned in the Bible (Gen.
43:11 and Jer. 8:22). He was convinced he would find it in the Indies. When he
was finally able to locate it, it came from some friends in Antwerp, although
we do not know whether in fact the balsam originated in the Indies.23
If we examine the collection in its totality it is clear that, unlike so many
others of the time, this was not simply an assemblage of curiosities brought
together to satisfy prevailing notions of good taste or to elicit a visitor’s admir-
ation. For Arias Montano, as the historian Juan Gil Fernández has pointed out,
the museolo formed an integral part of a reference library designed to serve
one principal function—his vocation of Biblical exegesis.24 Since his youth
and long before going to Antwerp, Arias Montano already had a personal
library well stocked with geography, cosmography and astronomy books by
ancient and modern authors.25 Along with his museolo, these acted as textual
and material resources which he mined in his effort to bring, among other
things, the American reality in concert with the Biblical narrative.
Consider the treatise Phaleg from the appendix to the Antwerp Polyglot;
there Arias Montano joined others before him who, following Christopher
Columbus, associated America with the Biblical land of Ophir.26 Arias
Montano understood the Biblical passages that mentioned this land in the
following genealogical and geographical terms. The sons of Joktan (descend-
ants of Noah through the line of Shem) settled in Ophir. In turn one of
Joktan’s sons, Jobab, settled beyond Ophir, and his descendants in turn lived
along a mountain range known as Sephar (Gen. 10:29–30). He continues in
the Phaleg that the Bible
also indicates clearly that this land, from which they took so much quan-
tity of superb gold and transported it to other places, this land—I say—was
then called ‫ ַּפרַוים‬Parvaim. This name, for those who only know how to
read Hebrew, suggests clearly that those two regions in another time were
called Peru. There is only one land that goes nowadays by that same
name, it is called Peru, but the other has been given the name New Spain
by sailors. We know about the very pure gold from that region and how
much it was valued by all people. And the interpreter, because he did not
know of those lands, or better yet, in praise of the gold that the region
produced, since in Hebrew it is read as written: ‫הָָּהב ַּפְרָוִֽים‬
‫ זְַהב וְַ ז‬converts
that gold into PERV y PERV, since ‫ ַּפרַו‬is pronounced in the dual ‫ַפרַוים‬. ּ 27
Arias Montano had found two types of evidence to reinforce his interpret-
ation; the first was empirical, the second philological. The artifacts brought
from the New World testified to the abundance of gold, pearls and precious
woods in those lands. He then went on to explain that the word “Parvaim”
(‫)ַפרַוים‬
ּ had become confused through a commutation of letters with the word
“Ophir” (‫)אוִֹפיר‬.28 Furthermore, in Hebrew “Parvaim” is spelled using an ending
that signifies duality (‫)ם‬, and thus, Arias Montano surmised, the word indicated
two regions. These two regions had to be those that were the source of most
of the American gold, but now went by the names Peru and New Spain. He
explained that after the time of Solomon, however, the word “Ophir” through
common usage went on to designate only one region. This is why the word
in the Bible sometimes appears in its original, plural form. Furthermore, Arias
Montano placed the lands of Jobab in the region of Paria (Venezuela)—a region
renowned for its abundant gold and pearls—so therefore the Sephar Mountains
mentioned in the Bible had to be a reference to the Andes (see Figure 5.1).29
Arias Montano’s philological approach to Biblical interpretation also
yielded new insights into other scientific disciplines. The second part of
his Opus magnum, the Naturae historia (History of Nature), fully displays his
approach. For example, he explained what he considered an error of usage
as well as of translation: the manner in which the Bible designates certain
trees of precious woods. According to Arias Montano, over the years the
words ALMUGIM and ALGUMIM had become confused and amalgamated.
As he explained, the ALGUMIM (‫ )אְַלגּוִּּמים‬were trees that grew in the forests
of Lebanon, while ALMUGIM (‫ )אַלֻמִּגים‬were the precious woods that Hiram’s
fleet brought back from Ophir. (Furthermore, the combinations of five letters
used in these words were in themselves very rare in the Biblical language
which indicated a foreign origin.) Just as VPHIR had become PIRV over the
course of many years, the names of the trees had become confused.30
It may be possible to say that, at least from his stay in Antwerp onward, Arias
Montano was very interested in botany and in particular, in American plants.
So it should not surprise us that he facilitated the exchange of American plants
between Sevillian naturalists and their counterparts in the rest of Europe
during the last two decades of his life, finding himself a leading member of a
group of collectors who trafficked in American naturalia from the city on the
86
Figure 5.1 “Orbis tabula,” in Benito Arias Montano, Phaleg siue De gentium sedibus primis, orbisque terrae situ (Antwerp, 1572)
Guadalquivir.31 Perhaps the best known among them was the Flemish doctor
and naturalist Carolus Clusius (1526–1609), whom Arias Montano knew
from his sojourn in Antwerp.32 Through the agency of Arias Montano news
of American plants that Tovar grew in his Seville garden made their way into
Clusius’s catalog. In the Rariorum plantarum historia (Antwerp, 1601) we find
an engraving of a plant that Clusius named “narcissus jacobeus,” the same
name that Tovar had given the plant because it resembled the emblem of the
order of the Knights of St James, which was, perhaps not coincidentally, Arias
Montano’s order (see Figure 5.2).33 A similar exchange took place between
Tovar and the botanists Lorenz Scholz and Bernardus Paludanus (Berent ten
Broeke), contacts which Arias Montano brokered during the 1590s.34 In fact,
Tovar bequeathed Arias Montano his garden in Seville, a veritable ortus medi-
cus, as well as a number of “medicines, oils, balsams, roots, stones, woods and
other strange things” that Arias Montano and “other persons” had asked him
to send to Clusius and to Pieter Ernest von Mansfeld, governor of Flanders
and an avid collector of botanical specimens.35
To conclude this section it may be worthwhile to point out some of
the few—no more than three or four—observations that Arias Montano
makes about American products in the Naturae historia.36 For example,
when describing different types of tubers, he makes a reference to a certain
“foreign potato” (“batata extranjera”) that is sweet like “the ones we know
and is brought from the islands of the Ocean.”37 In a section where he dis-
cusses a particular class of trees—or using his taxonomy based on Hebrew
nomenclature, within the group of the PERI and the fourth subgroup of the
SEKEDIM—we find a reference to trees that flower rapidly, “like foreign ones
and those sought and brought in ships from other places, which we hear are
called cinnamon, canes and tamarinds [‘canelos, cañas y tamarindos’].”38
At first glance the New World and its products seem to occupy a very
secondary place in Arias Montano’s work. Although this might seem surpris-
ing given his interest in American curiosities, it agrees with the objective of
the Naturae historia. The Montanian project was never intended to be a com-
prehensive catalog of the natural world. He exhorted his naturalist friends
to continue their labors compiling this type of knowledge, listing them
by name: Clusius, Dodoens, Lobellus, Tovar, Sánchez Oropesa, Paludanus,
Monaw and Scholtz.39 He considered the “diligent” study of plants in and
of itself a necessary and virtuous occupation whose ultimate purpose was to
explain divine Creation, but considered his contribution to these endeavors
circumscribed to pointing out how the Bible offered a comprehensive—and
divinely inspired—taxonomy. And although he did not consider himself
well suited for the arduous task of plant classification and study, Arias
Montano encouraged others to carry on the task, as he explained:
It is convenient that the diligent and studious man of this agreeable and
gratifying and, in addition, most useful knowledge of plants carry out
88
Figure 5.2 Narcissus jacobeus, in C. Clusius, Rariorum plantarum historia (Antwerp,

1601), 157
his work with diligence, so that he does not become weary working and
dealing with very common and most vulgar things, and not be ashamed
of investigating, searching and following strange things, and even rare
and singular ones. This way he will leave dominating this discipline with
great reward for his effort, of whose diligence and doctrine the Sacred
Scriptures recommend as author, guide and model, Salomon.40
His objective, as far as the natural sciences were concerned, was to propose
taxonomic systems that encompassed all of nature, whether discovered or
yet to be discovered. It was a scheme he had found after a lifetime of reading
the Sacred Scriptures carefully. In these he had identified a “compendium
or method” (“compendio o método”) that allowed him to achieve “exact
knowledge of one and another group” of animals, plants and trees.41 He
relegated the specifics to another project, mentioning on several occasions
that certain aspects of nomenclature would be discussed in the third part of
the Opus magnum, the never-published Vestis.42
There was little room and even less patience in Arias Montano’s work for
a Pliny or a Dioscorides. Such was his adherence to the Biblical text that
when he discussed animals, he preferred to follow the classification sug-
gested by King Solomon rather than any alternative proposed by the ancient
philosophers.43 Informing his rejection of alternative taxonomies, as well as
his disdain for prevailing natural philosophical systems, was a deep-seated
conviction that his approach was so fundamentally in concert with the
intention of the Creator that America must have been prefigured in the
Bible; others had simply failed to notice.
The Montanian hermeneutics of nature
Arias Montano’s grand plan was to create a cohesive, all-encompassing theo-

logical and philosophical system that put forth infallible precepts through
which the natural world could be interpreted. Furthermore, certainty was
achieved by basing it on principles derived directly from the Hebrew Bible.
We must understand, however, that the natural philosophical aspect of his
scheme was but a part of a broader hermeneutics of nature that was informed
by a series of historical premises that were also partly a consequence of his
exegetical approach; these and metaphysical principles he identified in the
Book of Genesis ultimately undergirded his natural philosophy.
In the Naturae historia, Arias Montano uses a methodology similar to the
one he developed years earlier in the Arcano sermone. The key to his literal
Biblical exegesis lay in examining particularly meaningful words utilizing
Hebrew etymologies and lexicon. Once grammatical errors that had crept
into the Bible were corrected (as shown above with “Ophir”), the exercise
continued with the compilation of a lexicon of Biblical Hebrew. This exer-
cise consisted of determining different shades of meaning for important
words, depending on usage. Armed with these ample definitions, exegesis

began by choosing the most appropriate meaning and then offering a literal
interpretation for the given passage.
These lexical and interpretive exercises were not solely informed by the
narrative context, but also by the observation of nature. Nature in the
Montanian universe, however, was interpreted as if seen through a histor-
ical lens situated between empirical, first-hand observation and natural
philosophical interpretation. It is possible to identify some core historical
premises that Arias Montano considered fundamental to the scheme he put
forth in the Opus magnum. The first one established the relationship between
God, man and nature.44 The purpose of nature, explained Arias Montano,
was to sustain man, but also through its contemplation to allow man to
gain an understanding of the divine mystery. This was God’s purpose when
Adam was given domain over all animals (Gen. 1:28–30). As an act of grati-
tude for this divine gift, mankind must attempt to understand His creation.
Yet acquiring this understanding was not solely a contemplative act, but
rather consisted of seeking actively the kind of knowledge of nature that led
to acknowledging God’s design. This ultimately led man to understand the
special place he occupied in the world and at the same time instructed him
on how to use wisely what God has put at his disposal.
How then did man attain this knowledge of nature? Here is where we
find the second historical premise. Arias Montano explained that Adam
had been granted knowledge of the true nature of things (“rerum natura”),
as put in evidence by the Biblical passage where Adam named all things
(Gen. 2:19–20). Arias Montano was reassured that those names—spoken
in Biblical Hebrew and recorded by Moses—indicated the essence and true
nature of things. In the act of naming, Adam had established a correspond-
ence between thing and word (“res et verbum”) that was informed by divine
wisdom. After the Fall, this knowledge was lost almost completely, and
since then humanity found the study of nature to be a difficult task that
required much patience and was given to delusions. Over time the study
of nature fell prey to the “empty words” of the philosophers, who, having
forgotten the real purpose of the study of nature, constructed a whirl (“vora-
gine”) of inventions in a frenzy motivated only by mere curiosity.45 God,
in His patience, had repeatedly communicated this knowledge to mankind
by means of revelations, as in the cases of Moses, Japheth (son of Noah)
and Solomon. It was precisely the vestiges of this original knowledge that
Montanian exegesis sought to rediscover in the Sacred Scriptures and upon
which a new natural philosophy could be built.
For his part, Arias Montano suggested on several occasions that this way
of approaching the Biblical text, as well as nature, came to him through
a revelation. He may have mentioned something along these lines to his
disciple José de Sigüenza while he, Arias Montano, was at the Escorial organ-
izing the king’s library. (Sigüenza seems to have repeated the confidence in
an unguarded moment, and this apparently contributed to an inquisitorial

process that was raised against him.46) Yet Arias Montano did not shy away
from delivering a similar message in the votive elegy at the beginning of the
Naturae historia.
I will begin to tell of the causes and origins

of the newly built world, its semblance and forces.
And those things I remember that long ago,
as a young man, I learned with many others,
and read in books, I repeated them, yes, I remember,
and I regret that great effort and lengthy tedium,
as in time I ventured through obscure paths.
…
One praises water, his adversary prefers fire,
Some affirm that there is no primal matter.
…
When here, marveled, I contemplate
the live face of truth and good in some paintings,
believe me mortals, although painted, the image,
nonetheless, seemed to live and breathe.
And, while I contemplated it, I heard it speak to me and warn me:
“Beware, child, beware, of giving yourself over
to the vain words of men and trusting their vain promises.”47
The elegy is in essence a lamentation for the years wasted in disputes on

the natural philosophy of the ancients. When the image speaks to Arias
Montano and says “take from here, child, all principles,” “here” refers to
the Sacred Scriptures, while “all principles” refers to the first principles of
natural philosophy. We might be tempted to dismiss the elegy as complaint
against Scholasticism, during a time when this type of complaint had almost
become a trope. Descartes, Leibniz and Bacon expressed similar criticisms,
but in Arias Montano these words acquire greater significance.48 Our exegete
was not only complaining about the scholastic method and about the study
of things through their causes. He had a different preoccupation—the study
of nature had become a corrupt enterprise. Not only had it lost all con-
nection to the true knowledge that God had given Adam as a divine gift;
it was also being pursued for the wrong reasons and toward a dubious end.
Another historical premise concerned the immutability of the order
and type of all creation. Arias Montano explained that everything, except
for man, blindly obeys the laws and the order that God instituted during
Creation. It was thanks to these laws that the original relationship Adam
observed between the object and word persisted and that therefore it was
possible to study nature through the Hebrew Bible and the careful obser-
vation of a nature that did not differ from one Adam saw.49
The final historical premise we will consider here concerned the role
of sense perception. Human sense perception is always presented in the
Naturae historia as diminished human capacity. For whereas pre-lapsarian
Adam had enjoyed infallible sense perception, after the Fall it had also
become corrupted. Or rather, the senses now operated without the divine
wisdom that had allowed Adam to grasp the essential principles of nature
without threat of sensual deception. Post-lapsarian man, however, no
longer knew the nature of things simply by virtue of being God’s prized
creation and having been made in His image. Now man had to rely on his
inferior, external or feminine nature to learn “by the sweat of his brow”
what he needed to know in order to survive. For Arias Montano this implied
that post-lapsarian man had diminished sensual perception and, con-
sequentially, an also-diminished cognition that was prone to falling prey
to the sensual pleasures. Arguing from precepts based on these perceptions
and even arguing on the basis of reason alone, as far as Arias Montano
was concerned, were heavy crosses that humanity had to bear because of
the Fall. Little good had come from it; in fact, he took the whole Western
philosophical enterprise to be the fanciful fabrication of the Greeks based
on Chaledean and Egyptian lies.
Along with the view afforded by this historical lens informed by these
premises, the other cornerstone of his hermeneutics of nature consisted of
four metaphysical first principles that Arias Montano claimed came into
being during the first six days of Creation. In this chapter I will describe
only two of them in some detail: ELOHIM (‫ )ֱאלוִֹהים‬and MAIM (‫)ַמִים‬. For Arias
Montano, ELOHIM is the divine spirit with a diligent force that is ever
present and extends over the entire world. While the Word of God creates
everything, the builder of all creation is ELOHIM. It prepares the forms,
distinguishes among them, establishes them and directs them. It is the prin-
ciple that hovered over the abyss in the instant before God spoke; it is the
source of movement and life. The other principle, MAIM, is a type of matter
with a double nature from which everything is made, except the spirits.50
The Montanian hermeneutics of nature served two important functions
in his grander project, both circumscribed, however, within what man was
capable of knowing. It followed the Augustinian tradition in that nature
served as a handmaiden for Biblical interpretation. Also, since nature was
understood as having a purpose (to serve man) which could be realized
only by man (through its domination), Arias Montano always interpreted
the natural world through a utilitarian lens that asked: What is it for? Why
is it the way it is? Note that the Montanian hermeneutics of nature did not
posit a symbolic or associative relationship between things with different
natures and left for man to unravel. (There are no magical doctrines of
signatures lurking here.) Instead, it presumed a law-like order established
during the Creation, entirely contingent on God’s purposeful design and
persisting in time.
Biblical natural philosophy
Arias Montano was not the first to turn to the Biblical text in search
of precepts of natural philosophy. The commentaries on Genesis of
St Augustine and St Basil originated the tradition of finding signs about the
true composition of the world in the literal interpretation of the Creation
story. By the end of the sixteenth century we can identify a movement that
intended to build a new “pius” or “Christian” natural philosophy based on
the Mosaic text.51 A curious detail jumps out when we consult the bibli-
ography of these Mosaic philosophers, however. We find that there were two
Spaniards among the first three exponents of the genre: Francisco Valles de
Covarrubias and Arias Montano.52 The third one was the Calvinist Lambert
Daneau (1530–95), author of Physica christiana (1576). In contrast to Valles
and Daneau, Arias Montano’s objective, as we have seen, was not to recon-
cile Biblical facts with Aristotelian natural philosophy.
During the seventeenth century other philosophers would follow Arias
Montano’s footsteps, although never achieving his metaphysical rigor. We
know, for example, that the work of Arias Montano had a great influence on
the Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi. Aldrovandi recalled the great honor
he had received when Arias Montano had visited his museum in Bologna
and was among the scholars who used the Opus magnum as a guide for his
studies.53 However, it would not be long before the proposals made by Arias
Montano started to be questioned. This was the case with the Jesuit José de
Acosta, who challenged the opinion about the location of the Biblical Ophir
in Peru by directly addressing Arias Montano:
And there is no lack of learned authors who affirm that this Ophir is
Piru, deducing one name from the others and believing that during the
time the book of Paralipomenon [Book of Chronicles] was called Piru as
it is now. He bases himself on the scripture’s mention that very fine gold
was brought from Ophir, and very fine stones, and precious woods all of
which are found in great plentitude in Piru, as these authors claim. But
in my opinion Piru is very far from being the Ophir that this scripture
celebrates.54
Acosta chose to meet Arias Montano on the philological playing field. He

explained that it had been Spaniards who had given the name “Peru” to
that territory, taking the name from a river in the region. Furthermore,
the natives did not call their land by the name “Peru.” The etymological
arguments of Arias Montano did not convince the Jesuit, who preferred
instead to counter with empirical ones. Acosta used his own experience
about the quality of the products from Peru—the gold was neither as fine,
nor the woods as precious as those described in the Bible—to counter Arias
Montano. Acosta’s sense of history also served to undermine Arias Montano.
The trip from Jerusalem to Peru, across so many oceans, would have been
impossible for anyone without a compass, nor was there any knowledge
among the Inca of ever having been visited by Solomon’s fleet. Finally, he
thought that the derivation of etymological arguments from homophones
in different languages was a “very slight clue from which to affirm such
great things,” preferring instead the historical interpretation of Josephus’s
De antiquitatibus ac De bello Iudaico that Ophir was in the Orient. Acosta
reveals himself as an example of a contemporary of Arias Montano who
found within the framework of Aristotelian natural philosophy and a literal
interpretation of the Bible the necessary hermeneutics from which to inter-
pret American nature.55
In closing, let us return to the principal topic of this book: American

products. The modest space these occupy in the work of Arias Montano is
somewhat disconcerting given the access he had to them in Seville and how
much effort he devoted to collecting and disseminating American novelties.
But this fact itself allows us to propose a conjecture—perhaps as a con-
solation prize—to explain the few lines Arias Montano devoted to them in
his published works. How did he intend his Biblical natural philosophy to
account for such novelties? His interpretation originated from a historically
informed hermeneutics of nature that in practice worked to nullify the tem-
poral dimension of any discovery. Adam had seen, named and been given
domain over all of nature, and thus the novelty of the New World and its
products was simply a historical accident. Any novelty was thus only so in
appearance, and was not worth much time, especially when the task at hand
was reforming the whole of the natural philosophy so that it was in concert
with the Word. The form, function and place of every plant, every animal,
every natural phenomenon had been presaged in the Bible.
In the midst of the natural philosophical turbulence of the late sixteenth
century, Arias Montano saw an opportunity—nay, a need—to continue the
ecumenical theological and philosophical mission launched with the Antwerp
Polyglot Bible. From the distance of his hilltop retreat in Peña de Aracena he
thought about the bustle of novelties in Seville, and realized that the task
of making sense of this expanding world could not be tackled solely with
the empirical tools of description and classification. And thus with the Opus
magnum he attempted to institute new metaphysical principles and a natural
philosophy that liberated humanity from the misguided ideas of the ancient
philosophers and the distraction of novelties. His hermeneutics of nature was
intended to serve as a guide for empirical observations, but, by placing this
activity within the context of a Mosaic philosophy, it constantly reminded
the naturalist of the true purpose of this endeavor. This endeavor also implied
rationalizing the New World through a hermeneutics that normalized any
appearance of novelty. One of Arias Montano’s objectives was precisely to
eliminate the “new” from the New World.
Notes
1. Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford University
Press, 1992), 22–3; Anthony Grafton, A. Shelford and Nancy G. Siraisi, New Worlds,
Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1992), 6–7. For an explanation of the gradual erosion of
the notion of the inhabitability of the Torrid Zone before Columbus, see Nicolás Wey
Gómez, The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2008), 231–91.
2. This was often the case with the cosmographer of the House of Trade, Rodrigo
Zamorano, as described by Doctor Juan de Castañeda in a letter to C. Clusius on
20 October 1600. La correspondencia de Carolus Clusius con los científicos españoles,
ed. Josep Lluís Barona and Xavier Gómez Font (Universitat de València, 1998), 82.
3. In cosmography, for example, efforts to situate the New World geographically
led to the flourishing of mathematical cartography and astronomical navigation.
Similarly, we see in natural history a number of new proposals for botanical
classification. Prime examples of this were royal cosmographers, particularly
those associated with the House of Trade and the Council of Indies, who in their
attempts to assimilate the New World focused on adjusting disciplinary practices
without needing to reconceptualize the natural philosophy that served as its
framework. María M. Portuondo, Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New
World (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 302–5.
4. This is an important distinction; “conveyable” aspects could be much more easily
turned into commodities, whether material or conceptual, and could circulate.
Those that could not be brought across the sea or adequately conveyed with
words or images had to wait for the natural philosopher to work in situ.
5. Nicolás Monardes, Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la Historia medicinal, de
las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales … (Seville: en casa de Alonso
Escrivano, 1574), 18, 42, 48.
6. Peter Dear has explored the difference between “experience” and “experiment” in
early modern science; his most concise treatment appears in his Revolutionizing the
Sciences: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500–1700, 2nd edn (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Recent scholarship on the subject of “experience” vs.
“experiment” is collected in John Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the Origins
of Modern Science (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 33–55. For Renaissance
natural history, see Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in
Renaissance Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2006), 141–51. For a study of
how a similar phrase was used in Italy, see “Fare esperienza,” in Paula Findlen,
Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 201–8.
7. This point bears emphasizing since it has not been made sufficiently clear in
the historiography discussing empirical practices in sixteenth-century Seville.
Antonio Barrera-Osorio describes the empiricism characteristic of Seville as a pre-
Scientific Revolution. He does not study, however, the philosophical implications
of this empirical posture. Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish
American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2006).
8. There is much work still to be done on the history of ideas in late sixteenth-
century and seventeenth-century Spain. Robbins has just scratched the surface of
the importance of Skepticism and Stoicism, but Aristotelians have been largely
ignored. See Jeremy Robbins, “The Arts of Perception,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies
82:8 (2005), 1–289.
9. The historiography on Arias Montano is extensive. Some biographies of note
include José Tomas Gonzalez Carvajal, “Elogio histórico a Benito Arias Montano,”
Memorias de la Real Academia de Historia 7 (1832); Benjamin Rekers, Benito Arias
Montano (1527–1598) (Warburg Institute, University of London, 1972); Gaspar
Morocho Gayo, “Trayectoria humanística de Benito Arias Montano, II: Años de
plenitud (1568–1598),” in Mariano Fernández-Daza et al., eds, El humanismo
extremeño: Estudios presentados a las 3as jornadas organizadas por la Real Academia de
Extremadura en Fregenal de la Sierra, Aracena y Alájar en 1998 (Trujillo: Real Academia
de Extremadura de las Letras y las Artes, 1999), 227–304. Arias Montano’s corres-
pondence is currently being edited; see Antonio Dávila Pérez, Correspondencia
conservada en el Museo Plantin-Moretus de Amberes / Benito Arias Montano: Estudio
introductorio, edición crítica, traducción anotada e índices a cargo de Antonio Dávila
Pérez, 2 vols (Alcañiz, Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos, Ediciones del
Laberinto, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2002); Antonio Dávila
Pérez, “El epistolario de Benito Arias Montano: Catálogo provisional,” De Gulden
Passer 80 (2002), 63–129; Antonio Dávila Pérez, “La correspondencia inédita de
Benito Arias Montano: Nuevas prospecciones y estudio,” in José María Maestre
Maestre et al., eds, Benito Arias Montano y los humanistas de su tiempo (Mérida:
Editora Regional de Extremadura, Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos, 2006),
65–78; Baldomero Macías Rosendo, ed., La correspondencia de Benito Arias Montano
con el presidente de Indias Juan de Ovando: Cartas de Benito Arias Montano conservadas
en el Instituto de Valencia de don Juan (Universidad de Huelva, 2008).
10. Benito Arias Montano, Boderianus, Raphelengius, Masius, Bruges et al., eds, Biblia
Sacra Hebraice, Chaldaice, Graece, & Latine: Philippi II Reg. Cathol. pietate, et studio
ad Sacrosanctae Ecclesiae usum (Antwerp: Christophe Plantinus, 1569–73).
11. There is a developing historical consensus that dismisses Reker’s thesis that while
in Antwerp Arias Montano became a follower of Hiël and that as an adherent of
the Familia Charitatis instituted a “cell” of followers at the Escorial. Rekers, Benito
Arias Montano, 86–100. For convincing arguments against the familist thesis, see
José M. Ozaeta, “Arias Montano, maestro del Dr. Jose de Sigüenza,” La ciudad de
Dios 203 (1990), 535–82; Juan L. Sanchez, “Arias Montano y la espiritualidad en
el siglo XVI,” La ciudad de Dios 211 (1998), 33–49; Angel Alcalá Galve, “Arias
Montano y el familismo flamenco: Una nueva revisión,” in L. Gómez Canseco,
ed., Anatomía del humanismo: Benito Arias Montano, 1598–1998: Homenaje al
profesor Melquiades Andrés Martín. Actas del simposio internacional celebrado en la
Universidad de Huelva del 4 al 6 del noviembre de 1998 (Universidad de Huelva,
1998), 85–111, and Antonio Martínez Ripoll, “La Universidad de Alcalá y la for-
mación humanista, bíblica y arqueológica de Benito Arias Montano,” Cuadernos
de pensamiento 12 (1998), 13–92.
12. This version of the Thesaurus was never printed. The annotated working copy
for it was recently rediscovered at the University of Leiden by Anthony Grafton
and Theo Dunkelgrün. See Theo Dunkelgrün, “The Multiplicity of Scripture: The
Confluence of Textual Traditions in the Making of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible
(1568–1573)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2012), 89–90, n. 68.
13. Benito Arias Montano, Libro de José o sobre el lenguaje arcano (Huelva: Universidad
de Huelva, 2006), 403.
14. Arias Montano’s Opus magnum lay largely forgotten until 1999, when the University
of Huelva began publishing critical editions of this author’s works as part of the
series Bibliotheca Montaniana. This excellent work has facilitated a host of new
studies on Arias Montano’s natural philosophy. Juan José Jorge López and Luis
Gómez Canseco, among others, have characterized Montanian thought within
Spanish humanism and its tradition of Biblical studies. Juan José Jorge López, El
pensamiento filosófico de Benito Arias Montano: Una reflexión sobre su Opus magnum
(Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2002); Luis Gómez Canseco, “Ciencia,
religión y poesía en el humanismo: Benito Arias Montano,” Edad de oro 27 (2008),
127–45. See also the essays in the introduction to Benito Arias Montano, Historia
de la naturaleza: Primera parte del Cuerpo de la Obra magna, ed. Fernando Navarro
Antolín, Bibliotheca Montaniana (Universidad de Huelva, 2002).
15. Josep Lluís Barona, “Clusius’ Exchange of Botanical Information with Spanish
Scholars,” in Florike Egmond, Paul Hoftijzer and Robert P. W. Visser, eds, Carolus
Clusius in a New Context: Towards a Cultural History of a Renaissance Naturalist
(Amsterdam: Edita, 2007), 99–113; Mar Rey Bueno and Miguel López Pérez,
“Simón de Tovar (1528–1596): Redes familiares, naturaleza americana y comercio
de maravillas en la Sevilla del XVI,” Dymanis 26 (2006), 69–91; Antonio Dávila
Pérez, “Arias Montano y Amberes: Enlaces espirituales, bibliófilos y comerciales
entre España y los Países Bajos,” Excerpta philologica 9 (1999), 199–212; Robert
J. Wilkinson, The Kabbalistic Scholars of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible (Leiden: Brill,
2007); Jeanine de Landtsheer, “Benito Arias Montano and the Friends from his
Antwerp Sojourn,” De Gulden Passer 80 (2002), 39–61.
16. Juan Gil Fernández, Arias Montano y su entorno (Mérida: Regional de Extremadura,
1998), 38–95. On Spanish collections, see José Miguel Morán Turina and Fernando
Checa Cremades, El coleccionismo en España: De la cámara de maravillas a la galería
de pinturas (Madrid: Cátedra, 1985); Antonio Urquiza Herrera, Coleccionismo y
nobleza (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2007).
17. Enrique Morales, “Las cartas de Benito Arias Montano a Abraham Ortels: Edición
crítica y traducción a español,” Humanistica Lovaniensia: Journal of Neo-Latin
Studies 51 (2002), 153–205.
18. Letter from Arias Montano to Johannes Crato, 21 January 1575. This letter refers
to the Liber Ioseph sive, de Arcano sermone of the Antwerp Polyglot. The letter is cited
in Gábor Almási, The Uses of Humanism: Johannes Sambucus (1531–1584), Andreas
Dudith (1533–1589), and the Republic of Letters in East Central Europe (Leiden:
Brill, 2009), 86, and was published in its entirety in Carolus Clusius, Caroli
Clusii Atrebatis ad Thomam Redigerum et Joannem Cratonem epistolae … (Brussels:
M. Hayez, 1847), 102–4.
19. News of this document at the Archivo Notarial de Zafra was first given in Antonio
Salazar, “Arias Montano y Pedro de Valencia,” Revista de Estudios Extremeños 15:3
(1959), 475–93. It also appears in Gil, Arias Montano y su entorno, 287–92.
20. Salazar, “Arias Montano y Pedro de Valencia,” 490.
21. Ibid., 491. Arias Montano’s interest in shells and mollusks was well known. It was
apparently the principal motivation of a trip to Portugal in 1578: see Manuel José
de Lara Ródenas, “Arias Montano en Portugal: La revisión de un tópico sobre la
diplomacia secreta de Felipe II,” in Luis Gómez Canseco, ed., Anatomía del human-
ismo (Universidad de Huelva, 1998), 343–67.
22. Zur Shalev, “Sacred Geography, Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito
Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible,” Imago mundi 55:1
(2003), 60–1.
23. From, Arias Montano’s De optimo imperio sive in librum Iosue commentarium
(Antwerp, 1583), 174, cited in Gil, Arias Montano y su entorno, 44. For efforts
during the early sixteenth century to determine whether a balsam produced

in Santo Domingo was the “classical” balsam, see Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing
Nature, 15–23.
24. This is Juan Gil’s assessment. Gil, Arias Montano y su entorno, 40–4.
25. The inventory of Arias Montano’s library dates from 1548: ibid., 165–81.
26. Francisco J. Perea Siller and Bartolomé Pozuelo Calero, “El Phaleg en su entorno:
La concepción montaniana de la geografía e historia primitivas,” in J. M. Maestre
Maestre et al., eds, Benito Arias Montano y los humanistas de su tiempo (Mérida:
Editora Regional de Extremadura, Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos, 2006),
335–48.
27. Preface to the Phaleg, in Benito Arias Montano, Prefacios de Benito Arias Montano a
la Biblia Regia de Felipe II: Estudio introductorio, edición, traducción y notas de María
Asunción Sánchez Manzano, Colección de Humanistas Españoles, 32 (Salamanca:
Junta de Castilla y León, Consejería de Educación y Cultura, 2006), 163.
28. Benito Arias Montano, Phaleg siue De gentium sedibus primis, orbisque terrae situ, in
Benito Arias Montano et al., eds, Biblia Sacra Hebraice, Chaldaice, Graece, & Latine:
Philippi II Reg. Cathol. pietate, et studio ad Sacrosanctae Ecclesiae usum (Antwerp:
Christophe Plantinus, 1572), 12.
29. Ibid., 16.
30. Arias Montano, Historia de la naturaleza, 380.
31. José Ramón López Rodríguez, “Sevilla, el nacimiento de los museos, América y la
botánica,” in F. Gascó and J. Beltrán, eds, La antigüedad como argumento II (Seville:
Scryptorium, Consejeria de Cultura Junta de Andalucia, 1995), 75–97.
32. La correspondencia de Carolus Clusius, 36–7.
33. Ibid., 72–6; Florike Egmond, The World of Carolus Clusius: Natural History in the
Making, 1550–1610 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010), 40.
34. Letter from Arias Montano to Abraham Ortelius, 25 November 1594, in Enrrique
Morales, “Otras tres cartas de Benito Arias Montano a Abraham Ortels: Edición
crítica y traducción a español,” Humanistica Lovaniensia: Journal of Neo-Latin
Studies 53 (2004), 225–7.
35. Morales, “Otras tres cartas,” 231, n. 37.
36. Arias Montano’s references to American products were first studied in Fernando
Navarro Antolín, Luis Gómez Canseco and Baldomero Macías Rosendo, “Fronteras
del humanismo: Arias Montano y el Nuevo Mundo,” in F. Navarro Antolín and
L. Navarro García, eds, Orbis incognitus: Avisos y legajos del Nuevo Mundo. Homenaje
al Profesor Luis Navarro García (Universidad de Huelva, 2007), 101–36.
37. Arias Montano, Historia de la naturaleza, 355, 350.
38. Ibid., 363.
39. Ibid., 349. The names of the last three botanists mentioned in this list never
appeared in the published book, despite a 1596 letter by Arias Montano to
Moretus asking that he add the names. As cited in Morales, “Otras tres cartas,”
225–6. The letter appears in Dávila Pérez, Correspondencia conservada en el Museo
Plantin-Moretus, vol. II, 836.
40. Arias Montano, Historia de la naturaleza, 389.
41. Ibid., 345–6.
42. Ibid., 351.
43. Ibid., 424.
44. Although modern conventions might lead me to use “humanity” or “human-
kind” instead of “man,” here I remain faithful to the usage of Arias Montano,
who clearly meant “man” given his attitude toward women and all things female.
45. Benito Arias Montano, Libro de la generación y regeneración del hombre, o, Historia
del género humano. Primera parte de la Obra Magna, esto es, Alma: Estudio preliminar
de Luis Gómez Canseco, trans. Fernando Navarro Antolín et al. (Universidad de
Huelva, 1999), preface and 293–4.
46. Gregorio de Andrés, Proceso Inquisitorial del Padre Sigüenza (Madrid: Fundación
Universitaria Española, 1975), 51–2.
47. Arias Montano, Historia de la naturaleza, 97–9.
48. “Estudio preliminar,” in ibid., 16–17.
49. Arias Montano, Libro de la generación y regeneración del hombre, 135–7.
50. Arias Montano, Historia de la naturaleza, 252–3.
51. English-language scholarship refers to it as “Mosaic philosophy.” Ann Blair,
“Mosaic Physics and the Search for a Pious Natural Philosophy in the Late
Renaissance,” Isis 91:1 (2000).
52. Francisco Valles de Covarrubias was Philip II’s personal physician and published
his ideas in Francisco Valles de Covarrubias, Francisci Vallesii, De iis, quae scripta
sunt physice in libris sacris siue de sacra philosophia liber singularis ... (Augustae
Taurinorum: apud haeredem Nicolai Beuilaquae, 1587).
53. The reference to Arias Montano appears in Ulisse Aldrovandi, “Bibliologia,”
2 vols, Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, Ms. Aldrovandi 83, vol. I, fol. 426. I thank
Andrew Berns for this reference. For more on Aldrovandi and Mosaic philosophy, see
Andrew Berns, “The Natural Philosophy of the Biblical World: Jewish and Christian
Physicians in Late Renaissance Italy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2011).
54. Acosta cites Arias Montano’s Phaleg in the margin. José de Acosta, Historia natural
y moral de las Indias … (Seville: Juan de Leon, 1590), 49.
55. Thayne Ford, “Stranger in a Foreign Land: José De Acosta’s Scientific Realizations
in Sixteenth-Century Peru,” Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998), 32.
6
The Diffusion of Maize in Italy
From Resistance to the Peasants’ Defeat
Giovanni Levi
At the end of the eighteenth century, the production of maize in some years
represented a quantity similar, if not superior, to that of wheat in all regions
of northern Italy, with the exception of Liguria.1 It was the result of a radical
transformation, which started in the mid-1500s and sped up in the follow-
ing century. The main reason for the change was a far-reaching alteration in
agrarian contracts and the structure of land ownership. The consequences
were important and, in certain respects, devastating: a great impoverishment
of the peasants, who were forced to eat only maize (polenta). Much wheat
was removed from auto-consumption to commercialization, even though
there were no signs of increase in the yield of seed, which has usually been
considered as proof of an agrarian revolution. The agrarian contracts of
sharecropping settlements (colonia parziaria) and payments in kind appar-
ently increased the quantity of food to feed settlers and temporary farmers,
but actually took high-quality grains, above all wheat, out of their hands.
This change was the result of a long battle, as will be shown in the follow-
ing pages, which the peasantry did not lose until the beginning of the
eighteenth century. But this phenomenon was not only Italian: an area from
northern Spain through southwestern France to the northern Balkans went
through the same process.
This transformation was accompanied by a terrible evil: the spread of
pellagra. The doctors who started studying pellagra in the mid-eighteenth
century realized that it was an illness related to a bad diet and identified
maize as the main cause. But this realization also took place after a long
confrontation that ended much later, when the relationship between pel-
lagra and avitaminosis was identified through the discovery of vitamins and
their effects in 1911.
Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries three Italian doctors
argued that pellagra was a new, different disease related to poverty, and
advanced the hypothesis that it was caused by a diet based exclusively
100
The Diffusion of Maize in Italy 101
upon maize. Nevertheless, some 30 years were needed to clarify the matter.
Plagued by doubts and confusions, medicine, which still depended upon the
theory of the humors, was incapable of explaining the diversity of physical
characteristics of people hit by the illness and the diversity of climatic areas
in which it spread. Rigidly governed by Hippocratic tradition, medical cul-
ture remained dominated by permanent conflicts between rival academies.
I will examine the hypotheses of these three doctors, who, supported by
the Austrian government, which was very worried about the spread of the
disease, led the research and debates on the definition of the illness and
search for a cure in the decisive years from 1775 to 1815. They did not find
any definitive solution, but their progress in the characterization of the
features of the disease and its causes was at the very forefront of research
for a century. The first of the three doctors, Gaetano Strambio, was born in
Cislago, a village in Varesotto that bordered on Switzerland, in 1751. He was
a doctor’s son and enrolled in medicine at Pavia after a period of preparing
for an ecclesiastical career. The spread of pellagra, which concerned the
authorities in Vienna for demographic reasons, led to a decision to open a
hospital with 50 beds in Legnano, which specialized not only in the cure
of the illness but, above all, in the study of the disease to identify a cure.
Supported by the rector of the University of Pavia, Strambio became the
director of the hospital. The hospital was opened in 1784, when pellagra
became the main subject of Strambio’s research, although it was closed in
1788 (see below). In 1786, 1787 and 1789 Strambio published his obser-
vations on pellagra,2 and in 1794 two Dissertazioni sulla pellagra (Dissertations
on Pellagra).3 The first dissertazione summarized four years of work on the
definition of the illness and its causes in order to attempt to discover a cure,
which had not been achieved. The second dissertazione was written to refute
opposition and resistance to his discoveries and hypotheses. After the hos-
pital in Legnano was closed, Strambio continued his studies in the Ospedale
Maggiore (Main Hospital) of Milan, which he ran from 1810 to 1816.
Suffering from heart problems, he retired in 1816 and died in Milan in 1831.
Pellagra had been named in 1771 by the Milanese doctor Franceso
Frapolli, who studied it and ascribed its effects to the solar rays and
unhealthy air to which the peasantry were exposed. Strambio criticized
this thesis because solar radiation was not a novelty in nature, while pel-
lagra had been unknown before the first half of the eighteenth century.
Strambio’s main aim was to show the difference between pellagra and other
known diseases like scurvy, leprosy, impetigo and erysipelas. With this
objective Strambio wrote “histories” of patients, which were based upon
the comparison between pellagra and other diseases, and the experimental
use of cures. For instance, Strambio discovered that people suffering from
pellagra did not respond to lemon, which was used to cure scurvy. They
did not respond to treatments used to cure erysipelas and leprosy either.
Furthermore, these other diseases had acute stages different from those of
102 Giovanni Levi
pellagra, which abated in the winter but worsened in the spring. Pellagra
was a different disease. Strambio defined it as “a chronic illness of the whole
body whose more common symptoms are peeling of the skin exposed to the
sun during the spring, delirium, vertigo, tetanus, opistonono—body stretched
back—emprostotono—body stretched forward and stiffness—pains in the
backbone and extremities, weakness of lower limbs, bulimia,”4 and whose
main consequence in the acutest phase was death. He ruled out that the dis-
ease was contagious, but thought that it might be hereditary. Nonetheless,
Strambio had many doubts about the features of pellagra and the differences
between it and pellagrina, which spread among the inhabitants of Belluno
(in the Veneto), and between pellagra and “the illness of the rose” (il male
della rosa), which spread in Asturias (Spain) from the 1730s onward and
was studied by Gaspar Casal Julian, whose observations were published in
his posthumous Historia natural y medica del principato de Asturias (Natural
and Medical History of the Principality of Asturias, 1762). Strambio concluded
that the illness occurred far from the cities, in the most impoverished areas
of the countryside where unhealthy diets were based upon maize: “pellagra
abounds in those areas where the peasants are poorer, and spreads in correl-
ation with the expansion of poverty.”5 He finished by saying that “although
I have not found the whole truth, I have overcome many doubts and identi-
fied many falsehoods ... Although I have not discovered the true cause and a
cure, I have been able to know the illness better than others.”6 He delimited
the specific scope of the illness with his observations, and pointed out with
great clarity that the poverty of the peasant world was the only cause for the
malady’s presence and spread.
In fact, it was thanks to Strambio’s notes that the most valid theories
about the causes of the illness were developed. These conclusions were the
furthest point that medicine reached in the context of the nineteenth cen-
tury, in which, nevertheless, there was no real progress. On the contrary,
Lodovico Balardini and Cesare Lombroso opposed Filippo Lussana, who
followed the hypotheses of Francesco Luigi Fanzago discussed below, and
attributed pellagra to bad maize rather than simply to maize in the last third
of the nineteenth century.
Although meeting opposition, Francesco Luigi Fanzago, a doctor from

Padua, adopted and clarified Strambio’s ideas. After he graduated in 1790
from Padua, where he had been born in 1764, Fanzago studied medicine
in Padua and Florence before becoming rector and a professor of the
University of Padua. He directed the faculty of medicine between 1828 and
1835, and died in 1836. In 1815 Fanzago collected his reports and those
of other doctors dating from 1776 to 1815, and published them in two
volumes entitled Sulla pellagra: Memorie (On Pellagra: Reports).7 These volumes
recorded the evolution of Fanzago’s ideas, updating and developing the

work of Strambio. Furthermore, he moved the focus of his observations
from Lombardy to the Veneto, which was the region that suffered most
from the disease. Fanzago also republished the work of Jacopo Odoardi, who
had been born in Feltre but was a doctor in Belluno, where, as a member
of the Academy of the Anistamici—later the Academy of Agriculture—he
played an important role in the study of sanitary problems of the country-
side. Odoardi had initially focused on the diseases of cattle, fostered the
creation of a veterinary school of at the University of Padua, and translated
the works of the director of the French school of veterinary medicine,
Claude Bourgelat.8 Later he focused on pellagra. In 1776 Odoardi published
the short report D’una spezie particolare di scorbuto (On a Particular Type of
Scurvy),9 addressing Alpine scurvy or pellagrina, which was the name he
used to describe pellagra:
[Pellagrina] arises little by little, at the beginning with a slowness typical

of scurvy, from a diet based upon corn polenta without salt ... bread of
granturco [maize] ... and from the long winters in which peasants are
crowded in their idleness—in contrast to their hardship in most seasons.
The cold weather and the houses where they live, which are exposed to
external air, and the paved and wet lands, but not staying most of the day
and night in the stables, spread [the illness].10
But let us go back to Fanzago. By comparing 16 stories of patients suffer-

ing from pellagra in the Memoria sopra la pellagra nel territorio padovano
(Report on Pellagra in the Region of Padua),11 he accurately defined its symp-
toms: “1. Burns in the skin exposed to the sun; 2. Extreme weakness
of the body, above all in the legs; 3. Disorders, either large or small-scale, in
the faculties of the spirit, revealed through signs of dizziness and vertigo,
faintheartedness, astonishment, stupidity, loss of memory, melancholic
delirium and maniac delirium.”12 But, in contrast to Strambio and Odoardi,
Fanzago was mostly interested in the social aspect of the illness, especially
after the Austrian government started worrying about the illness becom-
ing a demographic and political problem. Through a decree dated 28 June
1804, the government required all provincial doctors to record the number
of patients who had been cured in each jurisdiction. Fanzago, who had
examined the answers received from the doctors of several towns by
1809, developed a very clear idea of the situation. The dramatic expan-
sion of the disease led him to exclude any confusion with other known
illnesses: it was a new illness that derived neither from filth, because the
city beggars were not affected, nor from the climate, because “according
to the opinion of doctors it is a new illness, which first became known in
Italy at the beginning of the previous century.”13 According to Fanzago,
pellagra had nothing to do with scurvy, elephantiasis or hypochondria,
104 Giovanni Levi
and was neither spread through contagion nor hereditary. Furthermore,

it hit “the peasants, especially the poorest, and, above all, those families
composed of few persons, which are the majority in the countryside.”14
Fanzago avoided the pessimistic view of those who racked their brains to
find a medical cure or considered the illness incurable: “It is very clear that
the squalid and daunting poverty of the peasants, from which their insuffi-
cient and sad daily food derives, is the most common and perceptible
cause of pellagra, and that, therefore, we should not rack our brains to find
other causes or look for them in the air.”15 To summarize, Fanzago con-
sidered a diet based upon maize to be the consequence of the peasantry’s
newly increased poverty:
A change in the peasant’s daily diet during the period when pellagra
appeared can easily be discovered, for two reasons. The first reason to be
emphasized is the introduction and growing of Turkish wheat [maize],
which has become the main food of country growers. The second is the
deterioration of their economic condition, which nowadays is poorer and
more meager than in the past.16
In the countryside, save for some few wealthy families, yellow flour is
their only food; they have no other nutritious food.17
Both Strambio and Fanzago regarded as a great difficulty the peasants’ lack
of faith in medical cures without visible or efficient results, impeding not
only the cure, but also deep analyses of the situation. One of the problems
that led to the closure of the hospital in Legnano and hindered work at the
hospital of San Francesco Grande of Padua, in which Fanzago had started
his research, was that the peasants rarely went back to the hospital after
their first visit, or returned only when they were close to death. This was
the fate of all the cases described by Fanzago in his 16 “medical stories.”
Peasants usually preferred to go to municipal doctors and “country sur-
geons” (“chirurghi campestri”), who actually made their condition worse by
“extracting blood” (“cavar sangue”), because the blood “is always burning
in their eyes” (“è ai loro occhi sempre infiammato”). The long experiments—
these were actual experiments—always proved insufficient and negative, as
Strambio pointed out when he noted that patients improved by changing
their diet, “although they retained some latent illness” (“ma sempre restò
loro qualche indizio del male latente”).18
Fanzago reached conclusions which, nevertheless, could not be embraced

without a substantial change in the structure of property ownership and
social relations. Almost in desperation, and more as a social analyst than as
a doctor, Fanzago drew an extraordinary and terrible picture of the advance

of capitalism in the Venetian countryside:
In this period which could be defined as fortunate, the rural families pos-
sessed some portions of land and enjoyed the fruits of propriety, and the
workers on lands owned by others attained adequate benefits, because the
products of the soil, which they watered with their sweat, benefitted only
the owners and themselves. Now this is not the case any more ... the peas-
ants who are owners are few, very few, and the products of the soil are nor-
mally shared by the owner, the tenant farmer [fittajuolo] and the worker.
A third kind of people make money out of the hardship of the countrymen,
which mostly damages the owner and also ruins the peasant. The peasant
is considered as nothing more than a mechanical instrument … a rake,
a plowshare, a plow. How much better is the lot of the cattle! The tenant
farmer [fittajuolo] has a great interest in the cattle, and managing and feed-
ing them provides him with another source of earnings. But this is not so
wonderful, because the stables are more comfortable and the farms cleaner
than the country shelters. Nothing is left for the poor peasant but an insuffi-
cient portion of polenta. Nowadays peasants suffer more poverty than
in the past, which has certainly contributed to the appearance and spread
of the disease. Pellagra will appear more easily in those places where maize
flour [frumentone] is common, and it will appear less, or not at all, where
wheat bread is familiar in the countryside. In the places where the grain
from India [maize] is unknown, the peasants are known to be stronger and
more robust.19
These conclusions, which were reached between the late eighteenth cen-
tury and the beginning of the nineteenth century, had another century of
history. Pellagra spread violently while no one explained its physiological
causes. In the nineteenth century the debates stopped focusing on social
aspects but moved to theories that the illness originated from eating grains
that were unripe or had gone bad, rather than from a diet based only upon
polenta. This was actually a backward step in research. At this point, it
is more interesting to analyze what had happened before the eighteenth
century than after it. I will focus on the way in which peasants resisted the
introduction of maize, and I will link this resistance to their social con-
ditions. I will address how the peasants’ resistance was defeated, producing
dramatic consequences at the end of the eighteenth century, and will con-
sider the Piedmont region, which was hit slightly less hard by the disease
than the other two main areas of northern Italy, Triveneto and Lombardy.
Furthermore, in Piedmont there was some delay in the studies of the causes
of the illness: as late as 1793–95 the doctor and botanist Carlo Lodovico
Allioni was still identifying pellagra with what he called porpora cronica, a
contagious illness of the skin that struck only the left side of the body, in
106 Giovanni Levi
his Conspectus praesentanneae morborum conditionis (Turin, 1793) and his

Ragionamento sopra la pellagra, colla risposta del signor dottore Gaetano Strambio
(Reasoning on Pellagra, with the Response of Doctor Gaetano Strambio) (Turin,
1795).
The introduction of maize was difficult to achieve, and required more than
a century. It produced a hidden resistance, often individual and sometimes
collective. This resistance arose not because peasants recognized the effects
of consuming maize on their health, but, rather, because they perceived it
as endangering their economic and social conditions. To this perception, we
can add the hazy sensation that maize would change their standard of living
and overturn the symbolic meaning always associated with traditional nourish-
ment. In fact, almost predicting its negative consequences, the peasants
resisted the introduction of maize for many years. We should take a step back,
then, to examine the slow triumph of maize cultivation. To consider this
process, I will continue to examine what happened in the Piedmont region of
Italy, where the weight of the maize harvest would double that of the wheat
harvest at the end of the eighteenth century.
Historians have become used to distinguishing the timing of the evolution
of scientific development from that of technical innovations. Furthermore,
they are not addressing so much the rise of technical innovations as the
evolution of the spread of innovations, and the causes that determined the
speed and delay in the adoption of such innovations. But still there is a
point that is overvalued by historians, which is the institutional causes of
the slow diffusion of knowledge of technical processes—the barriers of trade
secrets, especially in the fields of craftsmanship and manufacture, which
were erected by guilds and the state, and which only craftsmen and special-
ized migrant workers appeared to be able to break; and the monopolies
created at the expense of innovation, which required forces that persons on
their own could not develop and could be destroyed only by the inter-
vention and control of landlords and the state. Different topos of the history of
technology, such as the waterwheel and the irrigation system, refer to modes
of production in which the systems of banno lordships or the intervention
of central powers involved a more or less real mechanism of distribution,
in which the emphasis is placed exclusively on the central question of the
decision.
Among all these hypotheses there is a point that has not been explained:
the question of why the poor classes rejected innovation. Economic reasons,
and the idea that the renewal of technology develops new ways to control
and exploit people, are not enough to explain their resistance. The refer-
ences to the existence of a tradition hostile to innovation appear quietly,
like a sort of element that enforced social conflict and conditioned and
slowed down the diffusion of technology—it is an external variable, which

is not well defined with respect to the mechanism that involved different
economic interests of social groups immersed in different logics of cost and
benefit.
Marc Bloch himself pointed out that peasants “enjoyed their freedom to
obstinately keep the old individual grindstones” at a time when “society
confused what was fair with what was already known,” and that “‘stubborn’
peasants themselves sought refuge in their routine” and in “a dark fascination
with tradition.”20 This approach considers the peasantry as a passive actor,
which counts because of its numbers, and which resisted technology and
increasing domestication because these two elements depended upon eco-
nomic pressure and a growing exploitation. In one of his last works in 1941,
Bloch questioned the adequacy of this explanation and pointed out the
need to study the relationship between the collective psychology and the
history of technology.21
Anthropology and sociology have focused on tradition from another
perspective: “tradition is not only a symbol of continuity, but also defines
the legitimate limits of creativity and innovation, and it is the best criterion
of their legitimacy.”22 It seems to me that many of the studies by Kuhn on
the causes and rhythms of scientific revolutions are also full of suggestions
regarding the problem of technical innovation: the resistance to breaking
the paradigms of normal techniques, as he has pointed out, is not only an
important cause of the persistence of the technique, but also the field that
defines and allows evolution within the paradigm.23 Techniques improve
because they do not change, insofar as the paradigm introduces a secure
field within which to improve. Through small improvements and minor
changes, the cumulative character of the process of invention facilitates
that “the improvement of a process contributes to technological progress
even more than in its initial development.”24 “Progress seems clear and
firm only in the period of ‘normal’ science ... Once the success of a com-
mon paradigm has freed the scientific community from the constant need
to re-examine its fundamental principles, the members of the community
can focus on more subtle and esoteric phenomena that the paradigm
highlights.”25
Therefore, scientific revolutions entail a reassuring break in accumulation,
since they allow the development of cumulative progress within the scope
of the paradigm of normal science. The break fosters processes of non-
cumulative development whose effects, because of their incompatibility
with the dominant paradigm, are very subversive of the need for order that
segments of society consider essential to the definition of a good society, of
a moral economy.
The rights and traditional customs, and the consensus as to what was
legitimate and what was illegitimate, which are visible, for instance, in the
popular uprisings described by E. P. Thompson, “rested upon a traditional
108 Giovanni Levi
point of view on rules, social obligations and the role of each social group,
which, all together, were to comprise what might be called the moral
economy of the poor.”26
These paragraphs introduce a difficult story whose study has usually been
avoided by specialists: why a technical innovation that was inexpensive
and therefore could be introduced by peasants without making large invest-
ments, which had been known since the late sixteenth century, and whose
advantages and disadvantages for peasants and landlords were reciprocal,
was not diffused for many years, and why, when it was diffused, it spread in
avalanches. I am referring to corn, more specifically the introduction of maize
in Piedmont. As will be shown, psychological elements and the environment
played essential roles in the process.
Early seventeenth-century agricultural contracts seemed to point to a certain

hostility, more on the part of landlords than on that of peasants, to the
diffusion of maize. The limits on the quantity of land cultivated with the
new plant and the prohibition against sowing it—peasants could only plant
it every two years—indicate that there was a degree of willingness to sow
maize. However, the sowing of maize, which was driven by dietary neces-
sities, clashed with the interests of landlords, who considered it a product
of low commercial value that could remove land and labor from the culti-
vation of cereals in greater demand.
The success of the new plant was very limited. Maize erupted quickly and
successfully only in those areas in which the crop of sorghum was extended.
Maize was considered a better type of meliga (corn). During the early decades
of the seventeenth century—before sorghum disappeared and maize became
the only meliga grown in large quantities—the terms used to distinguish
them were red meliga and black meliga, or country meliga and Sicilian meliga,
respectively.
Maize was initially grown in the humid areas of Casalese, Vercelli and
Novara, which were little adapted to the production of wheat and rye. This
diffusion took place without peasant resistance, since its growth did not
entail changes in practices of hoeing and weeding linked to crop rotation or
in the sides of the fields.
There was, nonetheless, a more important reason why peasants favored the
expansion of maize: when new plants were sown, they could be exempted
from the payment of tithe (decima). In fact, the areas in which maize mostly
extended were those where the tithe in kind had been resisted, even after
the large reconfiguration and reification of landownership followed by the
long grève des dîmes (tithes strike) of the last third of the sixteenth century.
I will give two examples. The former is an example of the early introduction
of maize in the area owned by the Abbey of San Benigno. The latter is a
case developed in the area of Novara, which became part of the kingdom of
Savoy in 1618, and whose noble and ecclesiastical proprieties retained many
feudal features after that year.
On 12 May 1609 the Abbey of San Benigno, located in the lower
Canavese, and the members of the community of Montanaro signed an
agreement. According to the agreement, the peasants were exempt from
the bean tithe (decima delle fave), and, if the male head of the family died,
from the inheritance fines (laudemi di successione). In return, the abbot
obtained permission to use common properties to pasture sheep and
obliged the peasants to use the abbey mill to grind the grain. Furthermore,
the agreement recorded that the Sicilian meliga would be subject to
the tithe—one sack per 20 sacks—although it was “a very insignificant
amount, and it should be ordered to reintroduce the planting of the
above-mentioned meliga, which started being cultivated on 3 August
1593” (“cosa minima et che novamente sia introdotto l’uso di seminar
detta melica come appare per atti cominciati per comandamento fatto alli
tre d’agosto dell’anno 1593”). Therefore, the abbey kept an eye on the dif-
fusion of this new product, which the peasants cultivated because it was
exempt from the tithe.27
The conflict between Marquis Della Porta, who enjoyed the usufruct
of one-half of the tithe, and the peasants from Suno confirms this idea,
although the conclusions that can be reached from this other case are rather
different. After a long conflict that started with the refusal to pay the tithe
on all products in 1567, 28 the peasants’ demands gradually turned toward
the exemption of maize, which had expanded quickly. After 100 years of
conflict and actual exemption, the verdict of June 1676, favored the peas-
ants, who nevertheless had to accept the sharecroppers of the marquis in
their land when maize had already become the main crop in the area.
But maize was not so important before 1630. The areas that consisted
of small proprieties and those that produced grain and wine offered
much resistance. In Asti and Cuneo only one community declared hav-
ing collected maize for the two-percent tax in 1624. Moreover, in Mazzé
in the Canavese, which was a village hit hard by pellagra in the eight-
eenth century, only six out of 160 peasants declared having cultivated
white meliga and in very small quantities—from an eighth of a sack that
Antonio di Biagio Monte declared to a half sack declared by Matteo di
Filippo. Bertaldo himself refers to meliga as a gardening curiosity that
spread, above all, in the Canavese. He points out in his Regole della sanità et
natura de’ cibi (Rules of Health and Nature of Food) that it had been recently
planted.29
A century and a half later meliga had spread to the extent that it eventu-
ally represented a quarter of the production of the most important cereals,
which was equivalent to one-half of all cereals by weight, although with
important differences between provinces (see Table 6.1).
110
Table 6.1 Distribution of production of main cereals in four provinces of Piedmont and in the region, 1760–69 and 1780–89 (percent)
Turin Cuneo Ivrea Vercelli Total
1760–69 1780–89 1760–69 1780–89 1760–69 1780–89 1760–69 1780–89 1760–69 1780–89
Wheat 49.2 51.6 49.8 45.0 18.7 20.8 28.7 24.5 49.5 48.2
Barbariato 8.0 5.6 6.8 7.4 0.8 0.7 0.5 0.4 6.0 4.8
Rye 16.7 14.2 36.6 32.6 32.7 27.8 22.5 20.6 17.3 15.2
Meliga 26.1 28.6 6.8 15.0 47.8 50.7 33.4 35.4 21.7 25.4
Rice – – – – – – 14.9 19.1 5.5 6.4
Sources: Archivio di Stato, Turin, sezione I, Materie economiche, Annona, mazzo I di sec. add., fol. 627, Archivio di Stato, Turin, sezione II, art. 535, par. 2.
The ability of maize to feed large numbers of people did not extend to
those areas in which the two aforementioned elements—substitution of
sorghum and exemption from the tithe—were not present. I do not think
that a positive attitude toward maize among owners and a negative atti-
tude among peasants and tenants can be distinguished in the first stage of
maize expansion. For diverse reasons, both felt that a deep change in the
traditional mode of production might be a threat. The need to hoe instead
of plow for weeding, the lower quality of the diet based upon maize and its
shorter preservation time, and consequently harder marketability, made the
new product unattractive. The relationship between owners and tenants was
based upon an uneasy balance, in which conflict was latent and continu-
ously on the point of exploding, prevented any group from making any
movement regarding maize.
We might compare the expansion of maize to the introduction of rye. Rye,
which was unknown in Roman agriculture, expanded in Western Europe
with the great invasions. It was probably known earlier and did not represent
an attack against the social system because it was produced with the same
techniques as those used to produce wheat and barley, but in this case the
period of diffusion was also very long. As Bloch pointed out ironically, “its
expansion took place quickly, over some centuries.”30
But the information regarding the peasantry and maize from the Piedmont
region is obviously richer than the information regarding the Merovingian
peasantry and rye. In its collective psychology this was a society that was
permanently searching for stability, and for a system of reassurance against
the negative accidents of history and the uncertainty of a structure of continu-
ously threatening natural and social forces. The slow introduction of a tech-
nical innovation was not a progressive diffusion, as it might appear in the case
of rye. It was rather a discontinuous process, which sped up when the social
and natural environment was devastated by war, plagues and natural disasters.
In fact, maize cultivation burst into the region over two phases in which
the society seemed to lose its system of protection and defense. It did not
spread when demographic pressure demanded more intense production for
subsistence, but, rather, after an unexpected fall in population unbalanced
the system.
The first wave of the expansion of maize happened after the war of the
1620s and the plague of 1630:
the books located in the Cathedral of Novara register and estimate all grains
from the lands of the territory in which the Holy Chapter of the Cathedral
collects the tithe on all grains. These books do not register grains of maize
[meligone] in 1630 and earlier. From 1631 until now maize has been regis-
tered and estimated, and its tithe has been paid as for the other grains.31
112 Giovanni Levi
The second wave took place after the crisis of the 1690s, when maize
expanded throughout the plain of Turin and Cuneo. In 1691 the popu-
lation of Racconigi “was eating provender of low quality such as pollante,
soup of maize [melliche], millet, formentino and others,”32 or, as the priest of
the Church of San Giovanni Battista pointed out, “many fall sick and die
because of the malnutrition they suffer from eating maize [melliche], formen-
tino, millet and other meals of little substance.”33 The meligone were intro-
duced after the destruction of lands in the spring of 1691, “which is to say
the growth of melliche is a novelty that did not happen in previous years.”34
In 1694 the priest of Costigliole di Saluzzo also declared, “I know that certain
families, which in the past were famous and enjoyed some comforts, today
can feed only on bread of melicha and drink water, which shocks even the
stones.”35 I could give many more examples of the rapid speed of the diffusion
of maize at the end of the seventeenth century. This diffusion took place after
a long resistance and despite the negative attitude to maize, which was said to
have “little substance” and to be a sign of the degradation of peasant food.
The opinion of Marc Bloch that a society that suffers a deep crisis is a society
more adapted to change, more able to become adapted to new productive
conditions, can be confirmed: “I have the feeling that life conditions that
were terribly tragic were also more favorable to innovations.”36 A stormy
crisis tends to weaken a scientific paradigm and the usual procedures, and it
opens the way to innovation. More than the conflict between social groups,
what produced change was an external, environmental crisis.
Social conflict develops, if anything, in the successive stage of rise and
stabilization of a new paradigm. During the seventeenth century the agrarian
contracts changed into a structure based upon a new balance, in which maize
became a powerful means of transformation of the distribution of resources
between tenants and owners. On the one hand, the increased production of
maize was accompanied by an increase in the food at tenants’ disposal, but
also a need to hoe more. On the other, owners got greater quantities of fine
grain—wheat, rye and rice—which they diverted toward the market, leaving
two-thirds of lesser grain to tenants but removing the obligation to supply
them with a part in the form of seed.
Maize, which finally broke the psychological dyke that hindered its
diffusion, was an essential cause of the deterioration of the peasant diet
and increasing hardship. After 1720 a change in agrarian contracts paved
the way to another phase in the diffusion of maize: the new and more
oppressive form of sharecropping (schiavenza) contract replaced the con-
tracts of sharecropping settlements (colonia parziaria), and the payments
in kind that sustained peasants became made up mostly of maize, since
wheat and rye disappeared and were diverted exclusively to the owner for
commercial sale. It was for these reasons that pellagra spread at the end
of the eighteenth century.
It was the whole system of protection of the social balance, rather than
the peasant routine, that hindered technical innovation. After the system
was broken because of an unexpected and deep upheaval in the environ-
ment, it raised new problems of initiative and stabilization for the opposing
social groups in the countryside and in the context of continuous rupture
and reconfiguration of the paradigm of the normal technique.
Yet, for more than a century, pellagra continued to ravage peasant commu-
nities. At the same time, it also continued to produce conflict and debate in
medical circles, thereby preserving, as we have seen, the mystery of its causes.
Notes
This chapter has been translated and revised as part of the Junta of Andalusia’s
“Proyecto de Excelencia” P09-HUM 5330, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia,
guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. I have dealt with this topic in Giovanni Levi, “L’energia disponibile,” in Ruggiero
Romano, ed., Storia dell’economia italiana, vol. II: L’età moderna verso la crisi (Turin:
Einaudi, 1991), 141–68.
2. Gaetano Strambio, De pellagra observationes, annus primus (Milan: G. B. Bianchi,
1786); Gaetano Strambio, Annus secundus (Milan: G. B. Bianchi, 1787); Gaetano
Strambio, Annus tertius (Milan: G. B. Bianchi, 1789).
3. Gaetano Strambio, Dissertazioni di Gaetano Strambio sulla pellagra I–II (Milan:
Giovanni Batista Bianchi, 1794).
4. “Una malattia cronica di tutto il corpo, i cui sintomi più frequenti sono la des-
quamazione in primavera delle parti esposte al sole, il delirio, la vertigine, il
tetano, l’opistotono (il corpo teso all’indietro), l’emprostotono (il corpo teso in
avanti e irrigidito), i dolori della spina e della estremità, la debolezza degli arti
inferiori, la bulimia”: Strambio, Dissertazioni, vol. I, 9–20.
5. “Trovandosi la pellagra abbondare in quei distretti, nei quali i contadini sono più
miseri, e dilatandosi essa in proporzione dell’accresciuta miseria”: ibid., vol. I, 17.
6. “Se non ho trovato intiera la verità, ho superato molte dubiezze e riconosciute
molte falsità ... Se non son giunto ad assegnare la vera cagion prossima e la cura,
ho potuto però conoscere il male meglio degli altri”: ibid., vol. I, 46.
7. Francesco L. Fanzago, Sulla pellagra: Memorie (Padua: Nella Tipografia del
Seminario, 1815).
8. On Jacopo Odoardi’s veterinary activity, see Paolo Prato, “L’agricoltura bellunese
nella seconda metà del ’700 e l’accademia degli Anistamici,” Critica storica
15 (1978), 94, and Alba Veggetti and Bruno Cozzi, La scuola di medicina veterinaria
dell’Università di Padova (Trieste: Lint Editoriale, 1996), 14–16. Odoardi translated
the works of Claude Bourgelat under the title Opere veterinarie del sig. Bourgelat
(Belluno: Simone Tissi, 1776–79).
9. Jacopo Odoardi, D’una spezie particolare di scorbuto: Dissertazione (Venice: Simone
Occhi, 1776).
10. “Nato a poco a poco nelle prime vie cotesto lentore scorbutico dallo alimentarsi di
pressochè sola polenta di grano turco pretto e senza sale ... di pane parimenti di
114 Giovanni Levi
grano turco ... e accumulatosi nell’ozio in cui vivono in queste lunghe invernate
i contadini, rispetto alle continue fatiche, nelle quali si adoprano nelle altre stagioni
accresciuto inoltre dal freddo della stagione e dei luoghi, e dall’abitare in stanze mal
difese dalle impressioni dell’aria esterna, o terrene selciate ed umide, non che dal
passare buona parte del giorno e della notte ... entro alle stalle”: ibid., 24–5.
11. Francesco L. Fanzago, Memorie sopra la pellagra del territorio Padovano umiliata
agl’illustrissimi signori Presidenti dello Spedale di S. Francesco di Padova (Padua:
Stamperia di Giovanni Antonio Conzatti, 1789).
12. “1. La scottatura dell’epidermie nelle parti esposte al sole 2. la somma debolezza
di tutto il corpo, maggiore però nelle gambe, che in altre parti del corpo 3. Uno
sconcerto or piccolo or grande nelle facoltà dell’anima, che si palesa in varie
guise, di cui ne sono altrettante prove le vertigini, i capogiri, la pusillanimità, lo
sbalordimento, la stupidezza, la perdita della memoria, il delirio malinconico ed
il maniaco”: ibid., 75.
13. “Per opinion conforme dei medici è malattia di data recente, giacchè non comin-
ciò a farsi vedere e conoscer in Italia se non verso il principio del secolo scaduto”:
Francesco L. Fanzago, Sulle cause della pellagra: Memoria detta all’Accademia di
Scienze, Lettere ed Arti di Padova l’anno 1807 e inserite nelle memorie dell’accademia
stessa per l’anno 1809 (Padua, 1809).
14. “Tra i villici che la gente più povera e miserabile, ed in ispecialità quelle famiglie
composte di pochi individui (che forma in campagna la maggiore miseria)”: ibid., 10.
15. “Risulta assai chiaramente, che la squallida e scoraggiante miseria dei villici, da cui
necessariamente deriva lo scarso loro e tristo alimento giornaliero è la più comune e
sensibile cagione della pellagra, e che quindi non v’è bisogno di troppo lambiccarsi
il cervello per iscoprire altre cause e molto meno di ricercarla nell’aria”: Francesco
L. Fanzago, “Ragguaglio di alcune relazioni presentate all’Uffizio di sanità di Padova
l’anno 1804 concernenti la Pellagra,” in Sulla pellagra: Memorie, 217–18.
16. “Si può benissimo scoprire un cangiamento nel cibo giornaliero dei contadini
all’epoca circa dela comparsa della pellagra, e questo da due cause dipende. La
prima dee ripetersi dall’introduzione e coltivazione del grano turco, che è ormai
divenuto il principal alimento dei coltivatori della campagna; la seconda dalla
deteriorata loro condizione economica, essendo ora più miseri e meschini di
quello fossero ne’ tempi addietro”: ibid., 224.
17. “In campagna, tranne alcune famiglie un po’ comode,la farina gialla è l’alimento
esclusivo senza unione di altri cibi nutritivi”: Fanzago, Sulle cause, 16.
18. Ibid., 21.
19. “Ne’ tempi, in cui potevansi chiamar fortunati, le rustiche famiglie possedevano
qualche porzione di terreno, e gustavano i frutti della proprietà, oppure i lavora-
tori delle terre altrui ne traevano una congrua utilità, perchè i prodotti del suolo,
cui bagnavano coi loro sudori, ridondavano solo in profitto dei proprietari e di
essi. Ora la cosa non è più così ... Pochi, pochissimi sono i contadini possessori, ed
il prodotto della terra va quasi generalmente diviso fra il proprietario, il fittajuolo
ed il lavoratore. Una terza classe di gente col solo maneggio, e colla speculazione
lucra sulle fatiche del villico, pregiudicando per lo più il proprietario e facendo
sempre la rovina del contadino. Quest’ultimo non è calcolato che qual meccanico
strumento. E’ un rastrello, un vomer, un aratro. Quanto non è migliore la con-
dizione delle bestie da lavoro! Il fittajuolo ha un maggior interesse per esse, e le fa
ben governare e nutrire, perché oltre il lavoro in esse contempla un’altra sorgente
di guadagno. Non è però maraviglia, se le stalle sono più comode e tenute più
monde dei villerecci abituri. Altro non resta al misero lavoratore che una scarsa
misurata porzione di polenta ... A dì nostri regna fra i villici maggior miseria che
ne’ tempi andati e questa ha certamente contribuito alla comparsa della malattia
e della sua propagazione ... La pellagra comparirà più facilmente in quei luoghi
in cui si fa uso comune della farina di frumentone e meno o mai nei paesi in cui
il pane di frumento è famigliare anche in campagna. Ove non si conosce il grano
d’India i contadini, come è ben noto, sono assai più vegeti e robusti”: ibid., 23–5.
20. Marc Bloch, “Avvento e conquiste del mulino ad acqua,” in Lavoro e tecnica del
Medioevo (Bari: Laterza, 1969), 95, 97, 100, 106.
21. Marc Bloch, “Les transformations des techniques comme problème de psych-
ologie collective,” in Mèlanges historiques (Paris: SEVPEN, 1963), 791–9.
22. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Some Observations in the Dynamics of Traditions,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 9 (1969), 451–75.
23. Thomas S. Kuhn, La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche (Turin: Einaudi, 1978).
24. John L. Enos, “A Measure of the Rate of Technological Progress in the Petroleum
Refining Industry,” Journal of Industrial Economics (1958), 180–97.
25. Kuhn, La struttura, 197.
26. Edward P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the
Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50 (1971), 76–136.
27. Archivio Ordine dei SS. Maurizio e Lazaro, Turin, Abbazia di Lucedio, mazzo 18,
12 May 1609, Strumento notariale rogato Comoto.
28. Archivio di Stato, Turin, sezione 1, Archivio famiglia della Porta, serie 1, mazzo
18–20.
29. Giovanni Ludovico Bertaldo, Regole della sanità et natura de’ cibi di Ugo Benzo senese
arrichite di varie annotazioni et di copiosi discorsi naturali e morali del signor Lodovico
Bertaldo, medico delle serenissime Altezze di Savoia (Turin, 1616 and 1620).
30. Bloch, “Les transformations,” 794.
31. “Costa dalli libri che si ritrovano nello archivio della Cattedrale di Novara, dove
restano registrate descrizioni e stime fatte i tutti li grani pendenti e prevenienti
da campi posti ne’ trritori, nei quali il Reverendissimo Capitolo de la medesima
Cattedrale ha la ragione di decimare ogni e qualsivoglia sorti di grani niuno eccet-
tuato, in quelli anni che il detto Reverendissimo Capitolo ha fatto raccogliere la
detta decima, auqndo sia dallo anno 1630 inclusive retro, non esere mai enunciato
enunciato alcun seminerio di meglione, solo dall’anno 1631 inclusive a questa
parte, si ritrova essersi dato principio a descriverlo et estimarlo, con essersi di
questo pagata di continuo l’importar della Decima in conformità degli altri grani”:
Archivio di Stato, Turin, sezione I, Archivio famiglia della Porta, serie I, mazzo 20,
note by the canon and archivist Filippo Avogrado, 14 July 1695.
32. “Andava cibandosi di vittovaglie di mala sostanza come di pollante, minestre di
melliche, miglio, formentino e altre”: Archivio di Stato, Turin, sezione Reunite,
Archivio Camerale, art. 472, mazzo R.
33. “Molti si ammalano e periscono per il malnutrimento che pigliano dalle melliche,
formentino, miglio e altre robbe di puoca sostanza con quali sono necessitati cibarsi”:
Archivio di Stato, Turin, sezione Reunite, Archivio Camerale, art. 472, mazzo R.
34. “Se ben detto raccolto delle melliche sia insolito e non si praticasse negli anni
indietro”: ibid.
35. “So di certa scenza esserci in questo luogo presentamente molte fameglie cospicue
altre volte di comodità non ordinaria e hoggi di ridotte a termine tale di pas-
cersi non d’altro che di poco pane di melicha a bever l’acqua pura, tutte cose
da far impietosire le pietre”: Archivio di Stato, Turin, sezione Reunite, Archivio
Camerale, art. 472, mazzo C/2.
36. Bloch, “Les transformations,” 796.
Part II
The Social Use of Things
7
Taste Transformed
Sugar and Spice at the Sixteenth-Century
Hispano-Burgundian Court
Bethany Aram
In what has been considered one of history’s greatest paradoxes, a taste

for spices is credited with impelling early modern Europeans around the
globe.1 This apparent contradiction, which highlights seemingly frivolous
desires that transformed the world, stems from a perspective shaped by
historiographical advances and popular traditions that have focused on
consumption in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Empire.2 By
that period, “sugar and spice / and all that’s nice” had become the essential,
accessible, mundane and commonplace ingredients of “little girls,” to cite a
famous nursery rhyme.3 Over three centuries, in the words of Sidney Mintz,
sugar had been “transformed from a luxury of kings into the kingly luxury
of commoners.”4 The same could be said for spices, which became “demysti-
fied” over the sixteenth century, as Stefan Halikowski Smith has argued with
reference to Portuguese trade.5 By examining courtly rituals, moreover, the
present chapter highlights changes in consumption practices and material
culture in response to an increased supply of spices and shifting demand
for them. Associated with princely wealth and prestige, spices acquired a
symbolic value that would be transferred to other goods.
Since the Middle Ages, the successive, cumulative efforts of Venetian,
Portuguese, Castilian, Dutch and English adventurers who risked their
lives and fortunes overseas, not to mention countless Americans, Africans
and Asians, made sugar and spice ever more abundant and less expensive
in Europe, transforming their uses and meanings. The demand for sugar
and spice has been persistently and convincingly credited with “fueling”
Iberian expansion, initially to compete with the republic of Venice and,
later, stimulating Dutch and British intromissions in Iberian enterprises that
would nourish their own incipient empires.6 Famously, the fortunes of late
medieval Venice were built upon privileged access to Islamic spice caravans
and maritime control of the Black Sea and western Mediterranean, compli-
cated by the Ottoman Turk’s territorial expansion.7 Further challenging the
Venetians, though without destroying them, Portuguese mariners, traders
and captains circumnavigated Africa to reach the Indian Ocean and attained
119
120 Bethany Aram
alternative access to the oriental spice trade after 1498. Although Christopher
Columbus had famously failed to reach eastern sources of spices by sailing
west, the crown of Castile would sponsor expeditions into the Pacific Ocean,
including the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan and Sebastián el Cano (1519–22)
to establish its own claims to the spice islands.8 Portuguese control of
the Cape route waned after 1580, when the union of the Portuguese and
Castilian crowns began to facilitate Dutch incursions.9 Unlike the Venetians
and the Iberians, however, by the mid-seventeenth century Holland’s East
Indies Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) used a larger-
scale capacity for discriminating violence to enforce profits and to establish
a more effective monopoly over the trade in certain spices (particularly
cloves, mace and nutmeg).10 According to some scholars, the company’s
success had the “Trojan Horse effect” of undermining the appeal of spices
by ensuring their relatively cheap availability.11
Without overlooking the unsavory consequences of European expansion,
this chapter will explore how and why European rulers, then merchant
elites, demanded spices in an attempt to help explain their temporary yet
essential role as a catalyst of the first globalization. Among other scholars,
Paul Freedman has drawn attention to the role of spices in Europe before
their “demystification.” In Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination,
Freedman dismisses the idea that spices were needed to preserve food or
to mask the taste and the stench of spoiled meat. Far from having such
mundane uses, he argues, spices were prized mainly as luxury commodities
from sacred and mysterious lands. After driving Portuguese and Spanish
overseas expansion, in Freedman’s account, spices simply went out of style,
with the exception of sugar, which became essential in tea, chocolate and
coffee.12 But how did such a shift in taste occur and what did it involve?
By the Dutch Golden Age, according to Harold Cook, “almost everyone seemed
to be consuming” spices, presumably after acquiring access to the spices them-
selves.13 As spices became more accessible and less mysterious, might elites of
other territories have hastened to acquire a taste for more exclusive goods?
The demand for spices not only led to the European discovery of and access
to new stimulants like chocolate and tobacco, which became more desirable
and increasingly available; it also may have fostered a scientific spirit and an
interest in materia medica that ultimately undermined the humoral principles
and ideas of health so crucial to spices’ appeal.
Studies of the British Empire and, to some extent, the Dutch Republic have
highlighted unpalatable aspects of the commercial and military expansion
that facilitated and secured European access to exotic products, including
sugar, originally considered a spice, and pepper. As early as 1986, Sidney
Mintz emphasized the dependence of rising sugar production upon the
spread of plantation slavery in Brazil and the Caribbean.14 More recently,
Julie Hochstrasser has highlighted the human costs of sumptuous displays
of wealth in the Dutch Golden Age.15 Access to spices depended upon and
Taste Transformed 121
intensified the growth of naval power, based on what K. N. Chaudhuri

has called “the principle of armed trading.”16 Whether acquired by the
Portuguese, the Dutch or the British, a taste for spices impelled the exterior-
ization and escalation of European violence. It transformed distant lands and,
as we shall see, undermined the elite demand that had originally inspired it.
Notwithstanding its ramifications, the history of spices at the sixteenth-
century Hispano-Burgundian court entails the rise and decline of different
ways of perceiving, experiencing and valuing exotic goods. The lure and
the difficulty of the subject stem from the need to connect areas that often
develop in isolation from each other: the history of European expansion
and the burgeoning field of court studies.17 Archival evidence and material
culture reveal that early sixteenth-century courtiers conspicuously displayed
and consumed spices. Initially an index of incipient “globalization” at the
early modern court, spices would provide a catalyst of the process that ultim-
ately undermined their appeal.18 If spices gave way to other luxuries in the
sixteenth century, some of the meanings and social rituals associated with
them may have been transferred to other marks of distinction. While spices
lost favor at court, their aura may have infused other goods.
This chapter seeks, first, to ascertain the place of spices in the early
sixteenth-century court of Burgundy. It then turns to the meaning that the
competition for spices acquired for Charles V and his brother-in-law, João III
of Portugal. Finally, it will consider how the increased access to and avail-
ability of spices may have undermined their privileged, exclusive status, while
scientific ventures led to experiments in transplanting and lent credibility
to new materia medica.19 Before embarking, however, it seems essential to
emphasize the breadth of the medieval concept of spices, which went beyond
cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace and pepper to include fragrant substances
such as ambergris and even dyes. Nor were spices consumed exclusively in
food. While they certainly played a prominent role in medieval banquets,
spices were also offered as “drugs” or “confections” in “anti-meals” with
wine.20 Paradoxical, perhaps, but far from frivolous. A sacred aura, supposed
medicinal properties and mysterious, exotic origins extended from spices to
their close cousins, fragrances and jewels.
Spices and conspicuous court consumption
The work of the architectural historian Krista De Jonge on the palace of

Bruges helps to situate spices in the Burgundian court. De Jonge locates
the Duke of Burgundy’s especerie between the chapel and the wardrobe21—
a symbolically rich contiguity, with spices, used as incense or perfume, nour-
ishing the spirit as well as the body. Indeed, the palace organization that
De Jonge describes is corroborated by Olivier de La Marche, who discusses
the especiers after the garde des joyaulx and before the quatre estaz qui servent
le corps et la bouche du prince and the gardelinge, noting the intimate status
122 Bethany Aram
of the officials who would convey the drageoir des épices to the sovereign as
desired. When summoned, the especier would present spice dishes to the first
chamberlain, who would select the highest-ranking noble in attendance to
present them to the prince.22 The proceedings that La Marche recorded were
also reflected in ordinances for the household of Philip “the Handsome”
in 1497. After the varlets de chamber and the garderobes, two especiers were
listed, followed by mediciens, cirurgiens, the garde de joyaux and, finally,
the petite chapelle, which attended to the archduke’s spiritual needs.23 Spices,
like music, flowed from sacred to profane and from the mass, where they
were burned as incense, to the banquet hall. The ordinances and états
journaliers or accounts of daily expenses from the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries reveal that spices retained proximity to the wardrobe,
medicines and jewels. The especerie comprised its own département and pos-
sibly still occupied its own chamber yet permeated the adjacent chambers.
Spices, like other articles, were habitually purchased from local merchants
and were paid for on the last day of each month, when the états journaliers
prove especially rich and revealing. The ordinances of 1497 prohibited the
épicier from acquiring spices for the chamber or drugs for anyone ill at any
other time without the first chamberlain’s approval. While espices de chambre
were purchased by the cup, sugar from Portugal or Valencia was acquired by
the pound—no fewer than 112 pounds for the household of Archduchess
Juana in Brussels in December 1496 and 116 pounds in Ghent during the
month of February 1499.24 Other spices, including cinnamon, pepper and
saffron, were more expensive and obtained in smaller quantities.25 Some
spices were acquired for use in the personal chambers of the ducal family—
presumably as incense or sachets—while others were purchased “enterers a
fair geler,” apparently for an artistic culinary effect.26
Coveted spices and other luxuries reached Europe from overseas. In 1496
Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the bishop of Córdoba and future architect of
the Castilian crown’s American enterprise, designed an impressive armada
to convey two brides, Juana of Castile and Margaret of Austria, to their
respective husbands and, in passing, to intimidate the French. The Hispanic
monarchy would emerge from this Atlantic foray. Ferdinand and Isabella’s
diplomatic attempt to isolate the Valois backfired, nevertheless, when a
series of dynastic accidents made Juana, married to a vassal of Louis XII,
their heiress. With Aragon and France on the brink of war, Philip “the
Handsome” disregarded his in-laws’ preference (and Fonseca’s plans) for a
sea voyage to Castile and Aragon, where he and Juana would be sworn in
as their successors. Instead, they traveled through France.
An account of the voyage attributed to Philip’s gentleman Antoine
de Lalaing first mentions “vin et espices” bestowed upon Philip in Paris
when returning to his lodgings after mass at the Sainte-Chapelle. Rather
than offering standard hippocras, or spiced wine made by the espiciers, the
representatives of Paris offered the Duke of Burgundy wine to complement
and enhance the effects of spice-based confections. The spice issue heated
up when the Burgundian and French courts met at Blois. Personally guided
by Fonseca, Juana refused to perform any gesture of homage to Louis XII
or his queen, Anne of Brittany. Rather than risk humiliation or subordin-
ation, on certain occasions the archduchess remained in her apartments at
Blois, “une petite mal disposé.” To demonstrate support, noblewomen led
by the Duchesses of Vendome and Nevers took the heiress to the throne of
Castile “les espices dedens les dragoires.”27 While spices were also presented
to Archduke Philip in his apartments, according to a text recently attributed
to Juana’s dame d’honneur Alienor de Poitiers, “ce ne fut pas en celle maniere
ni estat que l’on fait à la archiduchesse.”28 According to this account, spices
enabled Juana of Castile to demand and to receive recognition of a rank
superior to that of her husband.
The ceremonial distribution of spices in receptions, after dancing or as part
of court entertainments, clearly marked social hierarchies, with superiors
receiving the exotic products before their inferiors. Juana sampled spices separ-
ately rather than accepting them after her husband or the Queen of France.
Instead of isolating the archduchess, timely “indispositions” enabled her to
garner spices and homage in her own right. Paradoxically, by withdrawing
from the flurry of court activity, she obtained visitors, attention and “pots
d’or plains de toutes sortes de confitures.”29 Conveying and serving these
delicacies to the heiress, the Duchesses of Bourbon, Vendome and Nevers
could, moreover, camouflage their defiance of the King of France and support
for the future Queen of Castile as Christian charity and hospitality.30 Spices,
like jewels, were believed to have medicinal properties. Certainly, an ailing
guest should not be deprived of medicine. The historian Magdalena Sánchez
has shown that Juana’s descendants would also use health complaints in
order to demand visits and gifts, including jewels. The heiress to her parents’
kingdoms may have inaugurated or simply perpetuated a tradition.31
Once the archdukes reached Castile, its leading nobles competed with
the French aristocracy that had preceded them in Philip’s acquaintance
and affections. They also competed among themselves to offer the most
sensational spices. The constable and admiral of Castile, Don Bernardino de
Velasco and Don Fadrique Enríquez, outdid themselves in attempts to outdo
each other. The account of the 1501–02 voyage published by Joseph Chmel
notes that the constable of Castile received the archduke in his Burgos home
with his head uncovered and a butler’s cloth over his shoulder, presenting
Philip no fewer than 24 or 30 plates of different spices, all of them covered
with beautiful cloths. The constable proceeded ceremoniously to taste any
drug or comfit that the prince desired and likewise insisted upon sampling
the archduke’s wine before he drank. Other noblemen partook of the spices
and wine following Philip in order of their rank, before the archduchess and
her ladies were served in the same way.32 When Philip returned to the Casa
del Cordón after a hunting excursion on 16 February 1502, the constable
124 Bethany Aram
reportedly offered him 20 or more plates of spices, as he had done on the

first day and would do again after dancing, jousts, running of the bulls and
other entertainments.33 In Valladolid, the admiral of Castile also welcomed
Philip and Juana to his home with his head bared and a butler’s cloth over
his shoulder. Other gentlemen carried 20 or 24 plates of spices, sumptuously
covered, and the admiral sampled everything that the archduke wished to
consume, followed by wine, before the whole retinue approached the arch-
duchess and her ladies. The admiral, like the constable, offered Philip and
his inferiors an impressive array of spices whenever the archduke returned
from hunting, jousts or other events. On 5 March 1502, the archdukes were
taken to see six bulls running and being chased by luxuriously adorned
knights on horseback from the marketplace of Valladolid, strewn with
tapestries. After the event, Philip and Juana were brought the “bancquet
d’espesseries,” as the people pressed toward them, desperate to glimpse the
foreigner who would become their king. The exotic archduke then tossed
certain confections into the crowd, which went wild and thereby delighted
Philip more than the bulls.34 Only the Duke of Burgundy could commit such
an audacious transgression as hurling coveted luxuries to the commoners.
The marketplace of Valladolid would be one of many places where spices
would become increasingly available to a variety of social groups during
the sixteenth century and no longer exclusively—or even mainly—a royal
monopoly. The spice ceremonies, emphasizing hierarchical access to ex-
clusive commodities, help illustrate how a demand for exotic consumables
may have encouraged European expansion. Seeking more direct commercial
ties to distant lands, royals and aristocrats competed to obtain and to present
exotic goods.
In such select circles, spices would encompass and then be overshadowed
by other substances with far-away origins affording new sensorial experi-
ences. The circulation of new substances discussed in later chapters of this
volume, like cacao, would eventually make delicacies such as sugar, ginger
and nutmeg accessible beyond the most exclusive elite encounters. As spices
became more available and abundant, social demand and rituals would
continue to redefine and to refine such categories as foods, beverages, acces-
sories, medicines, spices and drugs.
After the early sixteenth century, courtly spice ceremonies are rarely if
ever recorded and seem to have disappeared or to have been changed. At
the same time, sugar gained prominence. Among other occasions, the wed-
ding of Alexander Farnese and Mary of Portugal in 1565 reflected sugar’s
growing prestige and abundance. The flourishing commercial center of
Antwerp presented the bride and groom with a banquet table full of spices
and products “from the whole world” with the dishes, torches and even a
mini-replica of the armada that had conveyed the bride from Lisbon—over
3,000 pieces all fashioned in sugar.35 This use of exotic goods from distant
lands honored and displayed Portugal’s political and commercial prestige.
Admiring the figures, the wedding guests strolled around the banquet table
and subsequently received sugar sculptures as mementos of the occasion.36
Spice ships: their ostentation and transformation
Like the consumption of spices, the vessels used for them evolved. Valuable
receptacles may have found other functions when the ostentatious display
and conspicuous consumption of spices became distanced from princely
prestige. In medieval times, a centerpiece and status symbol on the medieval
banquet table, the nef, não, navío, barca or naveta, normally made of silver
or gold, displayed spices in proximity to the sovereign. While vessels with
the same names served to burn incense at mass, the ships destined for the
medieval banquet table more explicitly alluded to overseas expansion and
displayed its fruits. Olivier de La Marche described a nef belonging to Philip
“the Good” so large that it could obstruct the ambassadors’ view of the duke
at meals. At the same time, according to La Marche, banquets for the order
of the Toison d’Or required 30 ships, each named for a specific region.37
They were conspicuously displayed in spice vessels, often of gold and silver,
which held condiments and served as centerpieces during banquets.38
Spice ships most obviously alluded to their owners’ overseas ties, ventures
and commitments. Some 31 of these vessels, along with eight especieros
or combination salero especieros, appear in the collection of inventories of
Margaret of Austria, Juana of Castile, Charles V, Isabel of Portugal, Mary of
Hungary and Catherine of Austria dating from 1493 through 1571, recently
published in three volumes by Fernando Checa Cremades. The elaborate
ships could weigh up to 100 marcs and often bore heraldic, symbolic adorn-
ments, typically resting upon a sumptuous “foot” or “rock” of gold or silver.
They often included saints, castles and/or mythological creatures alongside
coats of arms and chivalric devices, and could also display ladies and lions.
One spectacular piece, for example, which had belonged to Juana I, featured
her patron saint, Saint John the Baptist, on the prow, engravings of her first
initial and that of her husband, a castle with a dragon, a lion (the symbol of
Flanders as well as Leon) offering its paw to a golden lady, and other lions
holding weathervanes bearing the arms of Castile and Flanders, apparently
alluding to the vicissitudes of dynastic succession.39 The arms and motifs on
other ships indicate that they originated as gifts from the city of Ghent in
the previous example, the town of Zierikzee in the case of a “nef d’argent”
owned by Charles V, or even the archbishop of Lisbon or the bishop of
Coimbra, who gave or sent golden “saleros-especieros” bearing their arms
to Isabel of Portugal.40 Although many of these spice dishes had multiple
compartments, it is also noteworthy that salt shakers may not have been
used exclusively for salt. The Seville-based doctor and businessman Nicolás
Monardes reported having seen a “salero de ambar” in the household of a
great lord, where a jester become intoxicated after sprinkling the amber into
126 Bethany Aram
his wine.41 Whether it dispensed salt and pepper or simply served as a work
of art, the golden and ebony salt cellar that Benvenuto Cellini fashioned for
Francis I in the form of a ship bearing Neptune and Ceres in 1543—alluding
to the commerce, prosperity and abundance associated with “new Atlantic”
products—may be classified along the same lines, proclaiming economic
and political power in the “age of discovery.”42
While the most ostentatious display cases for consumable spices were
forged from gold and silver, magnificent ships were also made of jasper.
Mother-of-pearl seemed especially suited to vessels that were designed for
incense and likely to break over time. Royal inventories suggest the possi-
bility of diverse or even changing roles for these vessels. Margaret of Austria,
for example, had a wooden ship hung in the middle of her “librarie” or
“gabinete y biblioteca” in Mechelen surrounded by Turkish tapestries of
the emperor’s coronation at Bolonia or the battle of Pavia, among other
relics of her family’s overseas interests and achievements.43 The Queen of
France, Anne of Brittany, had a rich spice ship converted into a reliquary
dedicated to Saint Ursula and the 1,100 virgins who accompanied her to
martyrdom. The vessel would conceal and display relics representing exclu-
sive, privileged ties to far-away lands.44 Queens like Anne of Brittany and
Juana of Castile treasured relics of the virgin martyrs, perhaps as a way of
transcending (or sweetening) marriages to princes with designs on their terri-
tories. Presumably and plausibly, saints’ relics would continue to exude the
fragrances associated with spices and Paradise.
Specific spice ships may have been adapted to retain sacred associations
and fragrances while continuing to display an owner’s prestige. While con-
taining examples of re-converted spice ships, royal inventories rarely indicate
whether or not vessels initially intended for spices became treasured for other
purposes after mid-century. Alongside symbolic transformations, the value of
many of these ships merely in precious metals cannot be overlooked. When
taking possession in 1565 of a spice ship that had pertained to the deceased
Queen Juana, the Marquis of Denia, Don Luis de Sandoval y Rojas, may have
simply wanted the vessel for its silver.45
While heavy naves adorned banquet tables, more versatile confit dishes had
taken spices to the center of portable rituals. Both types of vessels survived
the short-lived ceremonies that featured the conspicuous consumption of
spices and “drugs.” These vessels, when preserved as works of art or recorded
in royal inventories, testify to the decline of certain fashions at court and the
introduction of others as means of distinction.
Discovery, medicine and empire
According to Stefan Halikowski Smith, Portuguese access to spices at their

origins, alongside the development of cartography and botany, “demysti-
fied” products that had long and vaguely been associated with Paradise.46
Yet spices, even while passing out of style at court, inspired competition
among empires and remained fundamental to their political economies.
Demystification in no way curtailed the imperial expansion, empirical
observation and entrepreneurial experimentation that facilitated it.
Documentation from the first half of the sixteenth century conserved at
the Archivo General de Indias indicates that the spice race intensified only
with the realization that Christopher Columbus had not reached Asia. In the
early 1520s, Castilian royal interest in Panama and the so-called “Southern
Sea” centered upon the search for the origins of spices and the possibility
of conveying the spice trade from Panama to Nombre de Dios and then to
La Coruña, where Emperor Charles V planned a “Casa de la Contratación de la
Especiería” (“House of Trade in Spices”).47 The voyage of Ferdinand Magellan
and Sebastián el Cano sponsored by Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, among others,
while deadly for the most of the crew, proved lucrative for investors when
the não Victoria transported cloves to Seville. Besides turning a profit, the
Magellan–El Cano voyage also improved Charles V’s bargaining position with
his brother-in-law twice over, João III, regarding their respective claims to the
spice islands, and paved the way to the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529), in which
the emperor, desperate for cash, sold his rights to the Moluccas to the King of
Portugal. Spices or “drugs” of eastern origins produced pleasure for consumers
but suffering for natives and Europeans who attempted to produce, collect,
obtain or transport them.48 Astute rulers, like Catherine of Austria, Queen
of Portugal, extracted profits from their privileged access to eastern spices
by exporting them to other parts of Europe.49 Spices also offered a practical
medicine for monarchs competing to outlive each other and to produce heirs
who might succeed their in-laws and rivals.
The emperor, while selling his rights to the Moluccas to his Portuguese
brother-in-law in 1529, remained determined to achieve privileged access to
the spice trade. After the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza, according to the historian
Justina Sarabia Viejo, there was “a shift in the point of departure” of the exped-
itions to the Moluccas from La Coruña on the northwestern tip of Spain to
Mexico and Peru. The Castilian crown also encouraged the smuggling of spices
from Portuguese Asia to Spanish America, where attempts to transplant them
succeeded in the case of ginger, which was exported from Mexico, Española
and Puerto Rico in significant quantities by the end of the sixteenth century.50
Imperial competition continued during the union of the Portuguese and
Castilian crowns. As late as 1584, an official in the Philippines argued that
the Portuguese had never attained an effective monopoly over the Asian
spice trade and urged King Philip II to re-route the lucrative commerce
through Panama. Restating an argument made by the Venetian ambassador
and future doge in 1573,51 the factor declared:
It would be convenient to take spices to Spain through Panama … and

prevent them from passing, as they have until now, from India to the
128 Bethany Aram
Mediterranean ports ... from which the Venetians purchase them to sell
them to the Germans, Poles and Moscovites. This would deprive the Turk
of a good portion of his rents from rights in the said ports, and out of
necessity the Germans who go to Venice would turn to Spain …52
The union of the crowns advanced rather than changed this official’s strat-
egy for controlling the spice trade.53 In another letter two months later, the
same official considered the possibility of transplanting cloves, nutmeg and
mace to the West Indies, as had been achieved with ginger, to the point that
Española produced more of it than the East Indies.54
Don Francisco de Mendoza, Count of Monterey and son of the Viceroy
of Mexico, had long and unsuccessfully held a royal contract or asiento to
transplant pepper, cloves, cinnamon and ginger to New Spain, although the
privileges originally granted him were judged excessive in 1565.55 The more
that was learned about American flora and fauna, the more it became clear
that the West Indies offered a plethora of new products,56 some of which
could be transplanted to private gardens like that of Nicolás Monardes in
Seville and even to the botanical gardens of Aranjuez and the Escorial,
which another doctor, Andrés Laguna, had urged the king to support for
his own health as well as that of his subjects.57 As long as pearls, ginger,
peppers and lapis lazuli remained rare, the king requested them sent to him
directly from the House of Trade.58 Nevertheless, by 1599, the Audiencia
(Royal Tribunal) of Española requested restrictions on the amount of ginger
that could be planted in order to maintain its price.59
The increasing availability of spices undermined their sacred and mysteri-
ous aura. It also quite probably curtailed their effectiveness as “miracle
cures” when merchants, soldiers and physicians could also experience and
experiment with them. Substances like ginger, once coveted for enhancing
sexual potency, could lose status and even reputed efficacy when widely
available. They also lost value. A 1599 report on the amount of ginger that
reached Seville from Santo Domingo referred to ginger as the “principal busi-
ness” (“grangería”) of the island, but claimed that more was being produced
on Española than was purchased in Seville, driving down the price and
threatening to ruin planters and merchants.60 Distressed by the plummeting
price of balsam in 1565, Nicolás Monardes reflected: “so much is true of the
abundance or the scarcity of things: that when they are very expensive, every-
one takes advantage of their virtues, and later, when sold for a vile price, are
not valued at all, being the same balsam.”61 A coveted, rare substance lost
value when it became more common.
One might argue that as spices became more abundant, they were grad-
ually displaced at the Hispano-Burgundian court by products impossible to
transplant or to acquire in significant quantities, such as “unicorn horns”
actually obtained from the rhinoceros, or bezoar stones extracted from the
llama’s gut. The elite expected—and physicians promised—that people
would gain miraculous health benefits by ingesting shavings from either of

these treasures with water or wine.62 Given their prophylactic effects against
poison and fevers, Nicolás Monardes even recommended that bezoar stones
or jewels with “true unicorn” be submerged in water before its consumption.63
Unicorn horn, like amber and the bezoar stone, was considered effective
against melancholy—the quintessential Habsburg ailment, which also
affected slaves, as Rebecca Earle indicates in Chapter 8 below—and sup-
posedly also served as a sexual stimulant. Upon losing three unicorn horns
in a ship that sank on the way to Brussels in 1558, Philip II expressed part-
icular sorrow that his successors, “who may have better taste than I,” would
not inherit them.64 Treasuring unicorn horns, like savoring spices, proved
a matter of taste. Meanwhile, gloves perfumed with amber or ambergris,
believed to be a kind of prophylactic that warded off plague, became all
the rage among Habsburg royalty who were required to submit their tender
hands to the potentially contaminating kisses of social inferiors.65
As foods and drugs began to evolve into distinct categories, an association
with jewels, also famed for their exotic origins and curative properties, passed
from spices to medicines. An anecdote from Pliny’s Natural History related by
Andrés Laguna and José de Acosta may provide further insights into the decline
of spices, which coincided, moreover, with the eclipse of Luso-Spanish over-
seas hegemony.66 According to Laguna, the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra had
two pearl earrings, each the value of a very rich city. At a banquet in honor
of Mark Anthony, she conspicuously dissolved one of these pearls in vinegar
and drank it, offering her husband the other pearl, which she would have dis-
solved as well, he had not dissuaded her.67 Such had been the ephemeral role
of spices. Once an exclusive mark of royalty, according to Acosta, pearls had
glutted the market, “for we have seen not only the hats and braids but even
foreign women’s boots and shoes covered with work in pearl.”68 Although
Acosta may have exaggerated, the new availability of pearls probably de-
valued them as a touchstone of royalty. The increased abundance of pearls
from Asia as well as the Americas rendered them less suitable for conspicuous,
even scandalous, elite consumption.
Paradoxically, then, the success of the quest for jewels and spices may
have ultimately decreased their value at court by making them obtainable
beyond the apex of society. Rather than simply a decline in one mode of
conspicuous consumption, a broadening of access to “oriental” luxuries led
to changing customs. On the other hand, the income that trade in spices
garnered the crown far outweighed any loss of exclusivity. Spices brought in
revenue even as they went out of style.
In 1577 a planter on Española, Rodrigo Peláez, sent some 2,500 arrobas
of ginger from Santo Domingo to Seville, alongside declarations and testi-
mony supported by the royal Audiencia, extolling his achievement and
requesting royal concessions, and particularly African slaves, to expand
his business. Thirteen years earlier, Peláez recalled, he had obtained three
130 Bethany Aram
ounces of ginger that had been transported on a slave ship from San Tomé.
Planting the ginger in a flowerbed, Peláez struggled for some eight years per-
forming “many experiments” (“muchas experiencias”) and seeking reports
from Portuguese India, before he could cultivate enough ginger to share it
with neighbors and have slaves plant it in the fields. Styling himself the
“first inventor” of this new technology in the Americas, Peláez promised
that his business, if favored, would increase royal revenues. The ginger,
he claimed, could be sold in Flanders and other “cold regions” including
England, France, Germany and Muscovy.69
Alongside the rise of empirical practices and experimentation, the
influx of autochthonous or transplanted materia medica from the Americas
undoubtedly made an impact at—and beyond—the Hispano-Burgundian
court. Spices, as low-volume, high-value commodities, appeared particularly
susceptible to contraband or simply unregulated trade.70 Notwithstanding
the privilege accorded Mendoza and the offer of Peláez, the crown refused
to establish a monopoly on spices like that which it would later attempt
for tobacco (see Chapter 12).71 Hence the revenues that American spices
produced or failed to render the crown require further study. In this way,
the fate of spices may be linked to that of other products that crossed the
Atlantic to reach Europe in ever greater quantities.
Imperial expansion transformed spices from an exotic, elite mark of dis-

tinction into an available commodity and source of revenue. Inspiring
military ventures and competition among Europeans around the globe,
spices infused the social, political and material cultures of European elites.
Princes and nobles initially represented the scope of their knowledge and the
extent of their power by conspicuously displaying and consuming spices. Yet
globalization destroyed the reign of spices at court. After the early sixteenth
century, the ceremonial display and distribution of spices receded from
the courtly cultural scene. The elaborate ships that had borne spices began
to carry other treasures. As they gained commercial potential, spices lost
symbolic capital.
What, then, does the study of spices suggest about the role of exotic goods
or new products? Elites who relished exotic and vague connections to “the
orient” laid the groundwork for what would become the sixteenth-century
Hispanic Empire. Initially, spices enabled sovereigns to enhance their sacred
aura, while improving their health and reproductive capacities, distinguish-
ing themselves from elites without access to such exotic goods. In the 1520s,
however, Portuguese and Spanish convergence on the Moluccas, where the
Dutch would eventually displace them, made spices less mysterious and
much more accessible in Europe. Spice ships and dragoires that had placed
oriental images and goods at the center of courtly events acquired other,
more exclusive, uses while continuing to project a potent oriental image.
Yet cookbooks indicate that sugar, pepper, ginger, cloves and cinnamon
remained important in the seventeenth-century royal kitchens of Spain.72

Habsburg kings might still consume, but could no longer celebrate, drugs
available to merchants, soldiers and slaves. Nor could their rituals feature
the same luxuries as those of Dutch burghers.
A taste at court for edible, visible spices waned when the exotic and elu-
sive products that had lured Columbus across the Atlantic became more
accessible. In this way, the initial appeal of products from overseas may
have depended on their scarcity. While novel and exclusive, spices served
Hispano-Burgundian elites as a symbol of distinction. This taste for spices,
moreover, impacted the governing elites’ material culture, reflecting while
shaping their aspirations and values. Such influence can be traced in ban-
quets and receptions, as well as the não’s transformation from incensory
to spice ship to reliquary or chandelier. The practices that pre-dated and
impelled European ventures abroad, while transformed by their results, did
not simply disappear. Rather than being a frivolous fashion, spices entailed
a form of symbolic capital typical of the Old Regime. They shaped an endur-
ing material culture that continues to reflect the ideas that it promoted.
Notes
The author is grateful to Krista De Jonge, Geoffrey Parker, Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
and Palgrave’s anonymous reviewer for providing advice incorporated in the revision
of this chapter. It has been researched and written as part of the Junta of Andalusia’s
“Proyecto de Excelencia” P09-HUM 5330, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia,
guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. John Keay, The Spice Route (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), xi.
2. As examples of influential works focused on Britain’s long eighteenth century,
see Gilly Lehmann, The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in
Eighteenth-Century Britain (Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 2003), James Walvin,
Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste, 1660–1800 (New York University
Press, 1997) and Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, eds, Consumers and Luxury:
Consumer Culture in Europe 1650–1850 (Manchester University Press, 1999).
3. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd edn
(Oxford University Press, 1997), 117.
Penguin, 1986), 95.
5. Stefan Halikoswki Smith, “Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and
Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380–1750,” International History Review 29:2 (2007),
237–57, and Stefan Halikoswki Smith, “‘Profits sprout like tropical plants’: A Fresh
Look at What Went Wrong with the Eurasian Spice Trade c. 1550–1800,” Journal
of Global History 3 (2008), 389–418.
6. Harold John Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the
Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 13–14. Along the
same lines, see Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Historia de los estimulantes: El paraíso, el
sentido del gusto y la razón (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1995), esp. 19–26.
7. C. H. H. Wake, “The Changing Pattern of Europe’s Pepper and Spice Imports,
ca. 1400–1700,” Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979), 361–403. For an
132 Bethany Aram
explanation that also considers Genoese and Florentine commerce, without

emphasizing Ottoman expansion, see Herman Van de Wee, “Structural Changes
in European Long-Distance Trade, and Particularly in the Re-Export Trade from
South to North, 1350–1750,” in James D. Tracy, ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires:
Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750, Studies in Comparative
Early Modern History (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 14–33, esp. 16–18.
8. Luis Adao da Fonseca, “O Tratado de Tordesilhas: Algumas reflexoes sobre o seu sig-
nificado,” in El Tratado de Tordesillas y su época (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León,
1995), vol. II, 1187. I am grateful to Pedro Cardim for recommending this source.
9. On the Portuguese Empire, see the classic studies Vitorino Magalhães Godinho,
L’économie de l’empire portugais aux XVe et XVIe siècles (Paris: SEVPEN, 1969), esp.
522, 565 and 670, and C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825
(Manchester: Carcanet, 1991).
10. Michael Pearson, “Merchants and States,” in James D. Tracy, ed., The Political
Economy of Merchant Empires (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41–116, esp.
84–6; Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 106–27.
11. N. M. Pearson, “Introduction,” in Spices in the Indian Ocean World, An Expanding
World, 11 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), xxxiii–xxxiv; Frederic C. Lane, “The
Mediterranean Spice Trade: Further Evidence of its Revival in the Sixteenth
Century,” in Pearson, ed., Spices in the Indian Ocean World, 111–20.
12. Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2008).
13. Cook, Matters of Exchange, esp. 3.
14. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, esp. 36–8.
15. Julie Berger Hochstrasser, “The Conquest of Spice and the Dutch Colonial Imaginary:
Seen and Unseen in the Visual Culture of Trade,” in Londa L. Schiebinger and
Claudia Swan, eds, Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern
World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 169–86.
16. K. N. Chaudhuri, “Reflections on the Organizing Principle of Premodern Trade,”
in Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, 421–42, esp. 439.
17. A lack of interaction between studies of the court and scholarship on European
expansion can be observed in excellent recent work including Krista De Jonge,
Bernardo J. García García and Alicia Esteban Estrígana, eds, El legado de Borgoña:
Fiesta y ceremonia cortesana en la Europa de los Austrias (Madrid: Marcial Pons
Historia, 2010); Almudena Pérez de Tudela and Annemarie Jordan, “Luxury Goods
for Royal Collectors: Exotica, Princely Gifts, and Rare Animals Exchanged between
the Iberian Courts and Central Europe in the Renaissance (1560–1612),” Jahrbuch
des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien 3 (2001), 1–127; and Stefan Halikowski-Smith,
“Portugal and the European Spice Trade, 1480–1580” (Ph.D. diss., European
University Institute, 2001).
18. On the “catalytic role” of spices from medieval to modern times, see Schivelbusch,
Historia de los estimulantes and Timothy Morton, The Poetics of Spice: Romantic
Consumerism and the Exotic (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 12–13.
19. On the rise of empiricism, see Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The
Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2006) and Paula De Vos, “The Science of Spices: Empiricism and
Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire,” Journal of World History 17:4
(December 2006), 399–427.
20. Stephen Hugh-Jones, “Coca, Beer, Cigars and Yagé: Meals and Anti-Meals in an
Amerindinian Community,” in Jordan Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy and Andrew
Sherrattt, eds, Consuming Habits: Global and Historical Perspectives on How Cultures
Define Drugs, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2007), 46–7.
21. Krista De Jonge, “Bourgondische residenties in het graafschap Vlaanderen: Rijsel,
Brugge en Gent ten tijde van Filips de Goede,” Handelingen der maatschappij voor
geschiedenis en oudheidkunde te Gent, new ser. 44 (2000), 112. I am grateful to
Professor De Jonge for offering advice and a copy of this article.
22. “Le duc a deux espiciers et deux aydes, et sont iceulx espiciers si privez du prince
qu’ilz lui baillent, sans y autres appeller, tout ce que le prince demande touchant
medecine. L’espicier apporte le drageoir du prince jusques devant sa personne,
à quelque grant feste ou estat que ce soit; le premier chambellan prent le drageoir
et baille l’assay à l’espicier, et puis baille le drageoir au plus grant de l’hostel du
duc qui là soit; et sert iceluy du drageoir le prince, et puis le rent au premier
chambellan, et le premier chambellan le rend à l’espicier.” Olivier de La Marche,
Mémoires (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1888), vol. IV, 19.
23. Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels, Audience 22bis, fols 1–14, March 1497.
24. Archives Départémentales du Nord, Lille (hereafter ADN), B 3454, no. 120576,
and B 3457, no. 120837, household expenses for Archduchess Juana, Brussels,
31 December 1496 and 28 February 1499.
25. A single pound of cinnamon for one month at 28 sous, one and a half pounds
of ginger for 18 sous, one and a half pounds of “menus espices” for 24 sous, the
same quantity of pepper for 15 sous and six ounces of saffron for 18 sous. Also in
the category of spices, even more was spent on almonds (75 sous) and on raisins
and prunes from Damascus (42 sous) in December 1496. ADN, B 3454, no. 120576,
household expenses for Archduchess Juana, Brussels, 31 December 1496.
26. ADN, B 3457, no. 120837, household expenses for Archduchess Juana, Brussels,
28 February 1499.
27. Antonine de Lalaing, “Relation du premier voyage de Philippe le Beau en
Espagne,” in Luis Prosper Gachard, ed., Collection des voyages de souverains des
Pays-Bas (Brussels: F. Hayez, 1876), vol. I, 132.
28. Ibid., 133.
29. Monique Chatenet and Pierre-Gilles Girault, eds, Fastes de cour: Les enjeux d’un
voyage princier à Blois en 1501 (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 48–9,
132–3.
30. Ibid., 138.
31. Magdalena Sánchez, “Mujeres, piedad e influencia política en la corte,” in J.
Martínez Millán and María Antonietta Visceglia, eds, La monarquía de Felipe III:
La corte, vol. III (Madrid: MAPFRE, 2008), 146–63.
32. Joseph Chmel, ed., “Reise des Erzherzogs Philipp nach Spanien 1501,” in Die
Handschriften der k.k. Hofbibliothek in Wien, im Interesse der Geschichte, besonders der
österreichische, verzeichnet und excerpirt (Vienna: Carl Gerold, 1841), vol. II, 611.
33. Ibid., 614, 619–20.
34. Ibid., 627.
35. Francesco De Marchi, “Narratione particolare delle gran feste e trionfi fatti in
Portogallo et in Fiandra nello sposalitio dell’Illustrissimo et eccellentissimo signore,
il signor Alessandro Farnese, Prencipe di Parma e Piazcenza, e la Serenissima donna
Maria di Portogallo,” in Giuseppe Bertini, ed., Le nozze di Alessandro Farnese: Feste
alle corti di Lisbona e Bruxelles (Milan: Skira Editore, 1997), 110–11.
36. Ibid., 112.
37. La Marche, Mémoires, vol. IV, 72, 88.
38. Freedman, Out of the East, 32.
134 Bethany Aram
39. Fernando Checa Cremades, ed., Los inventarios de Carlos V y la familia imperial
(Madrid: Fernando Villaverde Ediciones, 2010), esp. vol. I, 1034.
40. Ibid., vol. II, 1284–5.
41. Nicolás Monardes, Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la Historia medicinal, de las
cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven en medicina (Seville: Casa
de Alonso Escrivano, 1574), fol. 96v.
42. Stefan Halikoswki Smith, “Demystifying a Change in Taste: Spices, Space, and
Social Hierarchy in Europe, 1380–1750,” International History Review 29:2 (2007),
246.
43. Checa Cremades, ed., Los inventarios de Carlos V y la familia imperial, vol. III, 2449,
2481.
44. “Nef de sainte Ursule,” in the catalogue France 1500: Entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance
(Paris: Galeries Nationales, 2010), 105–6. Krista de Jonge kindly recommended
this example.
45. Ibid., 1019.
46. Halikowski Smith, “Demystifying a Change in Taste,” 237–57; Halikowski Smith,
“‘Profits sprout like tropical plants,’” 389–418.
47. Archivo General de Indias (henceforth AGI), Seville, Panamá 233, vol. I, fols 282
and 367v, cardinal of Tortosa, constable of Castile and admiral of Castile in the
name of King Charles, 6 September 1521, and King Charles to Pedrarias Dávila,
16 April 1524. Instructions for a new governor in 1526 likewise insisted upon the
need to foster the “commerce and trade in spices” with “the Moluccas and the
other isles of the Southern Sea.” AGI, Panamá 233, legajo 2, fol. 147, instructions
of King Charles to Pedro de los Riós, governor of Panama, 3 May 1526.
48. Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, Conquista de las Islas Malucas (Madrid, 1609),
fol. 51. On the high human and social costs of the spice trade, see Hochstrasser,
“The Conquest of Spice and the Dutch Colonial Imaginary,” esp. 174–86.
49. Isabel Maria Ribeiro Mendes, “O ‘debe’ e o ‘haver’ da casa da Rainha D. Catarina
(1525–1557),” Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português 28 (1990), 203.
50. Justina Sarabia Viejo, “Posibilidades de la especiería mexicana en la economía
mundial del siglo XVI,” in Andalucía y América en el siglo XVI (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1983), 391–5. On the export of ginger from Santo
Domingo, see AGI, Filipinas 29, N. 48, Juan Bautista Román regarding the trans-
plant of spices, 22 June 1584.
51. Lonardo Donato, “Relación de España,” 1573, in J. García Mercadal, ed., Viajes
de extranjeros por España y Portugal (Madrid: Aguilar, S.A. de Ediciones, 1952),
1238–43.
52. AGI, Filipinas 29, N. 46, Juan Bautista Román to Philip II, 10 April 1584.
53. In 1608, a resident of Madrid with experience in the Philippines, Pedro de Baeza,
recommended diverting the spice trade through Panama or Acapulco in order to
circumvent Dutch influence. Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Ms. R 14034, Memorial
of Pedro de Baeza, Madrid, 5 April 1608.
54. AGI, Filipinas 29, N. 48, Juan Bautista Román to Philip II, 22 June 1584. On the
successful transplant of spices, especially ginger, see De Vos, “The Science of
Spices,” 420–4.
55. AGI, Patronato 182, R. 16, “Consulta sobre el asiento de especias en Nueva
España,” 1565; AGI, Indiferente 738, N. 47–8 and 52, “Sobre los asientos tocantes
a la especiería”; and AGI, Indiferente 744, N. 170, consultation of the Council
of the Indies, with royal response, 27 March 1597. Nicolás Monardes claimed
that Don Francisco, son of the Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, lost the business
upon his death. Nicolás Monardes, Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la Historia
medicinal, fol. 99v.
56. J. Worth Estes, “The Reception of American Drugs in Europe, 1500–1650,” in
Simon Varey, Rafael Chabrán and Dora B.Weiner, eds, Searching for the Secrets of
Nature: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández (Stanford University Press,
2000), 111–22.
57. Andrés de Laguna, trans., Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo, Acerca de la materia
medicinal y de los venenos mortíferos (Salamanca: Mathias Gast, 1566), fol. 4.
58. AGI, Indiferente 739, N. 208, consultation with the king regarding the arrival of
the fleet from New Spain, including the king’s reponse, 16 August 1579.
59. AGI, Santo Domingo 868, legajo 4, fol. 29r–v, royal request for information about
the production of ginger and the need for its restriction, 15 February 1599.
60. Ibid., fol. 29r–v, “Información sobre la producción de gengibre en Santo
Domingo,” 15 February 1599. See also José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de
las Indias, ed. Fermín del Pino-Díaz (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas, 2008 [1590]), 122. The information, nevertheless, appears contradic-
tory. Pierre and Huguette Chaunu record irregular data on the arrival in Seville of
ginger from New Spain, Havana, Hispañola and Puerto Rico. The registers, listing
ginger as early as 1581, indicated its rise in price from 4,550 to 6,000 maravedíes
per quintal from 1581 to 1607, even reaching 8,000 maravedíes per quintal in
1627. Pierre and Hughette Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique (Paris: SEVPEN, 1955),
vol. VII, 1030–1, 1051.
61. Nicolás Monardes, Libro que trata de dos medicinas excelentissimas, contra todo
veneno: Que son la piedra bezaar e la yerva escuerzonera (Seville: Sebastián Trujillo,
1565), fols 104–5.
62. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 145. Carmen Bernand, “La pierre bezoard:
Passages opaques d’un objet merveilleux,” in Eddy Stols, Werner Thomas and
Johan Verberckmoes, eds, Naturalia, mirabilia & monstrosa en los imperios ibéricos
(siglos XV–XIX) (Leuven University Press, 2006), 213–22, and Marcia Stephenson,
“From Marvelous Antidote to the Poison of Idolatry: The Transatlantic Role
of Andean Bezoar Stones during the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth
Centuries,” Hispanic American Historical Review 90:1 (2010), 3–39.
63. Monardes, Libro que trata de dos medicinas, fol. iv.
64. Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli, Archivo Histórico, Feria, caja 7, legajo 249,
nn. 11 and 12, Philip II to the Count of Feria, 4 March 1558. I am grateful to
Geoffrey Parker and to David Lagomarsino for sharing this document and their
transcription of it.
65. Laguna, trans., Materia medicinal, fols 29v–30.
66. “Dutch and English sea power had broken the Spanish drug monopolies” by
about 1600, according to J. Worth Estes, “The Reception of American Drugs in
Europe, 1500–1650,” in Varey, Chabrán and Weiner, eds, Searching for the Secrets
of Nature, 118.
67. Laguna, trans., Materia medicinal, fols 515–16.
68. “Hay ya gran demasía donde quier. El año de 87 vi en la memoria de lo que venía
de Indias para el rey 18 marcos de perlas [peso de media libra o 230 g] y otros
tres cajones dellas, y para particulares 1274 marcos de perlas, y sin esto otras siete
talegas por pesar que en otro tiempo se tuviera por fabuloso.” Acosta, Historia
natural y moral, 116–17.
69. AGI, Santo Domingo 79, R. 3, doc. 107ª, information from Santo Domingo solicited
by Rodrigo Peláez, May–June 1577.
136 Bethany Aram
70. Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, although sometimes criticized for failing to consider
unregistered trade, noted that ginger may have been especially prone to escaping
crown control. Chaunu and Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique, vol. VIII(1), 553.
71. In this case, Portugal’s unsuccessful attempt to establish a monopoly on the spice
trade, seriously challenged in 1564 and then relaxed, may have been a crucial
precedent. The case is detailed in Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Ms. R 14034, fol.
3, Pedro de Baeza, “Memorial y discurso de las Indias Orientales y de las islas del
Maluco, y demás partes de la mar del Sur, y la orden y manera que se tenia en
el traer las especerías antiguamente a Europa, y demás partes della … ,” Madrid,
13 December 1607.
72. Spices appear frequently and abundantly in Francisco Martínez Montiño, Arte de
cocina, pasteleria, vizcocheria y conservería (Valladolid: Maxtor, 2006 [1623]).
8
Diet, Travel, and Colonialism
in the Early Modern World
Rebecca Earle
In an oft-reprinted early modern text the Spanish humanist Diego Rodríguez

de Almela offered the following thoughts on the emotional ties that bind
men to their patria, or homeland:
The love that men feel for the land where they were born or raised forms
part of their very nature ... and wise men even say that there are certain
ailments that can afflict men far from the land where they were born and
raised that can be cured only by returning to that land. This is because
their complexions suit the air of the place where they were raised and
different airs can and do make men ill; and this affects even the dead,
for they say that cadavers rest more easily in the lands where their fore-
fathers are buried than in any other.1
As a number of scholars have observed, many Spanish writers in the early

modern era made similar comments about the deep love that individuals
naturally felt for their patria.2 In contrast to earlier truths that had affirmed,
in the words of the Greek playwright Menander, “ubi bene ubi patria”
(“wherever you are happy is home”), early modern thinkers increasingly
insisted that travel away from one’s homeland was a deeply unpleasant
experience.3 The author of a late sixteenth-century general history of man-
kind thus included a chapter entitled “How all men feel deep love and
longing for their natal soil in which they were born and raised,” and many
writers, like Diego Rodríguez de Almela, further insisted that men who
absented themselves from this soil risked all manner of illness.4
This was because, as Rodríguez de Almela explained, each man’s com-
plexion was best suited to the air, water, and food of his homeland. Humoral
theory, which provided an understanding of the human body that was uni-
versally embraced in early modern Europe, offered a coherent explanation of
why this should be the case.5 Specifically, the individual complexion, which
was composed of a balance of the four humors that governed all bodies,
could undergo dramatic transformations if subjected to sudden changes.
137
138 Rebecca Earle
Each person was born with a particular “complexion,” a term which referred
equally to one’s physical appearance and one’s character, but the particu-
lar balance of humors possessed at birth was unlikely to remain constant
throughout a person’s life. Alterations in an individual’s pattern of eating,
sleeping, exercise, and digestion, in the airs and waters that surrounded them,
or in their emotional equanimity, could induce imbalances in their humors,
which could in turn provoke changes in mood, wellbeing, and character. The
complexion was thus changeable, varying both over the course of a lifetime
and in accordance with changes in lifestyle or environment.
Such transformations, however, were fraught with danger, and sudden
changes of any sort were to be avoided. “Changing your habits can be
lethal,” ran the saying.6 Only with great care should an individual alter their
basic complexion by introducing changes into their regimen, thereby acquir-
ing a “second nature.” Doctors liked to cite Hippocrates’s warning that even
healthy people could be harmed by an abrupt alteration, and that any shift,
even from a bad to a good diet, was potentially dangerous.7 Indeed, for this
reason some writers argued that it was best to ensure that one’s normal diet
was not too limited, as otherwise the slightest disturbance in the availability
of food could prove dangerous. It was better to accustom oneself slowly to a
variety of foods than to be reliant on only a handful of foodstuffs.8
Changes in environment were equally challenging to the humoral body.
Since the time of Hippocrates European writers had drawn connections
between the environment in which individuals lived and their characters,
and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the influence of climate
on the human constitution was universally acknowledged. As one Spanish
scholar put it in 1608, “people to a certain extent resemble the place where
they are born.”9 This meant that in general people were ideally suited to
their home environment. At the very least, exposure to an unfamiliar cli-
mate was likely to upset the balance of humors, thereby causing illness.
Some climates were inherently more healthy than others—damp, swampy
places were generally viewed as dangerous—but it was considered unwise
to undergo sudden alterations of environment, even from an unhealthy
to a more salubrious climate, just as it was dangerous to alter one’s diet
precipitously. More dramatically, prolonged residence in a different environ-
ment might provoke significant transformations of the overall complexion.
Writing in the early seventeenth century, the Dominican priest Gregorio
García explained that although Ethiopians were, like all men, the sons of
Noah (who had undoubtedly been white), because they now lived in the
heat of the torrid zone their skin had darkened. Lengthy exposure to a hot
climate had permanently altered their appearance.10 Overall, in the words
of the German cosmographer Henrico Martínez, a change in climate could
result in a change in “talent, vivacity, and condition.”11
Clearly, long-distance travel was likely to present the traveler with both new
climates and unfamiliar foods. As one seventeenth-century writer warned,
Diet, Travel, and Colonialism 139
such changes were challenging even to the most robust complexions. It was
particularly ill-advised for old men, who, he insisted, “shall never be able to
endure the frequent changes of diet and aire, which young men cannot bear
without prejudice to their health, except it be little and little and (as it were)
by insensible degrees.”12 Medical writers had therefore long advised that
travelers take particular care of their diets. For example, the health manual
composed by the ninth-century Baghdad-based physician Qusta ibn Luqa for
a client intending to undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca offered detailed advice
on which foods were most suitable in helping the body cope with the rigors
of travel. He stressed that keeping to a healthy diet was vital if the traveler
was to avoid illness. An appropriate diet, in turn, would protect against sick-
ness. “If he keeps to this regimen the humours of his body will not become
sharp and no fatigue or other diseases will befall him, which originate from
the intense movement during a long journey,” the doctor noted.13 Ideally, in
fact, the traveler would bring his own supply of food, precisely to ensure that
he did not further stress his already fatigued body with strange foodstuffs.
Unfamiliar foods, new environments, and disruptions to daily routine
were not however the only threat facing the early modern traveler. As
writers such as Diego Rodríguez de Almela indicated, the sadness and pain
caused by being far from one’s homeland in itself posed a serious danger to
wellbeing. Sadness had long been recognized by Galenic medicine as a signifi-
cant threat to health.14 What was new in early modern Spanish writings
was the increasing insistence that absence from one’s homeland was liable
to induce such sadness. This, together with the changes to regimen usually
provoked by leaving home, made early modern travel a dangerous experi-
ence. As the Spanish jurist Juan de Solórzano y Pereira observed, experience
provided ample evidence of the “illness, harm, and death that usually result
from leaving the climate and place where we were born and raised.” Love
of homeland, he continued, was so powerful that for many illnesses the
only cure was for the patient to return home to breathe its restorative air.15
Writers, in other words, viewed travel as dangerous both because of the
changes it imposed on an individual’s daily routine and because of the sad-
ness that was assumed to afflict anyone far from their natal soil, which was
itself liable to induce illness.16
This, of course, was precisely the era in which Spaniards, Portuguese, and
other Europeans were embarking on overseas travel on an unprecedented
scale, which took them first to Africa and then to the Americas and Asia.
The Portuguese had been exploring the west coast of Africa since the early
fifteenth century, and in 1488 Portuguese navigators rounded the Cape of
Good Hope to reach the Indian Ocean. In 1492 Columbus’s crew sailed in
a southwesterly direction hoping to reach Asia; a few years later Vasco de
Gama’s fleet reached India by sailing east. Between 1519 and 1522 the crew
of Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet of five ships circumnavigated the globe, and
for the next century European sailors and explorers ventured ever further
140 Rebecca Earle
from their homelands in pursuit of trade and conquest. It is thus a notable

feature of Europe’s early colonial expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries that it occurred in a moment in which European writers were placing
particular emphasis on the deep love that individuals naturally felt for their
natal soil. The voyages of discovery, and subsequent colonial ventures, in
other words, took place at a time when conventional wisdom affirmed
that prolonged absence from home was likely to induce almost unbearable
homesickness. Of course great things could not be expected from those
timorous souls who remained forever at home, but venturing overseas was
nonetheless recognized as an emotionally wrenching, and therefore danger-
ous, experience.17 The affective ties that bound men to their homeland were
considered so powerful that in Spain the Augustinian order abandoned its
practice of allowing prelates to designate individuals to serve as mission-
aries, and instead determined that only men who actively sought to travel
to distant parts should be sent to Asia and the New World, because even an
oath of religious obedience should not compel a man to exile himself from
his homeland.18
This chapter analyses how Europeans negotiated these challenges
during the age of discovery, using Spain’s exploration and settlement of
the Americas as a prototypical case study. Its aim is both to understand the
contradictory ideologies that underpinned European overseas expansion,
and to consider how these ideas influenced European responses to the new
peoples whom they encountered in their travels about the globe. Central to
both aims is a consideration of food.
Protecting the European body
The principal bulwark on which Spanish settlers and explorers in the New
World relied to shield themselves from travel-induced illness was diet.
Given the humoral understanding of the human body that underpinned
early modern epistemologies, this made perfect sense. The perturbations
provoked by the unfamiliar airs and waters of the Americas could best be
offset by maintaining consistency in diet, because of food’s central role in
maintaining the overall complexion, as writers such as Qusta ibn Luqa had
long advised. From the earliest days of Spanish overseas expansion in the
Americas, colonists constantly asserted that European food was an essential
defense against illness and early death. In 1493, Columbus had insisted
that his settlers would die were they not provided with “the usual foods we
eat in Spain,” and countless subsequent colonists echoed his sentiments.19
For this reason the familiar foods of the Iberian Peninsula took on a posi-
tively totemic importance in Spanish colonial writings. “To deprive an old
man or a youth of a little wine,” observed one official in sixteenth-century
Guatemala, “is to send him straight to the grave.”20 Similarly, meat was
absolutely vital. “Spanish people ... cannot survive without the sustenance
provided by meat,” insisted a Mexican viceroy in 1587.21 Wheat bread,

which of course also served as a crucial symbol of Catholic identity, was pro-
claimed as an absolute necessity, and Spanish settlers regularly denounced
New World carbohydrates such as maize or cassava as utterly unsuited to
the Spanish constitution. Settlers in Florida for example insisted that sick
people in particular “cannot under any circumstances eat the said maize,
and a number of people have died because they had no other food.”22 As
the seventeenth-century Jesuit writer Bernabé Cobo noted, these foods were
simply not “suitable for sustaining Spaniards.”23 What European settlers
needed was the familiar, healthful foods of home.
Settlers therefore went to considerable lengths to obtain these health-
giving foods. From the earliest decades of the colony the ships that traveled
to the Indies from Spain were laden with the red wine, olive oil, wheat
flour, and other foodstuffs necessary for the reproduction of the Iberian
diet, and royal orders repeatedly exhorted settlers to plant wheat and other
key crops. Indeed, only those regions in which European plants grew well
were considered suitable for Spanish colonization.24 Grants of land and
indigenous labor specifically stipulated that their holders must cultivate
European crops, and conquistadors were required to provide their troops
with appropriate European foodstuffs.25 Spanish settlers indeed planted
wheat, radishes, barley, cabbage, and a host of other Old World plants up
and down the Americas, and were equally energetic in introducing Old
World livestock such as cattle, pigs, and sheep to both the Caribbean islands
and the American mainland.
Although the actual success of these acts of trans-Atlantic transplant-
ation varied, a vigorous colonial textual tradition quickly developed that
insisted that Spanish foodstuffs flourished in the New World to a degree
little short of miraculous. Writing from Lima, the sixteenth-century settler
Sebastián Carrera promised his Spanish wife that “you need only pour out
the wheat and add water, and a whole field of grain shoots up, and from
one fanega you harvest 50.”26 (In contrast, in Spain farmers would be lucky
to harvest ten.27) Spanish success in cultivating their crops in the unfamiliar
environment of the New World was explicitly interpreted as a sign of
divine favor: clearly God looked kindly upon Spain’s colonial ambitions.28
“In what other land,” asked the sixteenth-century chronicler Gonzalo
Fernández de Oviedo:
has it ever been known or heard that in such a short space of time, and
in lands so far from our Europe, so much cattle and livestock should be
produced, and such abundance of crops as we see with our own eyes in
these Indies, brought there from across such vast oceans? This land has
received them not as a stepmother, but as a truer mother than the land
that sent them, for some of these things grow better and yield more here
than they do in Spain.29
142 Rebecca Earle
Such emphasis was placed on both the import of Old World foodstuffs and
the introduction of European agriculture in the Americas because, as Spanish
settlers constantly insisted, Iberian food played a central role in the mainten-
ance of their health, because it was suited to the Spanish constitution.
Indeed, the familiar foods of home were doubly medicinal, for in addition
to being well suited to the Spanish body they also helped remedy the sad-
ness that, as we have seen, men far from home were likely to experience. As
the chronicler Antonio de Herrera noted, settlers fell ill not only from the
“change to such a different climate” and “the local food,” but also because
they were saddened “to find themselves so far from their own lands.”30
Melancholy expatriates were thus in particular need of familiar, sustain-
ing foods. For the same reason slave traders, concerned for the health of
their valuable human property, made efforts to supply familiar food such as
plantains, rice, yams, and couscous to slaves, particularly those who were
already weakened by illness. Such measures were important as melancholy
sadness was acknowledged to be a condition to which enslaved people, not
surprisingly, were prone. It was generally believed that providing slaves with
customary foods reduced mortality both on board ship and after arrival in
the Indies, although such concerns were often curtailed by the desire to
maximize profits.31 In other words, traveling Spaniards and enslaved Africans
alike were liable to fall victim to the dangerous effects of homesickness,
and could alike benefit from restorative familiar foods. Such things were
particularly important in the New World, where Spanish and African bodies
were also subjected to unfamiliar air, water, and stars, and were therefore in
especial need of sustaining foods.
In the case of Spanish settlers, it was not simply that these foodstuffs
helped maintain individual health. Such foods helped preserve their specific-
ally Spanish complexion, despite their distance from the peninsula. Food
helped to make Spaniards Spanish in several ways. To begin with, it was of
course important in forging the affective bonds that linked a man to his
homeland. Writers rhapsodized about the love that individuals naturally felt
for the place “where their body gained the strength to take its first steps,
whose air formed their first breath, where they ate their first meals, where
they spent their childhood,” and so on.32 This is why eating familiar foods
could help to alleviate homesickness. Food’s significance to the construction
of a specifically Spanish identity however transcended this general affective
relationship between person and place. As early modern Spanish writers
insisted, diet, together with the climate and other aspects of an individual’s
lifestyle, not only explained the particular contours of the individual comp-
lexion, but also determined the ways in which Spaniards, as a group,
differed from the inhabitants of other states and kingdoms. Drawing on
standard Galenic principles, the Spanish physician Juan Huarte de San Juan,
for example, explained that men differed one from another “by reason of
the heat, the coldness, the moisture, and the drouth, of the territorie where
men inhabit, of the meats which they feed on, of the waters which they
drink, and of the aire which they breath.” He then observed that these
factors determined the ways in which Spaniards differed from Frenchmen.33
As long as they continued to consume Spanish food, in other words, colon-
ists would remain essentially Spanish.
In summary, food was understood to be a key element in maintaining
the health of colonial populations, because familiar foods best suited each
person’s constitution, because they helped counteract the threats posed by
homesickness, and also because they helped preserve the European con-
stitution intact even at considerable distance from the metropolis. Little
wonder that colonists up and down the Indies, and beyond, tried hard to
“Europeanize” the colonial landscape, to use Alfred Crosby’s term, by intro-
ducing European agriculture, and that the ships that sailed from Spain to
Havana and Veracruz were laden with red wine, olive oil, wheat flour, and
the other staples of Iberian cuisine.34 These foods were the front line in the
defense against degeneration and death among the settler class.
Indigenous bodies
Let us to turn to a related question. What effect did settlers believe travel
to have on the bodies of Amerindians? I have already suggested that
Europeans believed that enslaved Africans might suffer from the same crip-
pling homesickness that was liable to afflict Europeans, and therefore made
some effort to ensure that ailing slaves, in particular, were fed on familiar
foods. Did Europeans believe that travel had a similarly destabilizing effect
on Amerindians, and if so what might this tell us about how settlers con-
ceptualized the indigenous body?
The answer to the first question is that Spaniards believed travel to be
very detrimental to Amerindians. Abrupt movements from one climate
to another, together with changes in diet, were frequently blamed for ill-
ness among colonized Amerindians. The humanist scholar Peter Martyr
d’Anghiera, for example, noted that of the ten native interpreters taken
from the Caribbean to Spain after Columbus’s second voyage, “only three
survived; the others having succumbed to the change of climate, country,
and food.”35 The Dominican priest Reginaldo de Lizárraga likewise observed
that when Peruvian Indians from mountainous regions moved to the low-
lands they sickened, “as occurs everywhere.”36 Travel, in other words, was
just as dangerous for Amerindians as it was for Europeans. Indeed, given
Amerindians’ feeble constitution, it was more dangerous. Consequently the
Spanish crown in 1543 prohibited colonists from transporting Amerindians to
Europe, even if the Indians were traveling voluntarily. This decision was
necessary because, as the legislation explained, “the majority of those Indians
die, because these parts are different from their own kingdoms, and contrary
to their nature, and because they are of feeble complexion.”37 The factors
144 Rebecca Earle
offered to explain this mortality were thus those offered to explain ill health
in any traveler: the disruptive impact of an unfamiliar environment, with its
attendant changes in diet and air.
As the 1543 legislation indicated, Spaniards tended to view Amerindians
as “feeble.” In the words of another sixteenth-century writer, they were
“delicate and feminine and of feeble complexion.” This, he explained, was
due to their diet:
They do not have the habit of eating meat, as there was none in that land
aside from some little animals like rabbits, which were not enough for
everyone anyway, and some parrots, and as a result they ate fishes and
worms that grow in the earth, and they didn’t have any wine and for this
reason they died so young.38
This writer—a Spanish doctor—was not unusual in his interest in explain-

ing mortality among Amerindians. After 1492 the indigenous population
of the Americas suffered a precipitous decline. Scholarly estimates of the
scale of the demographic collapse vary, but there is no doubt that in many
areas it was catastrophic.39 Spaniards were troubled by this, if for no other
reason than that it reduced the size of the labor force, and they expended
much effort in accounting for it. Strikingly, writers often insisted that
mortality was due not to abuse by the Spanish, nor to the inadequacies of
the pre-conquest diet, as the doctor quoted above maintained, but rather to
the disruptive effects of the adoption of the Spanish diet. The Jesuit writer
José de Acosta summed up the current orthodoxy when he observed in the
1590s that “people attribute [the decline in the indigenous population] to
various causes, some to the fact that the Indians have been overworked, others
to the changes of food and drink that they adopted after becoming accustomed to
Spanish habits, and others to the excessive vice that they display in drink
and other abuses.”40 New foods, in other words, were just as dangerous for
indigenous bodies as they were for Europeans. If the adoption of new foods
was combined with travel the effect could be lethal.
This explanation was first offered in the 1510s to account for the deci-
mation of the indigenous population in the Caribbean. In Hispaniola, settlers
blamed the wave of epidemics that nearly exterminated the Taino people
in large part on their adoption of European dietary habits, whose impact
was augmented by the dangerous shifting between different environments
that resulted when enslaved natives left their villages to mine gold. Illness
among Amerindians was thus attributed to precisely the same forces that
were believed to be behind the ill health afflicting Spanish settlers on the
island: the consumption of unfamiliar foods alongside the impact of un-
familiar airs and waters. Colonists reported that when Amerindians came to
Spanish settlements to work they ate European food, and as a consequence
sickened and died. “Many of them die from eating unfamiliar foods because
our foods are very different from the ones they have in their own towns,”
explained one settler. In their lands Amerindians ate “fish and roots and
poisonous things of very little nourishment,” noted another colonist, whereas
when they served in Spanish settlements they ate pork and beef. “Thus they
sicken and die because of the change from one land to another, together
with the change in foods,” he affirmed.41 Likewise, the Spanish geog-
rapher and conquistador Martin Fernández de Enciso observed that certain
Caribbean Indians, whose usual diet consisted solely of fish and cassava,
“die if they are taken to other places and given meat to eat.”42 The combin-
ation of a new diet with travel to unfamiliar climates thus produced devas-
tating consequences in the indigenous population, in the view of settlers.
The Spanish doctor Juan de Cárdenas offered similar explanations as to
why the Chichimec Indians, who in their own environment were hardy
and robust, fell ill and died when incorporated into colonial society. He
attributed their mortality to various causes, first among them “the change
in food, in that they are deprived of the natural sustenance on which they
were raised, which, although it is very bad in itself, is for them healthy
and very good, as they are accustomed to it, unlike our food which harms
them.” Dreadful though the Chichimec diet was (Cárdenas explained that it
consisted largely of raw meat), it was better suited to their complexion than
was European food. “As our food is foreign and harmful to them, it does not
give them strength to resist illness,” he concluded.43
In keeping with basic humoral principles, Cárdenas also observed that
changes in their level of exercise and their unhappy emotional state follow-
ing incorporation into colonial society exacerbated their ill health. He noted
in particular the bad effects produced by “the sad rage and melancholy that
overcomes them, on finding themselves among men whom they loathe so
much.” As doctors since Galen had warned, sadness and melancholy were
liable to induce all sorts of illness. Other colonial writers agreed that re-
located Amerindians tended to sicken “as they miss the nature of the climate
in which they were born and raised, and despair at having to leave the lands
that they used to cultivate.”44 Amerindians, just like Europeans, thus fell
victim to homesickness and the potentially fatal sadness it induced.
For these reasons, moving Amerindians into the new colonial settlements
established with the aim of facilitating evangelization and the management
of indigenous labor was seen by some colonial writers as counter-productive
because the resettled Indians tended to die. From the mid-sixteenth century
Amerindians in many parts of the Americas were forcibly relocated into
new towns as part of a broader Spanish reorganization of colonial space.
While some writers supported this venture on the grounds that the re-
settled Indians would be easier to govern and evangelize, others complained
that, far from increasing Spanish control over indigenous labor, it actually
reduced the size of the labor force because Amerindians did not respond well
to being moved. Indeed, some churchmen even argued that for this reason
146 Rebecca Earle
it was a mortal sin to attempt to resettle Amerindians in different climates.45

Travel in the early modern era was thus a dangerous undertaking regardless
of whether the traveling body was European, African, or indigenous.
European understandings of how the human body operated thus influ-

enced how Europeans made sense of the experience of colonialism. Indeed,
because humoralism played such a central role in how all Europeans made
sense of their bodies, concerns about the corporeal effects of travel, and in
particular of new foods, were widely expressed not only by Spanish colon-
ists but also by many other categories of traveler. As one English writer
insisted, because of the hot climate “an European can hardly live in Aetheopia
or under the Equinoctiall line above five years.”46 Europeans living in the
hot climate of Equatorial Africa thus imported quantities of wheat flour
and wine, in order to protect their health. “If the ships which bring these
goods did not come, the white merchants would die, because they are not
accustomed to negro food,” explained a Portuguese pilot who left a short
account of the nascent sugar industry in São Tomé.47 Travel in Europe itself
posed significant dangers even to European travelers. Writers warned that
English pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela risked falling ill from
“eatynge of frutes and drynkynge of water,” and English troops campaign-
ing in northern Spain complained that the region’s cider made them ill.48
Nor were Spaniards the only ones to worry that through travel they risked
losing their very identity. “In this point let experience be consulted with;
her unpartiall sentence shall easily tell us, how few young travellers have
brought home, sound and strong, and (in a word) English bodies,” warned
the English cleric Joseph Hall in 1617.49
Moreover the perceived fragility of the European body in the age of
discovery should encourage us to reconsider the idea that European colon-
izers were clad in the invincible armor of impenetrable self-confidence.
Early modern colonialism was in many ways an anxious pursuit, not least
because the health and stability of the European body was always in doubt.
As colonists noted, the combination of unusual foods and an unfamiliar
climate claimed the lives of many settlers; “everyone from Spain is struck
with a chapetonada, which kills more than a third of the people who come
here,” observed one settler in 1570s Mexico, although this did not deter him
from urging his relatives to follow him to the New World.50 Those who did
not die risked equally disturbing transformations. “Whether because of the
climate or its air, or because of its foods, those who live [in the Americas]
become like their surroundings, and even worse: liars, swindlers, cheats, trai-
tors, ambitious, proud men who seek power by any means, no matter how
illicit,” insisted the Spanish jurist Baltasar Álamos de Barrientos at the end
of the sixteenth century.51 Colonial writers debated whether such changes
were inevitable, and many argued that the New World’s climate was no less
healthful than that of Spain, but merely by being different it constituted
a threat to the Spanish body. For Spaniards, then, the acquisition of their
overseas empire came at a high cost.
Beyond this, the belief that travel posed a serious challenge to the health of
any traveler, whether European, African, or Amerindian, points to the funda-
mental commonalities that were believed to unite all bodies. While some
historians have lately argued that early modern settlers viewed Amerindian
bodies as fundamentally different from those of Europeans, most settlers in
fact believed that Spanish and indigenous bodies operated in precisely the
same fashion, as their responses to morbidity and mortality among indigen-
ous peoples reveal.52 These commonalities, in turn, accorded a central
importance to food. Food acted as an essential defense against the myriad
threats that travel posed to the physical integrity of the human body, and
thus came to hold an importance in colonial society that far outstripped its
role in demarcating social distinctions. If we wish to understand the nature
of early modern colonial expansion, in other words, we need to attend to
the myriad meaning of eating within the culture of early modern Europe.
Notes
A preliminary version of this chapter was presented at the international workshop
“Approaching and Dividing Cultures: New Goods between the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, 1492–1824” held in December 2010 at the European University
Institute, with support from the Junta of Andalusia’s “Proyecto de Excelencia” P09-HUM
5330, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia, guerra, economía y consume en el antiguo
régimen,” and also draws on material from Rebecca Earle, ‘‘If You Eat their Food …”:
Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America,” American Historical Review 115:3
(2010), 688–713, and Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race, and the
Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
For works that were published prior to the date of the edition consulted, as in other
chapters, the original publication date has been given in square brackets after the date
of the edition consulted. For works that were composed significantly before the date
of the edition I consulted, but which were not published at that time, I have listed
the approximate date of composition after the work’s title.
1. Diego Rodríguez de Almela, Valerio de las historias escolásticas, ed. Fernan Pérez de
Guzman (Salamanca, 1587 [1462]), libro 5, título 6, 159.
2. See in particular José Antonio Maravall, Estado moderno y mentalidad social, siglos
XV a XVII, 2 vols (Madrid: Ediciones de la Revista de Occidente, 1972), vol. I,
468–76.
3. For the original Greek see Menandri Sententiae, ed. Siegfried Jäkel (Leipzig:
Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, 1964), line 735.
I am grateful to Simon Swain for this reference. For a defense of the classical view,
with appropriate citations, see Robert Burton (1621), The Anatomy of Melancholy,
ed. Holbrook Jackson (New York: Vintage, 1977), part 2, sect. 3, member 4, 173–5.
4. Juan Sánchez, Crónica y historia general del hombre (Madrid, 1598), book 1, chap.
44, 47–8. As William Vaughan noted, “that which is a man’s native style and
countries aire is best”: William Vaughan, Approved Directions for Health (London,
148 Rebecca Earle
1612), 2 (quote); and Thomas Neale, A Treatise of Direction: How to Travell Safely
and Profitably into Forraigne Countries (London, 1643), 18.
5. For a clear introduction to humoralism with a focus on Spain see Luis Grangel,
La medicina española renacentista (Universidad de Salamanca, 1980); Luis García
Ballester, La búsqueda de la salud: Sanadores y enfermos en la España medieval
(Barcelona: Península, 2001); and Carmen Peña and Fernando Girón, La preven-
ción de la enfermedad en la España bajo medieval (Universidad de Granada, 2006).
For the pan-European influence of humoralism see for example Nancy Siraisi,
Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice
(University of Chicago Press, 1990); and Lawrence Conrad, Michael Neve, Vivian
Nutton, Roy Porter, and Andrew Wear, The Western Medical Tradition, 800 BC to
AD 1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
6. “Mudar costumbre es a par de muerte”: Andrés Bernáldez, Historia de los reyes
católicos D. Fernando y Doña Isabel, 2 vols (Seville, 1870 [1500]), vol. I, chap. 43,
125; Refranes famosísimos y provechosos (Madrid: Gráficas Reunidos, 1923
[1509]), chap. 10, 8; Juan de Valdés, Diálogo de la lengua, ed. Angel Alcalá Galve
(Madrid: Biblioteca de la Universidad de Alicante, 1997 [1535]), 264; and Juan de
Cárdenas, Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura
Hispánica, 1945 [1591]), book 3, chap. 7, 202.
7. Juan Francisco Pacheco, Question médica nuevamente ventilada: Si la variedad de la
comida es dañosa para la conservación de la salud (Jaen, 1646), 15; Luis Lobera de Ávila,
Banquete de nobles caballeros compuesto (Madrid: Ediciones Castilla, 1952 [1530]),
chap. 51, 133–6; Pedro de Mercado, Diálogos de philosophia natural y moral (Granada,
1574), dialogue 4, 76v; and Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 50. See also Hippocrates, “Aphorisms,” in
Hippocrates, trans. W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998),
vol. II, 50. I am grateful to Peter Pormann for this last reference.
8. Blas Alvarez Miraval, La conservación de la salud del cuerpo y del alma (Medina del Campo,
1597), chap. 58, 233r–237v; and Pacheco, Question médica nuevamente ventilada.
9. Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza, Antigüedad y excelencias de Granada (Madrid,
1608), 146; Juan Huarte de San Juan, Examen de ingenios, or The Examination of
Mens Wits (London, 1594), 21–2; Cárdenas, Problemas y secretos, book 3, chap. 1,
174–5; and Diego Andrés Rocha, El orígen de los Indios, ed. José Alcina Franch
(Madrid: Historia 16, 1988 [1681]), 69. See also Hippocrates, “On Airs, Waters and
Places,” in The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, trans. Francis Adams (London, 1849);
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Holbrook Jackson (New York:
Vintage, 1977 [1621]), part 2, sect. 2, member 3, 61; and Clarence Glacken, Traces
on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to
the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).
10. Gregorio García, Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo, ed. Franklin Pease (Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Económica 1981 [1607]), book 2, chap. 5, 149–50. See
Mary Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 23–47 for early modern theories about the impact of cli-
mate on skin colour.
11. Henrico Martínez, Reportorio de los tiempos e historia natural desta Nueva España
(Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1991 [1606]), 275.
12. Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary Written by Fynes Moryson Gent (London, 1617), part
III, book 1, 2.
13. Qusta ibn Luqa’s Medical Regime for the Pilgrims to Mecca: The risala fi tadbir safar
al-hajj, ed. Gerrit Bos (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 27.
14. Susan Mattern, Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
15. Juan de Solórzano Pereira, Política indiana, 2 vols (Madrid, 1736 [1647]), book
2, chap. 8, sect. 42, vol. I, 88. See also Antonio de Herrera, Historia general de los
hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del mar océano, ed. Mariano Cuesta
Domingo, 4 vols (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1991 [1601]), decade 1,
book 2, chap. 10, vol. I, 324.
16. Bermúdez de Pedraza, Antigüedad y excelencias de Granada, 146; Maravall, Estado
moderno y mentalidad social, siglos XV a XVII, vol. I, 476; and James Casey, Early
Modern Spain: A Social History (London: Routledge, 1999), 194. A man’s home-
land “is always in his heart, calling out to him,” wrote Alonso Rodríguez from
New Granada to his brother, who lived near Toledo: Alonso Rodríguez to Juan
Rodríguez, Popayán, 4 February 1578, in Enrique Otte, ed., Cartas privadas de
emigrantes a Indias, 1540–1616 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1996), 55.
17. See for example Diego Pérez to Manuel Pérez, Panamá, 10 April 1573, in Otte,
ed., Cartas privadas de emigrantes a Indias, 1540–1616, 248; Peter Martyr to Juan
Bautista de Anglería, 15 May 1488, in Epistolario, ed. José López de Tori (Madrid:
Imprenta Góngora,1953), 25; Maravall, Estado moderno y mentalidad social, siglos
XV a XVII, vol. I, 459; Christoval Suarez de Figueroa, El passagero: Advertencias
utilíssimas a la vida humana (Barcelona, 1618), 1; and Christoval Pérez de Herrera,
Proverbios morales y consejos christianos muy provechosos para concierto y espejo de la
vida (Madrid, 1618), libro 1, tratado 2, 14.
18. Juan de Grijalva, Crónica de la orden de N.P.S. San Agustín en las provincias de Nueva
España en cuatro edades desde el año de 1533 hasta el de 1592 (Mexico City: n.p.,
1924 [1624]), libro i, chap. 4, 27.
19. Cristóbal Colón, “Memorial que para los Reyes Católicos dio el Almirante a don
Antonio de Torres,” 30 January 1494, in Cristóbal Colón, Los cuatro viajes del
almirante y su testamento, ed. Ignacio Anzoátegui (Madrid: Espasa, 1971), 155–68
(quote 158). For further discussion see Earle, The Body of the Conquistador.
20. Archivo General de Indias, Seville (henceforth AGI), Audiencia de Guatamala 9A,
R. 18, N. 77, fol. 1, letter of Tomás López Medel, 25 March 1551. For an introduc-
tion to the early modern Spanish diet see Rafael Chabrán, “Medieval Spain,” in
Melitta Weiss Adamson, ed., Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays
(New York: Routledge, 2002), 125–52.
21. AGI, Audiencia de México 21, N. 19, fol. 10, letter of Virrey Marqués de
Villmanrique to king, Mexico, 20 July 1587.
22. Investigation into conditions in Santa Elena, 1576, in Jeannette Thurber Connor,
ed., Colonial Records of Spanish Florida, 2 vols (Deland: Florida Historical Society,
1925), vol. I, 154 (quote), 158, 162, 164, 168, 170, 174, 176.
23. Bernabé Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, in Obras del P. Bernabé Cobo, ed. Francisco
Mateos, 2 vols (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1956 [1653]), libro 10,
chap. 1, vol. I, 375. For details of colonial responses to New World foods see Earle,
The Body of the Conquistador.
24. See for example AGI, Indiferente General, legajo 415, libro 1, fol. 36, Asiento con
Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, 12 June 1523.
25. “Ordenanzas inéditas de Fernando Cortés,” Temixtitan, 20 March 1524, in
Lucas Alamán, ed., Dissertaciones (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1969), vol. I, 270;
“Carta del contador Rodrigo de Albornoz al emperador,” 15 December 1525, in
Joaquín García Icazbalceta, ed., Colección de documentos para la historia de México:
150 Rebecca Earle
Versión actualizada (Mexico City, 1858–66), http://www.cervantesvirtual.com,

vol. I, 489–90; “Real Cédula al virrey de la Nueva España,” Valladolid, 23 August
1538, in Richard Konetzke, ed., Colección de documentos para la historia de la for-
mación social de Hispanoamérica, 1493–1810, 3 vols (Madrid: Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953), vol. I, 186; José Tudela de la Orden,
“Economía,” in José Tudela de la Orden, ed., El legado de España a América,
2 vols (Madrid: Ediciones Pegaso, 1954), vol. II, 665–76; Eugene Lyon, “Spain’s
Sixteenth-Century North American Settlement Attempts: A Neglected Aspect,”
Florida Historical Quarterly 59:3 (1981), 279; Carmelo Viñas Mey, “Datos para la
historia económica de la colonización española,” Revista nacional de economía
44 (1923), 60–1; AGI, Panamá, legajo 235, libro 6, fol. 129, Cédula to the
governor of Tierra Firme, 19 October 1537; and Justo L. del Río Moreno, “El
cerdo: Historia de un elemento esencial de la cultura castellana en la conquista
y colonización de América (siglo XVI),” Anuario de estudios americanos 53:1
(1996), 10, 17–19.
26. Sebastián Carrera to his wife, Los Reyes, 1 November 1558, in Otte, ed., Cartas pri-
vadas de emigrantes a Indias, 1540–1616, 375. A fanega is a unit of volume roughly
equivalent to 50 litres.
27. B. H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500–1850, trans.
Olive Ordish (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), 172–80, 328–33; Fernand Braudel,
Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, vol. I: The Structures of Everyday Life:
The Limits of the Possible, trans. Siân Reynolds (London: Collins, 1981), 120–4;
Carla Rahn Phillips, Ciudad Real, 1500–1750: Growth, Crisis and Readjustment in
the Spanish Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 39; David
Vassberg, Land and Society in Golden Age Castile (Cambridge University Press,
1984), 201–3; and Abel Alves, “Of Peanuts and Bread: Images of the Raw and the
Refined in the Sixteenth-Century Conquest of New Spain,” in Francisco Javier
Cevallos-Candau, Jeffrey Cole, Nina Scott, and Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz, eds,
Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 62.
28. See Earle, The Body of the Conquistador.
29. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias, ed. Juan
Pérez de Tudela Bueso, 5 vols (Madrid: Editorial Atlas, 1959 [1535–57]), book 1,
dedication, book 3, chaps 8, 11, book 16, chap. 16, book 17, chaps 3, 4, book 18,
chap. 1 (vol. I, 8 (quote), 71, 79, vol. II, 107, 115, 184).
30. Herrera, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del
mar océano, decade 1, book 2, chap. 10, vol. I, 324.
31. Alonso de Sandoval, De instauranda aethiopum salute: El mundo de la esclavitud
negra en América, ed. Angel Valtierra (Bogotá: Biblioteca de la Presidencia de
Colombia, 1956 [1627]), 107; Linda Newson and Susie Minchin, “Diets, Food
Supplies and the African Slave Trade in Early Seventeenth-Century Spanish
America,” The Americas 63:4 (2007), 533–6; David Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David
Richardson, “Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African
Contribution to Rice Cultivation in the Americas,” American Historical Review
112:5 (2007), 1345–7; and Judith Carney and Richard Rosomoff, In the Shadow
of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2009), 68–9.
32. Suarez de Figueroa, El passagero: Advertencias utilíssimas a la vida humana, 1–2
(my emphasis); and Maravall, Estado moderno y mentalidad social siglos XV a XVII,
vol. I, 478.
33. Huarte, Examen de ingenios, 21–2. Or see Levinus Lemnius, The Touchstone of
Complexions, trans. T.N. (London, 1633), book 1, 25–31.
34. Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900
(Cambridge: Canto, 1986).
35. Peter Martyr D’Anghera, De Orbe Novo: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D’Anghera,
trans. Francis Augustus MacNutt, 2 vols (New York: G. P. Putman’s Sons, 1912),
decade 1, book 2.
36. Reginaldo de Lizárraga, Descripción breve de toda la tierra del Perú, Tucumán, Río de
la Plata y Chile, ed. Toribio de Ortiguera (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,
1968 [1609]), chap. 19, 16. Or see Alonso de Ovalle, Histórica relación del Reyno
de Chile (Santiago: Instituto de Literatura Chilena, 1969 [1646]), book 3, chap. 5,
117–18.
37. Esteban Mira Caballos, Indios y mestizos americanos en la España del siglo XVI
(Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2000), 54, 62 (quote), 66. I am grateful to Caroline
Pennock for this reference.
38. Ruy Díaz de Isla, Tractado contra el mal serpentino que vulgarmente en España es
llamado bubas (Seville, 1539), 39–40.
39. Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650
(Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Massimo Livi-Bacci, Conquest: The
Destruction of the American Indios, trans. Carl Ipsen (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2008).
40. José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans. Frances López-
Morillas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002 [1590]), book 3, chap. 19,
143–4 (my emphasis).
41. “Interrogatorio Jeronimiano,” in Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, ed., Los domin-
icos y las encomiendas de indios de la isla Española (Santo Domingo: Academia
Dominicana de la Historia, 1971 [1517]), 284–5 (quote), 305, 307, 324, 343.
42. Martín Fernández de Enciso, Suma de geographía que trata de todas las partes y
provincias del mundo: En especial de las Indias (Seville, 1530), lii (quote); and
Bartolomé de las Casas, “Relaciones que hicieron algunos religiosos sobre los
excesos que había en Indias y varios memoriales,” in Luis Torres de Mendoza, ed.,
Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonización
de las posesiones españolas en América y Ocanía, 42 vols (Madrid, 1864 [1517]),
vol. VII, 47.
43. Cárdenas, Problemas y secretos, book 3, chap. 7, 202–3 (quotes). On sadness caus-
ing epidemic disease among Amerindians see also Martínez, Reportorio de los
tiempos, tratado 3, 261.
44. Rodrigo de Vivero, “Tratado ecónomico político,” in M. Ballesteros Gaibrois, ed.,
Documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vol. V: Papeles de Indias (Madrid:
Editorial Maestre, 1947 [1609]), 34. See also Juan Botero Benes, Relaciones uni-
versales, trans. Diego de Aguiar (Valladolid, 1603), part 1, book 5, 151; Lizárraga,
Descripción breve de toda la tierra del Perú, chap. 19, 16, and chap. 81, 64; and
Hernando de Santillan, “Relación del orígen, descendencia, política y gobierno
de los Incas,” in Francisco Esteve Barba, ed., Crónicas peruanas de interés indígena
(Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1968 [1563]), clause 115, 144.
45. Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, Itinerario para parochos de indios en que se tratan
las materias mas particulares, tocantes a ellos, para su buena administración (Madrid,
1688), book 2, tratado 1, sect. 10, 151. See also José de Acosta, De procuranda ind-
orum salute, trans. L. Pereña, V. Abril, C. Baciero, A. García, D. Ramos, J. Barrientos,
and F. Maseda, 2 vols (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas,
152 Rebecca Earle
1984 [1588]), book 3, chap. 18, sects 1, 3, 5, vol. I, 529, 531, 535; and Solórzano
Pereira, Política indiana, book 2, chap. 8, sect. 39, book 2, chap. 15, sect. 40 (vol. I,
88 (quote), 128).
46. Thomas Palmer, An Essay on the Means How to Make our Travailes, into Forraine
Countries, the More Profitable and Honourable (London, 1606), 46–7; Vaughan,
Approved Directions for Health, 8 (quote); Neale, A Treatise of Direction, 31–2; and
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, “Fear of Hot Climates in the Anglo-American Colonial
Experience,” William and Mary Quarterly 41:2 (1984), 213–40.
47. “Description of a voyage from Lisbon to the Island of São Thomé,” c. 1540, in
John William Blake, ed., Europeans in West Africa, 1450–1560, 2 vols (London:
Hakluyt Society, 1942), vol. I, 157.
48. Andrew Borde, The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, ed. James Hogg,
2 vols (Universität Salzburg, 1979 [1547]), chap. 32, vol. II, 88 (quote); James
Howell, Instructions for Forreine Travell (London, 1642), vol. IV, 5; and J. N. Hillgarth,
The Mirror of Spain, 1500–1700: The Formation of a Myth (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2002), 13, 16.
49. Joseph Hall, Quo Vadis? A Censure of Travell (London, 1617), 18 (my emphasis).
50. Alonso de Alcocer to Juan de Colonia, Mexico, 10 December 1577, in Otte, ed.,
Cartas privadas de emigrantes a Indias, 1540–1616, 99. Chapetonada is a colloquial
term for an illness specifically afflicting newly arrived Spaniards, or chapetones.
Or see María Díaz to Inés Díaz, Mexico, 31 March 1577, and Diego Sedeño to
Diego Gómez, Mexico, 22 November 1592, both in Otte, ed., Cartas privadas de
emigrantes a Indias, 1540–1616, 97, 121.
51. Baltasar Álamos de Barrientos, Discurso político al rey Felipe III al comienzo de su
reinado, ed. Modesto Santos (Madrid: Anthropos, 1990 [1598]), 16. See also Juan
de la Puente, Tomo primero de la conveniencia de las dos monarquías católicas, la de la
Iglesia Romana y la del Imperio Español, y defensa de la precedencia de los reyes católi-
cos de España a todos los reyes del mundo (Madrid, 1612), book 2, chap. 35, sect. 3,
book 3, chap. 3, sect. 3 (363, 21); Francisco Hernández, Antigüedades de la Nueva
España, ed. Ascensión H. de León-Portilla (Madrid: Historia 16, 1986 [1574]), book 1,
chap. 23, 97; and María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre,
Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2008), 201–2.
52. For claims that early modern Europeans viewed the indigenous body as funda-
mentally different from those of Europeans, see Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “New
Worlds, New Stars: Patriotic Astrology and the Invention of Indian and Creole
Bodies in Colonial Spanish America, 1600–1650,” American Historical Review 104:1
(1999), 33–68; and Joyce Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science
on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500–1676 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2001).
9
Asian Silk, Porcelain and Material
Culture in the Definition of Mexican
and Andalusian Elites, c. 1565–1630
José Luis Gasch-Tomás
By the end of the sixteenth century, the monarchy of Philip II had spread
beyond the Atlantic and the Americas. In 1565 Castilian troops had con-
quered the Philippine Islands. That year one of the most famous com-
mercial routes between the Atlantic world and Asia was opened. Between one
and four “Manila galleons” (galeones de Manila), or “China vessels” (naos de
China), as they were known in the Hispanic world, provided a commercial
connection between Acapulco, on the northwestern coast of the Americas,
and Manila with annual journeys across the Pacific Ocean from 1565 to
1815. In 1565 the conqueror Miguel López de Legazpi sent the galleon San
Pedro from the Philippines to Acapulco with a small cargo of cinnamon
and Chinese manufactures such as silk and porcelain. In the late 1580s,
trans-Pacific trade escalated, and huge quantities of Asian manufactured
products, mostly Chinese silk and also Chinese porcelain and Japanese
furniture, among other products, were shipped in the Manila galleons from
the Philippines to the American viceroyalty of New Spain.1 The aim of this
chapter is to gauge how Asian manufactured goods were integrated into the
material culture of elites of the Spanish Empire, and the role American elites
played in such an integration.
The Americas and other peripheral areas of the Hispanic monarchy, such
as Manila, Macao and some cities of the Indian coast, were involved in
processes of Westernization, globalization and cultural hybridization marked
by the movement and merging of peoples and things, and the adoption of
(or resistance to) ideas, languages and identities from all over the world. In
spite of the dominance of Iberian Catholic cultural elements, sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century peripheral elites of the Spanish Empire faced plurality
and diversity in daily life, not only as a discourse of power. This reality has
led Serge Gruzinski to define miscegenation as a constituent component of
the Spanish Empire, and the Americas as one of the most privileged labora-
tories of an early modern process that he defines as Iberian globalization.
He even uses the term “modernity” to describe what was happening in the
Americas and on other margins of the Spanish Empire during the sixteenth
153
154 José Luis Gasch-Tomás
and seventeenth centuries. This modernity was based upon the intellectual
production that elites considered Indian, Mestizo (of native American and
white parentage) and Creole (of European ancestry but born in the Americas),
developed in the Americas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
which was also related to, but different than, a European modernity based
on Cartesian rationalism and the scientific revolution.2
These new forms of globalization and miscegenation also emerged in
material culture. We can follow the different degrees of miscegenation across
places through the circulation, symbolic trajectory and transformation of
objects. The Americas were a great scenario of Iberian globalization in terms
of material culture. Bezoar stones, tusks, coconuts, corals, new plants and
animals, alongside European objects and artifacts, created unprecedented
expressive and aesthetic frameworks in the Americas. Of course, this was not
a happy story of global dimensions. The path of Iberian globalization was
marked by violence. Spaniards imposed Renaissance, Baroque and Christian
art and ideological frameworks upon American peoples, forms of art and
taste, and these clashed and converged with indigenous tastes and aesthetics,
creating new objects and artifacts.3
Recently, scholars of North Atlantic history are making efforts to go
beyond the Atlantic space by gauging the connections of historical processes
in the Atlantic with those in other areas.4 Following these studies, the pres-
ent chapter raises questions about the impact of Asian manufactured goods
in the Spanish Empire and the role of American elites in such an impact.
What was the significance of the Asian cultural element in this new reality
that developed in the Spanish Empire around 1600? To what extent were the
colonial Americas and American elites important in the connections between
Asia and the Spanish Empire? To what degree were Asian manufactures
such as Chinese silk and porcelain, alongside other special products such
as Japanese folding screens, accepted among Creole elites of the Americas
and, in comparison, among Castilian elites? This chapter attempts to answer
these questions in order to evaluate the diffusion of Asian goods across the
Spanish Empire as well as the importance of the Asian element in American
elites’ material culture, and more specifically that of Creole elites, in relation
to that of the elites of Castile.
Although some scholars have mentioned the re-exportation of Asian
goods to Castile from the Americas across the Atlantic,5 no author has
attempted to integrate the reception and assimilation of Asian goods by
Hispanic elites, both American and Castilian, into the same scheme from a
global perspective. By comparatively addressing the reception of Asian manu-
factured products by the more privileged inhabitants of two of the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries’ main Atlantic cities, one American—Mexico
City—and another European—Seville, this chapter is intended to shed light
on the centrality of American elites in the development of new, pioneer
cultural settings in which the Asian element was integrated and assimilated
Asian Silk, Porcelain and Material Culture 155
into the Ibero-American world. More specifically, alongside the elites of

Seville, I address the reception of Asian manufactured goods by a precise
group of Mexico City, the white and Creole notables, who dominated the city
and the viceroyalty of New Spain politically and economically, along with
the European elites sent from Iberia to the Americas by the crown.6 This
chapter will compare the reception and integration of Asian textiles and
objects into the material cultures of Mexican and Sevillian notables, arguing
that the greater assimilation of Asian goods in New Spain was partly due to
cultural reasons, which is to say that Andalusian elites, unlike those of New
Spain, had consumer preferences that did not accommodate Asian novelties.
This chapter, however, does not seek to describe a simple, mechanical
reception of Asian goods by the elites of the Spanish Empire. It proposes
that Asian goods were assimilated into Iberian-American cultural frame-
works through, among other things, their adaptation to Creole American
and Castilian tastes, which on occasion entailed the rejection of goods or
their transformation into new, hybrid products. Concepts such as cultural
exchange or transfer have recently been contested as undermining our com-
prehension of the encounter between Europe (and here we might include
America) and Asia during the early modern era.7 Likewise, in trying to
escape the use of anachronistic national approaches to understanding the
past, which may leave essential factors out of the explanation, more and
more scholars are reflecting on the need to stress the importance of the
entanglement and hybridity of agents, ideas and goods from very diverse
places in the development of historical processes.8 In the case of material
culture, the use of such an approach implies looking at the ways in which
products were transformed over time according to consumers’ taste either
in the centers of production or in the centers of consumption. In the more
particular case of Asian material culture in the early modern Iberian world,
it entails analyzing how in some cases Chinese silks and sculptures and
Japanese furniture, among other products, were altered, Christianized and
merged with other non-Asian aesthetic forms and cultural frameworks.
Objects and goods, among them Asian goods, not only circulated across
different spaces, but were transformed in different workshops of the world
(China, the Philippines, New Spain, etc.), telling a story of different stages
in the integration of objects into different tastes. In the case of the Spanish
Empire, such an integration of Asian goods was largely a matter of religion,
more specifically Catholicism, insofar as many objects and goods were
gradually transformed into other, more Christianized, products. But it was
also a matter of taste,9 and New Spanish elites’ consumer preferences and
taste, this chapter will argue, played a central role in the assimilation of
Asian textiles and objects into Hispanic and Catholic cultural frameworks.
This chapter is based on, among other sources, 286 probate (postmortem)
inventories of the elites of the two above-mentioned cities, Mexico City and
Seville—128 and 158, respectively. This material, which lists the goods and
properties owned by people at the moment of their death, provides the basic
information about the levels of reception of Asian goods in the two Hispanic
cities in the late sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Such information will be contextualized within and used to illuminate
the preferences and cultural frameworks of the elites in two different spaces
of the Spanish Empire: New Spain and Andalusia.10
The consumption, transmission and assimilation of

Asian goods into Mexican and Andalusian elites’ tastes
Mexico City and Seville were two of the biggest and most important Atlantic
cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Mexico City, which was
the capital city of the viceroyalty of New Spain, was connected to both the
Pacific and Atlantic Oceans via the ports of Acapulco and Veracruz, respect-
ively. Seville was not the capital city of Castile, but, located in southwestern
Andalusia, was the most important commercial port of Iberia, along with
Lisbon, and the only Castilian port that enjoyed a monopoly of trade with
the Americas. Each city had a population of around 100,000 people in about
1600, of which between 5 and 20 percent were wealthy elites to whom the
importation of Asian goods was mostly directed.11 One of the socio-cultural
characteristics that distinguished the two Hispanic cities was that the elite
population of Mexico City purchased Asian goods to a greater degree than
that of Seville. Furthermore, Mexican elites accessed a greater diversity of
Asian products than their Sevillian counterparts. Considering the different
types of Asian goods that were imported in Mexico and Seville reveals a
greater stock and presumably consumption and use of Asian manufactures
among Mexico’s elites than among those of Seville in the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. Based on the data from probate inventories,
there is no type of Asian product nor statistical indicator that does not indi-
cate a much higher possession of Asian goods by Mexico’s elites than their
Sevillian counterparts (see Tables 9.1 and 9.2).12
Although the differences in the relative levels of reception of Asian goods
by Mexico’s and Seville’s elites may partly be explained by the cheaper
prices of Asian goods in Mexico City than in Seville,13 economic reasons
appear to be insufficient to explain such differences. The elites of Seville
had enough purchasing power to buy whatever products they liked, even
scarce and expensive products like Asian goods, but they did not purchase
as many Asian goods as other expensive products, such as Italian textiles
and German furniture. There were also cultural reasons behind the greater
reception of Asian goods by Mexico’s elites than by those of Seville. These
differences depended upon matters of taste, consumer choice and identity.
Asian manufactured products fit better into the rising and hybrid cultural
settings of American notables than into the identity of Andalusian elites. This
is visible when we consider the differences between the elites of Mexico City
157
Table 9.1 Ownership of Asian goods in Mexico City, 1580–1630
Asian goods Inventories listing Asian Number of Asian goods Asian goods as
goods per inventory percentage of total
Number of Percentage of Mean Median Maximum

inventories inventories
Unfinished 26 20.3 2.5 2 7 23.8

textiles*
Garments 51 39.8 4.3 2 22 11.7
Adornments 24 18.8 4.6 2 21 5.1
Footwear 3 2.3 10.5 10.5 20 8.3
Bedclothes 54 42.2 5.8 2.5 32 22.4
Decorative 34 26.6 5.1 2 33 15.4
household
textiles
Other textiles 7 5.5 1.9 1 6 17.4
Tableware 31 24.2 13 8 88 27.1
(porcelain)
Household 5 3.9 1.8 1.5 3 2.1
equipment
Tables and 4 3.1 7.5 7.5 14 5.5
chairs
Writing desks 11 8.6 5 1 36 13.6
Beds 5 3.9 1 1 1 5.4
Chests and 11 8.6 1.2 1 2 1.3
boxes
Tools 4 3.1 1 1 1 0.3
Weapons 4 3.1 2.3 1 5 3
(katanas)
Horse tack 4 3.1 1.3 1 2 1.9
Jewels 13 10.2 3.8 2.5 17 10.3
Sculptures and 2 1.6 4 4 6 3.6
altarpieces
Religious 4 3.1 1.3 1 2 1.8
objects
Mirrors and 1 0.8 1 1 1 1.7
combs
Sunshades 5 3.9 1 1 1 23.5
Fans 14 10.9 3.8 1 10 90.5
Folding screens 2 1.6 1 1 1 100
Other special 9 7 1.8 1.5 3 3.2
items
TOTAL 90 70.3 11.6 2 221 11.4
Number of inventories 128

Sources: Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Contratación; Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico
City, Intestados; and Archivo de las Notarías del DF, Mexico City.
* “Unfinished textiles” include raw and pieces of manufactured fabrics. Pieces of woven textiles
have been counted by their number of pieces, because often the inventories do not refer to the
precise length of pieces of semi-elaborated textiles, but refer to them as “a piece of.”
158
Table 9.2 Ownership of Asian goods in Seville, 1580–1630
Asian goods Inventories listing Asian Number of Asian goods per Asian goods as
goods inventory percentage of total
Number of Percentage of Mean Median Maximum

inventories inventories
Unfinished 14 8.9 2 1 10 6.4

textiles*
Garments 15 9.5 2 1 4 0.5
Adornments 4 2.5 2 2 2 0.2
Footwear 0 0 0 0 0 0
Bedclothes 29 18.4 3 1 9 1.7
Decorative 28 17.7 3 2 19 2.4
household
textiles
Other textiles 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tableware 13 8.2 7 2 42 2.7
(porcelain)
Household 0 0 0 0 0 0
equipment
Tables and 3 1.9 2 2 3 0.3
chairs
Writing desks 3 1.9 1 1 1 0.2
Beds 5 3.2 1 1 1 1.1
Chests and 6 3.8 1 1 3 0.4
boxes
Tools 0 0 0 0 0 0
Weapons 3 1.9 1 1 2 1.1
(katanas)
Horse tack 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jewels 1 0.6 1 1 1 0.1
Sculptures and 0 0 0 0 0 0
altarpieces
Religious 1 0.6 1 1 1 0.4
objects
Mirrors and 0 0 0 0 0 0
combs
Sunshades 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fans 0 0 0 0 0 0
Folding screens 0 0 0 0 0 0
Other special 1 0.6 1 1 1 0.5
items
TOTAL 68 43 2.1 0 44 1.2
Number of entries indicating Asian goods: 158

Sources: Archivo Histórico Provincial, Seville, Protocolos.
* “Unfinished textiles” include raw and pieces of manufactured fabrics. Pieces of woven textiles
have been counted by their number of pieces, because often the inventories do not refer to the
precise length of pieces of semi-elaborated textiles, but refer to them as “a piece of.”
and those of Seville in the consumption of Asian goods, attending to the

way in which different types of Asian products, such as textiles, porcelains,
pieces of furniture, folding screens and fans, and other rarer and more spe-
cial items such as Christian devotional objects, were integrated into two of
the most important socio-cultural frameworks of the elites of Mexico City
and Seville: dress taste and home interiors.
The reception and use of Asian textiles clearly indicate a stronger taste
for Asian goods among the Mexican than the Sevillian elites.14 It must
be clarified, nonetheless, that the Asian textile most imported into New
Spain by the Manila galleons was Chinese silk. In fact, Chinese silk was
the leading product carried by the Manila galleons, favored over porcelain
and furniture as well as other Asian textiles, such as Indian calico, which is
scarcely mentioned in the inventories studied. The Manila galleons carried
finished textiles, such as Chinese silk shirts and stockings. However, most
Chinese silk transported across the Pacific was imported to New Spain in
the form of raw silk and fabrics.15 Raw silk and fabrics figure prominently
in the probate inventories of the Mexican elites,16 indicating that Chinese
silk was integrated into the production of luxury garments in New Spain.
Many finished textile products, from garments to bedclothes, present in the
houses of the richest people of Mexico City, were made of Chinese silk but
had been finished in New Spanish workshops by New Spanish tailors and
weavers. In fact, the inventories of Mexican tailors and weavers list, along
with their tools and textiles, pieces of Chinese silk that, according to the
notary, had been finished following Castilian techniques.17 The cultural
consequences of such a practice should not be underestimated. It facilitated
the integration of Chinese silk into the dress taste and fashions of Creole
elites in American cities such as Mexico City earlier than in Andalusian
cities such as Seville.
New Spanish notables, like other elites of the Spanish Empire, followed
the main fashions of Madrid’s court, which were characterized by tight gar-
ments and exaggerated adornments like ruffs and sleeves, and the supremacy
of black and white in both male and female dress.18 Garments such as silk
doublets, shirts (ropillas) and other specifically Spanish items such as the
so-called greguescos and valonas, which were typical long underwear from
Castile, were also found among Mexican elites. However, among the elites
of Mexico City, the classic attire of Hispanic tradition appears to have been
woven from Chinese silk, and the presence of many of these garments
manufactured with Chinese silk in the clothing of Mexico’s high society is a
constant feature.19 It marks a major difference from Seville’s elites.
The Chinese mark on Creole elites’ clothing emerged with the introduction
of new colors and new decorative motifs. In comparison with the Middle
Ages, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe was a world in black and
white, owing to the predominance of darkness not only in paintings and the
arts in general but also in clothing. Clothes were dark: black, brown and grey
were the most popular shades. Bright colors were worn only on very special
occasions and feasts.20 But the use of Chinese silk was to partially break the
predominance of darkness in the clothes of Mexico’s elites. Chinese silks were
bright and colorful, including blues, greens, reds, yellows and other strong
colors. The inventories of the Mexican elites reveal this phenomenon. The
Creole notables of Mexico eagerly accepted these bright colors, which domi-
nated Chinese silks and appear to have appealed to pre-Hispanic cultures that
were also characterized by a varied use of colors.21
The Chinese influence on these garments of the Mexican elites woven
with Chinese silk fabrics was visible, furthermore, in the presence of Asian
motifs in some of the fabrics used to finish garments. The most common
Chinese motifs embroidered in silk fabrics such as damasks and velvets were
floral motifs, representing plants of southeast Asia such as lotus flowers and
chrysanthemums.22 The use of the term “spring” (primavera) to define the
decoration of many Chinese silk garments of Mexican elites around 1600
refers to this kind of floral decoration in Mexico’s dresses.23 Scholarship has
usually located the impact of Chinese silk and taste on New Spanish elite
dress fashions in later periods, specifically the late seventeenth century
and the eighteenth century.24 However, the Mexican inventories of the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries show that such changes must be
located earlier, when Creole identity had just begun to form. As early as
the late sixteenth century, New Spanish elites had started developing dress
fashions in which European and pre-Hispanic styles and garments were also
patterned with Chinese floral and other decorations.25
Catholic priests and monks comprised a social group within the Mexican
elite that was particularly important in the reception and use of Chinese silk
in clothing. The use of tunics, chasubles and decorative textiles in churches
and for dresses used to clothe images of saints and the Virgin Mary, woven
with Chinese silks and fabrics, offers outstanding examples of the ways in
which the religious elites of Mexico adapted Asian goods to Euro-American
aesthetic forms and cultural frameworks. Some Mexican priests’ tunics,
chasubles and other vestments were embroidered and finished in Canton
and Manila,26 but others were finished in Mexican workshops, as the fre-
quent presence of non-finished Chinese silk in well-to-do Mexican houses
appears to indicate. Mexican priests and monks possessed many Chinese silk
robes, dalmáticas (long priests’ tunics with broad, open sleeves), chasubles,
stoles, manípulos (shorter stoles) and frontales or frontaleras (altar hangings).
They had a strong preference for Chinese silks, especially taffeta, damask
and velvet, which in many cases were decorated with the aforementioned
“spring” embroidery and also with Chinese prints of creatures such as birds
(paxaras).27 This use of pieces of silk such as damask, which by definition
was embroidered and printed, to finish the ceremonial vestments of priests
also points to a high degree of assimilation of Chinese forms and motifs in
Euro-American taste in an early period, when Mexican priests were doubtless
ahead of their Castilian counterparts, even though members of the church

were among the most important consumers of Asian textiles in Castile.28
Asian textiles also appeared in the interior decoration of Mexican elites’
houses and palaces. Home interiors enabled Mexico’s notables to develop
their cultural and aesthetic practices by using and displaying Asian textiles,
among other goods, and the presence of tablecloths, wall-hangings and
curtains of Chinese silk in the parlors of Mexico’s elites reflects their taste
for using Chinese silk to furnish and decorate their houses.29 The case of
bedclothes is of particular note since Mexican elites’ bedchambers exhibited
a strong Asian influence. Canopies, cushions, pillows and sheets made of
Chinese silk—and to a much lesser extent of Indian cotton—occupied an
important space in the bedchambers of Mexican elites, precisely at a time
when the bed and the bedchamber were gaining importance as central spaces
in households’ differentiation between communal and private spaces.30
Meanwhile, the infrequent possession of Chinese silks by Seville’s elites,
in both clothing and interior decoration, shows that urban elite tastes took
divergent paths in early seventeenth-century Andalusia and Mexico. The
clothing of Seville’s elites, unlike that of the Mexicans, was dominated by
Castilian and Italian, rather than Chinese, silk. Sevillian elite dress fash-
ions of the first half of the seventeenth century were strongly attached to
Castilian aesthetic forms, namely the aforementioned tight, dark clothes
that had developed during the sixteenth century and spread from Madrid.31
The scarcity of garments woven with Chinese silk in the wardrobes of Seville
suggests that Andalusian elites may have been reluctant to adopt novelties
such as the strong colors and floral decorations of Chinese origins that
became prominent in Mexico’s elite fashions. If there was any novelty in
the fashion preferences of Seville’s elites around 1600, it was the expansion
of their taste for Italian silks. The frequent presence of Italian garments
and garments woven with Italian silks among the possessions of Seville’s
notables32 may have been related to an increase in marital alliances between
Castilian and Italian aristocratic families during the second half of the
sixteenth century and the seventeenth century, which was accompanied
by some changes in Castilian and Andalusian dress. The elites of Castile
and Andalusia introduced features into their dress such as cuffs from Savoy
(saboyanas), which were thinner and smoother than Castilian cuffs, and the
skirt known as saya saboyana (a saya skirt from Savoy), which was character-
ized by its short tail; all of these had nothing to do with Chinese influence
in Mexican elites’ dresses.33
The interior decoration of Sevillian elites’ houses also followed pat-
terns different from those of Mexico City. The mudéjar (a Christian style
with marked Hispanic and Islamic influence) was not present as much in
the architectural forms of early seventeenth-century Andalusia as it was
during the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period.
However, this was not the case with the interior decoration of the houses
and palaces of Andalusian elites. The aristocratic parlors and chambers

of Sevillian elites had many textiles and cushions decorated with Islamic
motifs as late as the seventeenth century. The possessions of Seville’s wealth-
iest elites included neither Chinese nor Japanese nor Indian textiles, but,
rather, household linens with Moorish and Turkish motifs.34 The designs of
mudéjar, morisco (Moorish) and Turkish (turquesco) styles were very different
from the Chinese. Spanish Islamic themes were dominated by geometric
forms (lacería) and geometric plant forms (ataurique). And this taste for
displaying Islamic cultural influence among Seville’s elites was in tune with
costumes and habits of Islamic origins, such as sitting at floor level on carpets
and cushions, with low tables and stools.35
The interiors of houses and palaces are precisely a space in which we
can perceive the relative advance of Chinese and Japanese objects in elite
Mexican and Sevillian material settings, since house interiors provided a cul-
tural and aesthetic framework for many of their socio-cultural practices. One
socio-cultural practice of European and Euro-American elites was to gather
to eat and drink with their peers, which is the reason why cutlery became
an essential material medium for Hispanic elites to use and display. And the
preferred material of both Mexican and Sevillian elites for their cutlery was
silver. The pieces of silver tableware sets like plates, dishes, forks, knives,
glasses, jugs, tankards and saltcellars, and other more unusual pieces such as
model ships (see Chapter 7), played an essential role as eating utensils and
also as a cultural means in the socialization of the rich from Hispanic cities
such as Mexico and Seville. However, in the houses of Mexico’s elites we can
detect that the wealthiest people of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-
century Mexico possessed many more Chinese porcelains than their peers in
Seville.36 The second most important article carried by the Manila galleons
after silk, Chinese porcelain, was integrated into Mexican elites’ material
culture as objects to be displayed as well as to be used in gatherings and
other social rituals. Chinese porcelain would seem to have been even more
culturally significant in the Creole households of Mexico City if we take into
account the rapid merging of Chinese porcelain into cultural practices of pre-
Hispanic origin. Along with the jícaras and tecomates, which were calabash
vessels very common among native Mexican populations, Chinese crockery
provided the perfect vessels for the consumption of chocolate, a custom of
pre-Hispanic origins (see Chapters 2 and 14), in the parlors of elite houses in
late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century New Spain.37
Chinese porcelain was not the only Asian luxury object abundant in the
houses of the richest people in Mexico City. One space in Mexican notables’
houses was especially important for their display and use of objects of material
culture—the dais room (estrado). The dais room was a parlor devoted to the
reception and visits of guests, and was basically a ladies’ space, receiving its
name from the wooden daises on which women sat. This space was also dedi-
cated to social rituals such as conversation, drinking chocolate or eau-de-vie
and entertainments such as card games.38 These and other parlors of wealthy
Mexicans’ houses were full of carpets, tapestries, luxury chairs and tables,
cushions, escritoires, paintings and sculptures. Among the imported prod-
ucts, besides tapestries from Flanders, which were extremely expensive and
highly valued, Asian objects appear to have been the most treasured in the
Creole Mexican parlors. Castilian furnishings, apart from silk cushions, did
not occupy much space in Mexican Creole homes, in contrast to Asian tables
and chairs ornamented with gold, silver and silk, chests and other pieces of
furniture such as folding screens (biombos), which in 1600 remained quite
exceptional in the Atlantic world.
Although most of the luxury tables and chairs from Asia that furnished
Mexican elites’ houses were from China, it seems that their chests and
folding screens were mostly from Japan, since mother-of-pearl and lacquer
(makie) chests and folding screens were an area of Japanese craft special-
ization (see Figure 9.1).39 In fact, Japanese folding screens and chests, while
among the most remarkable decorative objects integrated into Mexican
elites’ parlors and bedchambers, remained nonexistent in early seventeenth-
century Seville.40 Japanese screens were usually decorated with geometric,
floral and fantastic or feline animals, while chests normally depicted Chinese
and European themes and, in time, allegories of Mexico City.41 Other Asian
decorative items that were extremely rare and expensive also appeared in
Figure 9.1 Japanese trunk decorated in mother-of-pearl with floral and animal motifs
and Taoist symbols, 1576–1625. Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
Sevillian as well as Mexican elites’ interiors. Among these rare objects Japanese
katanas (traditional swords) deserve special attention. This product, which
had a decorative function, was uncommon even among Mexican elites.42
Other goods like Asian fans, which became fashionable among the ladies
of Madrid’s court, were more common among early seventeenth-century
Mexican elites than among those of Seville.43 Fans had a social function
in the gatherings and meetings of Mexican notables. In Mexican parlors,
women used them to refresh themselves in hot weather and also to show off
the paintings on them, which featured Oriental themes and mythological
and even erotic scenes.44
Other pieces of furniture, such as writing desks, were integrated mainly
in the private chambers of Mexican elites. The presence of Chinese and
Japanese writing desks in the wealthy circles of Mexican society would
have been influential, given the high number of Asian-made escritoires that
Mexico’s elites possessed in comparison with others made in Europe and
even Michoacán (New Spain), an important center for the manufacture of
furniture of American woods such as cedarwood and ebony, as well as silver.
By the early seventeenth century, these items of furniture were important
for the work of merchants, clergymen and other social groups of Mexico
City for whom reading, writing and counting became central daily activities.
Many of these supports were Asian in the case of Mexico City.45
In Seville, by contrast, products such as Japanese lacquer and mother-of-
pearl chests and folding screens, Chinese fans, and Chinese and Japanese
furniture were rare or practically nonexistent.46 Wall-hangings, tablecloths and
other decorative textiles were slightly more common than Asian furniture in
Seville, but did not reach the levels of fine Mexican houses because Seville’s
early seventeenth-century elites remained attached to the taste for tapestries
and curtains from Flanders, which had spread in the second half of the six-
teenth century.47 This demand for Flemish tapestries and curtains among
Seville’s elites was in tune with a taste for furniture that was also from Flanders.
Flemish furniture such as wardrobes, escritoires, trunks and chests was usually
made of walnut, cedarwood, boxwood or ebony, and decorated with bone,
marquetry and ivory, usually with motifs that were geometric (rhombuses,
circles) or floral. However, the floral motifs on Flemish pieces of furniture
were, like those of Spanish furniture, far from Asian aesthetic forms.
Decorations of Spanish and Flemish pieces of furniture consisted, besides the
above-mentioned geometric motifs, of flowers and fruits such as pomegran-
ates and acorns, which sometimes had a mudéjar influence.48 This demand for
Flemish furniture coexisted with a taste for pieces manufactured in Germany,
especially writing desks, which were quite similar to those from Flanders.
German escritoires had grown increasingly popular in Seville’s houses since
the mid-sixteenth century. Although this fashion of German origins was still
present in the early seventeenth century,49 new fashions for tables, chairs and
stools made in other places irrupted in Seville after 1600. Furniture of American
wood had already started arriving in Seville by the early seventeenth century,50
but was far from being the only novelties to enter Seville’s elite interiors.
Furniture made in the kingdom of Muscovy, more specifically writing desks,
started to delight Seville’s elites in the 1610s,51 and more people in Seville
chose Russian furniture to decorate their parlors in the following decade.52
But these new objects that entered the houses and palaces of Seville’s elites
reflected aesthetic choices and preferences that were far from Asian tastes.
On the other hand, the emergence of a new Asian taste in conjunction
with Hispanic and Catholic aesthetics is visible, finally, in the private chapels
of Mexico’s elite houses. Chapels were among the most important spaces in
the houses and palaces of the most powerful elites, chambers that were richly
decorated with paintings and sculptures of biblical figures, such as Christ and
the Virgin Mary, and saints.53 Among the objects that the elites of Mexico
City purchased through the commercial traffic of the Manila galleons, ivory
sculptures of Christian figures were the most outstanding in terms of their
sumptuary and artistic value. These sculptures were practically nonexistent
in the private chapels of the richest of Seville but were present in those of
Mexico City.54 Although people from Mexico City identified these ivory
sculptures as coming from China,55 in time they also may have been carved
in Manila. The Portuguese had started importing these objects, which were
produced in Chinese areas such as Macao and Canton, during the sixteenth
century.56 When the supply of these religious items to the elites of New
Spain expanded via the Manila galleons, many Chinese artisans moved with
Chinese merchants to Manila. Apart from Filipino populations, who were the
majority in Manila, the Chinese formed the largest foreign population during
the early modern era. About 1600, around 6,000–8,000 Chinese people,
including sculptors and artisans, lived in the capital city of the Philippines,
along with another 8,000 who went to the city to trade every year.57 Whether
produced in China or in the Philippines, ivory sculptures of biblical figures
carved in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were character-
ized by their strong Oriental influence: their eyes were Oriental-looking, their
noses were flattened, their feet were short and fat, following the Buddhist
tradition, and their necks had folds (see Figure 9.2). The bases of the figures
were decorated with both European and Asian motifs.58 Early seventeenth-
century Mexican elites decorated their chapels and probably also their parlors
with sculptures of the most important figures of the Catholic religion, like
other elites of the Spanish Empire, but in their case the forms, features and
gestures were not European but Asian.
Ivory sculptures of Christian figures were not the only Euro-American
objects produced in Asia for Euro-American markets in which Mexican elites
appear to have been leading consumers in comparison to those of Seville.
Besides jewels and precious stones imported from Asia, gold rosaries and
agnusdéi (little reliquaries) with decorated in wood, mother-of-pearl and, more
commonly, gold, silver and precious stones manufactured by Asian craftsmen
Figure 9.2 Figure of the infant Jesus from Cebu (Philippines). Anonymous, 1601–1700.
The face has the typical features of Chinese sculptures: big face, fleshy eyelids and thin
and open mouth. The neck, wrists and ankles have the typical Buddhist folds. Museo
de América, Madrid
penetrated the Creole market of Mexico City as was not the case in Seville.59
The case of production of objects such as rosaries, some of them with crosses,
agnusdéi and even boxes for the Eucharist is especially interesting for show-
ing the adaptation of Asian production to the Atlantic markets via American
elites’ markets, since it entailed a certain knowledge among Asian craftsmen,
if not of the Christian religion, then at least of Euro-American taste.60
Conclusions: New Spanish elites as a cultural bridge between

Europe and Asia
Recent historiographical research has paid attention to growing consumer

access to Asian commodities, particularly porcelain, silk and cotton, during
the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth century, and to the effects
of increasing demand for these goods on the transformation of fashions
across social structures. When they are seen in terms of longue durée, one
can perceive that these were complex processes involving agents beyond
European merchants and companies, and paths around the world other
than the Indian Ocean and the Cape routes. The expansion in consumption
of, and demand for, Asian commodities in the Atlantic world during the
early modern era entailed a set of processes best described as transmission,
adaptation, assimilation and transformation: adaptation of such products
to local tastes, assimilation of or resistance to goods by different elites and
transformation of Asian products into new goods, in which the eighteenth-
century European chinoiserie and development of imitation and “import
substitution” industries were but late stages of the early modern Atlantic–
Asian encounter.61 The Philippine Islands and the elites of certain areas of
the Americas, like New Spain and probably also Peru, played an early but
vital role in this cultural interaction between Asian producers and Atlantic
consumers of Asian manufactures.
The lists of goods contained in the probate inventories of elites of two of
the most important cities of the South Atlantic, Mexico City and Seville,
indicate that the elites of leading American cities could be pioneers in the
reception of Asian goods in the early stages of Atlantic–Asian contacts, when
the reception and adaptation processes of Asian goods to Atlantic markets were
still incipient. The notables of Mexico City incorporated Asian textiles and
objects into their dress, parlors, bedchambers and chapels to extents
unknown by the elites of European commercial cities such as Seville during
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Although we might be
tempted to explain such differences only in economic terms, by highlight-
ing the direct commercial contact between Asia and the Americas across the
Pacific Ocean, the cultural sphere cannot be ruled out so easily. The rising
identity of Creoles and the hybrid character of American societies are frame-
works within which the greater reception of Asian manufactures by Mexican
than by Sevillian elites must be understood. Andalusian elites were less
enthusiastic consumers of Asian manufactures because they were more prone
to retain tastes and aesthetic frameworks that had been born in the merging
of medieval and Renaissance aesthetics during the sixteenth century and
even mudéjar traditions, whereas the main novelties of their material settings
were not Asian but European. The colorful and exotic decorative forms of
China and Japan did not appeal to Andalusian urban elites as they appealed
to those of New Spain around 1600. Links between Andalusian and other
European notables, particularly Italians, fostered a taste for textiles and
furniture produced in areas such as Italy, northern Europe and even Russia,
instead of Asia.
Furthermore, the elites of New Spain were not merely pioneers in the
consumption of Asian products. They were also ahead of other Atlantic
elites in the adaptation of such goods to Euro-American and Christian

cultural settings, which entailed the transformation of these goods into
new products that were influenced by both Euro-American and Asian forms
and aesthetic languages. The Manila galleons were important not only to
the early diffusion of Asian commodities in the South Atlantic, but also as
a commercial route between the Philippines and the Americas where Asian
and Atlantic consumption patterns mediated, interacted, and promoted the
production and consumption of new products. In this way, going beyond
the metropolis, Iberia, and focusing on the peripheral areas of the Spanish
Empire, such as the Americas and the Philippines, facilitates an understand-
ing of the interaction between Asia and the Atlantic world during the early
modern era.
Notes
This chapter has been developed within the Junta of Andalusia’s “Proyecto de
Excelencia” P09-HUM 5330, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia, guerra, economía
y consumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. William L. Schurtz, El galeón de Manila (Madrid: Cultura Hispánica, 1992);

Carmen Yuste López, El comercio de la Nueva España con Filipinas, 1590–1785
(Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1984); Pierre
Chaunu, Les Philippines et le Pacifique des Ibériques (XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe siècles):
Introduction méthodologique et indices d’activité, 6th edn (Paris: SEVPEN, 1960).
2. Serge Gruzinski, Las cuatro partes del mundo: Historia de una mundialización
(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010), 71–94; Serge Gruzinski, El
pensamiento mestizo (Barcelona: Paidós, 2000); David Brading, The First America:
The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge
3. Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture (Cambridge
University Press, 2001); Gruzinski, Las cuatro partes, 315–38.
4. Peter A. Coclanis, “Introduction,” in Peter A. Coclanis, ed., The Atlantic Economy
during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice,
and Personnel (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), ix–xix;
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman, eds, The Atlantic in Global History,
1500–2000 (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007); Nicholas
Canny, “Atlantic History and Global History,” in Jack P. Greene and Philip
D. Morgan, eds, Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford University Press,
2009), 317–36.
5. Marina Alfonso Mola et al., El galeón de Manila (Madrid: MECD, 2000); Eufemio
Lorenzo Sanz, Comercio de España con América en la época de Felipe II, vol. I: Los
mercaderes y el tráfico indiano (Diputación Provincial de Valladolid, 1986), 626;
Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, Séville et l’Atlantique (1504–1650): Partie statistique,
vol. VI-2, Tables statistiques (Paris: SEVPEN, 1956), 1020–1.
6. Ralph Bauer and José Antonio Mazzotti, “Introduction,” in Ralph Bauer and José
Antonio Mazzotti, eds, Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empires, Texts,
Identities (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 1–57; Jonathan
I. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Oxford University Press, 1989).
7. Thomas DaCosta Kaufman and Michael North, “Introduction,” in Thomas

DaCosta Kaufman and Michael North, eds, Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between
Europe and Asia (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 1–8.
8. Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, “‘Localism,’ Global History and Transnational History:
A Reflection from the Historian of Early Modern Europe,” Historisk Tidskrift
127:4 (2007), 659–78; Madelaine Herren, Martin Rüesch and Christiane Sibille,
Transcultural History: Theories, Methods, Sources (Heidelberg: Springer, 2012); José
Luis Gasch-Tomás, “Textiles asiáticos de importación en el mundo hispánico,
c. 1600: Notas para la historia del consumo a la luz de la nueva historia trans-
‘nacional,’” in Daniel Muñoz Navarro, ed., Comprar, vender y consumir: Nuevas
aportaciones a la historia del consumo en la España moderna (Publicacions de la
Universitat de València, 2011), 55–76.
9. Gruzinski, Las cuatro partes, 317–32.
10. Probate inventories have been analyzed with the following methodological pre-
cautions: first, probates do not record consumption as such, which is a dynamic
practice marked by the replacement of goods, but, rather, stocks of goods pos-
sessed at the end of people’s lives; second, notarial records, including probate
inventories, are mostly produced by wealthy social groups, who had enough goods
and economic reasons to record them: Jan de Vries, “The Industrial Revolution
and the Industrious Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 54:2 (1994), 249–70;
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, “Inventarios post-mortem, consumo y niveles de vida
del campesinado del Antiguo Régimen: Problemas metodológicos a la luz de la
investigación internacional,” in Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and Jaume Torras Elias,
eds, Consumo, condiciones de vida y comercialización: Cataluña y Castilla, siglos
XVII–XIX (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1999), 27–40. Regarding the social
composition of Mexican and Sevillian inventories collected for this work, the elitist
character of the sample is even more marked than in other similar studies because
the period under analysis, around 1600, was one in which international trade was
little developed in comparison with later periods, such as the eighteenth century,
and therefore the reception and consumption of imports were mostly concentrated
in precise, wealthier social groups, especially in big commercial cities and political
capitals. Furthermore, it must also be noted that the sample from Mexico City is
biased further down in the social scale than that of Seville, which is dominated by
richer inventories than the sample from Mexico City. Far from being a problem,
this situation, which has been determined by the difficulties of finding inventories
in Mexico City, will provide additional support for the conclusions proposed in
this chapter. The fact that the sample of Mexico City’s inventories is comprised
of elites who, however, were not as rich as those of the sample of Seville goes
against our hypotheses, which posit that more people consumed more Asian goods
in Mexico City than in Seville. For more details about the sample, see José Luis
Gasch-Tomás, “Global Trade, Circulation and Consumption of Asian Goods in the
Atlantic World: The Manila Galleons and the Social Elites of Mexico and Seville
(1580–1630)” (Ph.D. diss., European University Institute, 2012), 244–54.
11. Charles Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: History of the Indians of the Valley
of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford University Press, 1964), 136–41 and 381; Linda
A. Newson, “The Demographic Impact of Colonization,” in Victor Bulmer-
Thomas, John H. Coatsworth and Roberto Cortés Conde, eds, The Cambridge
Economic History of Latin America, vol. I (Cambridge University Press, 2006),
143–84; Ruth Pike, Aristócratas y comerciantes: La sociedad sevillana en el siglo XVI
(Barcelona: Ariel, 1978); León C. Álvarez Santaló et al., “La población de Sevilla en
las series parroquiales, siglos XVI–XIX,” in Actas II Coloquios Historia de Andalucía:

Andalucía Moderna, vol. I (Córdoba: Monte de Piedad, 1983), 1–19; Antonio
Domínguez Ortiz, Orto y ocaso de Sevilla (Universidad de Sevilla, 1981).
12. All statistical indicators of data contained in probate inventories (number of
probate inventories listing Asian goods, number of Asian goods per inventory,
and percentage of Asian goods among total goods) clearly show that the Mexican
elites received and consumed many more Asian goods than those of Seville. 70.3
percent of the Mexican inventories list at least one Asian product, in contrast to
43 percent of the Sevillian inventories. A mean of 11.6 objects listed in Mexican
inventories were Asian, as against only 2.1 objects of Sevillian inventories.
Furthermore, of all the items listed in the inventories of Mexico City, 11.4 percent
were Asian, whereas in Seville, only 1.2 percent of all the goods collected were
Asian. See Tables 9.1 and 9.2.
13. Prices of Chinese silk were at least two times higher in New Spain than in Seville:
Gasch-Tomás, “Global Trade, Circulation and Consumption of Asian Goods,”
149–67.
14. A preliminary statistical analysis can be seen in Gasch-Tomás, “Textiles asiáticos
de importación,” 69–74.
15. José Luis Gasch-Tomás, “The Manila Galleon and Silk in New Spain, c. 1550–1650,”
in Luca Molà and Dagmar Schäfer, eds, Threads of Global Desire: Silk in the Pre-Modern
World (Oxford: Pasold Research Fund/Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
16. 20.3 percent of the Mexican inventories list Asian non-finished textiles, a mean
of 2.5 unfinished textiles per inventory were Asian, and 23.8 percent of all the
non-finished textiles contained in the inventories were Asian.
17. The tailor Manuel Tinoco, for instance, had a piece of Chinese blue damask
woven with Castilian techniques (“una pieça de damasco açul de China de
labor de Castilla”) in 1591: Archivo General de Indias (henceforth AGI), Seville,
Contratación, 242, N. 1, R. 5, 15.
18. Carmen Bernis, El traje y los tipos sociales del Quijote (Madrid: Ediciones El Viso,
2001); Virginia Armella de Aspe, “El traje civil,” in Virginia Armella de Aspe,
Teresa Castelló Yturbide and Ignacio Borja Martínez, eds, La historia de México a
través de la indumentaria (Mexico City: Inversora Bursátil, 1988), 77–8.
19. 39.8 percent of Mexico’s inventories mention at least one garment manufactured
with Chinese silk. Moreover, there is an average of 4.3 of garments made of
Chinese silk per inventory, and 11.7 percent of the garments inventoried in
Mexico City’s probates were Asian. These data contrast with those for Seville,
which are 9.5 percent, an average of 2 and 0.5 percent, respectively.
20. Michel Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Princeton University Press, 2008),
114–48.
21. Bauer, Goods, Power, History, 104–15; Gibson, The Aztecs, 336–7.
22. Virginia Armella de Aspe, “La influencia asiática en la indumentaria novohis-
pana,” in María C. Barrón, ed., La presencia novohispana en el Pacífico insular:
Actas de las Segundas Jornadas Internacionales celebradas en la Ciudad de México del
17 al 21 de septiembre de 1990 (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 1992),
223–30; Gonzalo Obregón, “El aspecto artístico del comercio con Filipinas,”
Revista artes de México 143 (1971), 74–97.
23. Archivo de las Notarías del DF, Mexico City (henceforth ANotDF), Notario: Juan
Pérez de Rivera (497), vol. 3360, 796–807.
24. Armella de Aspe, “El traje civil,” 77–8.
25. Gasch-Tomás, “The Manila Galleon and Silk.”
26. Ana Ruiz Gutiérrez, “Las aportaciones artísticas de Filipinas,” in María L. Bellido
Gant and Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales, eds, Historia del arte en Iberoamérica y Filipinas:
Materiales didácticos III, artes plásticas (Universidad de Granada, 2005), 267.
27. A precise but significant example can illustrate the extent to which garments and
other textiles of Chinese silk were popular among Mexican priests around 1600.
Pedro Martínez Buytrón, priest of Mexico City, who died in 1596, possessed a
large collection of garments and clothes made of Chinese silk for officiating in
Catholic rites: a blue and yellow damask cloak and chasuble and robe of birds
from China lined with colored linen; a white chasuble with blue taffeta stole and
manípulo from China; a blue taffeta hanging from China; two blue and white
taffeta hangings from China lined with blue linen and green and red fringes;
a yellow brocatel (mixed fabric of silk and hemp) hanging from China with a piece
of blue mitán (kind of linen); a black damask chasuble and stole and manípulo
with yellow damask border and lined with blue linen from China; and a purple
taffeta chasuble and stole and manípulo from China with a tawny damask border:
ANotDF, Notario: Andrés Moreno (374), vol. 2464, 105–6. Other examples can be
seen in AGI, 375A, N. 4; AGI, Contratación, 937, N. 2.
28. Antonio J. Díaz Rodríguez, “Sotanas a la morisca y casullas a la chinesca: El gusto
por lo exótico entre los eclesiásticos cordobeses, 1556–1621,” Investigaciones
histórica 30 (2010), 31–48.
29. See the sections of “Decorative household textiles” in Tables 9.1 and 9.2.
30. Jacques Ravel, “Forms of Privatization,” in Roger Chartier, ed., A History of Private
Life: Passions of the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989),
161–445.
31. Bernis, El traje, 137–306.
32. Archivo Histórico Provincial de Sevilla, Seville (henceforth AHPS), Protocolos, file
16736, 743–8; AHPS, Protocolos, file 2396, fols 1119–26; AHPS, Protocolos, file
7828, 810–11; AHPS, Protocolos, file 13733, 223–5; AHPS, Protocolos, file 12617,
Protocolos, 621–66; AHPS, Protocolos, file 7961, Protocolos, 980–1029; AHPS,
Protocolos, file 12798, 1048–1323; AHPS, Protocolos, file 8008, 577–84.
33. Carmen Bernis, “La moda en la España de Felipe II a través del retrato de corte,”
in Juan Miguel Serrera et al., eds, Alonso Sánchez Coello y el retrato en la corte de
Felipe II (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 1990), 66–88; Bernis, El traje, 234–40; and for
images of women dressed with a saya saboyana, ibid., 22 and 25.
34. Among other examples, the knight of the Calatrava order Don Diego Messia de
las Roelas had no Asian objects, but two Turkish carpets. Neither did the alder-
man (“caballero veinticuatro”) Don Juan Pérez the Guzmán, who had a Turkish
carpet among his goods: AHPS, Protocolos, file 7912, 974–1025; and AHPS,
Protocolos, file 6190, 1081–95.
35. Antonio Urquízar Herrera, Coleccionismo y nobleza: Signos de distinción social en la
Andalucía del Renacimiento (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2007), 33–53; Francisco Núñez
Roldán, La vida cotidiana en la Sevilla del Siglo de Oro (Madrid: Sílex, 2004), 37–83.
36. 24.2 percent of the Mexican inventories analyzed include Chinese porcelain
tableware. Moreover, 27.1 percent of the tableware objects (plates, glasses, jugs,
spoons and so forth) listed in all inventories were of Chinese porcelain in the
Mexican inventories. Data from Seville prove far from these numbers. 8.2 percent
of Seville’s inventories list Chinese porcelain tableware, and only 2.7 percent
include Chinese porcelain among the pieces of tableware enumerated.
37. Gustavo Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals among the Elites of
New Spain: The Evidence from Material Culture / Formas, costumbres y rituales
cotidianos de las elites novohispanas a través de los objectos de la cultura

material,” in Héctor M. Rivero Borrell et al., eds, The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico:
Treasures from the Museo Franz Mayer / La grandeza del México Virreinal: Tesoros
del Museo Franz Mayer (Mexico City: Museo Franz Mayer, 2002), 23–44; Gustavo
Curiel, “Ajuares domésticos: Los rituales de lo cotidiano,” in Antonio Rubial
García, ed., Historia de la vida cotidiana en México, vol. II: La ciudad barroca (Mexico
City: Colegio de México, 2005), 81–108.
38. Curiel, “Ajuares domésticos,” 82–90.
39. Many of the chests, boxes and folding screens listed in Mexico’s inventories are
described by the notary as from China. However, most them were presumably
from Japan, since most people of the Spanish Empire, including elites, confused
China with the rest of Asia: Juan Gil, La India y el Lejano Oriente en la Sevilla del
Siglo de Oro (Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, 2011), 51–60. See also Yayoi Kawamura,
“Coleccionismo y colecciones de la laca extremo oriental en España desde la
época del arte Namban hasta el siglo XX,” Artigrama 18 (2003), 211–30.
40. Only two inventories from Mexico City list Japanese folding screens, but they are
the only folding screens of the whole sample. 8.6 percent of Mexico’s inventories
list Asian chests and boxes.
41. Gustavo Curiel, “Los biombos novohispanos: Escenografías de poder y transcul-
turación en el ámbito hispánico,” in Gustavo Curiel et al., eds, Viento detenido:
Mitologías e historias en el arte del biombo (Mexico City: Museo Soumaya, 1999), 9–32.
42. Japanese katanas constitute 3 percent of all the swords, daggers, spears and other
weapons in the Mexican inventories and 1.9 percent in the Sevillian inventories.
43. Asian fans appear in the 10.9 of the Mexican inventories. Furthermore, in Mexico
City people had Oriental fans as early as the 1580s. The Mexican merchant
Hernán Núñez Caballero, who died in 1584, had six fans from China among his
goods: AGI, Contratación, 923, N. 1.
44. Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals,” 28.
45. 8.6 percent of Mexico’s inventories of the sample contain at least one writing
desk from China or Japan, with an average of 5 writing desks from Asia per
inventory. Furthermore 20 of the writing desks (over 13 percent) in the Mexican
inventories were from Asia.
46. Not one inventory of the sample from Seville lists an Asian fan or folding screen.
Only 3 of the Seville inventories (1.9 percent) record any Asian writing desks.
47. In the Seville inventories, Asian textiles used to decorate houses comprised 2.7
percent of total textiles of the same type, in contrast to 15.4 percent in the
Mexican inventories.
48. María Paz Aguiló Alonso, El mueble en España: Siglos XVI–XVII (Madrid: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1993). See AGI, Contratación, 228,
N. 1, R. 1; AGI, Contratación, 477B, N. 2, R. 28; AGI, Contratación, 923, N. 1; AGI,
Contratación, 492A, N. 3, R. 3; AGI, Contratación, 259B, N. 2, R.3; AGI, Contratación,
375A, N. 4; ANotDF, Notario: Andrés Moreno (374), vol. 2471, 298–309; AGI,
Contratación, 517, N. 2, R. 1; ANotDF, Notario: Andrés Moreno (374), vol. 2469,
174–6, and vol. 2470, 56–9; ANotDF, Notario: Andrés Moreno (374), vol. 2467, 1–26.
49. Núñez Roldán, La vida cotidiana, 51–70.
50. AHPS, Protocolos, file 4998, 1997–9; AHPS, Protocolos, file 12617, 621–66; AHPS,
Protocolos, file 5458, 387–440; AHPS, Protocolos, file 12626, 1391–2; AHPS,
Protocolos, file 3567, 416–18.
51. The first of these extremely expensive pieces of furniture has been dated to 1617.
Two people who died that year had pieces of furniture made in Muscovy, Juan
Gutiérrez Garibay, the captain and knight of the Santiago order, and the canon
Alonso Buján de Somoza: AHPS, Protocolos, file 12728, 97–160; AHPS, Protocolos,
file 12728, 74–92.
52. AHPS, Protocolos, file 7473, 547–609; AHPS, Protocolos, file 2519, 653–715; and
AHPS, Protocolos, file 8562, 435–89.
53. Martha Fernández, “De puertas para adentro: La casa habitación,” in Rubial
García, ed., Historia de la vida cotidiana, vol. II, 49–56; Núñez Roldán, La vida
cotidiana, 40–4.
54. Whereas no inventory in Seville lists any Christian sculptures produced in China
or the Philippines, two inventories from Mexico City list eight ivory sculptures
which had been produced, according to the inventory, in China. These are the
inventories of the corregidor (mayor) Don Francisco Muñoz de Monforte, who
possessed a small ivory figure of Saint John, a sculpture of Our Lady and four
figures of Christ, all made of ivory, and Cristóbal del Huerto, who had among
his goods an ivory sculpture of the baby Jesus and another of Christ: AGI, 375A,
N. 4; ANotDF, Notario: José de la Cruz (106), vol. 718, 34–53.
55. Inventories record them as “from China.”
56. Margarita Estella Marcos, “Trabajo artístico entre Filipinas y España vía Acapulco,”
in Francisco de Paula Solano Pérez-Liria et al., eds, El Extremo Oriente Ibérico:
Investigaciones históricas. Metodología y estado de la cuestión (Madrid: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1989), 593–606; José M. Casado Paramio,
Museo Oriental de Valladolid, catálogo II: Marfiles Hispano-Filipinos (Valladolid: Caja
España, 1997), 55–72, 118–20.
57. Antonio García-Abásolo González, “Relaciones entre españoles y chinos en
Filipinas: Siglos XVI y XVII,” in Leoncio Cabrero, ed., España y el Pacífico: Legazpi,
vol. II (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2004), 231–48;
Marta M. Manchado López, “Chinos y españoles en Manila a comienzos del siglo
XVII,” in Miguel Luque Talaván and Marta M. Machado López, eds, Un océano
de intercambios: Hispanoasia (1521–1898). Homenaje al Profesor Leoncio Cabrero
Fernández, vol. I (Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 2008), 141–59.
58. Ruiz Gutiérrez, “Las aportaciones artísticas,” 260–6.
59. Whereas in Seville only one inventory in the sample contains a jewel from China,
in Mexico City 13 people in the sample had one or more jewels which had been
imported into New Spain from Asia.
60. Alfonso Mola et al., El galeón, 67–8. Asian goldsmithing and silversmithing
devoted to the production of Christian objects is still little known, however, and
sometimes it is hard to ascertain whether these products were produced in China
or in the Philippines or New Spain: Ruiz Gutiérrez, “Las aportaciones artísticas,”
267–8.
61. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and John H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society:
The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Hutchinson, 1983);
Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods
in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 182 (2004), 85–142; Maxine Berg,
Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2005);
Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, “East & West: Textiles and Fashions in Early
Modern Europe,” Journal of Social History 41:4 (2008), 887–916.
10
Interest and Curiosity
American Products, Information, and Exotica
in Tuscany
Francisco Zamora Rodríguez
This chapter addresses the role of Florentine consular agents in Iberian ports
in the circulation and consumption of new products and information from
Ibero-America. From a global and transnational perspective, these agents
were new instruments of the Medici who converged with converso and
Jewish merchants and religious networks (principally the Jesuits) tied to
Iberian ports and the Americas. The focus we bring to bear should provide
new information that allows us to move beyond a state-centric analysis
based on theory and international equilibrium and instead to consider
the breadth of Tuscan integration manifested by networks and agents in a
continually expanding world. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany offers a useful
means for analyzing these questions precisely because, politically as well
as in theory, it lay outside the Spanish imperial framework, though its net-
works intersected with information and products from America. The Medici
consuls implemented and improved upon previous channels of commerce
and communication (mostly diplomats, travelers, and explorers), enabled
the regular arrival of new products and information greatly valued by
the government in Florence and the Tuscan elites, and established stable
circulation flows between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.1 It will be
instructive to calibrate the impact and nature of these American “inputs” in
a concrete geopolitical setting such as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany as well
as rulers’ interest in and curiosity about these objects.
The Medicis’ interest in and curiosity regarding

American inputs
A letter from the Grand Duke Ferdinand I to his minister in Madrid,

Domizio Peroni, in 1604 mentioned the work to be undertaken by Orazio
Della Rena, another secretary in the Medici service. Both agents took advan-
tage of their privileged situation in Madrid to provide continual information
about everything that happened in the New World.2 The Medici sovereign
showed interest in and curiosity regarding information from the Americas,
174
Interest and Curiosity 175
declaring: “As we are very interested in all things, particularly those from
the Indies, and as this matter is one pertaining to secretaries, we wish that
Rena, as long as he remains there, and you continually keep track of events
in New Spain and Peru.”3
The Medici had long been building a specialized library to store docu-
ments about America, manifesting their intense interest in knowing about
the geography, products, practices, customs, and nature of its inhabitants.
In addition to Della Rena’s descriptions, until the early seventeenth century
their principal sources were explorers such as Francesco Carletti, whose
itinerary through Panama and New Spain (1594–1606) provided the Medici
with information regarding plants and animals hitherto unknown in Europe.
A similar case was that of Filippo Sassetti, who supplied information from the
East Indies.4 The interest of the Medici, starting with Francis I, in “natural
curiosities” was one of the family’s hallmarks.
The family’s interest in American inputs can be divided into two cat-
egories that were quite different but nonetheless complementary. First, there
was the possibility of profiting from the Atlantic trade by actively partici-
pating in commerce with the American territories. In the second half of
the seventeenth century there was no lack of proposals from the Medici to the
Iberian governments aiming to capture a share of the market.5 Second, the
Medici also were interested in receiving new products from America and
information about recipes and consumption, not in order to make money
but also to broaden their social capital and prestige among their Italian
peers. The Florentines and the Genovese competed in Lisbon for a piece of
the American market through a trading company that would bring not only
wealth but also access to products and consumption data from the Indies
that later would make their way through the elite circles of Genoa and
Florence. The Genovese made a proposal in Lisbon, which was countered
by the Florentines in the person of the consul, Lorenzo Ginori (1674–89),6
in the following terms:
Each of the above-mentioned ships will be duty-free in Lisbon and the

House of the Indies both in Portuguese ports and in those of the East
Indies, West Indies, Africa, and Brazil, and sugar, tobacco, peppers, and
small cabbages of interest to the Portuguese from now on will be free of
duties in Livorno.7
Regarding the potential profit to be made in the American market, of

particular note was the entry of Brazilian sugar through Livorno and its con-
sumption in Tuscany. Circulation was possible in large part thanks to Pedro de
Silva Enriques, agent of the crown of Portugal and the General Brazil trading
company, who had many contacts in Lisbon.8 Essentially, Silva Enriques,
Portugal’s consul in Livorno, was one of a group of individuals who enabled
constant and fluid contact between Portugal and Tuscany and, therefore,
176 Francisco Zamora Rodríguez
between Brazil and Tuscany. Officials of the Hispanic Monarchy complained

in the mid-seventeenth century that, thanks to the grand dukes’ trade pol-
icies, both the Portuguese and the Catalans were trading through Livorno
just as they had before rebelling against Spain in 1640.9 The Hispanic mon-
arch’s economic and commercial blockade against Portugal and Catalonia,
according to available documents, was inoperative in Tuscany. Siding with
these rebel nations was an affront to the Spanish government, imply-
ing that Tuscany’s need for American products outweighed the possible
political dangers of ignoring Madrid’s punishment of the Portuguese rebels.
Despite international events, Tuscan consumption of American products
from Brazil, trafficked through Portuguese ports, was not cut off, and it was
the Portuguese who made that possible. The grand duke, in fact, employed
a Portuguese man as his provveditore di grascia, whose main job was to ensure
that the population’s food needs were addressed and that the city-port was
properly supplied. He was required to keep close tabs on demand in Livorno
as well as to ensure the quality of the foods sold in local markets. The
Buonacorsi merchant house in Florence had a ship that did nothing but sail
round trip between Livorno and Lisbon, making it possible for the Medici
to have regular access to products from Brazil.10
Brazilwood also was in demand and profitable in Tuscany, where it was
used as a dye in the textile industry and for furniture manufacturing. It had
many uses and, along with black ebony from Mozambique, was one of the
most precious woods (legni preziosi) in demand in Tuscany. It arrived from
Brazil through Lisbon.11 The scientific name for brazilwood is haematoxyion
campechianum, indicating its origin in the region of Campeche (in present-
day Mexico), where it was most abundant.12 It also was known as palo tinta
and palo de Campeche, after its place of origin; the latter also reached Livorno
from Cadiz, so much so that its price fell owing to the large incoming
supply.13 Like sugar, brazilwood (or Campeche wood) was trafficked by
Sephardic merchants from Lisbon or Cadiz to Livorno, and from there to
Naples, Venice, and eastern Mediterranean ports. The routes are described
in letters concerning where the best prices could be found.14
Thanks to the information made available to the Medici by their consuls
in the principal Atlantic ports of Cadiz and Lisbon, the Tuscan rulers had
access to markets of products and information that, at least in theory, were
off-limits to them under Spain’s monopoly over Atlantic routes. The grand
duchy thus, unlike other states on the Italian peninsula, lay beyond Spanish
jurisdiction. That fact, along with its traditional commercial prowess, allowed
it to play a fundamental balancing role among European powers. There was
a global dimension to Tuscany’s interaction with America which, in spite of
theoretical restrictions, was not strictly or rigorously bound by the Spanish
imperial system. In other words, the Italian territories’ integration in the New
World regarding information and commerce was considerable, in contrast to
their theoretical political exclusion.15 This situation has consequences for the
history of consumption in Italy in general and in Tuscany in particular. In

the latter case, there were similarities with the Italian cities belonging to the
Hispanic Monarchy, where there was always demand for American products
shipped through Iberian ports. In this regard, the Tuscan state was one of the
“not-integrated yet integrated” points in the vast Spanish imperial network.16
The Medici understood that if they wanted to negotiate in certain places
overseas they had to have complete prior knowledge of everything happen-
ing there, and they needed constant updates on new products.17 To that
end, contact with the principal Atlantic ports was essential. For Francis I,
Lisbon was an emporium with the potential to offer the Tuscan state great eco-
nomic advantages.18 For example, the Medici tried unsuccessfully to obtain
the pepper concession in 1576, and in 1580 they tried again, encouraged by
the possibilities presented by the Iberian Union after Spain’s annexation of
Portugal and Tuscany’s good relations with Philip II.19 Once Portugal won
its independence, the Medici attempted to gain regular access to Portuguese
colonial markets. Letters from the consul, Lorenzo Ginori, in addition to refer-
ring to his supplying merchandise to the grand duke, also mention attempts
by an envoy to Lisbon, the Jesuit Father Almeyda, to let Florence participate
in trade with Brazil and the Portuguese Indies.20
Consuls in the Ginori family used their position to reiterate the sure suc-
cess that Tuscan textiles, especially wool and silk, would have in Iberian
ports.21 María G. Carrasco González has written that Florence had a plan
between 1666 and 1670 to set up a trading company with the Spanish
Indies, to be based in Cadiz and Lisbon.22 It is likely that the appointments
of two consuls from the same family were made with this intention, just a
few years after Cosme de Medici’s well-known journey to Spain and Portugal
in 1668–69, recorded by Lorenzo Magalotti, who was hired to write a sort of
travelogue.23 Starting in 1667, Magalotti, who was well connected in Tuscan
academic circles, worked in the grand duke’s diplomatic service and wrote
several books about his travels through Europe. Another of the travelers on
the trip to Spain and Portugal was Juan Bautista Gornia, who accompanied
the prince as his doctor and recorded the long list of gifts from his Iberian
colleagues, testifying to the cultural and scientific transfers between the two
worlds.
All these activities during the seventeenth century must be understood
in the framework of the economic and social origins of the Medici dynasty.
The rise of the new Atlantic powers, the Dutch Republic and England, and
the scarce means at the disposal of the Medici, who barely managed to keep
a few galley ships afloat and those only in the Mediterranean, make the
situation clear.24 Despite occupying a privileged and strategic place on the
Italian peninsula, the Tuscan state’s strength lay neither in politics nor in
military might but in its commerce and mercantile networks.
As we have seen, the commercial possibilities for the Medici in America
were significant, and they continually had to keep track of the departures
and, especially, the arrivals of the Indies fleet, which, for reasons of safety
in a world of pirates and corsairs, were often kept secret.25 The Medici rulers
continually requested information about the fleet’s arrival from America “so
that its cargo can relieve a disheartened Europe.”26 The fleet and its cargo
stimulated the European economy in general, and the Tuscan economy in
particular.27 In Livorno, silver coin and gold were among the most highly
valued cargo, and Rena in 1594 wrote an account of the arrival of American
gold and silver called “Relazione dell’oro e argento che portò la flotta dal
Perù e Nuova Spagna.”28 The relationship between the arrival of the fleet and
the abundance of coin was a given among the Livorno merchant class, an
assumption made clear by Florentine merchants in a petition to the grand
duke to move exchange fairs from Livorno to Florence: “The scarcity in
Livorno of pieces of eight [silver] does not appear to be due to the arrival of
the fleet and galleons, which was some time ago, nor to prohibition of the
monetary exchange in Novi.”29 The government of Florence assumed that
the arrival of the fleet from America set in motion commerce in its ports,
particularly Livorno, which was duty-free and a distribution center and
therefore had an immediate impact on other international ports, particularly
in the eastern Mediterranean: “The effects of the fleet have begun reaching
Livorno, so, at least for the moment, commerce can breathe again.”30
Consuls as new agents of Atlantic information
Consuls scattered throughout international ports were fundamental to the

history of news and consumption and linkages between distant spaces. The
concept of “consul” is meant here as a representative of a foreign nation in a
port.31 They were not the only agents who informed about consumption and
circulation, and their information and resources varied according to the pro-
fessional group to which the agents belonged.32 Previous information channels
entailed principally travelers, explorers, and ambassadors, who did not supply
continual information and did not always enjoy close ties to the business world.
Before becoming diplomatic personnel in the mid-fifteenth century,
European consuls were hybrid agents who stood between the worlds of com-
merce and informal diplomacy. This situation gave them enormous potential
as channels of information and products. Their indefinite institutional and
juridical position can be seen in how they were used by their respective
governments; in the case of Tuscany, consuls were used mainly to collect
information and gain access to American markets.
There is no doubt that they collected valuable information, which can
be seen in their correspondence not only with their rulers but also with
merchants. Several historians have pointed to the importance and relevance
of consular information, though it has rarely been investigated in detail.33
Consular archives offer a top-quality source of documentation with which
to contrast and verify other sources.
The intersection between inputs from America and consular agents in

Iberian ports has generally been considered only to study participation in
Atlantic commerce and the various strategies used. It has been assumed
that foreign communities used their consuls to channel these practices, and
Seville and Cadiz are the ports that have attracted the most attention.34 But
these agents were not considered private traders or key elements within
dense networks. They were situated somewhere between commercial and
family networks, their government, their community, and their host govern-
ment, in an expanding world that in the seventeenth century displayed an
extraordinary ability to integrate disparate spaces.
Thus consuls, understood as political-commercial beings and as elements of
a dense reticular network, were essential transmitters of products and infor-
mation to their home governments, and they must be taken into consideration
when writing the history of consumption. They constitute the necessary link
between the history of consumption and knowledge, on the one hand, and
international networks of merchants and consular agents, on the other. Access
to and participation in these networks were consuls’ principal credentials and
often the reason for their appointment to begin with. The density of consuls’
own commercial networks was therefore directly proportional to the amount of
information and products they received, but also to the amount they could
channel and redistribute elsewhere, preferably to the political powers and
elites of their home governments.
In this way, home governments (in this case Tuscan) could ensure the
regular arrival of the greatest amount of information and merchandise
possible. As the seventeenth century advanced, the Tuscan government
used its consuls to achieve access to American information and products.
These agents completed a network that until then had been based on infor-
mation and products transported by occasional expeditions by emissaries
or travelers or, in the best of cases, by diplomats and aristocrats who often
had no connection with international commerce. Starting in the second
half of the seventeenth century, consuls became yet another element of the
construction and reinforcement of states. Their institutional and juridical
profiles make that clear. Generally speaking, some of the Tuscan consuls
in major European ports went from being representatives of merchants,
chosen by the latter, to assuming greater responsibilities and becoming
executors of the specific interests of their home government, which, in
the context we are studying, meant coordinating the reception of and
transmission to Florence of information concerning the Indies trade, the
political situation in America, consumption patterns, silver prices, and
descriptions and transport of new flora and fauna. In order to attain this
objective, the Medici government took it upon itself to appoint consuls,
making them into yet another instrument of the state apparatus. In the
cases of Lisbon and Cadiz, such appointments placed them at the vanguard
of American knowledge.35
Members of the Ginori family were protagonists of this phenomenon in

the Iberian ports. They went from being merchants under the protection
of the grand dukes to being elected consuls of their nation. The Ginori
certificate of nobility issued in August 1677 states that the four brothers—
Lorenzo, Francesco, Bartolomeo, and Niccolò, sons of Senator Carlo Ginori
and Fiammetta Oricellari—were dispersed throughout Europe “ubi honeste
mercature nobilit er incumbunt,” emphasizing the commercial origins and
identity of this Florentine family.36 Their official position in Cadiz dates
from the early 1670s, when a Florentine merchant house was opened there
by Francesco Ginori and Tommaso Cavalli. The company from the start was
protected by the Tuscan government through its envoy in Madrid, Vieri da
Castiglione, who wrote to the governor in Cadiz on behalf of the newly con-
stituted company. Francesco was later appointed consul in 1679.37 The fam-
ily always had the protection and support of the Jesuit community in Cadiz,
many of whose members originally from Florence. One Florentine Jesuit,
Paolo Federighi, had been asked by the Medici government to persuade the
rector of the Jesuit college in Cadiz “to help and care for these gentlemen,
sons of Don Carlos Ginori.”38
It goes without saying that Cadiz had enormous importance for the con-
sumption of American products in Italy and especially in Tuscany. There is
an immense bibliography on the role of Cadiz as a port of entry and as a
meeting place for many foreign communities.39 Francesco Ginori was the
intermediary for merchandise that arrived at the port of Cadiz from the West
Indies, bound for the grand duke; for example, he received three boxes of
porcelain, remedies, and other unspecified products from Mexico that Jesuit
authorities had sent on the fleet for the grand duke, and Ginori received a
request from Florence that the shipment be sent to the Tuscan court.40
In Lisbon it was Lorenzo Ginori who performed these tasks. In May 1674 he
thanked his government for having appointed him consul; later he would be
replaced by his brother Niccolò.41 Clearly Lisbon, the westernmost capital of
Europe, was the best place possible to watch over the transatlantic trade.42 And
here, too, the Ginori brothers enjoyed good relations with the religious com-
munity in general and the Jesuits in particular, both in Brazil and in Lisbon.
Thus we can see the close relationship between the two consulates and the
Jesuit networks, which were also active in America. The letter Lorenzo received
soon after his appointment said that he was to depend expressly on the
advice of Father Almeyda regarding the information he was to provide to the
Florentine secretary of state.43 Almeyda would act as a sort of tutor and filter,
watching over the information flowing from Florence’s consulate in Lisbon.
The list of Florentine consuls with connections to the American territories
also included Bartolomeo Ginori, who was in Seville as consul starting in
1693, though working for Danish merchants, not Florence.44 There is very lit-
tle information about Bartolomeo, but, given the transnational nature of the
case, there can be little doubt that he too occupied a crucial place not only
in his family’s network but also within that of the Florentine community in
Seville and, obviously, in connection with the Medici government.
The family and commercial network of the Ginori, hence, guaranteed a
constant flow of products and information, connecting a series of ports,
both Atlantic and Mediterranean. The chain began in American ports, where
they had Jesuit contacts, and continued through Lisbon, Cadiz, and Seville.
This was a safe, secure, reliable, and constant route for information and
merchandise, all leading, finally, via the port of Livorno, to Florence and the
head of the family, Senator Carlo Ginori.45
Given the origins of the Medici and their deep roots in finance and trade,
local businessmen in Iberian ports who were important, though not consuls,
also were used to traffic many American products toward Tuscany, helping
supply the court and elite circles who thought highly of the new products.
Such was the case of Giovanni Francesco Poltri, a Florentine merchant based
in Lisbon who dealt with tobacco and other stimulants, sending them regu-
larly to the Medici court through Livorno.46 In Seville there were three great
Florentine commercial families: the Federighi, the Fantoni, and the Bucarelli.
When the grand dukes of Tuscany visited Seville in the mid-seventeenth
century they stayed with the Federighi family,47 which dealt principally with
leather and skins and cochineal and indigo dyes and was in close contact
with markets in Seville, Cadiz, Florence, and New Spain.48
The establishment of consulates abroad constituted a sort of governmental
“soft power.”49 For that reason, host nations frequently blocked consular
activities when the home country was an enemy or if consuls or the mer-
chants they represented behaved improperly. This was the context for the
Hispanic government’s reprisals against consular and commercial officials,
and the Ginori family had to deal with many such obstacles. The best way
of continuing their labors was to shed their consular duties and continue
trading as private agents, thus ensuring that information and products could
continue flowing to the Medici court without interruption. The Hispanic gov-
ernment’s main accusation against the Ginori was that they were too close
to the French and diverted American products toward them, which undercut
not only Spain’s imperial monopoly with America and its blockade against
foreigners but also the Ginori family’s close relationship with American com-
merce through Iberian ports.50
The consuls’ information: the circulation of products

and animals
The Ginori family provided information about new products, species, plants,
and consumption habits that were ancient in America but entirely unknown
in mid-seventeenth-century Europe. To study this flow of information, we
draw on descriptions of shipments across the Atlantic to Tuscany during the
last 25 years of the century.
The arrival of information, knowledge, and exotic species, both flora and
fauna, served to increase the Medici rulers’ prestige and power vis-à-vis their
Italian counterparts, who were always subject to the delicate international bal-
ance of the two principal foreign powers in the region: the Hispanic Monarchy
and France. All these new products conveyed social capital and served to
differentiate the Medici from the rest. Unlike sugar and brazilwood, discussed
above, the products discussed below were never meant to be bought or sold.
In the case of Lisbon, the Medici continually asked Lorenzo Ginori about
sweets eaten in Brazil.51 The grand duke also asked him to send someone to
Brazil who could learn to “make eggs and meats as they are eaten there” and
who would then go to Florence and work in the Medici kitchens. Lorenzo
sent someone he described as a Moor who, under the direction of Andrea
Cioppi, his agent, learned the egg and meat recipes in order to then travel
to Florence.52 Lorenzo was also requested to send a “black” Brazilian to
Florence to make desserts with sugar and eggs as they did in Brazil.53 This
is one of the best examples of intercultural contact between the Medici and
America, but it was not the first, as Grand Duke Ferdinand I years earlier had
received six Caribs who allegedly ate human flesh.54
The large Sephardic Jewish community in Livorno, in close contact
with colleagues on the Iberian Peninsula (including in Cadiz and Lisbon),
facilitated the arrival of recipes for making chocolate. A Florentine secretary
once wrote to Francesco Ginori in Cadiz telling him that Spaniards and
Portuguese in Livorno had learned of three new ingredients for making
chocolate.55 Francesco quickly requested information from a Madrid estab-
lishment on the Calle de Toledo, the Olibarre droguería, and said he would
tell Florence what he found out about chocolate.56 Later he wrote that no
one had heard of these three substances.57 The episode is hugely relevant for
understanding the circulation of knowledge and reveals the curiosity of the
Medici about chocolate. It was, precisely, a Florentine who is credited with
introducing chocolate to Italy: Francesco Carletti, who was well acquainted
with Mexico, where chocolate had been drunk for centuries.58
Thus Francesco Ginori, in Cadiz, used his contacts in Madrid to verify
information about chocolate generated in Livorno by Sephardic Jews on the
basis of knowledge from America. When the Tuscan government mentioned
“spagnoli e portughesi” in Livorno, one of the most cosmopolitan enclaves
in the Mediterranean, it was really referring to Sephardic Jews and converts
from Judaism to Christianity (conversos).59
The Spanish-Portuguese community in Livorno was not as large as that
of the Jews, who enjoyed privileges and had traded there since the late
sixteenth century, so it is logical that the conversos and Sephardic Jews were
best informed about new ways of making chocolate. For many years it was
they who took chocolate from the Iberian Peninsula to Northern Europe,
especially Flanders, and during the seventeenth century Jews in Amsterdam
were considered great chocolate specialists.60
Information about chocolate, as well as chocolate itself, was also sent from
Genoa, which, owing to its proximity to Livorno and its close ties to the
Hispanic Monarchy, was a logical place from where to satisfy the grand dukes’
demand. In this case, the agent was Tuscany’s envoy to Genoa, Giustiniani,
who wrote to the Medici court:
Chocolate is something all the most noble Spanish ladies boast about
preparing, spending as much time making it as they do in drinking it, and
whereas other foods might be consumed in kitchens and ordinary rooms,
chocolate is sipped in the most elegant homes. One can say today that
chocolate is truly worthy of those who drink it, not only lay but ecclesias-
tical, and in fact the Jesuit fathers supply most of their establishments in
Italy, so much so that before preachers step up to the pulpit they fill their
stomachs with this liquor. Its use has increased in our century, along with
that of tobacco. While chocolate is truly a gift for princes, tobacco, it seems
to me, offers princes advantages from its sale.61
The letter contains several important points. First, women had an important
role in the preparation and consumption of chocolate, and Jesuits were agents
of transmission. It was made and drunk in noble and elite sites and was con-
sidered a gift to princes, even more than tobacco, which brought riches to the
treasury. Drinking chocolate was something appropriate to people of a certain
rank, both secular and ecclesiastical, as opposed to lesser products. Bianca
Lindorfer has written about the importance of aristocratic networks (especially
of women) in cultural transfers between Madrid and Vienna.62 In the Tuscan
case as well, this was a product that, because it came from overseas, had the
desirable exotic air that “signaled social and cultural superiority.”63
Portuguese commercial networks such as those of the Silva family, one of
whose members was Spain’s consul in Livorno, also contributed to fulfilling
these demands, not only in Livorno but in other Italian cities belonging to
the Hispanic Monarchy.64 Among the recipients of this luxurious product
were members of the Portuguese commercial bourgeoisie who wished to
exhibit their distinction in society. Many requests to the Silva for Atlantic
products came from people who received guests and thus wished to display
their social rank. For example, Gregorio Mendes, a Portuguese merchant
settled in Cadiz, requested 100 pounds of cacao because “I have so many
visitors.”65 Bartolomé de Silva, an important merchant in Naples, requested
25 pounds of cacao, 25 pounds of fine sugar, and vanilla for his own use,
saying, “expenses are constant, I haven’t received my salary in four years,
and one must put on appearances.”66 In both cases the chocolate came from
Livorno and was linked to the need to demonstrate the prestige and reputa-
tion of their respective houses.
Lorenzo Ginori, in Lisbon, received from Cosme III de Medici the
description of new vegetable plants such as the araticù, from Pernambuco,
Brazil, whose fruits and seeds he not only described in detail but also
drew.67 The araticù is called chirimoya in Spanish, cachiman or cachimantier
in French, and custard apple in English. Cosme III suggested that Ginori
might transport the trees and their fruits from Brazil to Florence in wooden
crates along with soil. This exchange took place a few years before Ginori
was appointed consul, and it could have been influential in his eventually
getting the post.
Cosme III de Medici wrote about three types of this fruit:
First species. Araticù (generic). It grows throughout Brazil, where it is not

well considered. The leaves are like those of the orange, the trunk is light
and weak and is of little use.
Second species: Araticù Paná, similar to the above, grows along river-
banks on trees with short trunks ... it is so poisonous that it even kills
snakes.
Third species: Araticù Apé, truly comparable to the best fruit in the
world. It can be easily cut with a knife and it breaks into two halves full
of soft, white delicious fruit, like sugared milk, eaten with a spoon.68
There also was an illustration with a note: “On the following page you
[Lorenzo Ginori] may see my attempt to depict a plant from Brazil; to us
it is unusual, but it is very common in those parts.”69 Cosme’s curiosity
and impatience stemmed precisely from the fact that what was ordinary
in America was exotic in Europe. His description included the basic parts
of the fruit from an aesthetic point of view and also the taste, which was
compared to that of known foods (milk with sugar, in this case; the name
“custard apple” points to that connection). In his statement that the fruit
was “truly comparable to the best fruit in the world,” it was not the fruit in
itself that generated excitement (though it did, of course, not only because
it was unknown but because it came from the New World) but the fact
that it was the best in the world. That is, what was important was not so
much what was being described as how it was being described, with lan-
guage that reflected fascination and desire, as when the chronicler Gonzalo
Fernández de Oviedo had described the pineapple as “one of the most
appetizing fruits in the world.”70 Lorenzo Ginori was asked to ship araticù
and pineapples via the Jesuits, which he did later on, sending them to
Florence via Genoa, where they were very badly treated, to the indignation
of the Medici: “Only the coralline survived; there is not much one can do
with the pineapples, and the coveted araticù apé are totally lost.”71 In the
mid-eighteenth century a religious man, José Pardo de Figueroa, sent a few
custard apple seeds from Peru to the Enlightenment historian and linguist
Gregorio Mayans, who lived in Oliva (Valencia), and in their correspond-
ence they both spoke of their fondness for American products, particularly
chocolate and custard apples.72
The physician, naturalist, and writer Francesco Redi, who was from
Arezzo and served the grand duke, mentioned custard apples in his
Esperienze naturali, where he transcribed a letter from a Portuguese Jesuit
that included descriptions similar to those Cosme III de Medici used in his
correspondence with Lorenzo Ginori. It is likely that Redi and Cosme III
had the same source, probably other Jesuits, who were a channel of cultural
information that could be received both with admiration and rejection.73
Redi had studied with the Jesuits in Arezzo, and Ginori, in Lisbon, also had
frequent contacts with the order. Cosme III de Medici’s letter and Redi’s
book are both from 1671, so it would be interesting to confirm the flow
of American information and circulation of products through these differ-
ent channels. The information generated in academic environments (with
Redi using the Jesuit’s information) enabled the Medici court to acquire
knowledge about and gain access to an exotic product (see Figure 10.1).
Cosme III de Medici very probably based his description and drawing on
Redi’s text. Although the connection between the two descriptions would
have to be verified, it is logical to assume that both arenas (Florentine
government and academic environments) would be highly permeable to
Figure 10.1 Frontispiece of Francesco Redi, Esperienze intorno a diverse cose naturali
(Florence: All’Insegna della Nave, 1671) with a drawing of a custard apple, p. 163
such information. The Medici rulers themselves did everything they could
to internationalize these institutions, protecting and integrating within
them persons who could provide American knowledge. Such was the case
of Diego López de Ulloa, a Portuguese born in Brazil who arrived at the
University of Pisa when the Medici requested a doctor or lawyer with that
background to teach classes there.74
Both Lorenzo Magalotti (who accompanied Cosme III on his voyage
through Spain and Portugal) and Redi were members of the Accademia
del Cimento, founded in 1657 by two of Galileo’s students, Evangelista
Torricelli and Vincenzo Viviani. This was one of the earliest research socie-
ties and functioned along the lines of the Accademia dei Lincei, founded
in Rome in 1630, and the Accademia degl’Investiganti, founded in Naples in
1650.75 The Accademia del Cimento is considered to have been the first in
Europe to conduct physical science experiments and, judging from the work
of some of its members, including Redi, it was well connected with Iberian
colonial routes.76 It would be interesting to establish to what degree Florence,
through its port of Livorno, played a role in Italy similar to that played by
Seville (according to the work of Manuel Castillo Martos and, in the present
volume, María Portuondo) insofar as the circulation of science and knowl-
edge is concerned.77
Lorenzo Ginori’s letters from Lisbon also included references to American
animals such as the capricaia, which the consul considered extravagant
though he did not provide more information. Later, a member of the pres-
tigious Accademia della Crusca, the Tuscan Giuglielmo Pisone, included
a dictionary entry referring to a “river pig” (“porco di fiume”), calling it
capybara. The Accademia della Crusca was founded in Florence in 1583,
and the first edition of its dictionary was published in 1612. One of the
organization’s objectives was to define and cleanse the Tuscan language; it
would be interesting to explore how the academy used American informa-
tion, supplied by merchants and informal diplomatic channels, for later
circulation in Tuscany.
On the basis of two 1674 accounts concerning merchant circles in
Amsterdam and Livorno analyzed by Paolo Malanima, we can observe the
movement of animals such as baboons and parrots from Brazil to Portugal.78
Lorenzo Ginori, as it happens, wrote from Lisbon about the talking parrot
(papagallo parlatore); the one he sent to Florence was received with aston-
ishment, and the Medici court was fascinated with this exotic talking ani-
mal.79 It was said of the long transatlantic voyage in 1673 and the bird’s
new setting that “despite having arrived in a new country, he is not afraid
of doing what he does,”80 a reference to his talkative nature. Unlike the
custard apples, the parrot arrived intact, and from the first day he behaved
according to his exotic nature. But often that was not the case, and many
descriptions of products and species state that they did not survive the voy-
age. One of the main problems with these “living curiosities” was, precisely,
their inability to withstand the journey.81 This was a problem, as they were
meant not only to be exhibited in various courts but to be used as presents
to other rulers.82
Fascination with American birds was especially notable at the Medici
court.83 In 1565 the grand duke asked his envoy to Spain, Leonardo de
Nobili, to oversee the shipment to Florence of a pair of birds that an eccle-
siastic had brought from the Indies at the request of the grand duke.84 In
the late seventeenth century, Placido Ramponi provided information about
talking animals when he traveled to the East Indies and West Indies at the
grand duke’s expense. What was most surprising, beyond the fact that the
animals could talk, was the way in which natives taught them:
There is an infinite number of parrots, araras, and piracchios, and they all
speak with total ease. Each house seems to have ten of them. They are cap-
tured in the forests by young natives who bring them to the city and teach
them to speak with pots that have holes in them, with mirrors behind
doors, and other methods that are equally wondrous.85
As was true with fauna, the Medici sought information about new plants. In
1599 the grand duke asked his botanist, Francesco Malocchi, to go to various
places, ending up at Genoa, where he would acquire plants and vegetables
for the duke’s garden and the museum at the University of Pisa.86 Many other
products, including sweet oranges,87 vanilla, cacao, tobacco, Indian nuts,
bananas,88 and figs,89 among others, later found their way to Florence.
Conclusion
During the early modern era, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany had neither the
power nor the instruments necessary to compete with other European states
politically or militarily. This was particularly true in the Atlantic, where
the Medici were completely and theoretically marginal. Nevertheless, the
efficacious way in which they took advantage of their networks permitted
them entry into Atlantic information circuits and gave them access to new
American products and species, both flora and fauna.
The Medici vastly improved upon existing transmission and distribution
channels, which allowed them to satisfy not only their curiosity but also
demand for new products. The Florentine consuls in Lisbon and Cadiz were
key pieces of this strategy and were firmly integrated into Jesuit networks.
The Order of Jesus, based throughout America, worked with consuls to
stabilize, regularize, and reshape channels of information and circulation
from America. And Sephardic Jews and converso merchants in Livorno, with
their contacts throughout Europe, particularly on the Iberian Peninsula,
also contributed to this complex exchange, which went beyond traditional
explorations or occasional voyages.
Notes
This chapter has been developed within the Junta of Andalusia’s “Proyecto de
Excelencia” P09-HUM 5330, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia, guerra, economía
y consumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. Documentation for this article comes from the Mediceo del Principato (hence-
forth MP) section of the Archivio di Stato de Firenze, Florence (ASFi), as well as
the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid (AHN) and the Archivo General de
Simancas (Valladolid) (AGS).
2. Orazio della Rena, Descrizione dell’America o vero Indie Occidentali (Valladolid,
1604).
3. Cesare Ciano, “Portogallo, Toscana e Livorno tra Medio Evo ed Età Moderna,”
Studi Livornesi 4 (1989), 57–69, at 65. This article is posthumous and incomplete.
4. There are many editions of letters from both travelers; see, for example, Francesco
Carletti, Ragionamenti del mio viaggio intorno al mondo (1594–1606) (Florence,
1701), and Lettere edite e inedite di Filippo Sassetti, ed. Ettore Marucci (Florence: Le
Monnier, 1855).
5. Francisco Zamora Rodríguez, “War, Commerce, Products and Consumption
Patterns: The Ginori and their Information Networks,” in Antonella Alimento,
ed., War, Trade and Neutrality: Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2011), 55–67.
6. On this agent see Antonella Viola, “Lorenzo Ginori: Console della nazione
florentina e agente del granduca di Toscana in Portogallo (1674–1689),” in
Nunziatella Alessandrini, Mariagrazia Russo, Gaetano Sabatini, and Antonella
Viola, eds, “Di buon affetto e commerzio”: Relações luso-italianas na Idade Moderna
(Lisbon: CHAM, 2012), 163–75.
7. Furthermore, Florentine ships could not be held in Lisbon for more than eight
days; see Nunziatella Alessandrini, “Consoli genovesi a Lisbona (1650–1700 ca.),”
in Marcella Aglietti, Manuel Herrero, and Francisco Zamora, eds, Los cónsules de
extranjeros en la Edad Moderna y principios de la Edad Contemporánea (Madrid: Doce
Calles, forthcoming).
8. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New
York: Penguin, 1986). For more on the relationship between Tuscany and Portugal
see Danilo Marrara, ed., Toscana e Portogallo: Miscellanea storica nel 650 aniversario
dello Studio Generale di Pisa (Pisa: ETS, 1994).
9. Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, legajo 3675, docs 130 and 131, “Estudio en
el Consejo de Estado del contenido de las cartas del príncipe Juan Carlos y de su
secretario Diego de Castillo,” esp. 6 April 1642.
10. Ibid.
11. The expression can be found in a 1674 document: Paolo Malanima, “I commerci
del mondo del 1674 visti da Amsterdam e da Livorno,” in Giuliana Biagioli, ed.,
Ricerca di storia moderna IV in onore di Mario Mirri (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1995),
175. See also ASFi, MP, 5062, Florentine government to Lorenzo Ginori in Lisbon
requesting one or two pieces of Mozambique black ebony, 8 May 1673.
12. Maximino Martínez, Plantas medicinales de la flora mexicana (Mexico City: Botas,
1959), 455.
13. Letter from the merchant Battista Vanherten in Cadiz to the Silva company in
Livorno, AHN, Estado 5005 (I), in which he remarks, in this regard, on the “self-
fulfilling prophecy,” 29 July 1674.
14. Letters from the Silva of Livorno to the Baruch of Venice and the brothers Isaac
and Solomon Henriques in Izmir (Turkey) make these circuits clear. For more on
the Sephardic community in Venice see Federica Ruspio, La nazione portoghese:
Ebrei ponentini e nuovi cristiana a Venezia (Turin: Silvio Zamorani, 2007). See also
AHN, Estado 5005 (II), Samuel Baruch to Andrés de Silva, 13 July 1674; and AHN,
Estado 5005 (I), Solomon and Isaac Henriques in Izmir to the Silva in Livorno,
14 June 1674. On Naples, see AHN, Estado 4907 (II), Pedro de Silva Enriques in
Livorno to his nephew Andrés de Silva in Naples, 18 August 1670; and AHN,
Estado 5004 (1), same correspondents, on the sale of brazilwood in Naples,
22 August 1672.
15. One can even consider the existence of an informal political integration of cer-
tain spaces that played crucial roles in the equilibrium among the great powers,
though this is not the place to delve into this possibility.
16. Bruno Anatra, “Italia e Spagna sotto gli Asburgo: reflessioni recenti,” in María
L. González, ed., Actas del II Coloquio Internacional de Historiografía Europa: La
historia de Europa Hoy (Universidad Mar del Plata, 1999), 125–34.
17. Ciano, “Portogallo,” 62–3.
18. Ibid., 62.
19. Ibid.
20. ASFi, MP, 5064, Ginori correspondence, 1675–77.
21. ASFi, MP, 5065, Ginori correspondence, 1678–81.
22. María G. Carrasco González, Comerciantes y casas de negocios en Cádiz (1650–1700)
(Cadiz: UCA, 1997), 37.
23. Lorenzo Magalotti, Viaje de Cosme de Medicis por España y Portugal (1668–1669),
ed. Ángela Mariutti and Ángel Sánchez Rivero (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra,
1933). There are various editions of this work that emphasize Cosme’s travels in
different regions; for Andalusia see María C. Múñoz Medrano, ed., Viaje de Cosme
de Medicis por Andalucía (Malaga: Caligrama, 2006). For a global perspective on
foreigners’ travels throughout the Iberian Peninsula, see the well-known José
García Mercadal, Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal desde los tiempos más
remotos hasta comienzos del siglo XX (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1999).
24. Franco Angiolini, “L’Ordine di Santo Stefano, i Toscani e il mare,” in L’Ordine di
Santo Stefano e il mare (Pisa: ETS, 2001), 33–49.
25. In ASFi, MP, 5067, Francesco Ginori wrote about the arrival of two fully loaded
galleons from Buenos Aires and about pirates in the south seas, 18 May 1687.
26. ASFi, MP, 5069, Florentine government to Francesco Ginori in Cadiz, 27 November
1691.
27. As Braudel wrote, as the world economy went, so went Tuscany, indicating
the integration of world markets: Fernand Braudel, En torno al Mediterráneo
(Barcelona: Paidós, 1997).
28. In Biblioteca Nazionale Firenze, Florence, Fondo Magliabechiano XXIV, codex 53.
29. ASFi, Miscellanea Medicea, 324, fasc. 3, fols 21–2. This is signed by several
merchants.
30. ASFi, MP, 5068, Florentine government to Francesco Ginori in Cadiz, 22 February
1688.
31. The expression should not be confused with that of consulado del mar, meaning a
maritime commercial court of law.
32. On the multiple actors involved in cultural transfers see Hans Cools, Marika
Keblusek, and Badeloch Noldus, eds, Your Humble Servant: Agents in Early Modern
Europe (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2006).
33. Theo Barker, “Consular Reports: A Rich but Neglected Historical Source,” Business
History 3 (1981), 265–6. One of the most illustrative cases of the importance
of these sources is Michel Morineau’s reworking of Hamilton’s theory (based
on official documents) regarding the impact of American silver on Europe: see
Earl Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934); Michel Morineau, Incroyables
gazettes et fabuleux métaux: Les retours des trésors américains d’après les gazettes
hollandaises (XVI–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: Cambridge University Press and Maison
des Sciences de l’Homme, 1985). On the alleged crisis of the Indies trade in the
seventeenth century see José M. Oliva Melgar, “La metrópoli sin territorio: ¿Crisis
del comercio de Indias en el siglo XVII o pérdida del control del monopolio?,” in
Carlos Martínez Shaw and José M. Oliva Melgar, eds, El sistema atlántico español
(siglos XVII–XIX) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2005), 19–73.
34. See, for example, Albert Girard, El comercio francés en Sevilla y Cádiz en tiempo de
los Habsburgo (Seville: Renacimiento, 2006).
35. This process can be seen, from another perspective, in the case of Naples and Rome.
The loss of Florentine consular autonomy in Naples was similar to that in Rome in
1663, when the Medici reduced the number of Florentines there in order to instead
install consuls and establish their annual succession. For Rome see ASFi, Miscellanea
Medicea, 363, fasc. 10, fols 1–4, a copy of a 1663 decree giving Ambassador Rinuccini
orders regarding the consulate. For Naples see Francisco Zamora Rodríguez, “El con-
sulado florentino en Nápoles y el fortalecimiento del estado mediceo a finales del
XVII,” in Aglietti, Herrero, and Zamora, eds, Los cónsules de extranjeros.
36. Franco Angiolini, I cavalieri e il principe: L’Ordine di Santo Stefano e la società toscana
in età moderna (Florence: Edifir, 1997), 86. On the Ginori family see Dizionario
biografico degli italiani, vol. LV (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2000),
26–53, and Francis W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The
Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori and Rucellai (Princeton University Press, 1977).
37. AHN, Estado, 661 (II), consulta de estado regarding a petition from Francesco to
be naturalized and to be allowed to stay in Cadiz as a private citizen and vecino,
28 May 1712. The consulta states that he had been consul since 1679.
38. ASFi, MP, 5064, 29 January 1675.
39. For example see Hipólito Sancho de Sopranis, “Las naciones extranjeras en Cádiz
durante el siglo XVII,” Estudios de historia social de España 2 (1960), 639–877;
John Everaert, Le commerce international et colonial des firmes flamandes à Cadiz,
1670–1700 (Bruges: De Tempel, 1973); Antonio García-Baquero González, Cádiz
y el Atlántico (1717–1778): El comercio colonial español bajo el monopolio gaditano
(Seville: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1976); María G. Carrasco
González, “Los instrumentos del comercio colonial en el Cádiz del siglo XVII
(1650–1700),” Estudios de historia económica 35 (1996), 9–210; Manuel Bustos
Rodríguez, ed., Un comerciante saboyano en el Cádiz de Carlos II (las memorias de
Raimundo de Lantery, 1673–1700) (Cadiz: Caja de Ahorros de Cádiz, 1983); Manuel
Bustos Rodríguez, Cádiz en el sistema atlántico: La ciudad, sus comerciantes y la acti-
vidad mercantil (1650–1830) (Cadiz: Silex, 2005); Girard, El comercio francés.
40. ASFi, MP, 5070, Florentine government to Francesco Ginori, 3 August 1694.
41. ASFi MP, 5063, Lorenzo Ginori to the Florentine government, 29 May 1674.
42. Timothy Walker, “Lisbon as a Strategic Haven in the Atlantic World,” in Wim
Klooster and Alfred Padula, eds, The Atlantic World: Essays on Slavery, Migration and
Imagination (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005), 60–75.
43. ASFi, MP, 5064, 15 January 1675.
44. Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, 4192, appointment by the King of Denmark,
11 May 1693.
45. ASFi, MP, 5063, letters indicating continual contact among members of the family
regarding the transport of American products form Lisbon to Livorno, in this case
nutmeg and bananas, 12 February 1672 and 6 January 1672.
46. ASFi MP, 5066, letters, 3 August 1683 and 14 September 1683.
47. Francisco Núñez Roldán, “Tres familias florentinas en Sevilla: Federighi, Fantoni y
Bucarelli (1570–1625),” in Presencia italiana en Andalucía, siglos XVI–XVII (Seville:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1989), 23–49.
48. Ibid., 39–40.
49. A concept, which Joseph Nye created in reference to contemporary politics, that
complements and goes beyond traditional diplomatic paradigms in early modern
history.
50. ASFi, MP, 5069, Francesco to Florentine government: Francesco told the court
that his properties and those of his brother in Seville had been seized with no
justification by the monarchy, which similarly took properties of other merchants
owing to its obsession with preventing and punishing possible dealings with the
French, 13 April 1692; AHN, Estado 661 (II), consulta, 28 April 1712.
51. ASFi, MP, 5066, Florentine government to Lorenzo Ginori, ordering the latter to
provide information on recipes, 14 March 1682.
52. ASFi, MP, 5065, letters from Lorenzo Ginori.
53. ASFi, MP, 5064, Florentine government to Lorenzo Ginori, 7 December 1675.
54. The expedition was organized by two Englishmen, Robert Dudley and Robert
Thornton; see Ciano, “Portogallo,” 67.
55. ASFi, MP, 5063, Florentine government to Francesco Ginori, 17 December 1674.
The three ingredients were palomage, mecachuches, and orejuelas.
56. ASFi, MP, 5064, Francesco Ginori to Florentine government.
57. On chocolate recipes see Irene Fattacciu, “Atlantic History and Spanish Consumer
Goods in the 18th Century: The Assimilation of Exotic Drinks and the
Fragmentation of European Identities,” in Nuevo Mundo/Mundos Nuevos (2012),
especially the section “Chocolate Crosses the Atlantic: Recipes and Ingredients,”
http://nuevomundo.revues.org/63480?lang=fr#tocto1n2.
58. On Carletti see Francisca Perujo’s introduction to Francesco Carletti,
Razonamientos de mi viaje alrededor del mundo (1594–1606) (Mexico City: Instituto
de Investigaciones Bibliográficas, 1976).
59. Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno
and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2009), offers an excellent study of Livorno as a site of collaboration and
negotiation among agents of different cultures and religions.
the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 259–60.
61. ASFi, MP, 1603, Giustiniani to the grand duke, 24 August 1669, cited in Manuel
Herrero, “La Monarquía Hispánica y las comunidades extranjeras, el espacio
del comercio y del intercambio en Madrid y Cádiz en el siglo XVII,” Torre de los
Lujanes 46 (2002), 97–116.
62. Bianca M. Lindorfer, “Las redes familiares de la aristocracia austríaca y los procesos de
transferencia cultural: Entre Madrid y Viena, 1550–1700,” in Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla,
ed., Las redes del imperio: Élites sociales en la articulación de la Monarquía Hispánica,
1492–1714 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2009), 261–88. See also Norton, Sacred Gifts.
63. Lindorfer, “Las redes,” 262.
64. Francisco Zamora Rodríguez, La pupilla dell’occhio della Toscana y la posición

hispánica en el Mediterráneo occidental (1677–1717) (Madrid: Fundación Española
de Historia Moderna, 2013).
65. AHN, Estado 5005 (I), 26 September 1674.
66. AHN, Estado 5007 (II), 7 May 1678; the merchandise was sent with a friend of
Andrés de Silva’s on the Naples galley ships.
67. ASFi, MP, 5063, letter from Cosme III to Lorenzo Ginori, 22 June 1671. On other
products from Brazil see Eduardo França Paiva, “Mandioca, pimenta, aljôfares:
trânsito cultural no império português: Naturalia & mirabilia,” in Eddy Stols,
Thomas Werner, and Johan Verbeckmoes, eds, Naturalia, mirablia & monstrosa en
los imperios ibéricos (siglos XV–XIX) (Leuven University Press, 2006), 107–22.
68. ASFi, MP, 5063, Cosme III Medici to Lorenzo Ginori, 22 June 1671.
69. Ibid.
70. Louise Bénat-Tachot, “Ananas versus Cacao: Un example de discours ethno-
graphique dans la Historia general y natural de las Indias de Gonzalo Fernández de
Oviedo,” in Berta Ares Queija and Serge Gruzinski, eds, Entre dos mundos: Fronteras
culturales y agentes mediadores (Seville: CSIC, 1997), 202.
71. ASFi, MP, 5063, Florentine government to Lorenzo Ginori, 27 March 1673.
72. Antonio Mestre Sanchis, “Llano Zapata, un criollo apologista de España:
Intercambio apologético-crítico sobre la colonización española a mediados del
siglo XVIII,” Revista de historia moderna 30 (2012), 304–5.
73. See, for example, Rui Loureiro, “O descobrimento da civilização indiana nas
cartas jesuítas (sécolo XVI),” in Ares Queija and Gruzinski, eds, Entre dos mundos,
299–327.
74. ASFi, MP, 5065, letters between Lorenzo Ginori and Florentine government,
1678–81.
75. On academic circles in early modern Italy see Jean Boutier, Brigitte Marin, and
Antonella Romano, eds, Naples, Rome, Florence: Una histoire comparée des mileux
intellectuels italiens (XVII–XVIII siècles) (École Française de Rome, 2005).
76. See Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History
of Science in the Iberian World (Stanford University Press, 2006), esp. “The Colonial
Iberian Roots of the Scientific Revolution,” 14–45.
77. Manuel Castillo Martos, “Ciencia y humanismo en Sevilla y América en los siglos
de la revolución científica y tecnológica,” in Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, ed.,
Ciencia, economía y política en Hispanoamérica colonial (Seville: CSIC, 2000), 17–34.
78. Malanima, “I commerci,” 168. This is a study of world commerce through the
ports of Amsterdam and Livorno and a selection of products that traveled from
one part of the world to another. It is based on ASFi, Carte Strozziane, serie I, 106.
The full titles of the accounts are “Commercio reciproco tra i paesi della domina-
zione del Portogallo e esito delle mercanzie di suddetti paesi ne’ paesi forestieri
nel 1674” and “Traffico d’Italia nel 1674.”
79. On parrots see Renate Pieper, “Papagayos americanos, mediadores culturales entre dos
mundos,” in Stols, Werner, and Verbeckmoes, eds, Naturalia, mirablia & monstrosa,
123–34.
80. ASFi, MP, 5063, Florentine government to Lorenzo Ginori, 27 March 1673.
81. Carlos Gómez-Centurión Jiménez, “Curiosidades vivas: Los animales de América
y Filipinas en la ménagerie real durante el siglo XVIII,” Anuario de estudios ameri-
canas 66:2 (2009), 181–211.
82. Florike Egmond, “Precious Nature, Rare Naturalia as Collectors’ Items and Gifts in
Early Modern Europe,” in Rengenier C. Rittersma, ed., Luxury in the Low Countries:
Miscellaneous Reflections on Netherlandish Material Culture, 1500 to the Present

(Brussels: Pharo Publishing, 2010), 47–65.
83. On the circulation of birds in general see Marcy Norton, “Going to the Birds:
Animals as Things and Beings in Early Modernity,” in Paula Findlen, ed., Early
Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500–1800 (London and New York:
Routledge, 2013), 53–83 and especially the pages dedicated to the adoption, cul-
tural encounter, and exchange of birds, 66–76.
84. The ecclesiastic was Antonio di Toledo. ASF, MP, filza (legajo) 2635, fol. 73v, October
1565. It is transcribed in Alessandra Contini and Paola Volpini, eds, Istruzioni agli
ambasciatori e inviati Medicei in Spagna e nell’ “Italia spagnola” (1536–1648), vol. I
(Pisa: Pubblicacioni degli Archivi di Stato, 2007), 274.
85. Carla Sodini, I Medici e le Indie Orientali: Il diario di viaggio di Placido Ramponi,
emissario in India per conto di Cosimo III (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1996), 105. The
trip was commissioned by the grand duke so that Ramponi could leave gifts at
the tomb of St Francis of Xavier, who was buried in Goa. Ramponi set off from
Florence in October 1697, and also visited Brazil.
86. Paula Findlen, “Inventing Nature: Commerce, Art and Science in the Early
Modern Cabinet of Curiosities,” in Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds,
Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (London:
Routledge, 2002), 304.
87. ASFi, MP, 5063, Florentine government to Lorenzo Ginori, asking for sweet orange
trees (as long as they were not “Chinese”) and strong lemon trees, 23 May 1673.
88. ASFi, MP, 5063, Lorenzo Ginori to Florentine government, confirming a ship-
ment to Livorno for his brother, Francesco (and then to their father, Carlo), of
100 Indian nuts, with water, and a box of plants from Brazil called (in Portuguese)
bananas which, according to Lorenzo, had a very tasty fruit, 12 February 1672 and
6 January 1672.
89. ASFi, MP, 5068, Florentine government to Francesco Ginori in Cadiz, 26 July 1689.
Part III
Connected and Contrasting
Societies
11
Mexican Cochineal and European
Demand for a Luxury Dye,
1550–1850
Carlos Marichal
Cochineal was the most expensive and most important dye exported from
the Americas throughout three centuries, from the Spanish conquest down
to the mid-nineteenth century. The subject is of interest because it illustrates
why and how the European demand for a particular commodity—in this case
a valuable and labor-intensive dyestuff—directly affected the livelihood of
tens of thousands of members of Mexican indigenous peasant communities
from the mid-sixteenth century until the nineteenth century. The Mexican
peasants, who devoted large amounts of labor to cultivating huge quantities
of cochineal insects, actually provided the deep, red dyes that colored the
finest fabrics worn by popes, kings and princes, nobles, military officers and
wealthy residents of most European cities and towns of the ancien régime.
Furthermore, cochineal continued to be in large demand from the textile
industries of industrial and bourgeois Europe in the first two thirds of the
nineteenth century, until artificial dyes—introduced by German chemical
enterprises—drove natural dyes out of the market. Hence, the cochineal
commodity chain, which literally lasted for all of four centuries, can help
elucidate complex transatlantic dynamics with multiple economic, social
and cultural implications.
The chapter that follows is organized around four themes: (1) the dis-
covery of Mexican cochineal by the Spanish conquistadores; (2) the origins
of demand for cochineal in Europe, from the mid-sixteenth century, and
the rise of the international trade in this commodity, with special emphasis
on analysis of trends of production and prices in the period 1750–1850;
(3) the role of both Spanish American and European merchants and merchant
bankers in the international commerce of cochineal and their control of the
complex networks (commodity chains) which developed around this branch
of transatlantic trade; and (4) the specific characteristics of the production
of cochineal in Mexico, principally in the Oaxaca region, with emphasis on
the ways in which peasant communities interacted with royal officials and
merchants for centuries in the production of this valuable dye, which was in
such great international demand. We conclude with some observations on
197
198 Carlos Marichal
the gradual decline of Mexican cochineal as a global commodity in the first

half of the nineteenth century.
The discovery of Mexican cochineal
In the mid-1520s, shortly after the conquest of Mexico, Charles V wrote to

Cortes urging him to send much-solicited information on a new red dyestuff
of high quality, similar to Mediterranean kermes but baptized cochineal,
cultivated and produced by Indian peasants in the Mexican meseta. That
the emperor should request a report of this nature is indicative of the high
value placed in Europe on this quite special commodity, and proof of the
broad demand that developed for this dyestuff can be found in the fact that
cochineal became, after silver, the most important Mexican export for over
300 years from 1550 to 1860.
The name of the most expensive American dye of the ancien régime,
grana cochinilla, was adopted from Europe, being derived originally from
the old Latin term coccina (in Spanish cochinilla), which was used from
the time of the Roman empire to refer to the rich, red colors produced by
scale insects which, when desiccated, were described as grana (little grains).
From the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the principal insects
which produced the dye were those known as kermes, which live on the
sap of certain trees, in particular oaks. During the medieval era, this dye
was in high demand in most luxury wool and silk textile manufacturing
centers of Europe. But from the mid-sixteenth century, the new American
dyestuff triumphed because its colors were brighter and more durable. The
modern scientific name of the Mexican insect that produces the famous
dye is Coccus cacti, a term that refers to the fact that cochineal thrives upon
the cactus known as nopal, abundant in central and southern Mexico. The
historian Manuel Miño notes that in the colonial era it was also known
as Nopalae coccininelifera, an insect living on the leaves (nopal) of a native
cactus.1 According to Richard Donkin, who carried out the most exhaust-
ive historical study on cochineal, it is important to keep in mind that the
cochineal insects belong to two related species of cacti, known as Puntia and
Nopalea, which are important both because of their fruit known as tunas
and their leaves on which the cochineal fed. According to Donkin, “The
early Spanish historians, commencing with [Gonzalo Fernández de] Oviedo
y Valdes (1526) … compared the fruit to large figs, hence the subsequent
description ‘Indian fig’ (higuera de las Indias) …”2 As for the cochineal
insect, which is the parasite of the nopal, it is important to note that there
was a wild form known as grana silvestre (and by botanists as Dactylopius
coccus), but that the most important type for the high-grade dye production
was the grana fina, which in the Nahuatl language was known as nocheztli,
literally translated as “blood of the nopal,” because of its brilliant red color
if squashed.3
Mexican Cochineal and European Demand 199
The Spanish conquistadores soon recognized the value of the dyestuff as

it was an important component of the tribute paid by many peoples subject
to the Aztecs. The administration of Hernan Cortes continued its practice of
collecting tribute: Spanish tax officials used the Matrícula de tributos, an early
sixteenth-century Mexican codex that included detailed lists of the tributes
that had been paid by thousands of peasant communities to the Aztec state
led by the Triple Alliance of the city-states of Tenochititlan, Tlalcopan and
Texcoco at the time of the reign of the emperor Moctecuhzoma II, before his
death in the year 1520. An indication of the importance of the tribute was
the fact that the Zapotec peoples of the central Oaxaca valley were obliged
to contribute 20 bags of grana cochinilla every three months, as well as 400
huipiles (artistically woven covers), 800 plain tunics and 20 gold discs. Many
other examples could be cited, but what we wish to emphasize is that cochin-
eal was an important component of Indian tribute in the viceroyalty of
New Spain from the sixteenth century to the late eighteenth century.
During the colonial era, the natural, wild variety of cochineal, called
grana silvestre, was found and cultivated in relatively small quantities not
only in Mexico but also in Guatemala and in South America, in Peru and
in Tucumán (Argentina), with up to six harvests per year, but producing a
relatively low-grade dyestuff. The truly valuable and important variety of
cochineal, however, was the domesticated type known as grana fina, which
was cultivated basically in Mexico, being twice the size of grana silvestre and
producing a much richer dye. As the historian John Munro noted, it could
yield three harvests (in May, July and October) with production levels of
about 250 kilos of these insects per hectare of planted nopals. The enormous
amount of peasant labor expended can be indicated by the fact that one
pound of the final dye, known as grana cochinilla, required the desiccation
of approximately 70,000 of the tiny insects!
The cochineal insects were cultivated with extraordinary care by Mexican
Indian peasants on the nopal cacti and were later killed directly with hot
water and then dried, which made them a red-brown color, or, alternatively,
were baked slowly in the hot sun, making them a silver color, or were baked
in hot pans or ovens, which made the final color of the grains black.
Subsequently the grains were packed together using diverse procedures
until, finally, the valuable “bricks” (zurrones) of dried dyestuff were ready
for shipment.
Originally cultivated in Tlaxcala and several other regions of New Spain,
production came to be concentrated in Oaxaca by the late sixteenth century.
The high population density of peasant communities in this mountain-
ous territory was an important precondition for the highly labor-intensive
cultivation of the cochinilla on nopal plants. But such circumstances were
not altogether unique. Contemporary descriptions of the cultivation of
cochineal also evoke the enormous amount of meticulous peasant labor
required for the production of silkworms in China and in Europe in the
200 Carlos Marichal
same era. Moreover, it should be noted that both of these commodity chains
with peasant origins—that of silk from China and that of cochineal from
Mexico—met and meshed in Europe in the leading luxury textile centers
from the mid-sixteenth century onward, a fact which bespeaks an early kind
of economic globalization of considerable importance.
European demand for cochineal and trends

in international trade, 1550–1850
A few studies have described aspects of the production of cochineal in Mexico,

but relatively few have explained the reasons why this product consistently
had such a strong secular demand in Europe. One reason for the paucity of
studies on this specific subject would appear to be the relative neglect of eco-
nomic historians with regard to a major chapter in international commerce,
namely, the study of the history of the trade in dyes from the Americas,
including indigo, brazilwood, Campeche wood (palo de Campeche) and
cochineal, all of which were of fundamental importance for European textile
industries from the sixteenth century down to the late nineteenth century.
The use of these dyes, however, was affected by the extensive regu-
lations on the textile industry characteristic of the old regime. For instance,
the Habsburg monarchy decreed that luxury cloth such as silk and velvet
could not be produced in the Americas but must be imported from Spain.
Moreover, the privilege of wearing luxurious silks, velvets and woolens
(particularly of certain bright colors) was highly regulated by special sumptu-
ary laws, and this was also the case in other European societies of the late
medieval era and in the Renaissance. Cochineal was one of the dyes that
produced the richest, deepest and most long-lasting crimsons and scarlets,
and this was reflected in price: expensive dyes often represented a higher
proportion of the final costs of fine cloth than the other materials essential
to their manufacture, including the raw or processed fibers (wool, silks, linens).
But why were such dyestuffs, and in particular cochineal, so expensive?
Scarcity of high-quality dyestuffs, of course, played a major role, but it is also
worthwhile to underline that certain colors had considerable significance
for traditional society in reaffirming social hierarchies.
In this regard, it may be worthwhile to recall that from the medieval era,
one of the colors most prized by crown, church and nobility in Europe for
their finest fabrics was that of carmine or deep crimson. That this should be
so was due in part to its symbolic importance as representative of the pre-
eminence of the upper orders in human society. Two works which are especially
illuminating in this regard are Arthur Lovejoy’s classic The Great Chain of Being
and Manlio Brusatin’s Storia dei colori.4 Apart from red or scarlet, other colors
such as deep blue, gold and silver had perhaps similar prestige, as may be
observed in the Renaissance paintings of the princes of state and church, but
undoubtedly the crimsons stood out. Whether for cloaks, robes, uniforms,
dresses or stockings, or for cushions, curtains or canopies, it is clear that

silks, linens and woolens of a deep red color were always in heavy demand
by wealthy and powerful Europeans of the old regime. One medieval ante-
cedent is the fact that in 1464, Pope Paul II introduced what came to be
known as “the Cardinal’s Purple,” which was actually a deep red, derived
from kermes insects: the latter dye was soon replaced with luxury cloth dyed
with Mexican cochineal in church vestments, cushions and curtains in the
sixteenth century and continued to be used in churches throughout the
Catholic world down to the mid-nineteenth century. But the same types of
cochineal crimsons and scarlets were also in high demand among European
royalty, aristocracy and military officers, as can be seen in a great many
paintings from the Renaissance down to the early nineteenth century.
It is the argument of this chapter that the valuable cochineal trade origin-
ating in Mexico was essentially demand-driven from the early sixteenth century
onward. It was the high premium that European elites were willing to pay
for this rich scarlet dye that impelled the development of an extraordin-
arily complex transatlantic commodity chain, which prospered for over three
centuries. To understand the origins of the international trade in cochineal,
attention must be paid to the contemporary European luxury textile indus-
tries and their multiple connections to the Spanish and Spanish-American
economies. One most important parallel commodity chain that had devel-
oped from the fifteenth century was that of Spanish merino wool, among the
most highly valued and expensive primary goods consumed by the leading
European textile manufacturing centers of the period. Cochineal was the
ideal dye for wool as it is essentially a protein that meshes particularly well
with wool, as well as with silk. But the process of dyeing also required large
quantities of alum, a considerable amount of which was exported from Spain
throughout Europe from the late fifteenth century, constituting another
interlocking commodity chain of the luxury textile business of the age.
From the late medieval period, luxury textile centers of Europe, in par-
ticular Florence and Flanders, produced crimson cloth (in various shades
and tones) by using a variety of red dyestuffs. According to John Munro, the
“medieval scarlets” owed their “splendor, fame and high cost to the dyeing
process.”5 This was largely due to the fact that such dyestuffs (particularly
those derived from insects, such as the kermes from the Mediterranean) were
relatively rare and because the dyeing processes were complex and required
textile dyers of great skill. The dyes represented a large proportion of the final
cloth price, sometimes being the largest single component of production
costs. At the luxury textile center of Mechelen in the fourteenth century,
the scarlet dye known as kermes accounted for 40 percent of the total costs
of cloth production. The variety of colors or tones was obtained by the use
of mordants, including alum, tin, chrome or copper, which respectively pro-
duced hues of crimson, scarlet, purple and claret and, furthermore, allowed
the dyes to fix fast to the cloth and to last for decades.6
202 Carlos Marichal
The expensive scarlet or crimson fabrics could be acquired only by the

wealthiest members of late medieval society. Munro cites the case of the
British monarch Henry VI, whose wardrobe accounts of 1438–39 included
expensive crimson luxury cloth as well as somewhat cheaper scarlets that
cost more than £14 sterling. He notes: “A master mason, then earning six
pence a day, would have had to spend his full wages for 565 workdays
(about 2 years and nine months) to buy one ... For that same amount of
money in 1440, the following goods could have been purchased at the
Antwerp market: approximately 2,720 kilos of Flemish cheese, or 850 kilos
of butter; or 22,000 smoked red herrings or 1,100 litres of good quality
Rhine wine.”7
Despite these high costs, from the early sixteenth century the demand for
luxury crimson and scarlet cloth continued to climb all over Europe, although
perhaps most noticeably in England, Flanders, France and Italy. And, inevit-
ably, the demand for high-quality and long-lasting red dyestuffs also rose.
From the late 1520s Mexican cochineal began to appear on European
markets in small quantities but soon gained wide acceptance as the finest
crimson dyestuff for textiles. According to one historical study: “Cochineal
possessed from ten to twelve times the dyeing properties of kermes; it also
produced colors far superior in brilliancy and fastness.”8 This dyestuff thus
quickly won growing markets in the leading luxury textile manufacturing
centers of Europe, including Segovia in Spain, Suffolk in England, Florence,
Milan and Venice in Italy, Rouen, Malines and Lyons in France and various
cloth-producing centers in Flanders. Recent interdisciplinary studies provide
concrete evidence of the rapid expansion of European demand for cochineal.
A laborious chemical research program studying hundreds of samples of
medieval and early modern dyed textiles has provided “concrete evidence to
substantiate the historical assertion that Mexican cochineal within fifty years
of its introduction into Europe (c. 1520–30) fully displaced kermes in scarlet
textile dyeing.”9
The luxury textile industries of Italy were among the most important of
sixteenth-century Europe and, hence, constituted major markets for expen-
sive dyes. Substantial quantities of the grana cochinilla sent from Veracruz
to Seville and Cadiz made their way to the port of Livorno, as demonstrated
by Spanish economic historian Felipe Ruiz Martín, who used the correspond-
ence of contemporary Spanish merchant bankers to trace the exports to
Florence, where a booming luxury textile industry consumed large quantities
of dyes.10 But he also noted that a not unsubstantial volume of cochineal was
transshipped from Livorno to Venice, where it was used to dye the cheaper
textiles—pannina—sent to Constantinople as well as for the famous Venetian
fez (red felt hat). According to both Spanish and Genoese merchants heav-
ily involved in this trade, this crimson dyestuff was always profitable, as
reflected by the fact that its price quadrupled over the sixteenth century even
as the volume of trade rose rapidly.
In Italy, in the sixteenth century, red garments of silk, velvet or wool

dyed red with cochineal became quite popular, and strict regulations were
established to limit the use of such fabrics, particularly by married women.
Phipps has pointed out that “In 1558, women of the city of Pistoia were
not allowed to wear cloth from Lucca or cloth made of grana (insect red)
and married women in Florence were not allowed to wear red. By that time,
the source of the crimson color so prized for luxury cloth would have been
cochineal from the Americas, which had been slowly replacing the kermes
from Spain and Sicily and the Armenian or Polish insects (sometime referred
to as carmesi) that Venetian traders brought from the east.”11
Despite a few stimulating pages by Ruiz Martín and pioneering articles
by Raymond Lee on some mercantile aspects of the cochineal trade as well
as more general studies by Amy Butler and Elena Phipps, historians have
not devoted much attention to the subject of Mexican cochineal in the
European textile industry of the sixteenth century or to the consumption
patterns of these deep crimson fabrics.12 This seems to be a somewhat striking
lacuna since the Mexican grana cochinilla became for three centuries the
most demanded and expensive luxury dyestuff in the Western world.
According to Phipps and Lee, Antwerp was initially the major trading
center in Northern Europe for cochineal but Amsterdam subsequently
became the major mercantile hub, whence cochineal was re-exported to
France, England and other lands. Phipps comments on the early cochineal
trade, noting that the historian Francesco Gucciardini (1483–1540) had
already mentioned cochineal as one of the articles that Antwerp imported
from Spain, and that “Flemish dyers became renowned for their early expert-
ise in cochineal dyeing.”13 It has become well established that cochineal
was used widely by Italian and Spanish painters from the sixteenth century
and subsequently by Dutch, French and English artists.14 It should also be
noted that in the seventeenth century, Dutch chemists were particularly
active in producing a variety of new varieties of the dye: for instance,
Drebbel, a Dutch chemist, produced a new brilliant red dye by combining
cochineal and tin. It was used at the Gobelin textile manufactures (Paris)
and the Bow Dyeworks (England). Moreover, the leading manuals on dye-
ing techniques paid great attention to methods of preparing the cochineal
dye and to the types of mordants required, as can be seen, for instance, in
the classic work by Jean Hellot, The Art of Dying Wool, Silk, and Cotton, first
published in French in the mid-eighteenth century and republished in an
English version in London in 1789.15
According to an old but classic article by Raymond Lee, it may be esti-
mated that by the early seventeenth century average annual imports of
cochineal to Spain ranged from 10,000 to 12,000 arrobas (each arroba being
some 25 pounds).16 The dyestuff was later transshipped from Seville and
Cadiz to a number of ports in Northern Europe, as well as to Marseilles,
Livorno and Venice in the Mediterranean. Leading merchant banking firms
204 Carlos Marichal
financed much of this highly lucrative commerce from the late sixteenth
century and at times attempted to monopolize supplies, as we will have
occasion to note later in this chapter.
The published data and information on the early cochineal trade are rela-
tively scarce and scattered for both the seventeenth century and the first
half of the eighteenth century. Louisa Hoberman has, however, provided
some important data with regard to the cochineal trade in the seventeenth
century in her excellent study on the merchants of New Spain of the period.
According to her research, it can be estimated that, on average, one pound of
cochineal would cost anywhere between four and six silver pesos in the early
seventeenth century. Hoberman notes that the high unit-value of cochineal
can, perhaps, be best judged by comparing it with other commodities. In the
decade 1610–20, for instance, 25 pounds of cochineal cost 60 times more
than an equivalent weight of sugar; later, in the 1630s, cochineal was worth
30 times the value of an equivalent weight of sugar.17
Hoberman also observes that prices for cultivated cochineal in the decade
1610–20, for example, varied from a low of 110 silver pesos per arroba to a
high of 150 pesos. This general price range appears to have continued to
have been remarkably stable for a very long time, a fact which can be con-
firmed by looking at information from the end of the eighteenth century,
when, according to data published by Alicia Contreras, the prices registered
for cochineal at Cadiz varied from a low of 80 silver pesos per arroba to a
high of 150 pesos between 1780 and 1800.18
While seventeenth-century data on the Mexican cochineal trade are relatively
scarce, there is more abundant statistical information on the Mexican cochin-
eal trade for the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the
nineteenth century, a subject developed in a later section of this chapter in
order to provide an overview of the final century of the international cochineal
trade.
The international networks of trade: merchants and

the cochineal trade in America and Europe
The international commerce in cochineal was of great complexity and

continued to be so for centuries. Its axis originated in Mexico because the
Spanish crown made it a policy to maintain a virtual production monopoly
of grana fina in the region of Oaxaca. The dyestuff was generally carried on
mules from the producing valleys and towns hundreds of miles inland to
the port of Veracruz, where it was put on board Spanish ships that sailed
for Havana, whence the great flotillas of the Spanish naval convoys (flotas)
departed for Seville and later Cadiz, points of arrival of all legal shipping
from Spanish America. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
hundreds of ships and thousands of merchants from all over Europe arrived
in Seville each year on notice of the incoming flotilla that carried immensely
valuable cargoes of silver, gold, cochineal, tobacco, sugar and other goods
from the Americas. The sale of goods there was followed by their re-export
to points all over Europe.
Apart from cochineal it should be noted that there was an important trade
in other American dyes, in particular indigo (some produced in Mexico but
mostly in neighboring Guatemala) and Campeche wood. Indigo was in par-
ticular demand in Europe for the making of blue cloths, while Campeche
wood dyes were used for deep blacks, much in demand for religious reasons
(in both Catholic and Protestant countries) as well as for the clothing of the
expanding middle classes in Europe.
Cochineal was distinguished from the other dyes because of its greater (and
more specialized) demand and higher prices. This probably explains why it
appears more prominently in the correspondence of international merchants
from the sixteenth century down to the early nineteenth century. Moreover,
the possibility of cornering the market in cochineal was apparently greater
than in the case of the other dyestuffs and, hence, was generally seen as
offering more potential for profit-taking by those in a position to invest
large sums in such speculations. From the mid-sixteenth century, leading
European merchants and merchant bankers became as interested in cochin-
eal as they were in other high-value commodities with low weight such
as precious metals, pepper or alum, which made them easily transportable
and objects of financial speculation (although they could also lead to heavy
losses if prices did not evolve as predicted). At any rate, the relatively small
volume of cochineal stocks facilitated frequent price manipulations by the
oligopoly of mercantile firms, which controlled the bulk of cochineal stocks
in European ports.
Felipe Ruíz Martín described how from the late sixteenth century, a few
powerful merchant firms attempted to corner cochineal markets in Europe.
According to this distinguished Spanish economic historian, the cochineal
trade inside Europe was very soon dominated by groups of Spanish and
Italian merchant bankers, a number of them closely linked to the finances of
the Habsburg monarchy. These merchant bankers were engaged in the trade
circuits linking Seville and Cadiz, Genoa, Livorno and Florence. The cochin-
eal arriving from Mexico to Seville and Cadiz was redistributed to the rest
of Europe: for instance, much of the cochineal that went to Italy through
Livorno was transported in the same ships that carried the famous merino
wool that was also a primary commodity for the Florentine luxury textile
manufacturing sector. A close look at the Livorno trade—following the clas-
sic studies by Braudel and Romano—could prove fruitful in this regard.19
In 1965 the Spanish historian Ruiz Martín edited a selection of the abundant
correspondence of a Spanish merchant, Simon Ruiz, with Italian merchants,
which includes extremely frequent references to cochineal: there are 290 cit-
ations in the selection of correspondence published.20 The most spectacular
speculative operation related to cochineal cited was that carried out in the year
206 Carlos Marichal
1585 by the Florentine merchant banking family known as the Capponi, who,
in alliance with the powerful Maluenda merchant bankers of Burgos in Spain,
attempted to corner the entire shipment of cochineal from Mexico arriving
at Seville that year. They also bought up the bulk of stocks in other European
ports in order to reinforce a strategy aimed at gaining a virtual monopoly
of the valuable dyestuff. The ambitious plans of the speculators were quite
successful and allowed them to push prices upward, although there was stiff
resistance by the artisans in the leading textile centers of Europe. Furthermore,
Ruíz Martín notes that in some cases the decline in demand obliged the mer-
chants to offer extended time spans for payment for the cochineal.21
A review of the trade in cochineal over the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries indicates that speculation continued to be a quite common feature
of the international trade in this dyestuff. Marten Buist, the historian of
the merchant-banking firm of Hope and Company, has described in con-
siderable detail the great cochineal speculation of 1788, an operation that
involved buying up most of the stock of the dyestuff in all the principal
European ports: Cadiz, Marseilles, Rouen, Genoa, Amsterdam, London and
even St Petersburg, with the object of obtaining a virtual monopoly. But
before carrying out these transactions in the rest of Europe, particular atten-
tion was directed to acquisition of practically all of the cochineal received
in Cadiz from Mexico before it could be re-exported. Failure there would
condemn the whole of this vast business scheme. The agent of Hope and
Company at Cadiz, however, was not entirely successful in this part of the
project, and as a result there were other ports in which rival merchants were
able to buy up substantial stocks of cochineal, probably because they had
gotten wind of the aims of the alliance between the Amsterdam merchant
banking company of Hope and the London firm of Baring Brothers in an
attempt to corner the market. As a result, the monopoly was nowhere com-
plete and attempts to rig prices failed, causing substantial financial losses to
the main partners in the speculation.22
But European merchants were not alone in the international cochineal
business. Some of the great eighteenth-century mercantile firms of Mexico
City and Veracruz were also heavily involved in the management of this
complex commodity chain from the American side and its connections to
both Europe and Asia (see Figure 11.1). Studies by various historians on the
operations of the wealthy merchant house of the Iraeta family of Mexico
City reveal the complexity of the control of the cochineal trade inside New
Spain. For instance, Brian Hamnett´s pioneering work describes the complex
transactions of a variety of Mexican merchant firms which were heavily
involved in the cochineal trade in the late eighteenth century.23 Later, the
historian Cristina Torales studied one of the chief commercial houses of
Mexico City that carried on international trade in cochineal, indigo and
other products of the viceroyalty of New Spain in the second half of the
eighteenth century. This work illustrates the complexity of networks that
Cochineal Money and bills of credit
Veracruz Cadiz
merchants merchants
Agents of
European
merchant
London bankers at Cadiz Genoese
merchants merchants
Amsterdam Marseilles
Textile merchants merchants Textile
manufacturers manufacturers
Textile Textile
manufacturers manufacturers
Figure 11.1 The cochineal commodity chain: from Veracruz to Europe, c. 1780
allowed for the global distribution of cochineal to a large number of markets

around the world. The Iraeta merchant family participated actively in trad-
ing networks which stretched, on the one hand, from Veracruz to Havana,
Cadiz and thence numerous European ports, and on the other hand, across
the Pacific from Acapulco to Manila and China and India.24
The latter trade was conducted by the famous Manila Galleon—the largest
ship in the world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—which
sailed annually from Acapulco to Manila, taking both silver and cochineal
to the main entrepot of the Philippines during the long span of more than
200 years.
The Oaxaca Indian communities and secular

production of cochineal
This chapter has concentrated attention so far upon the origins and long-
term evolution of the international trade in cochineal. Nonetheless, in
order to understand the complete commodity chain of this dyestuff, it is
worthwhile devoting attention to the specific local and social conditions of
208 Carlos Marichal
production. We will begin with a few comments on the ecology of cochineal

and then summarize some features of the peasant labor involved and the
local commercial mechanisms.
From the late sixteenth century onward, the Spanish colonial regime put
in place a complex incentive structure, which made it attractive for Oaxaca
peasants to specialize in the production of cochineal. Local agriculture was
relatively unproductive because of poor soils, limited markets and high trans-
port costs. The high prices of cochineal, however, allowed Indian families to
obtain a modest but welcome income from the dyestuffs. In many Oaxaca
towns, the peasant communities also obtained income from sale of cotton
produced in the valleys and from the manufacture of richly colored textiles.
For the Spanish crown, there were clear fiscal advantages to indirect con-
trol over the production of cochineal. Since the Indian communities (called
“repúblicas de indios”) were from the sixteenth century obliged to pay trib-
ute to tax collectors of the colonial administration, it was soon stipulated
that in Oaxaca they should do so preferably in cochineal. Actually, cochin-
eal had already been one of the tributes paid by Oaxaca peasants to Aztec
emperors in the fifteenth century, among other goods, basically in the shape
of agricultural goods and textiles. But as production rose under Spanish rule
in the sixteenth century, cochineal became increasingly important to royal
fiscal administrators, who pressed for payment from the Indian peasants. In
the seventeenth century, however, the Spanish crown established the pay-
ment of tribute in silver coin by the heads of Indian peasant families, and
as a result it became essential for the latter to obtain monetary payment for
their cochineal production. This was done by selling the cochineal to mer-
chants and frequently to royal officials, who were involved in this lucrative
trade owing to the high price of cochineal.
The royal functionaries made substantial profits by selling the dyestuffs to
export merchants for silver or gold, whereas they had more difficulties in selling
other commodities produced by the Indian peasants. Some historians such as
Brian Hamnett and Carlos Sánchez Silva have underlined some of the coactive
methods that were employed to force Oaxaca peasants to produce cochineal
from the sixteenth century through to the end of the eighteenth century.25 The
colonial administration included a complex structure of mercantile control of
cochineal production and trade, which operated on the basis of a close alli-
ance between merchants and local bureaucrats who exploited the Indian com-
munities as much as they could. The merchants or functionaries advanced silver
coin or payment in kind (textiles or food products) to the peasants before the
harvest and subsequently received part of their payment in cochineal. Peasants
needed advances in silver to pay the annual tribute which each local family
was obliged to extend to the crown as well as the tithes provided to the church,
which received 10 percent of the value of all cochineal harvests.
However, coaction was not the only factor involved in cochineal production
and trade. The historian Jeremy Baskes has argued that incentives (provided
by both merchants and the viceregal administration) help to explain the

continued specialization of Oaxaca peasants in the cultivation of the cochin-
eal insects and the production of the dyestuff.26 Certainly, it would appear
that the repartimiento system (which lasted until 1787) proved quite success-
ful in assuring a consistently large cochineal harvest each year. In very basic
terms, repartimiento functioned as follows: leading Mexico City merchants
advanced funds to Oaxaca merchants who, in turn, provided funds to
local bureaucrats (alcaldes mayores) in the cochineal-producing towns and
villages. The functionaries would lend the monies to the peasants so that
they could plant nopal plants or sustain themselves until the cochineals
were harvested and sold. In exchange for the funds advanced, the peasants
agreed to return payment to the alcaldes mayores with cochineal at a fixed
price (lower than the current international price). Baskes concludes: “While
at times the repartimiento yielded for peasant recipients undesired hardships,
including the unleashing of the alcalde mayor’s often violent debt collectors,
more often indigenous peasants benefitted, if modestly from their market
participation” (see Figure 11.2).27
On the basis of a huge literature surveyed, Donkin observed that Indian
holdings where cochineal was cultivated were generally family plots.
However, in Oaxaca:
from the eighteenth century there were also large plantations (haciendas)
of 50,000 nopals or more. These were sometimes arranged in blocks of
Silver and letters of credit Cochineal
Mexico City
merchants
Veracruz Cadiz
merchants merchants
Oaxaca
merchants
Alcalde Alcalde Alcalde

mayor mayor mayor
Indian Indian Indian

communities communities communities
Figure 11.2 The cochineal trade: mercantile networks in colonial Mexico

210 Carlos Marichal
about twenty-five meters square. Surrounding mud walls or live hedges

gave protection from wind and dust, and helped to exclude chickens and
turkeys which devoured the grana. Frost and driving rain also resulted in
heavy loss of insects. Fires were sometimes lit when frost was expected,
and canopies of wood and straw (tapextles) might be erected to shield the
plants from heavy downpours.28
The most complete series of data regarding cochineal production are based on
data registered at the local treasury of Oaxaca, including yearly production by
weight and value, as well as annual price trends. The long-term tendencies are
quite clear. Overall, physical production declined after the mid-1780s, as did
the total value of the harvests of cochineal, at the same time as prices moved
downward but with marked fluctuations. The analysis of the data, however,
suggests a need for a further breakdown from the century-long trend and into
shorter time periods.
Analysis of a first quarter-century, spanning the years 1758–83, demon-
strates that this was clearly an age of prosperity as far as cochineal was
concerned: annual production averaged 922,600 pounds, which, at a price
of almost 20 silver reales (two and one-half silver pesos ⫽ 10 shillings) per
pound, produced over 2 million pesos per year for local producers and mer-
chants (see Figure 11.2).
However, a marked drop in production levels took place after the great
peaks attained in the late 1760s, and decline was the trend from the 1770s
and especially during the 1780s, reaching a nadir of less than half a million
pounds per year until 1803. It may be suggested that the peaks in export
volume occurred in the period after 1763 as a result of the end of the Seven
Years War, which had led to a sharp drop in transatlantic trade that picked
up afterwards. It may also be suggested that the Atlantic wars between Spain
and Great Britain (1779–83 and 1796–1805) must have had an abrupt nega-
tive impact on cochineal exports as Spanish American transatlantic trade
and shipping were sharply curtailed by the Royal Navy. Nonetheless, to date
there are not yet enough detailed studies to reach a firm conclusion.
At the same time, prices declined slightly, hovering at an annual average
of 16.4 silver reales per pound until the turn of the century. However, the
reasons for the steep reduction in the production of Oaxaca cochineal were
apparently not related to the rather modest price decline, but rather have
been ascribed by historians to two causes: (1) the terrible impact of the
plagues and demographic crisis of 1784–85 (during which perhaps as many
as 300,000 people died in New Spain), a catastrophe that is believed to have
deeply affected the Oaxaca peasant communities and disrupted production;
and (2) the impact of fiscal and administrative reforms which restructured
traditional forms of commercialization of cochineal locally and, at the same
time, implied higher taxes on this commodity: the historians Hamnett,
Contreras and Silva take this view, which is based on archival research
regarding local conflicts between peasants and merchants and functionaries

in Oaxaca.29
That production should have fallen so abruptly after 1784 and continued
to remain depressed despite the continuing Oaxaca monopoly of cochineal
would seem to suggest that it was the disruption of this complex credit-
mercantile mechanism which contributed to the decline of cochineal. But
other authors have also insisted that additional factors were involved, such
as increasing taxation in the final decades of the eighteenth century. At any
rate, the subject would appear to merit future research. It is evident that a
complex series of new conditions (demographic, fiscal, administrative and
mercantile) disrupted traditional levels of local production of cochineal in
Oaxaca and initiated a phase of relative decadence.
During the following 15 years, 1804–19, production of Oaxaca cochineal
continued to decline (stabilizing at a plateau of 328,000 pounds per year)
but was compensated in good measure by the increase in the international
price of the dyestuff, which rose to an average of 26 silver reales per pound
during these years of war and intermittent interruption of navigation
between Mexico and Europe. Oaxaca peasants and merchants benefitted as
international conflict pushed the prices of this relatively scarce commodity
steeply upward, although, according to official registries, local production
still continued to fall in these difficult years. In this case, it may be suspected
that contraband, which increased during the war years, may have affected
legal production and the statistical records.
In contrast with the war years, after the independence of Mexico in 1821,
the international price of cochineal dropped steadily, most probably because
of the end to the Mexican monopoly on cochineal and the emergence of
competing production in other regions of the world: Guatemala and later
the Canary Islands became major producing areas of cochineal from the
1820s and hence became major competitors to Oaxaca on world markets.
But in spite of the fall in international prices, it should be noted that the
annual volume of production of Oaxaca cochineal (as measured in pounds)
increased, a fact which would appear to suggest that peasant producers sought
to maintain income levels by intensifying their labors in spite of the drop in
profitability, and continued to do so for decades (see Figures 11.3 and 11.4).
Epilogue: international competition and the relative

decline of Mexican cochineal, 1820–70
This brief closing section of the chapter raises the issue of why cochineal
production and trade worldwide continued to be buoyant in the first half
of the nineteenth century but prices tended to decline. One reason that
may be advanced is actually quite simple. For almost three centuries, the
Spanish crown had been remarkably successful in maintaining a virtual
Mexican monopoly of cochineal production. Contraband was punished
212 Carlos Marichal
1,600,000.0
1,400,000.0
1,200,000.0
1,000,000.0
800,000.0
Pounds
600,000.0
400,000.0
200,000.0
0.0
1758
1762
1766
1770
1774
1778
1782
1786
1790
1794
1798
1802
1806
1810
1814
1818
1822
1826
1830
1834
1838
1842
1846
1850
1854
Figure 11.3 Annual production of cochineal by weight registered at the Oficina del
Registro y la Administración Principal de Rentas, Oaxaca, 1758–1854
Source: Barbro Dahlgren, La grana cochinilla (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México–Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, 1990), [331–2].
4,500,000
4,000,000
3,500,000
3,000,000
Silver pesos
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
1758
1762
1766
1770
1774
1778
1782
1786
1790
1794
1798
1802
1806
1810
1814
1818
1822
1826
1830
1834
1838
1842
1846
1850
1854
Figure 11.4 Annual value of cochineal production registered at the Oficina del Registro
y la Administración Principal de Rentas, Oaxaca, 1758–1854
Source: Dahlgren, La grana cochinilla, [331–2].
severely and the secret of how to cultivate the cochineal insects was well
kept. It is true that several attempts were made in the eighteenth century to
spur production in other lands, both in British India in the Punjab as well
as in French colonies in the Caribbean. In the late 1780s, for instance, the
French botanist Thierry de Menonville smuggled some cochineal insects out
of New Spain and took them to Saint-Domingue (Haiti), where he attempted
to promote their cultivation, but without success.30 On the other hand,

after 1820 production increased notably in Guatemala, where peasants were
already familiar with the production methods of cochineal cultivation,
although historians have not dealt with this subject in depth. At any rate,
the increase in production and exports of cochineal from Central America
after independence in 1821 surely caused an increase in world supply and
therefore a drop in international prices.
A review of the statistical information available on production and prices
of Mexican cochineal, as shown in Figures 11.3 and 11.4, clearly suggests that
price volatilty was driven heavily by shortages during the numerous wars
in the period 1750–1820, but less afterward. It would appear that the Seven
Years War (1757–63) provoked an increase in cochineal prices as a result of
the unmet European demand, because Atlantic patrols of the Royal Navy
reduced Spanish American transatlantic trade. But interestingly, prices rose
most after the war, which suggests that during the military conflicts European
textile industries were able to use previously accumulated stores of the dye,
whereas afterward scarcity became a major factor pushing prices upward. It
is also possible that merchant firms specializing in the dye were successful in
cornering markets and also forcing prices upward. The response of Oaxaca
peasants to rising prices after this war was immediate and production also
rose spectacularly.
The Oaxaca data suggest that during the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, prices and production tended to decline, but that again with the
intensification of the Napoleonic wars at the turn of the century and new
naval blockades by the British Navy, prices rose notably and continued at
high levels during the wars of independence in Mexico. However, Oaxaca
official production statistics do not indicate a dynamic response at this time:
contraband may have played an important role in affecting the statistical
registrations of trade, as it did throughout Mexico during these prolonged
conflicts. On the other hand it would not be until after independence (1821)
that Oaxaca cochineal production began its recovery, and rather surprisingly,
since it did so despite falling international prices.
The decline in prices was almost certainly due to the fact that from the
mid-1820s, after Mexican independence, cochineal began to be cultivated
successfully and on a large scale in nearby Guatemala and subsequently
in the Canary Islands. Cochineal became the leading export of Guatemala
from the 1820s and of the Canary Islands between 1840 and the 1870s.31
The results of the increase in cultivation and production of the dyestuff
were dramatic, causing a steady price decline per pound. Despite this
turn of events, Oaxaca peasants responded by increasing production
after 1824, although profitability was falling year by year. Production in
the Canary Islands—which increased spectacularly after 1840 and until
1870—unleashed a particularly damaging trade rivalry. But then, at mid-
century came advances in the chemical dye industries in Germany, and
progressively natural dyes were replaced by synthetic ones until cochineal
214 Carlos Marichal
became something of a curiosity. This fact may explain why the old trade
in dyes has been neglected in most economic histories of Spanish America
and of Europe despite their secular importance to the expansion of luxury
textile industries within the complex process of the building of transatlantic
economies.
Notes
1. Manuel Miño Grijalva, La manufactura colonial: La constitución técnica del obraje
(Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1993), 74.
2. R. A. Donkin, “Spanish Red: An Ethnogeographical Study of Cochineal and the
Opuntia Cactus,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 67:5 (1977), 12.
3. Ibid., 14.
4. Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1936) and Manlio Brusatin, Storia dei colori (Turin: Einaudi, 1983).
5. John Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour,” in
N. B. Harte and K. G. Pointing, eds, Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays
in Memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson (London: Heinemann, 1983), 39.
6. Judith H. Hofenk-De Graaff, “The Chemistry of Red Dyestuffs in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe,” in Harte and Pointing, eds, Cloth and Clothing in Medieval
Europe, 73.
7. Munro, ”The Medieval Scarlet,” 66.
8. Raymond Lee, “American Cochineal in European Commerce, 1526–1625,”
Journal of Modern History 23 (1951), 206.
9. Hofenk-De Graaff, “The Chemistry,” 75.
10. Felipe Ruiz Martín, Lettres marchands échangées entre Florence et Medina del Campo
(Paris: École Practique des Hautes Études, 1965).
11. Elena Phipps, Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2010), 26.
12. Ruiz Martín, Lettres marchands; Phipps, Cochineal Red; Lee, “American Cochineal”;
Raymond Lee, “Cochineal Production and Trade in New Spain to 1600,” The
Americas 4 (1948), 449–73; Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage
and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper Collins, 2005).
13. Phipps, Cochineal Red, 28.
14. Jo Kirby and Raymond White, “The Identification of Red Lake Pigment Dyestuffs
and a Discussion of their Use,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 17 (1996), 56–80.
15. Jean Hellot et al., The Art of Dying Wool, Silk, and Cotton (London: Scott,
Greenwood & Co., 1901).
16. Lee, “American Cochineal,” 251.
17. Louisa Schell Hoberman, Mexico’s Merchant Elite, 1590–1660: Silver, State and
Society (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 121–2.
18. Alicia del Carmen Contreras Sánchez, Capital comercial y colorantes en la Nueva
España en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán-
Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, 1996).
19. See Fernand Braudel and Ruggiero Romano, Navires et marchands à l’entrée du port
de Livourne 1547–1611 (Paris: École Practique des Hautes Études, 1951).
20. The mercantile correspondence of Simón Ruiz is among the richest in that of con-
temporary Europe, including over 6,000 letters, now deposited at the University
of Valladolid: Ruiz Martín, Lettres marchands.
21. Ibid., 125–8.

22. Marten G. Buist, At Spes Non Fracta: Hope and Company, 1770–1815, Merchant
Bankers and Diplomats at Work (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), chap. 15, has
a fascinating description.
23. Brian R. Hamnett, Politics and Trade in Southern Mexico, 1750–1821 (Cambridge
24. Cristina Torales, ed., La compañía de comercio Francisco Ignacio de Yraeta (1767–
1797), 2 vols (Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano de Comercio Exterior, 1985).
25. Hamnett, Politics and Trade; Carlos Sánchez Silva, Indios, comerciantes y buro-
cracia en la Oaxaca poscolonial, 1786–1860 (Oaxaca: Instituto Oaxaqueño de las
Culturas–Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, 1998).
26. Jeremy Baskes, Indians, Merchants and Markets: A Reinterpretation of the Repartimiento
and Spanish–Indian Economic Relations in Colonial Oaxaca, 1750–1821 (Stanford
27. Jeremy Baskes, “Coerced or Voluntary? The Repartimiento and Market
Participation of Peasants in Late Colonial Oaxaca,” Journal of Latin American
Studies 28 (1996), 4.
28. Donkin, “Spanish Red,” 14.
29. Hamnett, Politics and Trade; Contreras Sánchez, Capital comercial; Sánchez Silva,
Indios, comerciantes y burocracia.
30. María Justina Sarabia Viejo, La grana y el añil: Técnicas tintóreas en México y América
Central (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos-Fundación del Monte,
1994), 35–6.
31. See Jacques Heers, “La búsqueda de colorantes,” Historia mexicana 11:1 (1961),
1–27; Antonio M. Macías Hernández, “El papel de la agricultura en el desar-
rollo regional de la Europa mediterránea, 1750–1890,” Áreas: Revista de ciencias
sociales 12 (1990), 239–52; Manuel Rubio Sánchez, Historia del cultivo de la grana o
cochinilla en Guatemala (Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional, 1994). More recently see
also Carlos Sánchez Silva and Miguel Suárez Bosa, “Evolución de la producción
y el comercio mundial de la grana cochinilla, siglos XVI–XIX,” Revista de Indias
66:237 (2006), 484–8.
12
Hispaniola’s Turn to Tobacco
Products from Santo Domingo in Atlantic
Commerce
Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero
For a brief but intense period, the island of Hispaniola constituted the center
of Spain’s discovery, conquest, and colonization of America and played a
crucial historical role. Economically, from the start of the sixteenth century
until the end of the eighteenth century, the island underwent various phases
with several features: monocultures of products as diverse as sugar cane in
the sixteenth century and tobacco in the eighteenth century; a thriving
plantation economy that produced exports to the Iberian Peninsula after
immigrants arrived from the Canary Islands; and the benefits that accrued
over time from the existence of the French colony of Saint-Domingue on
the western part of the island, where livestock was sold in order to obtain
slaves, cloth, and European manufactured products at prices much lower
than the Hispanic merchants could provide them.
It was in Hispaniola that the Europeans first came into contact with
American products they had never seen in the Old World and described their
consumption. Natives “smoked something they called tobacco ... a plant that
the Indians greatly value and they grow it in gardens and fields ... and smok-
ing this aromatic plant was not only healthy but also holy.” As would be
the case later, “some Christians ... especially those suffering from pustules,”
would smoke tobacco “because they say that when they feel its effects they
suffer no pain.”1
There were several reasons for the colony’s transition from a position of
preeminence to one of decline as it became secondary or even marginal
among Spain’s overseas possessions. The heart of the New World shifted
to other American sites, particularly after penetration into the continent
and discovery of the great indigenous empires. Further to the detriment of
the port of Santo Domingo and its commercial relations with the Iberian
Peninsula, strategic factors allowed the rise of Cuba and its capital, Havana,
which, owing to its exceptional geographic location, took on a leading role.
The decisive cause of the decline could be “the disappearance of the
Indians, the key problem throughout Dominican history.”2 Regardless of
the estimated population in 1492, it appears that by 1550 there were only
216
Hispaniola’s Turn to Tobacco 217
a few hundred natives left. In order to halt the flow of colonists moving to
other places in America, African slaves were imported, and more than forty
thousand Caribbean Indians from the Antilles, Cuba, Lucayas, Puerto Rico,
and Trinidad—also enslaved, owing to their alleged cannibalism—were
brought in from 1508 to 1515. Farmers arrived from the Iberian Peninsula,
and efforts were made to persuade married Spanish peasants to emigrate
and grow such basic Spanish foods as wheat, grapes, and olives. The chron-
icler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo wrote that in 1533 60 farming families
arrived at the port of Santo Domingo ready to populate Montecristi and
Puerto Real; with them they carried royal grants and privileges allowing
them to settle wherever they wished.3
From gold to sugar plantations
During much of the first half of the sixteenth century, Spanish settlers were
principally interested in discovering precious metals so they could get rich
quickly, which they certainly could not do by farming. Extraction was thus
a key focus, and the Spanish crown was keenly interested in obtaining pre-
cious metals to pay for its expensive foreign adventures.
From 1500 to 1520 extraction was confined to the Antilles and the
continental Caribbean coast. During this period barter (gold for Castilian
trinkets), tribute payments in gold, and placer mining in Hispaniola’s rivers
yielded some shipments back to the Iberian Peninsula.
Only around 200 pesos’ worth of gold were accumulated from the natives,
and in a very short time the Spaniards managed to get their hands on all
the gold collected by natives over centuries. Other means would be neces-
sary. Thus they turned to the river beds; experts were sent from Spain, and
Indians were put to work mining. As a result, gold production in 1501
reached 276 kilos.
But by around 1525, during the period that Pierre Chaunu called the first
gold cycle, the island’s golden years were over.4 The mythical and endless
mines were not to be found, and the placers did not yield the hoped-for
amounts of precious metals. Hispaniola did not live up to its economic
dreams. So it is not surprising that peninsular emigrants wished to go
elsewhere and become rich, their principal reason for having crossed the
Atlantic to begin with. In Santo Domingo at that time, “people talked of
nothing but depopulation, and the towns emptied of people because of the
lack of gold and Indians.”5 The collapse of gold led to farming, cattle-raising,
and, above all, the rise of the sugar industry.
The economic system established during the early years of Spanish colon-
ization in the New World was based on the supposition that the peninsula
would supply the means for ensuring the survival of emigrant families.
That was one important cause for the delay in agricultural development
in America, which should have been a priority, as it was the principal way
218 Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero
of establishing stable population centers. But it was only after Spain had
to admit that there was no gold forthcoming and that imports from the
metropolis became scarce—aside from being hugely expensive—that colon-
ists in Hispaniola began seeking alternatives through farming indigenous
crops or adapting European ones.
At first, Spaniards’ customs and religious practices determined which
crops were planted: above all, they wanted wheat, grapes, and olives.
Though the weather in the Antilles led to failure, other options were con-
sidered. As the king told Diego Colón (Columbus’s son) in 1512, “I have
been informed that it would be good to try to plant rice on the island ...
I have ordered officials in Seville to send some so it can be grown.”6 The
colonial trade office (Casa de la Contratación) received orders to send
as many workers overseas as possible, along with plants, fruit trees, and
seeds. The crown also offered regular rewards to growers who obtained a
given amount of crops that were in demand in America or for which it
was hoped great profits could be made in European markets. For example,
20,000 maravedíes of bonds ( juros) were promised to whoever first managed
to harvest ten pounds of clove, ginger, or cinnamon, and tax-exempt access
to water was promised to the first laborer in Hispaniola to pick 100 fanegas
of wheat three years running.7
During this period of forced economic transformation on the island, the
establishment of major sugar plants marked a productive shift. The most
immediate results were land seizures, the establishment of the latifundio
system, and a tendency toward private holdings. The constantly rising
demand for sugar (for baking, candies, rum, sweeteners, etc.) made it into a
massively popular consumer product. As Father José de Acosta would write
years later, the island’s industry gave the world a sweet tooth.8
Sugar plantations required significant investment and highly developed
technology, and for that reason they are considered the first capitalist ven-
tures in the New World. Owners frequently requested loans from the crown,
which were sometimes granted (6,000 pesos of gold in 1520 in Hispaniola,
for example). It was prohibited at various points to seize sugar mills, slaves,
tools, and other instruments of the industry in foreclosure proceedings.9
The mills generally were owned by businessmen from the powerful Creole
oligarchy, Indian functionaries, wealthy families, and even religious orders,
all of whom had capital and means. Fernández de Oviedo commented in
1546 that “he who runs an independent, well-managed mill is very well off,
as [the mills] are of great utility and produce great wealth.”10
In order to obtain a high level of profit and large quantities of sugar to
export, the cane fields required large numbers of laborers to plant, harvest,
and transform the crop. More and more black slaves were imported, their
price reaching 300 pesos and even up to 500 pesos if they had experience in
sugar mills. It has been correctly asserted that “sugar mills and black slaves
were synonymous in the Antilles starting in the sixteenth century.”11
It is thought that the first sugar cane reached the Antilles on Columbus’s
second voyage and came from either Madeira or the Canary Islands, which
also is where the early experts in sugar production came from. It was a
spectacularly successful crop in the Caribbean, owing to the perfectly suited
climate and soil. The humanist Peter Martyr d’Anghiera wrote that the first
canes harvested in Hispaniola were as thick as an arm and taller than a man,
while Alonso de Zuazo, a royal judge in Santo Domingo, said in 1518 that
the cane fields provoked “grandísima admiración”; “The cane is as thick as
a man’s wrist and as tall as two average-sized men.”12
In Hispaniola, the sugar industry replaced the so-called gold economy
after the placers collapsed along with most of the native population. Even
during the government of the Hieronymite fathers, loans of 500 pesos of
gold were granted to inhabitants who wished to set up a mill, and the
fathers were equally willing to allow the entry of black slaves to work in
the industry.13 By 1550 there were no fewer than 20 working mills and four
trapiches, mills that used horsepower. Some of these sugar plants were clear
signs of the wealth accumulated by the Creole oligarchy and high-ranking
Indians; Melchor de Castro’s plantation held 900 slaves, and Alonso de
Zuazo’s, “adding up the blacks and cattle and tools and lands and every-
thing else, is worth around fifty thousand ducats of gold.”14
Sugar production grew steadily until at least the late sixteenth century,
yielding exports to Seville of 86,000 arrobas in 1580. But sugar also was
consumed locally and exported to other European and international ports
via contraband, and it was captured by French pirates, meaning that in the
most productive years, and after a cycle of high prices, total production
could have been over 200,000 arrobas.15 Thanks to this new economic devel-
opment, the island once again prospered after the disappointments of the
failed gold rush. Fernández de Oviedo wrote that before the sugar boom,
“the ships left for Spain empty, and now they are loaded with sugar, even in
greater fleets than those that arrive, and with greater profits ... and the ships
that arrive here from Spain continually return with good sugar and the froth
and honey from it that are wasted on this island and given to them for free,
enough to enrich another great province ...”16
The end of the sixteenth century marked the start of the decline of
Hispaniola’s sugar industry. Shipments diminished at an alarming rate (just
2,100 arrobas in 1594 and 5,000 in 1596), as did the number of mills (from
60 in 1570 to just 16 two decades later). There were several reasons for the
phenomenon: the establishment of the officially sanctioned Indies trade
(“Carrera de Indias”), which limited trade between the island and the Iberian
Peninsula to three ships and just one port, Santo Domingo; difficulty in
obtaining black slaves; the absence of capitalists; liquidity problems; a shift
toward investment in other sectors such as cattle and ginger, which required
less capital outlay and labor; the inability of some mill owners to take advan-
tage of technology and adjust to conditions in the island; Sir Francis Drake’s
capture of the city of Santo Domingo in 1586; and, finally, competition from
the Brazilian sugar industry.17
As if all that were not enough, in 1605–06, in an effort to put an end to
widespread contraband, the entire west side of the island was abandoned
and the Spanish population was moved east. The move not only destroyed
the most important sugar mills but also provided an opening for the French
to take over the abandoned land, where they founded Saint-Domingue.
The Dominican sugar industry would not recover until the latter half of the
eighteenth century.
Despite the importance of the sugar trade for the metropolis, it is interest-
ing that documents in the Casa de la Contratación regarding the arrival of
ships from Santo Domingo in the sixteenth century reflect disappointment at
the lack of precious metals. Gold was desired above all else because it enabled
the crown to recover from its periodic economic crises. One frequently reads
observations such as “five ships have arrived from the island carrying hides
and sugars, but no gold or silver”; “[the ships] have very little gold and silver
and are loaded with hides and sugar and cañafístula [cassia fistula] and palo de
guayacán”; “[the ships] are carrying only hides and sugar, barely four hundred
pesos of gold,” and so on.18
Other crops
Wheat was planted in Hispaniola but, as throughout the Antilles, the humidity
was such that it could not grow well. The crown insisted on the manufacture
of flour (there were experiments in various parts of the island, especially
in Santiago de los Caballeros) but the results were not good, and the island
always relied upon other Spanish and foreign colonies in America for its
grain supply. As an alternative, people made bread from yucca, which in
Europe was called pan de palo. According to Bartolomé de las Casas, Spaniards
ended up getting used to it. The lack of wheat and wine not only meant
that Spaniards had to do without certain foods but also that they could not
conduct religious ceremonies properly. One writer noted the effect on the
“celebration of the Holy Sacrifice at a time such as now, at the start of Lent.”19
The climate also prevented the cultivation of grapes, despite attempts
from 1493 to 1519. Fernández de Oviedo wrote that many vines were trans-
ported from Castile and planted outside the city of Santo Domingo, that
Admiral Diego Colón tended a vine that yielded basketfuls of grapes, and
that clusters of grapes grown by Diego Caballero, in Nigua, were sold on
the city’s streets.20 But again, it appears that these efforts were unsuccessful,
because grape-growing was quickly abandoned. Throughout the colonial
period, wine was imported from the Canary Islands and the peninsula,
either directly or through other Spanish-American and foreign ports.
The island’s business communities were certainly enterprising. Long before
sugar shipments began their decline, growers began converting large cane
plantations into hundreds of small agricultural plots requiring fewer slaves,

known as estancias. There they grew a wide range of products both for local con-
sumption and for export to Seville, including annatto, cotton, rice, sweet pota-
toes, ginger, cassava, bananas, maize, and tobacco. They also grew cañafístula,
which was widely in demand for medicinal purposes. Ginger was grown from
1565, with remarkable success; 20 years later some 22,000 quintales were sent
to the metropolis, and the annual average remained 11,000 quintales through
the early seventeenth century. But by 1638 it was no longer being exported
because, according to one source, “no one wanted to take it to Spain.”21
Despite the fact that in 1503 it was prohibited for brazilwood from any-
where other than the overseas colonies to enter Seville, the wood grown in
Hispaniola was not easy to sell in the Old World owing to competition from
the other Antilles islands, Yucatan, and Venezuela, among other places.
Already in 1511 the wood was piling up in the warehouses of the Casa de la
Contratación, and as it sat there it grew dry and useless. In a 1565 report to
the king, the Casa said it had auctioned off 95 boxes of sugar, 3,100 hides,
and 1,110 quintales of brazilwood, and that the wood had not sold “because
the highest price we could get was eight reales per quintal [of four arrobas
and 100 pounds]. Taking into account what administrators have said it cost,
and the shipping, we would be losing around 16 reales for each quintal.”22
Export of cacao to New Spain and the metropolis involved the establish-
ment of plantations in Santo Domingo, Seibo, and Higüey until the mid-
seventeenth century, though the crop was ruined by disease in 1666 and six
years later a hurricane destroyed what was left.
As for livestock, the reproduction of horses, cows, pigs, sheep, and goats
from Spain was spectacular in certain regions of America where there were
wide open spaces with room for grazing. As evidence of their high rate of
reproduction, by the middle of the century the price of a horse was no
longer exorbitant (two or three thousand pesos), as it had been at the time
of the conquest, the price of meat in Hispaniola was 30 times less than in
the Iberian Peninsula, and there were significant exports of leather and
hides (to make hats, shoes, and saddles), tallow to make soap and candles,
and even live animals such as mules for mines and oxen and horses for
transport and fieldwork.
From Hispaniola, horses, along with pigs and cows, were sent to the rest
of the Antilles and from there to the continent. It was reported that some
Dominicans had herds with up to 42,000 head in 1550, and that between
1560 and 1580 more than 200,000 head were slaughtered every year solely
for their hides.23 These numbers indicate that the total bovine population
may have been more than two million head, showing how good the land
was in that respect. There also were smaller herds of pigs, sheep, and goats
whose owners belonged to more modest social classes.
The hides were highly regarded in Europe, and they account for a signifi-
cant portion of exports to the Iberian Peninsula. Several thousand units
were sent on each ship, not counting a similar amount taken in contraband.
Between 1580 and 1596, more than 278,000 pieces were transported; from
1603 to 1606 the total was 95,000.24 In subsequent years, skins were the
only one of Santo Domingo’s products to occupy first place in the trans-
atlantic trade; from 1650 to 1699, 221,668 units were exported, accounting
for 31 percent of the total imported from the American colonies during that
period (again not counting illegal trafficking).25
These exports continued throughout the eighteenth century with one
important difference: almost all were bought by non-Spanish-American col-
onies in exchange for flour and other foodstuffs. Thus of the 159,091 hides
officially exported by Santo Domingo from 1700 to 1747, 90 percent were
bound for “foreign ports” including Curaçao (80,309 units, or 50.47 percent),
Guarico (14,838, or 9.32 percent), Saint Thomas (10,028, or 6.3 percent),
Guadaloupe (1,531, or 0.96 percent), and Jamaica (1,412, or 0.88 percent). An
additional 35,790 units, or 22.49 percent, were sent to other locations.26
Contraband may well have reached double the official numbers. In other
words, Dominican hides and skins were an important component of the
Atlantic trade, but they crossed the ocean in the holds of foreign ships.27
A special plant: Dominican tobacco
Just three days after discovering America, Europeans learned of the existence
of tobacco in the Antilles after observing an Indian with “dry leaves that
must be very valued among them.” On 6 November 1492 they saw “many
people in the towns, both men and women, with charred sticks in their
hands and aromatic plants, as was their custom.”28 Yet during the sixteenth
century tobacco was not an important product among those sent from the
Caribbean to Seville, even though it was widely consumed in the Antilles
not only by the natives but by all sectors of the population, including
Spaniards in Hispaniola “who frequently smoked,”29 and by “many blacks
in [Santo Domingo] ... who smoke tobacco because they say that when they
stop working and inhale the tobacco they are no longer fatigued.”30
Early cultivation of tobacco

Though tobacco was initially sent to the Iberian Peninsula only to prove
its existence, there is no doubt that there were plantations in Hispaniola,
given the repeated references to the plant and its widespread use among
all the island’s inhabitants. For example, in the mid-sixteenth century
the number of slaves on the island was around 25,000, and most of them
smoked tobacco, so much so that it became a staple for them, and the lack
of tobacco could provoke serious unrest.31
It is therefore logical to think that tobacco was grown in Hispaniola
for three main reasons: for internal consumption, for commerce with
other Spanish-American sites, and, above all, as a product exchanged as
contraband among foreign ships that arrived at the island loaded with
European commodities. It is clear that lands were dedicated to growing
tobacco; a 1605–06 census in Santiago de los Caballeros, the second-largest
city on the island, shows that 95 plots were devoted to growing casaba,
maize, and tobacco.32
The bustling illegal traffic in the Caribbean, which obviously hurt the inter-
ests of both the crown and peninsular merchants, prompted a royal order in
1606 prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco for ten years on the islands of
Barlovento and Tierra Firme. Nonetheless, steady demand on the European
markets led to the order being revoked eight years later. From then on, the
king said, both so that colonists “do not lose the investments they have
made” and so that “the royal treasury benefits from its trade,” cultivation
would be permitted as long as “all the tobacco not consumed on the islands
be taken from each island or province of origin and sent directly to the city
of Seville, and anyone trafficking to anywhere else will be subject to the death
penalty and loss of property, which is true also for those who work with the
enemy, who will most certainly be condemned.”33
A royal law (cédula) in 1614 was quite clear in this regard. First, it impli-
citly recognized that despite prohibitions, tobacco planting was still going
on, partly to meet the consumption needs of the overseas colonies and
partly because of contraband carried on foreign ships, which explains the
harsh penalties for those caught illicitly trafficking. Second, and even more
important, the crown recognized the enormous potential of the earnings
derived from all activities associated with tobacco. This amounted to a shift
of great economic importance.
The creation of the tobacco monopoly, systematically leased out, resulted
in “extraordinary profits,” and even the king himself ended up admitting
that “income from tobacco is the most important of my royal treasury and
that which best meets the urgent needs of public finance.” The financial
problems of the seventeenth-century Habsburgs and the “overriding need
to obtain more income” resulted in the monarchy seeking “new taxes that
were not yet earmarked to pay off its considerable debts.” If tobacco was the
solution, it was because of “its ability to produce wealth owing to its deep
and widespread presence among broad sectors of the population.”34
Bourbon rulers reached similar conclusions in the eighteenth century,
viewing the tobacco monopoly as “an important source of resources with
which to rebuild royal power” and an income stream they could not do
without.35 Among the most important reforms they adopted were the estab-
lishment of a factory and monopoly in Cuba in 1716, the imposition of the
tax in New Spain, and attempts to encourage plantation farming in other
American colonies and the Philippines. Overall, tobacco became one of the
principal financial instruments of the royal treasury.
In the early seventeenth century, Dominican tobacco was sent from
Cartagena de Indias to the mines of Zamora, where it was consumed by
black slaves. Tithes (diezmos) on tobacco in Santiago de los Caballeros

reached 1,400 ducats a year. Data from a dozen years between 1600 and
1650 show that official exports to Seville amounted to around one mil-
lion pounds.36 But two important competitors appeared around this time:
the British colony of Virginia to the north, and the nearby island of Cuba,
whose tobacco production, which was quite different, would end up domin-
ating the market.
Nonetheless, the crown continued encouraging the plantation economy
of Hispaniola in order to compete with foreign interests and because its
sources on the island said that the “tobacco is very good and it could be
better than that of Barinas. Altogether, more than 200,000 pounds are picked
every year.”37 That was what someone told Governor Andrés de Robles in
1687, and he sought out good land for that purpose taking into account that
“the city of Santiago alone can supply the needs of this island, but if other
areas were worked as well, we could reap as much as the French, as this is
their main crop in the part [of the island] they occupy.”38 Those conditions
prevailed until at least 1699, when the judge (oidor) Araujo y Rivera com-
mented, regarding tobacco, “it is fruitful and of good quality. If there were
a market, a lot more could be grown, but for lack of a market we have only
what is necessary for consumption here.”39
Tobacco in the eighteenth century: great hopes are dashed

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, a chance event ended up
transforming the general situation described thus far. That event was the
English occupation of Havana in 1762, which led to substantial changes
in Dominican tobacco production. After the interruption in the supply of
Cuban leaves to the peninsula, the metropolis sought new supply sources.
The quality of Cuban tobacco had gone down since the previous century,
something that has not been adequately emphasized, which affected sup-
plies to the Royal Tobacco Factory in Seville.40 José de Gálvez, who years
later would be minister of the Indies, in 1760 remarked, “the tobacco plan-
tations [in Cuba] are as important to Spain as the decline in the harvests, and
as a result of decreasing prices some growers have abandoned their lands,
preferring to cultivate sugar cane, which is more profitable, and others have
reduced the efforts they put into planting tobacco to ensure it is of good quality.
This reduction ... is, to my way of thinking, the only reason for the smaller
harvests, along with the fact that the quality of the Cuban product is not as
good as it was.”41
After trade with Cuba was interrupted on account of the British invasion,
and after agreement that the quality of Cuban tobacco had anyway gone
down, Spain shifted its attention to the plantations of Santo Domingo,
whose production was garnering magnificent reviews. On several occasions,
experts from the Royal Tobacco Factory in Seville reported on the high qual-
ity of Dominican tobacco, which was as good as the best from Havana, and
even better; tobacco from “the region of Licey, of top quality ... and that
of less quality from the same area ... are both better than what used to be
sent from Havana, and it is all good for rolling cigarettes.” The leaves were
“broad, aromatic, and with good form, fragrant like the best shipments from
the other island [i.e. Cuba]. From one leaf, 40 cigarettes have been made,
something never before seen.”42
As a result, a royal order on 12 October 1763 provided for the establish-
ment of a tobacco factory in Santo Domingo which would have exclusive
supply rights over some of the two million pounds used annually by the
Royal Tobacco Factory in Seville. At the same time, shipment of Dominican
tobacco to other Spanish-American ports was prohibited so that all pro-
duction would take place in Spain. Two employees of the Seville factory were
chosen to oversee the new facility and ensure that the important venture
ran flawlessly. The agent in charge (the factor) must have knowledge and
experience regarding both “the perfect construction of cigarettes and the
leaves so as to ensure their perfection and their pleasant consumption by
smokers.”43
But the Dominican factory encountered difficulties. One of the first was
the appointment of peninsulares to occupy the posts of factor and accountant
(contador). The men initially chosen (José Cid de la Paz and José de Carranza,
respectively) accepted the jobs, but there is no indication that they ever
went to the island. Traditionally, blame has been assigned to the Casa de la
Contratación for not having issued the proper embarkation licenses as the
result of a pending lawsuit in Seville, about which nothing is known other
than its existence.
Whether or not that was the cause, there also were economic reasons
affecting the men’s voyage. Cid, replying to instructions to get his matters in
order before leaving for Santo Domingo, said firmly that “on his part there
was not the slightest obstacle to leaving immediately; the only thing holding
him back was the lack of resources to ensure he could perform his job prop-
erly.”44 Indeed, the salaries of the factor (30,000 reales) and the accountant
(12,000 reales) have always been considered low, given the cost of living on
the island and that they would have to “meet with and discuss matters with
the governor, the royal tribunal, and other ministers and appear before them
with the modest decency appropriate to a royal commissioner.”45
These budgetary restrictions, along with the fact that Santo Domingo was
considered a marginal territory within the Spanish colonial empire and,
thus, not the most attractive of places, meant that the two posts at the
Dominican factory were vacant for many years. A report from the factory in
Seville in 1763 to the Marquis of Esquilache, one of Charles III’s ministers,
remarks on the “urgent need to equip them with good clothes and other
things to make them decent; as long as Your Excellency does not provide
them with these means, it will be impossible for them to go to Cadiz. Paz’s
low salary, and the fact that Carranza’s comes solely out of what I [José de
Losada] pay him from mine so that he can survive, are the reason for their
indifference. If they were being sent to Veracruz or some other place in America,
someone would fit them out, but because no one sends anything to Santo Domingo,
and because the people there get their supplies from the French at a good price, no
one will want to risk their purse when there is no guarantee of being paid
back.”46
Owing to this situation, various conditions were sought, among them that
the two men’s salaries be adjusted in accordance with those of their counter-
parts in Havana: “The island of Santo Domingo is the Galicia of the Indies,
and all products, even food, are very expensive, and it is impossible to cover
one’s costs on these limited salaries.” It was also suggested that certain taxes
on the purchase of black slaves be eliminated for those who could demon-
strate they were “employed in the planting and cultivation of tobacco and
work the land to increase harvests,” and furthermore that farmers be exempt
from other taxes for ten or more years until their plantations were on sure
footing, as had been done with farmers on the peninsula who were sent to
repopulate the Sierra Morena.47
In 1768 the search continued for men willing to take the jobs in the Santo
Domingo factory; the latest candidates were Pedro de la Concepción Álvarez
as factor, and Joaquín de Irundarena as accountant. Until 1771 there were
no detailed lists of shipments of Dominican tobacco in numbered boxes
or packets. That documentation specified provenance, quantity, the name
of the ship, and the name of the captain or shipmaster. Above all, the lists
indicated the quality of the leaves (good, average, weak) and their category:
top quality was “Tienda Premio” (TP) followed by “Tienda” (T); next came
secondary quality, called “Rescogido” (either RP or R); and third was “Libra”
(either LP or L).
According to the precise instructions drawn up for the Santo Domingo
factory, tobacco was to be packaged in bunches of 12 leaves that previ-
ously had their stems removed. Eight of these little bunches (manojitos)
constituted a manojo, which was tied with strips of majaguas leaves “as is
done with shipments from the island of Cuba ... dampening them first with
zambumbia, the name in America for honey water, so they stick together
better and are preserved and will arrive fresh and perhaps not need to be
dampened before they are converted into cigarettes.” One hundred manojos
made a package (paquete), which also was tied with three strips of majagua,
then lightly pressed and wrapped in ordinary linen, which must have been
supplied by the royal treasury. In order to reduce the high costs of trans-
porting linen to Santo Domingo, it was suggested to the factor that the
packages be wrapped in “the reed matting [esteras] that are well made on
that island ... leaving it up to the factor to determine the best way to pack-
age and send them, with the objective of achieving the greatest benefit at
the lowest cost, and if this were possible using boxes made of thin boards,
then all the manojos could be shipped that way so as to take advantage
of the boxes for shipments of cigarettes from the royal factories to sellers
[administraciones].”48
The various shipments of tobacco were to be sent to Cádiz and from there
to the Casa de la Contratación in Seville or a branch official, and the super-
intendent of the factory in Seville was in charge of ensuring the shipments’
transport from the port up the river to Seville. It is estimated that from 1770
to 1796 Dominican tobacco exports to the Iberian Peninsula averaged from
5,400 to 5,864 arrobas per year, which would not have been enough to cover
the royal factory’s needs.
Nonetheless, the opportunity to increase trade relations with the metrop-
olis set off euphoria among the island’s business community, with positive
economic results including expanded cultivation, growth in plantations,
greater monetary circulation, and increased ship traffic. “After His Majesty
(may God protect him) established an Administración there ... the inhabitants
of Santiago La Vega and Cotuí are much more enthusiastic about growing,
quality has improved, and the towns are not so miserable.”49
Regular tobacco exports to the peninsula produced an economic boom in
Santo Domingo. But starting in 1774, the crown limited exports to 12,000
arrobas a year, with preference for product from Licey, given that the leaves
there were similar in quality to those from Cuba. That decision led to a
gradual reduction in planting and harvests which, along with droughts and
delays in aid from Spain, set off renewed decline. The Peace of Basel (1795),
by which Spain ceded to France its part of the island, was a near death-blow
for the economy, which anyway was fragile at that point and would con-
tinue suffering during the Haitian revolution and the new era that followed.
Notes
Translation of this chapter has been supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry
of Economics and Competitivity, HAR2010-12073-E, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos,
ciencia, guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias (Madrid: Ed.
Atlas, 1959), book 5, chap. 2.
2. Pierre Chaunu, Sevilla y América, siglos XVI y XVII (Universidad de Sevilla, 1983), 69.
3. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias, book 5, chap. 10.
4. Chaunu, Sevilla y América, 74.
5. Frank Moya Pons, Después de Colón: Trabajo, sociedad y política en la economía del
oro (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1987), 181–9.
6. Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter AGI), Indiferente 419.
7. Juana Gil-Bermejo, Panorama histórico de la agricultura en Puerto Rico (Seville:
Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos–Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas, 1970), 65.
8. José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Madrid: Ed. Atlas, 1959), libro
IV, cap. XXXII.
9. Genaro Rodríguez Morel, “The Sugar Economy of Española in the Sixteenth
Century,” in Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the
Atlantic World, 1450–1680 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004),
84–114.
11. Levi Marrero, Cuba: Economía y sociedad (Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1972–92),
vol. II, 305.
12. AGI, Patronato 174, ramo 8.
13. Moya, Después de Colón, 175ff.; AGI, Patronato 18, ramo 5, no. 1. On Puerto Rico
see AGI, Santo Domingo 10 and 164.
15. Roberto Cassá, Historia social y económica de la República Dominicana (Santo
Domingo: Alfa y Omega, 2003), vol. I, 171–4.
17. Ibid., 174–6.
18. AGI, Indiferente 2001.
19. AGI, Santo Domingo 258.
20. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general natural de las Indias, book 8, chap. 1.
21. Frank Moya, Manual de historia Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Caribbean Publishers,
2008), 122.
23. Cassá, Historia social y económica, vol. I, 181–4.
24. Ibid., 184 and 211.
25. Lutgardo García Fuentes, El comercio español con América, 1650–1700 (Seville:
Científicas, 1980), 337–43.
26. Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, Población y economía en Santo Domingo, 1700–1746
(Seville: Diputación Provincial, 1985), 224–6.
27. AGI, Santo Domingo 68.
28. Cristóbal Colón, Los cuatro viajes: Testamento, ed. Consuelo Varela (Madrid:
Alianza Editorial, 1986), 91–2.
29. Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias (Madrid: BAE, 1957), book 1, chap. 46.
30. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, book 5, chap. 2.
31. AGI, Santo Domingo 94; Juana Gil-Bermejo, La Española: Anotaciones históricas
(1600–1650) (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos–Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas, 1983), 69–73.
32. E. Rodríguez Demorizi, Relaciones históricas de Santo Domingo (Ciudad Trujillo:
Editorial Montalvo, 1942–57), vol. II, 434.
33. AGI, Santo Domingo 165 and 869.
34. José M. Rodríguez Gordillo, La difusión del tabaco en España: Diez estudios (Seville:
Universidad de Sevilla and Altadis, 2002), 248.
35. Luis Navarro García, “La política indiana,” in América en el siglo XVIII: Los primeros
borbones (Madrid: Editorial Rialp, 1983), vol. XI-1, 22–4.
36. AGI, Contratación 2446–50.
37. Rodríguez Demorizi, Relaciones históricas, vol. I, 239.
38. AGI, Santo Domingo 65, ramo 1.
39. Rodríguez Demorizi, Relaciones históricas, vol. I, 302.
41. Luis Navarro García, La política americana de Gálvez según su “discurso y reflexiones
de un vasallo” (Málaga: Editorial Algaraza, 1998), 63–4.
42. AGI, Santo Domingo 1055, Real Fábrica de Sevilla, informe, 1773.
43. AGI, Santo Domingo 1055, Instrucciones para el Factor y el Contador de la
Factoría de tabacos de Santo Domingo.
44. Archivo Histórico de la Fábrica de Tabacos, Seville, legajo 606.

45. AGI, Santo Domingo 1055, José de Losada, informe, 24 April 1768.
46. Ibid., my emphasis.
47. AGI, Santo Domingo 1055, report, 1768.
48. AGI, Santo Domingo 1055, instructions, 1763.
49. Antonio Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor de la isla Española (Santo Domingo:
Editora Nacional, 1971), 186.
13
Global Trade, Environmental
Constraints, and Local Conflicts
The Case of Early Modern Hispaniola
Igor Pérez Tostado
Daniel Lescallier was just 19 years old when he began his colonial career in
1764 as part of the entourage of the new governor of Saint-Domingue, the
Count d’Estaing. Once he arrived, Lescallier used his knowledge of military
engineering to survey exhaustively the eastern part of the island, which
was ruled by the Hispanic Monarchy.1 His report described the distances,
defenses, and natural surroundings of each of the Spanish settlements he
encountered on the island.2 Despite the dry tone, some of his footnotes
refer to agriculture and the land. In Santiago de los Caballeros, for example,
Lescallier reported that people “grow only tobacco and a bit of cacao,” and
expressed surprise at not finding a single orchard. “This cannot be explained
by sterile land,” he wrote, “as it is very good.”3
Later, having reached La Vega, he wrote that there were few crops, “but
the people have banana and cacao trees,” a bit of sugar to make syrup, and,
especially, livestock. Again, he contrasted the lack of agriculture with the rich
soil, a theme he explored even regarding the city of Santo Domingo, whose
inhabitants “engage neither in commerce nor in agriculture,” and whose sur-
rounding towns had “a few idle sugar mills that export very little.”4
Then Lescallier drops the indirect style and states clearly what he thinks
of the Spanish part of the island:
It is impossible to travel in this region without feeling indignation and

disgust at seeing so little industry among its inhabitants. This land is far
too productive; bananas and cacao grow spontaneously and effortlessly,
and the people cannot even be bothered to pick them ... The land needs
laborers to reap all its rich products. Sugar, coffee, indigo, cotton, etc.
could all be grown in larger quantities. Bananas and cacao grow on their
own, and the forests are full of these trees.5
Most French travelers repeated similar observations about the Spanish part
of the island in the eighteenth century: the island held great agricultural
wealth that was not being taken advantage of by its Spanish inhabitants.
230
Global Trade and Local Conflicts 231
Even toward the end of the century, when the revolution on the French part
of the island was underway and the Convention, after the Treaty of Basel
of 1795, had taken over the Spanish portion, a French official conducting
a study of France’s new territory (based not on his own observations but on
those transmitted to him by Spanish residents of the French part) echoed
the same idea. After describing the island’s “sublime beauty,” he added:
“The rivers are countless, and Nature appears to have placed them just so to
render, in the hands of hard-working and enterprising farmers, the gold and
wealth that Spaniards sought in vain for so long deep beneath the surface.
In fact, the wealth lies just on the surface.”6 The contrast between the two
parts of the island that so struck visitors and residents can be explained by
their respective origins and development. During the second half of the
seventeenth century, the French colony in the west and north had stabilized
and begun a period of intense growth based on new agricultural products for
export using the “hard-working” hands that Lescallier missed in the Spanish
territory: the hundreds of thousands of African slaves forcibly taken to the
island.
This marked a sharp contrast with the apparent lethargy on the Spanish
side. There, the second half of the seventeenth century was a time of great dif-
ficulty and decline in the most important export sectors, notably sugar and,
to a lesser degree, cacao. Thus, despite the fact that the eighteenth century
entailed a period of recovery and agrarian, commercial, and demographic
expansion, there was no comparison to the stunning progress on the western
part of the island.
The reason for the difference, however, lay neither in nature nor in
agricultural products. The main objective of European colonies during the
early modern era, in both Hispaniola and the rest of the Antilles, was the
cultivation of products for the world market. And even though the products
were the same, the means for obtaining them resulted in different societies.
The development of one side of the island and the underdevelopment of
the other were linked to the successful or failed production of the same
Atlantic products.
This situation would generate interactions between the two territories
dominated by political conflicts and asymmetrical economies. Hence, the
cultivation of Atlantic products led to a profound imbalance. There was
nothing determinative about the development of the plantation economy;
rather, it required the conjunction of a large number of factors.
These interactions allow us to see the island’s colonial history from
a transnational perspective, focusing on the agricultural products that
defined its history. This chapter will attempt to answer the following ques-
tions. What was the role of Atlantic products in the division of the island,
and what were the relations between the two parts? Why, in a relatively
homogeneous territory, did cultivation of the same crops lead to entirely
different social results? What role did environmental difficulties play in
232 Igor Pérez Tostado
this contrasting evolution? How did the two sides complement, confront,
and rely upon each other as they participated in the world’s first global era?
And, finally, what role did Atlantic products play in the island’s discourse of
domination, that of inhabitants and African slaves, on the one hand, and
that of the French and Spanish colonial powers, on the other?
As will be made clear, nothing was predetermined as regards the success
or failure of Hispaniola’s Atlantic crops. Agriculture and livestock pro-
duction involved shifting dynamics throughout the island; in general, the
two activities were compatible, although conflicts occurred, and the French
west always tended to dominate the Spanish east. This domination would be
reflected and justified by France’s ability to effectively and fruitfully extract
the island’s agricultural wealth. Despite its local origins on the border of
eighteenth-century Hispaniola, this discourse would become global, and it
would be used to justify colonial domination.
New products between economic history and

transnational history
Just a few decades after Spaniards first arrived on the island, their hopes
for finding gold were dashed and the native population was nearly extinct.
Settlers from the crown of Castile had no choice but to adapt to the new eco-
nomic circumstances. By around 1520, the principal objective of European
settlers in Hispaniola became growing new products for a global market. The
impact that these Antillean products had on the islands’ history is one of the
fundamental themes of the region’s anthropology and economic history.7
Interest in these products began in the late nineteenth century. In the
1880s, Pedro Francisco Bonó was the first to connect regional agrarian
specialization in the Dominican Republic with differentiated social and
political developments.8 Shortly thereafter, Edmund von Lippmann first
studied the history of Hispaniola’s sugar plantations.9 His ideas would be
developed in the 1940s by the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who
identified sugar and tobacco as the protagonists of Cuban history. While
laying the foundations of entirely different economic and social cultures,
together these products constituted the web through which relations with
the rest of the world would be established.10
On the basis of this work, Antillean and international historians have
recognized the importance of sugar and tobacco for explaining the genesis
of tropical societies characterized by international linkages through Atlantic
products and the use of slave labor.11 Social, economic, and political dimen-
sions of the agricultural transformation have been more deeply analyzed in
recent years using environmental perspectives that shed light on the crops’
ecological impact.12
Despite this interest in geography and space, fewer studies have looked at
the relations between areas that specialized in one product or another and
that were divided by inter-imperial borders. This is the case of early modern
Hispaniola, since only a few works on the eastern island have examined re-
lations with the French colony.13 Specialists in the latter generally are more
interested in the plantation economy and the revolution than in connections
to the eastern portion or the creation of a borderland.14
The past five years have witnessed the birth of a multidisciplinary initia-
tive known as “Transnational Hispaniola,” whose aim it is to provide a
transnational interpretation of the whole island’s history, present-day situ-
ation, and culture. Specifically, it focuses on the points of contact, exchange,
conflict, and hybridization across the border and between the island and the
rest of the world.15
But there are clear differences between the two tendencies. The historio-
graphic tradition inherited from the twentieth century understood the culti-
vation of new Atlantic products to be one of the key vectors of Antillean
societies’ historical process of social, political, and cultural formation.
Somewhat set apart from economics, the transnational emphasis of the
twenty-first century focuses on aspects concerning the formation of hybrid
identities, imagined communities, and discourses of the body and social
domination.16
This chapter is situated within a broader research project that aims to con-
nect these two perspectives. An analysis of the impact of the cultivation of
the new Atlantic products on the inter-imperial border of Hispaniola allows
us to stand halfway between twentieth-century economic history as it was
practiced in the Caribbean and transnational history as it is practiced in the
region at the start of the twenty-first century. This resolves a historiographical
rather than an epistemological problem, linking the physical and en-
vironmental effects of cultivating Atlantic products in the Caribbean to the
discourses of domination and identity-formation that also ensued.
Despite the general characteristics that new agricultural products may
imprint on the societies that produce them, it seems worthwhile to remember
that products never develop in the same way twice. In this manner, Hispaniola
gave birth to two imperial systems that were deeply interconnected and inter-
dependent, especially regarding the cultivation of new Atlantic products and
the presence and use of slave labor.
Nothing repeats itself: origins and contrasting production

in Hispaniola’s settlement
As Humberto García Muñíz said, plantation history never repeats itself.17 In

each part of the island, the same products (mainly livestock, tobacco, sugar,
cacao, ginger, and cotton) and differing applications of slave labor defined
the exchange and friction between the two colonies. Despite their appar-
ent similarities, the contrasting difficulties of the two colonies led to di-
vergent developments. Unequal access to commercial routes for distributing
products, an unequal supply of slave labor, and different environmental

challenges affected both colonies’ evolution and the creation of a border
society with its own identity.
French settlement on Hispaniola began in the seventeenth century at a
time of great political and economic crisis for the Spanish colony. This situ-
ation marked a sharp contrast with the sixteenth century, when the island
played a central role in the early phases of Spain’s expansion in America as
its first and principal religious, military, and political-administrative center.
Gold mining until the 1530s and then exports of hides and skins had made
the island prosperous. Alongside the livestock sector, and as a way of over-
coming its periodic crises, tobacco, ginger, cotton, and sugar began being
planted.18 Of these, sugar stands out, given the enormous investment needed
and because, after the collapse of the native population, it signaled the start
of the importation of labor, first from the American mainland and then
from Africa.19 Livestock and sugar complemented each other, facilitating
crop rotation, the transport of canes, and the running of sugar plantations,
while at the same time offering high-calorie sustenance that helped workers
withstand brutal field work.20
But the Spanish colony’s central role and prosperity were undercut in the
late sixteenth century. Both economic and political reasons made it increas-
ingly difficult to sell the island’s exports. Among the former was the fact that
producers depended upon the merchant oligopoly of Seville and therefore
could not ship their products directly to other markets where they could get
better prices. As for politics, Philip II’s increasingly bellicose positions led to
the closure of numerous European markets, a rise of piracy and corsairism,
and, finally, the organization of a system of fleets and galleons that favored
Cuba to the detriment of Hispaniola. As a result, producers turned en masse
to contraband, dealing with merchants from Northern Europe who, starting
in the 1560s, became a point of tension between the monarchy and insular
institutions.21
The crown’s drastic solution to this problem came to be known as the
devastations of 1605 and 1606.22 Following the king’s orders, the new
governor carried out a forced depopulation program in the northern and
western parts of the island with the twin objectives of gathering people into
defensible nuclei and exercising stricter fiscal control of the crown’s sub-
jects.23 Three principal outcomes of these vast operations are relevant to this
discussion, and all of them made existing problems worse. First, though the
island’s economy may have been declining in the early seventeenth century,
after the devastations it was at subsistence level owing to tremendous losses
by locally owned ranches and sugar and ginger plantations that were aban-
doned.24 Second, abandoned lands were taken over by wild animals. And
third, while Northern European contrabandists smuggled sugar and hides in
the latter half of the sixteenth century, after the devastations they arrived
not as traders but as colonists and workers, eager to extract the products that
they had previously bought. That was the crisis that led to French settlement
of the island.
French colonists initially arrived from the small island of Tortuga, north-
west of Hispaniola and easier to defend than the larger island.25 After 1654,
the Spanish colony no longer had sufficient military strength to try to dis-
lodge the French in Tortuga, and gradually the French moved north and east.
The Spaniards could do little to stop them, as economic and political
crises were joined by ecological difficulties (illness, epidemics, and natural
disasters) that particularly affected the Spanish colony.26 The survival and
prosperity of Tortuga were first based on piracy and on the capture and
domestication of wild cattle on Hispaniola’s northern coast, abundant after
the devastations at the start of the century.27 The French initially planted
crops for subsistence, but quickly developed export crops. The first was
tobacco, already present on the island, which required neither much cap-
ital nor much labor. Sugar production and the introduction of African slaves
began increasing in the second half of the seventeenth century and reached
their high point in the eighteenth century.28 In contrast, the number of
sugar producers on the Spanish part of the island declined throughout the
first half of the seventeenth century, and the export sector had disappeared
by the 1660s.29 In 1659, Manuel Palano Tinoco described the situation in
these bleak terms:
Of the more than sixty sugar mills on the island, today no more than
eight or ten remain, and they do the work of not even one. Most of the
sugar on the island comes from Puerto Rico and Cuba. And while there
used to be annual harvests of fifty thousand quintales of ginger, today
there is nothing.30
If Spanish colonists did not want to disappear along with their cane fields,
they would have to come up with new ideas. But the new ideas would make
them even more vulnerable to environmental crises.
“Hope for a remedy”: cacao and environmental crisis
Of all the alternatives for reviving the colony, cacao held out the best prom-
ise. We do not know much about when the product arrived on Hispaniola nor
where it came from, but already in the 1580s it was being planted, and culti-
vation grew steadily through the first half of the seventeenth century, though
it was still nowhere near as important as sugar and hides.31 Nevertheless, the
elites of Santo Domingo saw in cacao “the hope for a remedy” and backed up
their hope with important investments in trees and the purchase of slaves.32
The Jesuits, who from 1650 had a permanent settlement on the island, held
out “hope for much growth” in the cacao trade with Seville, New Spain,
and Caracas.33 The trade would provide them with economic viability and
generate wealth for the Society of Jesus, they thought. In general, massive
cultivation might solve the deep economic crisis of the colony.
Despite the steep initial investment in slow-growing plants and the
expensive and hard-to-obtain slave labor, there was hope that, given the
rising consumption of cacao throughout the Hispanic Monarchy, both in
America and in Europe, as well as the increase in trade, cacao could be a
niche crop capable of pulling the island out of its commercial slump. In
addition, it could offset military expenses, which were poorly subsidized by
the monarchy, to help defend the island from the French to the east or from
the great fleets sent from England and France. The cacao alternative seemed
sensible, taking into account that cacao would become the principal crop
and source of wealth for other marginal territories such as New Granada.
Today, the Dominican Republic, despite its small size, is the world’s tenth-
largest producer of cacao, and the third-largest in America. Why, then, did
the crop not succeed in the seventeenth century?
The reason was not laziness, as the French alleged, but rather the environ-
ment. Biological and environmental factors worked to reduce yields starting
in the 1660s. “For the past several years the island has suffered from hurri-
canes, storms, and epidemics,” according to the town councilor Gaspar
de Castro Rivera, “and cacao fruit, which alone kept commerce alive, has
disappeared.”34 In a report to the crown, he wrote:
The island and city are in a miserable state. For the past three years there
have been no harvests. An earthquake destroyed all the cacao trees and
plantations and most of the city’s dwellings. This was followed by epi-
demics of typhus and smallpox that killed more than 1,500 people and
1,000 slaves.35
Thus plagues affecting people and plants were joined by the earthquake of
1666, which was judged by the Jesuits eight years later to have been “such
a calamity that even today its effects are felt.” The company lost “its most
valuable possession, the cacao groves.”36
The outgoing governor in 1669, Don Pedro de Carvajal, said recovery of
the export sector would be very difficult in light of the natural disasters:
“The island lost its cacao, the fruit on which its economy depends, and it is
necessary to replant them. They will be lost for many years, and with them,
hope.”37
Cacao’s slow rate of growth, especially when compared with that of sugar
in the neighboring French colony, made investment more risky, particularly
in the difficult environmental context of the last quarter of the seventeenth
century. Nonetheless, there was still hope, and island inhabitants with
resources once again invested in cacao. But the problems would not go
away. A hurricane in September 1672 “destroyed all the island’s fruit and
small cacao trees.”38 Cacao trees are especially vulnerable to hurricanes,
which are frequent in the Caribbean, and even more vulnerable when they
are young. All these calamities led up to another devastating earthquake in
May 1673:
The earth shook with such force that not a house in the city remained
standing or habitable, and even those that suffered least required serious
repairs. It was God’s mercy that the royal palace, where the governors
live and the courts and accounting offices are located, did not kill the
president’s entire family when it fell down.39
The principal outcome of all these disasters was that hopes were dashed
regarding cacao, and the crop never recovered. During the 1660s, 18,700
arrobas were exported to the peninsula each year, but toward the end of the
century the number never reached 1,000.40 Meanwhile, as cacao declined
on Hispaniola, exports from the southern continent were rising, both from
Brazil (mainly in Maranhao and Pará, starting in the 1660s, under Jesuit
supervision) and from the lowlands of New Granada.41
The loss of hope in cacao also spelled lost hope in the idea that it could
serve as an alternative to sugar and a means for linking the island to the great
commercial routes of the first globalization. The result was a decisive shift
in the balance of power between the island’s two communities. Toward the
end of the seventeenth century, the French part took off as the world’s lead-
ing sugar producer, and its economic, military, and demographic resources
far exceeded those of its Spanish neighbor to the east. This situation meant
that Spanish rulers from Charles II onward had to play a more active role in
island affairs to ensure that it would be part of the global economy, given
that its economic woes were closely linked to military threats from the
French.42
The plans proposed did not attempt to imitate the French model of eco-
nomic development. Instead of sugar, the Spanish monarchy promoted
other crops, principally tobacco, which had been present in the Antilles even
before the Spaniards’ arrival.43 From 1763, when a factory was established
on the island to provide raw material to Seville’s Royal Tobacco Factory,
and 1795, when the Spanish part of the island was ceded to the French
Republic, the plantations of sugar, indigo, cotton, and cacao all recovered
and grew, thanks in part to tobacco’s prosperity and Enlightenment-era
reforms.44 Instead of resorting to the massive importation of slave labor,
as many islanders were demanding (“the wealth of this island, sir, is its
slaves ... and their absence is the reason for its misery,” said one),45 the
crown implemented repopulation projects using colonists sent from Europe.
Throughout the seventeenth century, colonists had arrived on their own
from the Lesser Antilles, most of them fugitive slaves and contract workers
who hoped to find freedom, refuge, and a better life in the Spanish colony.
These immigrants were especially important during the mid-seventeenth
century, coinciding with the high point of shipments of workers to the

Lesser Antilles. During the second half of the seventeenth century, exiles at
court in Madrid, such as the Irish, proposed organizing the flight of thou-
sands of workers to repopulate Hispaniola. The crown turned down the
suggestions for security reasons.46 It was not until the end of the century
that the island elites requested that Flemish or reliable allies such as the
Irish be sent over. The city council of Santo Domingo and the archbishop
himself encouraged plans to bring new inhabitants to the island.47 Of all the
immigrants, those from the Canary Islands were the most numerous; they
would form the basis from which the population and defense of the colony
were reinforced and were the key reason for the demographic recovery of
the Spanish colony in the eighteenth century. The crown played a key role
in this process starting in the 1730s. On the one hand, it established a quid
pro quo between the ability to export from the island directly to the New
World and the repopulation of the border at a rate of 50 families for every
1,000 tons of merchandise. On the other, it directly financed passage and
the cost of building towns using the Mexican situado or subsidy.48
The monarchy’s actions should not be seen as an imitation of French
political economy but rather as a way of adapting to circumstances and seek-
ing original solutions that must been seen within the context of the gradual
formation of an internal boundary. All the various measures taken after the
cacao debacle were the crown’s way of recovering effective possession of the
island through repopulation and cultivation of the territory abandoned in
1605, stopping the French advance, reinforcing ties to the peninsula, and
generating economic wealth on the island itself which, through exports,
might help finance the colony’s defense against the French.
Aside from being the source of continual political and military tension,
the border became the economic axis of the Spanish side of the island.
Most agriculture and livestock production was aimed principally at French
towns, and also financed most needs—for European products and African
slaves—that could not be covered locally. As a result, there emerged an
asymmetrical complementarity based on a fragile and ever-shifting military
and commercial balance between the two parts of the island.
A conflictive border
Border formation in the early modern era is a topic receiving growing atten-
tion by historians interested in how the Hispanic Monarchy worked. It is an
aspect analyzed mostly using transnational methodology, made necessary by
the object of study, and is the approach championed over the past decade
by the “Red Columnaria” group, which seeks a global interpretation of the
Spanish monarchy’s formation from the perspective of the interaction of
regional and local processes.49 In the specific case of Hispano-French relations,
attention has been paid above all to the Pyrenees.50 Turning to Hispaniola in
the early modern period, there have been several good studies of the western
part of the island, focusing on new settlements starting in the 1680s;51 the
juridical, political, and international dimensions of border formation,52 and
economic relations between the two parts of the island.53 In contrast to the
European experience, the production and exchange of new Atlantic products
were crucial for the establishment of a tropical frontier and the genesis of new
discourses of domination.
The success of plantations on the French side led to the gradual elimination
of livestock production so as to free up space for more intensive cultivation
of export crops. The result was a drastic reduction in livestock that meant the
island’s inhabitants had neither sufficient food nor enough plow animals for
the plantations.54
The need for both livestock and agricultural space marked the essence of
border relations in the eighteenth century. The French increasingly took
over the interior and the north of the island to expand plantations, which
meant entering the official albeit ill-defined territory belonging to Spanish
Santo Domingo, causing military friction. Importation of livestock over
the border, although considered contraband, was essential for the eastern
economy, both for food and for field work. In exchange for the animals, the
Spanish side received European and American imports that were difficult to
ship through the fleet system. So there were fluid, though officially illicit,
shared interests.
These are clear examples of border relations being constructed from
below. Throughout the eighteenth century, border exchanges grew con-
stantly despite deficient regulation and hardly any tax collection. As with so
much else concerning border formation, practice on the ground developed
long before authorities got around to its recognition, regulation, or taxation.
In fact, the lack of regulation threatened the survival of Spanish herds of
livestock, whose hides were being over-exported. Governor Pedro Zorrilla
de San Martín was the first to propose, in the 1740s, that livestock commerce
with the French be controlled and regulated. The point was to raise revenue
while using supply controls as a means of applying diplomatic pressure to
halt French settlement. The initiative did not prosper in Madrid, and border
regulation was taken up again only two decades later.55
A similar imbalance prevailed in military relations on the border. Politics
and diplomacy were always two steps behind spontaneous practice. For
example, there were French settlements on the west and north coasts of
Santo Domingo during much of the seventeenth century that were not of-
ficially recognized until the Peace of Ryswick in 1697. And military actions
along the border were largely unconnected to diplomacy between the two
crowns, as in the case of the continual attacks by French pirates against
Spanish ships. According to a report on the French situation, sent to Louis
XIV in 1684, the French continued fighting the Spaniards “even if there is
peace with them because, despite the peace, the Spaniards make an open and
cruel war upon the French, not accepting surrender on any terms, sinking
the ships, and capturing the crews.”56
Relations along the land border were more complex. They did not con-
form to the stereotypical permanent war but rather developed autono-
mously from negotiations by diplomats at Ryswick. Briefly, while the two
crowns were in constant conflict during the second half of the seventeenth
century and, therefore, in theory there was war on Hispaniola, on the
local level people sought ways to limit the violence, seizures, and reprisals.
Starting in the eighteenth century the situation was reversed; owing to the
close but often tense relationship between the two Bourbon thrones, the
orders they sent to their respective sides of the island sought neighborly
behavior, peaceful resolutions, and clear demarcations to avoid future
conflict. On the ground, however, the eighteenth century was marked by
continual border disputes, derived principally from the rapid expansion of
the French.
Let us refer to just one example from each one of these periods. The first
direct diplomatic correspondence we have between the governors of the two
sides of the island is from March 1680, when the commander of the French
ship St Bernard, Captain Les Ormes Jonchée, wrote that upon arriving in
Puerto Plata, on the north coast, he had received a message from Santiago
de los Caballeros, which had been alerted of the French ship’s presence. Two
days after the captain agreed to receive the Spaniards, a delegation arrived
carrying a white flag. Once they were on board, they gave the captain a
royal writ from Charles II notifying the governor of Santo Domingo of the
1678 Peace of Nimega and the establishment of peace with France. The cap-
tain agreed to transport an emissary, the priest Juan Bautista Escoto, to the
French governor of Tortuga and Santo Domingo, Monsieur de Pouancey, to
give him the message.57
After that, direct communication began between the French governor and
his Spanish counterpart, Francisco Segura Sandoval. The latter encouraged
Pouancey to honor the peace and order his people to stop planting crops
and slaughtering animals “and other harms committed during the times
of war in Europe.”58 In reply, Pouancey pointed out that, like previous
Hispano-French agreements, the Treaty of Nimega said nothing specifically
about the Indies, leading him to assume that they were still officially at war.
Therefore he was happy to learn of the Spanish governor’s wish to maintain
peace between the two crowns. He assured Sandoval that the King of Spain’s
subjects would not be attacked, but he also reminded him that the north
coast had been conquered by France and had been continually inhabited
for 40 years, for which reasons he would not withdraw his claim. On every
other point, he was willing to ensure the best possible relations between
the subjects of the two crowns.59 The initiation of direct correspondence
between the two governors did not signal the end of border conflicts, but it
did help to minimize and regulate them.
Although life along the border had a different rhythm than diplomacy, it
was not impervious to political treaties. For example, Les Ormes Jonchées
reported that on his trip from Tortuga to Manzanilla Bay to return Escoto,
“the buccaneers and the Spaniards, thus being the greatest enemies in the
past, have become the greatest of friends.”60
For the most part the two sides were conciliatory in the eighteenth cen-
tury, but good relations in the metropolis did not mean the Spanish crown
was resigned to watching the French continually expand their occupation,
nor that the French monarchy had any intention of halting its plantations
in the colony. The result was a constant series of local, low-intensity con-
flicts along the border that both crowns ensured would not escalate into
open warfare. Thus the power exercised on the island by central authorities
was very limited but crucial: preventing skirmishes, no matter how violent,
from becoming full-fledged war.
This frontier micro-violence in large part was the result of the very defin-
ition of the border, which was constructed on local practices defined not by
royal orders but by the cultivation of Atlantic products. Frontier violence,
despite efforts by the relevant monarchies, also was common in other regions
such as the Pyrenees,61 Florida (between Spain and England),62 and the Ohio
River valley. In the latter case, actions by planters, local administrators,
and speculators set off what would become the Seven Years War (1756–63),
which was not part of the metropolitan governments’ colonial strategy.63 But
this extreme case was the exception. The norm was that border conflicts,
despite their frequency and relative intensity, would not force metropolitan
governments to declare wars in which they had no interest. In the case of
Hispaniola, the series of border incidents in 1731 did not provoke war but
rather led the two governors to sign an agreement that year to halt violence
in the northern part of the island. This agreement laid the foundation for
demarcation, though the final border agreement between the crowns was not
signed until 1777, as part of the Treaty of Aranjuez.64 The attempt to eradi-
cate border violence on the island took place in an international context in
which France and Spain sought agreement in order to benefit from the war
between England and the Thirteen American Colonies.
None of these treaties managed to stop settlement on the border, despite
the governors’ good intentions. On the ground, given the divergence between
diplomatic decisions and de facto occupation, situations were resolved
through practices that became customary and eventually became law; the
right to settle land grew out of the fact of occupation, as Pouancey had indi-
cated to his Spanish counterpart. In other words, the creation of a plantation
on the border in the long term amounted to property rights. Therefore, com-
manders of all the border regions on the Spanish side were obliged to control
French settlement, send out cavalry troops to scout for French incursions, and
personally visit all the border areas under their jurisdiction. If vigilance flagged,
the French advance would be unstoppable. That was the point of a request for
information from villagers in Hincha in 1769 to determine whether Captain

Fernando Espinosa had been deficient:
Owing to his punishable failure, the French have occupied part of our
land, doing considerable harm to the vassals of our glorious monarch.
They have occupied more lands than can be tolerated, to the point that
French settlements can be seen from Spanish settlements, as they occupy
one and the same terrain.65
The inhabitants of Hincha referred repeatedly to “the agreed limits that are
tolerated,”66 or “their limits which are tolerated,” in other words, arrange-
ments that were illicit but not punished.67 French advances were considered
by their Spanish neighbors to be usurpations. For Francisco Andujar, who
lived in Hincha, it was worse than that: “From the witness’s house one can
clearly see French dwellings, which bit by bit have taken land in serious
detriment to the public good and more so to this witness, from whom the
French have usurped around one league of land.”68
If the French were not continually watched, their plantations would
continue advancing. In the words of another resident of Hincha, Tomás de
Araujo, “The place where the Spanish guard used to be has been planted by
the French, and as a result the guard has withdrawn from where he used to
be and is now further back.”69
The slow but incessant French advance despite peace agreements, and
Spain’s inability to counter it, were commonplaces of eighteenth-century
correspondence to the crown. One observer commented on the “avarice”
of the French:
They conscientiously violate pacts between Your Majesty and the Most
Christian [monarch of France], more every day, taking your patrimony
and the land of this island, crossing the border that Your Majesty desig-
nated, and they do so slowly, populating small areas such that if those
who should be vigilant over your dominion are at all careless they will
miss the tiny but continual additions to their positions ... They then
allege they possess large swathes of land that were ceaselessly robbed
from Your Majesty, piece by piece, accomplishing in peace what they
could not accomplish in war.70
While Spanish colonists complained of their French neighbors’ greed, on

the French side, the Jesuit François-Xavier de Charlevoix, though believing
that the land currently in French possession in Santo Domingo was enough to
permit the colony’s growth, was fearful of excessive subdivision or of the
eventual need to go off to establish new settlements. He hoped these new
settlements would be in areas claimed by France on the continent, but the
fact is that French colonists preferred spreading out on the island, given
local authorities’ passivity and the inability of metropolitan authorities to

effectively halt the practice.71
These tensions were explicit in the eighteenth-century conflicts referred to
earlier. Even when supervision over the tolerated French zone was constant,
there were cases of usurpation, always in an attempt to expand plantations
and always with the barely veiled support of French insular authorities. This
case allows us to better appreciate the negotiations from below through
which borders were constructed. In 1726, an event took place similar to that
described by Tomás de Araujo in Hincha. Colonel Don Manuel de Revenga,
a junior lieutenant in the Santo Domingo government, confirmed that
the French had taken a little island in the Dajabón River within the juris-
diction of Santiago de los Caballeros. The river divided two jurisdictions, and
the island, on the Spanish side, was of enormous military value, being the
only high point along the border until the city of Santiago de los Caballeros
itself, and it was a place of refuge for lancers.72 The most recent orders from
Madrid regarding the border were not to bother the French in those areas
they already possessed “in expectation of the return of the general peace,”
but if they were to advance beyond their plantations, they should “mildly”
be encouraged to withdraw. If that did not work, the king ordered that they
be “expelled by force of arms.”73
After receiving the news from the Dajabón River, on 21 August the
Santiago de los Caballeros judge (alcalde) with the most seniority, the mili-
tary chief of Santiago, and “other experienced and trustworthy people” went
to investigate. They discovered that the French had not only extended their
plantations on the island, but in addition had built a dam that changed the
course of the river toward the east, putting the island on the French side of
the river, where they had already begun planting.74 It was clear where the
French had cut down trees to obtain wood to construct the dam.
As the Spaniards were inspecting the river, armed French cavalrymen
approached, along with authorities from Vallaja and Tau, who insisted on
accompanying them, despite being told they were not needed. The French
officials invited them over to their territory to have a cold drink, but refused to
divulge anything about the dam. When the Spanish officials announced
they would destroy the dam so as to restore the river to its original channel,
they were immediately threatened: “What we would destroy with one hun-
dred free men in a month, they would rebuild in one day with a thousand
or more slaves.”75
Slavery and the difference between the two populations marked border
life in the eighteenth century, as the French acknowledged at Dajabón, but
things were more complicated than their boasts indicated. People such as
Manuel de Revenga were aware that the scant and dispersed population on
the Spanish side, typical of cattle-raising, was a source of military weakness.
The disproportionate resources in case of war meant “they can wreck us,
given how many people they have and how few we have.”76 But Revenga
also understood that the enormous slave population on the French side
could be used against the French:
In any case, we can console ourselves with the fact that [the French]
provide for our soldiers and their own enemies, the slaves, whom they
treat so cruelly that if war should break out they would desert and come
over to our side in order to obtain their freedom, and they account for
ten times the number of inhabitants of these colonies.77
Indeed, the relationship between slavery and the border was complex.
On the one hand, Spaniards obtained their slaves principally through
commerce with the French. But their presence was quantitatively and
qualitatively very different on either side. On the French side, there were far
more slaves than freemen; they were used by the thousands on plantations
and as domestic servants. In the year of the Dajabón incident, the French
population was estimated at 30,000 free inhabitants and 100,000 slaves.78
There were far fewer workers on the Spanish side, and fewer slaves than
freemen; at the end of the eighteenth century there were between 12,000
and 14,000 persons in all.79 Qualitatively their life was quite different, as
most of the slaves on the Spanish side worked outdoors on ranches, small
farms, or conucos (temporary growing areas), where two or three slaves
labored alongside the owner and his family. Other slaves worked essentially
as sharecroppers, receiving a share of the annual earnings, as did former
slaves.80 Even in the sugar fields, it was unusual even in the late eighteenth
century to find fields with one hundred former slaves.81 Many slaves who
lived in urban areas worked for daily wages at places distant from their owners,
although they had to give their owners their wages. In practice, however,
this meant they could enjoy a small part of their earnings.82 Even in agri-
cultural work, slaves typically were day workers and lived far away from their
owners. The organization of slavery on the Spanish side of the island thus
gave rise to greater autonomy and held out the promise of manumission
or at least more freedom.
Slaves on the French side tried to use the border and border conflicts for
their own benefit. The minute there was a skirmish, a great number of the
French slaves would run away, finding in the Spanish side a refuge against
their masters.83 Yet the protection the Hispanic Monarchy offered fugitive
French slaves could be irregular, being subject to diplomatic maneuver-
ings and border tensions. Therefore, slaves who crossed the border faced
an uncertain future; they might obtain their freedom, but could also be
recaptured as “French goods,” sent to the continent, or returned to their
former owners upon orders of the king or, most commonly, in exchange
for payment. Nevertheless, French slave owners rarely recovered slaves who
escaped during times of border trouble. These losses discouraged the French
from using their economic and demographic strength to attack the Spanish
side. They also understood that, in the case of war with Spain, their former
slaves would become their “dangerous enemies.”84
Given the uncertain future for escaped slaves on the Spanish side, some
decided to make the border their own, settling right there. The Hispanic
Monarchy took advantage of this by agreeing to respect fugitives’ freedom
and defend them from Spanish slave hunters in exchange for their assistance
in defending the border against French advances. That was the origin of the
town of San Lorenzo de los Minas. Even with no warfare between the two
colonies, the freedom of fugitives on the Spanish side was honored. The
French were aware that the settlement was of great harm to them: it exerted
an appeal over the enslaved Africans and served as a safe haven for the fugi-
tives, thus provoking an important increase in the number of desertions.85
The Spanish crown did not only incorporate escaped slaves onto census
rolls and use their settlements for border defense; it also used particular
models of European colonization along the border as a way of establishing its
position and halting the French. To that end, it encouraged new immigration
from Europe and established new towns as the surest and most peaceful way
of ensuring stability along the border, halting French usurpations, generating
new wealth for the crown through cultivation, and increasing the number
of men able to carry arms in case of war. Starting in 1680, and throughout
the eighteenth century, the monarchy and the island’s governors encouraged
new settlements of colonists, mostly from the Canary Islands, both along the
border and in strategic points along the coast.
The development of these new towns benefitted from the population
growth on the French side, which meant that demand for products rose as
well. This balance lasted until the revolution, which brought about huge
political and economic changes. During the first phase, there was a timid
and fleeting attempt to encourage sugar cane and other agricultural prod-
ucts traditionally dominated by the French. That, at least, was what one
Frenchman wrote when he described the Spanish part of the island in 1795:
The splendid expanse of Santo Domingo, rather than being used for agri-
culture, is covered with little ranches that for the past four or five years,
which is to say since the troubles in the French part of Santo Domingo,
have been developed in small numbers by some sugar, coffee, and cacao
plantations.86
But efforts to take advantage of French difficulties and the subsequent

drop in French exports to Europe were quickly undone when the Spanish
part of the island was given to France in 1795. Many Spanish colonists
and French refugees subsequently left the island, as it sunk at the center of
the revolutionary hurricane. As a result Cuba, and not the Spanish Santo
Domingo, underwent an economic boom based on plantations and the mas-
sive importation of slaves.
The Hispanic Monarchy had tried to populate the border to claim possession
through effective occupation rather than to imitate the French plantation sys-
tem. Nonetheless, a common thread runs through French writings (explicitly
in the case of the French traveler of 1795) regarding agriculture on the island:
the legitimacy of possession based on successful (or unsuccessful) cultivation
of new Atlantic products. If the French presence on the island was initially
legitimated only through the right of conquest, as Pouancey told Escoto in
1680, a new dimension appeared in the eighteenth century: the French not
only deserved the territory because they had seized it from the Spaniards
but also because they had worked the land and enriched it. “What we say
on the island,” lamented Sánchez Valverde in the late eighteenth century, is
that once the French “realized they could not take the island by force, they
proceeded to take it inch by inch.”87 The useful and productive cultivation
of the land led to rights of legitimate possession throughout the island and
suggested French superiority over the inhabitants of the Spanish side. French
writers and administrators spared few insults in describing the Spaniards,
saying their poverty was the result of indolence, not poor land, the proof of
which was that the French were generously rewarded for their labors. Though
this border conflict did not lead to war, as it did between the French and the
English in the Ohio River valley, it nonetheless had larger consequences
in the realm of racial stereotypes.
The French deduced from the Spaniards’ inferior cultivation skills that
they were racially inferior. Going back to the journey by the young engineer
Daniel Lescallier to the eastern part of the island in 1764, it is interesting
to note his impressions as he visited Bani, a recent settlement established
by immigrants from the Canary Islands. Once again, he referred to the rich
soil and noted that “its inhabitants do not grow anything.” Nevertheless,
in Bani
one sees the most hard-working men in all the Spanish colony, and the
whitest, though they were mixed-blood at first. They are tall and well
proportioned, and they are proud of only marrying white women or mes-
tizas. Very few are descended from Castilians. Most are from the Canary
Islands. Spaniards call them “islanders.”88
Shortly thereafter, after going through San Juan Bautista de Managua, he

wrote yet again that the land was good “but its inhabitants are lazy and
they don’t grow anything. Only the ‘islanders’ work a little.”89 For Lescallier,
the inferior cultivation of Atlantic products was a sign of the general and
intrinsic inferiority of the inhabitants of the Spanish colony, in contrast to
the gift of the hard-working French and that of the Canary Islanders, who
were whiter and more recent arrivals. This discourse would not go without
reply; writers such as Sánchez Valverde denied any congenital inferiority. If
anyone was inferior, he said, it was the French colonists, as the Spaniards
had shown that they were “stronger, more hard-working and more frugal
than the French.”90 Furthermore, he said, the wealth of the French colony
was not the result of any alleged French superiority but entirely the result of
slave labor, which was infrequent on the Spanish side.91
In spite of the stubborn refusal to end the colony’s political problems by
adopting French rule, in economic terms the responses to the crisis were
very different. On the eve of the revolution, as French slaves were sharpen-
ing their machetes, observers in the Spanish colony were convinced they
should follow the French model and not attempt to grow alternative crops.
They should increase the importation of slaves and develop plantations:
“Given the means that have made the one side so rich and abundant, the
same should be applied to the other side.”92
This debate sheds light on an unexplored facet of Atlantic products: the
relationship of agriculture to the birth of discourses of imperial and racial
legitimation.93
Conclusion: global products, local conflicts
Unlike the case of European frontiers, the formation and evolution of the
division of Hispaniola were the result of interaction between different agri-
cultural systems aimed at export; they were the local outcome of global
production. The basic elements of global circulation of new products have
concrete, local consequences such as the creation of a border, economic and
social interaction across that border, and violence and stereotypes.
Though the same products were being grown on both sides of the border,
productive and commercial practices were not the same. On the contrary,
specializations and productive cycles were divergent, and until the end of
the eighteenth century, when Spaniards began considering the French slave
plantation as a model they should imitate, each of the two colonies sought
“hope for a remedy” independently. That was the source of the increased
conflict and violence, but also of the two sides’ asymmetrical co-adaptation.
They co-adapted from the bottom up. Practices of production, exchange, and
interaction along the border were developed in situ, by the inhabitants of the
region, be they Spaniards, Africans, French, Canary Islanders, freeworkers, slaves,
day laborers, or fugitives. The bureaucracies of both monarchies were always
one step behind the spontaneous practices of these protagonists, who created
a vivid and constantly changing reality. The border was regulated, delimited,
and taxed only partially, always belatedly.
Though elements such as divergences within each of the colonies and the
gradations between effective occupation and recognized property remain to be
developed, the centrality of violence arising from the gigantic transformation
of the island during the early modern period cannot be emphasized enough.
Violence linked to Atlantic products was, in many cases, more brutal in the
production zones than in those of consumption. The continual micro-violence
on the border, which was created, managed, and resolved on the local level,
was the norm in the agricultural development of Atlantic products. Despite
their frequency, large-scale wars among the empires fighting for control over
the principal productive zones in the colonies, directed by European diplo-
macy, were the exception to the rule.
Border violence on Hispaniola never triggered any large-scale colonial
conflict because metropolitan authorities wished to make mutual con-
cessions so as to calm the waters to acceptable levels and prevent local conflicts
from dictating imperial policies. Nevertheless, the self-identification of each
of the groups participating in border life, constantly reinforced by daily
contact and explained in terms of economic divergence, had an impact that
far exceeded the limits of the island itself. As a result, discursive violence
was used to justify dominion and, on the basis of different crops, would
end up being used to justify the superiority of one population over another.
Differences of phenotype, climate, or food also were related to people’s
greater or lesser ability to develop a plantation economy. This dimension
must be taken into account in future research if we are to understand the
cultural significance of Atlantic products in the context of the justification
of imperialism and the definition and hierarchy of races.
Notes
This work has been undertaken in the framework of the project P09-HUM 5330, “Nuevos
productos Atlánticos, ciencia, guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen,”
financed by the Junta de Andalucía, and the project I+D+i HAR2011-29859-C02-02,
“Violencia, afinidad y representación: La proyección exterior de la Monarquía
Hispánica,” financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity. The
author is grateful to the editors for their comments, which have improved the chapter.
Any shortcomings remain his own responsibility.
1. Lescallier had a long political and military career in France and its colonies. In the
early decades, military espionage, particularly in England and Holland, stood out;
see Margaret Bradley, Daniel Lescallier, 1743–1822: Man of the Sea and Military Spy?
(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005).
2. The report is published in Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Viajeros de Francia en Santo
Domingo (Santo Domingo: Editorial Caribe, 1979).
3. Ibid., 10.
4. Ibid., 15.
5. Ibid., 11.
6. Ibid., 78.
7. Frank Moya Pons, La Española en el siglo XVI, 1493–1520: Trabajo, sociedad y política
en la economía del oro (Santiago, Dominican Republic: Universidad Católica Madre
y Maestra, 1978); Justo L. del Río Moreno, Los inicios de la agricultura europea en el
Nuevo Mundo (1492–1542) (Seville: Caja Rural de Huelva, 1991).
8. Pedro F. Bonó, “Apuntes sobre las clases trabajadoras dominicanas,” in Papeles
de Pedro F. Bonó para la historia de las ideas políticas de Santo Domingo, ed. Emilio
Rodríguez Demorizi (Santo Domingo: Editora Caribe, 1964), 190–250.
9. Edmund von Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers: Seiner Darstellung und Verwendung,
seit den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Beginne der Rübenzuckerfabrikation (Leipzig: M. Hesse,
1890).
10. Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Havana: Editorial
Ciencias Sociales, 1991 [1940]).
11. Among the most relevant works are the following: Gilberto Freyre, Casa-Grande &
Senzala (Recife-Pernambuco: Fundaçao Gilberto Freyre, 2003 [1933]); Noël Deerr,
The History of Sugar (London: Chapman and Hall, 1950); Fernándo B. Sandoval,
La industria del azúcar en Nueva España (Mexico City: Instituto de Historia,
1951); Juana Gil-Bermejo García, Panorama histórico de la agricultura en Puerto
Rico (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1970); Richard S. Dunn,
Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713
(Williamsburg: Institute for Early American History and Culture, 1972); Manuel
Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio: Complejo económico social cubano del azúcar (Havana:
Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 1978); Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the
Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835 (Cambridge University Press,
1985); Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History
(London: Penguin, 1986); J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical
Geography from its Origins to 1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1989); Genaro
Rodríguez Morel, Orígenes de la economía de plantación de la Española (Santo
Domingo: Editoria Nacional, 2012).
12. Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 2nd edn
(London: Penguin, 2011), esp. chap. 11; Reinaldo Funes Monzote, De bosque a
sabana: Azúcar, deforestación y medio ambiente en Cuba, 1492–1926 (Mexico City:
Siglo XXI, 2004); J. R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater
Caribbean (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
13. Rosario Sevilla Soler, Santo Domingo: Tierra de frontera (1750–1800) (Seville:
Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1980); Juana Gil-Bermejo García, La
Española: Anotaciones históricas (1600–1650) (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
Americanos, 1983); Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, Población y economía en Santo
Domingo, 1700–1746 (Seville: Diputación Provincial, 1985).
14. Cyril L. R. James, Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo
Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1989); Gabriel Debien, Plantations et esclaves à Saint-
Domingue (Université de Dakar, 1962); Gabriel Debien, Les esclaves aux Antilles
Françaises (XVIIè–XVIIIè siècles) (Basse-Terre, Fort-de-France: Société d’Histoire de
la Guadaloupe/Société d’Histoire de la Martinique, 1974); Carolyn E. Fick, The
Making of Haiti: The Saint-Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1990); David P. Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution
in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001); Patrick
D. Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2002); Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 2004); Christian Schnakenbourg, “Histoire économ-
ique,” in Bandielle Bégot, ed., Guide de la recherche en histoire antillaise et guyanaise:
Guadaloupe, Martinique, Saint-Domingue, Guayne, XVIIe–XXIe siècle (Paris: Comité
des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 2011), vol. I, chap. 8.
15. Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, “‘Localism,’ Global History and Transnational History,”
Historisk Tidskrift 127:4 (2007), 659–78; Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational
History: The Past, Present and Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); April
Mayes et al., “Transnational Hispaniola: Towards New Paradigms in Haitian and
Dominican Studies,” Radical History Review 115 (2013), 26–32.
16. From a historical perspective see Michele Wucker, Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans,
Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999); Pedro
L. San Miguel, The Imagined Island: History, Identity and Utopia in Hispaniola
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
17. Humberto García Muñíz, “La plantación que no se repite: Las historias azucareras
de la República Dominicana y Puerto Rico, 1870–1930,” Revista de Indias 65:233
(2005), 173–91.
18. Justo L. del Río Moreno and Lorenzo E. López y Sebastián, “Hombres y ganados
en la tierra del oro: Comienzos de la ganadería en Indias,” Revista complutense de
historia de América 24 (1998): 16–22; Justo L. del Río Moreno, “Comercio trans-
atlántico y comercio regional ganadero en América (1492–1542),” Trocadero 6–7
(1994–95), 231–48; Lorenzo E. López y Sebastián and Justo L. del Río Moreno,
“La ganadería vacuna en la isla Española,” Revista complutense de historia de
América 25 (1999), 11–49, 18–21; Justo L. del Río Moreno, “La élite antillana y
la economía de conquista en América: Los intereses ganaderos (1493–1542),” in
El Reino de Granada y el Nuevo Mundo: V Congreso Internacional de Historia de
América (Granada: Diputación Provincial de Granada, 1994), 187–204.
19. Justo L. del Río Moreno and Lorenzo E. López y Sebastián, “El comercio azucarero
de la Española en el siglo XVI: Presión monopolística y alternativas locales,”
Revista complutense de historia de América 17 (1991), 39–78.
20. López y Sebastián and Río Moreno, “Ganadería vacuna,” 13–14; Moya Pons, La
Española, 257ff.
21. Río Moreno and López y Sebastián, “El comercio azucarero,” 75.
22. Frank Peña-Pérez, Antonio Osorio: Monopolio, contrabando y despoblación (Santiago:
Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, 1980).
23. Río Moreno and López y Sebastián, “El comercio azucarero,” 75.
24. Gil-Bermejo García, La Española, 64–5; Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, ed., Relaciones
históricas de Santo Domingo, vol. IV (Ciudad Trujillo: Editorial Montalvo, 1945),
421ff.
25. Manuel Arturo Peña-Battle and Manuel Aznar, La isla de la Tortuga: Plaza de armas,
refugio y seminario de los enemigos de España en Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura
Hispánica, 1951); Kristen Block and Jenny Shaw, “Subjects without an Empire:
The Irish in the Early Modern Caribbean,” Past & Present 210 (2011), 44–8.
26. Frank Peña-Pérez, Cien años de miseria en Santo Domingo, 1600–1700 (Santiago:
Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, 1980); Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, “La
estructura económica de Santo Domingo, 1500–1795,” in Frank Moya Pons, ed.,
Historia de las Antillas, vol. IV: Historia de la República Dominicana (Madrid: Doce
Calles, 2010), 57–94; Alain Yacou, ed., Les catastrophes naturelles aux Antilles: D’une
Soufrière à une autre (Paris-Pointe-à-Pitre: Karthala, CERC, Université des Antilles
et de la Guyane, 1999); Sherry Johnson, Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the
Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2011).
27. John Latimer, Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 24–40, 70–1.
28. Gabriel Debien, Les esclaves aux Antilles françaises (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Basse-
Terre, Fort-de-France: Société d’Histoire de la Guadeloupe, Société d’Histoire de
la Martinique, 1974); Jacques de Cauna, Au temps des isles à sucre: Histoire d’une
plantation de Saint-Domingue au XVIII siècle (Paris: Karthala, 2003).
29. Geoffrey Vaughan Scammell, The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion,
c.1400–1715 (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 26; Gil-Bermejo García,
La Española, 64–5; Justo L. del Río Moreno and Lorenzo E. López y Sebastián, “La
crisis del siglo XVII en la industria azucarera antillana y los cambios producidos
en su estructura,” Revista complutense de historia de América 23 (1997), 137–40.
30. Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter AGI), Santo Domingo (hereafter SD),
legajo 273, memorial de Manuel Palano Tinoco, 6 April 1659.
31. Raffaele Ciferri, Informe general sobre la industria cacaotera de Santo Domingo (Santo
Domingo: Departamento de Agricultura, 1930), 15.
32. AGI, SD, legajo 273, no. 120, consulta, Junta de Guerra de Indias, 1 September
1673.
33. Archivium Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome (hereafter ARSI), Provincia Novi Regni
et Quitensis (hereafter NR et Q) 17, fols 118–27.
34. AGI, SD, legajo 273, no. 124, consulta, Consejo de Indias, 23 September 1673.
35. AGI, SD, legajo 273, no. 113, consulta, Junta de Guerra de Indias, 31 October
1671.
36. ARSI, NR et Q 15 (I), Antonio Pérez to Alonso Pantoja, 13 May 1674.
37. AGI, SD, legajo 273, Pedro de Carvajal to Carlos II, 20 July 1669.
38. AGI, SD, legajo 273, no. 120, consulta, Junta de Guerra de Indias, 1 September
1673.
39. Ibid.
40. Río Moreno and López y Sebastian, “La crisis del siglo XVII,” 144.
41. A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808: A World on the Move
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 155; Woodrow Borah, “Latin
America, 1610–1660,” in John P. Cooper, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History,
vol. IV (Cambridge University Press, 1970), 721–2; Manuel Casado Arboníes,
“Datos para el estudio de las haciendas-arboledas de cacao en los valles de
Aragua a fines del periodo colonial (1760–1810),” Estudios de historia social y
económica de América 12 (1995), 475–504; Manuel Casado Arboníes, “Cacao y
poder en Venezuela: Algunos comerciantes, hacendados y propietarios canarios
en los valles de Aragua (1760–1810),” Tebeto: Anuario del Archivo Histórico Insular
de Fuerteventura 13 (2000), 67–124. UNESCO is currently sponsoring a research
project called “The Cacao Route in Latin America and the Caribbean: Cultural
Diversity Towards an Endogenous Development”; see María Luisa Laviana
Cuetos, “Investigación e integración: La ruta del cacao en América Latina,” Tierra
firme: Revista de historia y ciencias sociales 100 (2007), 485–99.
42. AGI, SD, legajo 273, no. 69.
43. On tobacco in Hispaniola and its long-term development, see Antonio Gutiérrez
Escudero, “Tabaco y desarrollo económico en Santo Domingo (siglo XVIII),”
Anuario de estudios americanos 58:2 (2001), 713–36; Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero,
“La casa de la contratación y el comercio de la Española: Azúcar, tabaco y otros
productos exportables,” in Antonio Acosta Rodríguez, Adolfo González Rodríguez,
and Enriqueta Vila Vilar, eds, La casa de la contratación y el comercio entre España y
las Indias (Seville: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas–Fundación el
Monte, 2003), 511–39; Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, “El tabaco de Santo Domingo
y su exportación a Cádiz y Sevilla (siglos XVI y XVIII),” Revista hispanoamericana
1 (2011), 1–13 and n. 6.
44. Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, “El tabaco de Santo Domingo y su exportación a
Sevilla (época colonial),” in Enriqueta Vila Vilar and Allan Kuethe, eds, Relaciones
de poder y comercio colonial: Nuevas perspectivas (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-Americanos, 1999), 117–42; Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, “Tabaco
y algodón en Santo Domingo, 1731–1795,” in María Justina Sarabia Viejo,
ed., Entre Puebla de los Ángeles y Sevilla: Estudios Americanistas en homenaje al

Dr. José Antonio Calderón Quijano (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos,
1997), 151–69.
45. AGI, SD, legajo 273, memorial, Manuel Palano Tinoco, 6 April 1659.
46. Igor Pérez Tostado, “La llegada de irlandeses a la frontera caribeña hispana en el
siglo XVII,” in Enrique García Hernán and Oscar Recio Morales, eds, Extranjeros
en el ejército: Militares irlandeses en la sociedad española, 1580–1818 (Madrid:
Ministerio de Defensa, 2007), 301–14.
47. AGI, SD, legajo 273, Cabildo secular de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo town
council) to Queen Mariana of Austria, 27 September 1669.
48. Manuel Hernández González, La colonización de la frontera dominicana: 1680–1795
(Santo Domingo: Buho, 2006); Manuel Hernández González, Expansión funda-
cional y desarrollo en el norte dominicano (1680–1795): El Cibao y la Bahía de Samaná
(Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación, 2007); Manuel Hernández
González, El sur dominicano (1680–1795): Cambios sociales y transformaciones
económicas (Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación, 2008).
49. José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez and Gaetano Sabatini, “Monarchy as Conquest: Violence,
Social Opportunity, and Political Stability in the Establishment of the Hispanic
Monarchy,” Journal of Modern History 81:3 (2009), 501–36.
50. Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989); Oscar Jané Checa, Catalunia i França al
segle XVII: Identitats, contraidentitats i ideologies a l’època moderna (1640–1700)
(Catarroja: Afers, 2006); Fernando Chavarría Múgica, “En los confines de la sobera-
nía: Facerías, escalas de poder y relaciones de fuerza transfronterizas en el Pirineo
Navarro (1400–1615),” in Michel Bertrand and Natividad Planas, eds, Les sociétés
de frontière de la Mediterranée à l’Atlantique (XVIe–XVIIIe siècle) (Madrid: Casa de
Velázquez, 2011), 193–217.
51. Aside from the work of Rosario Soler Sevilla and Manuel Vicente Hernández
González, see Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, “Asentamientos urbanos, poblaciones
y villas en La Española, 1664–1778,” Temas americanistas 11 (1994), 22–4; Antonio
Gutiérrez Escudero, “Fundación de nuevas poblaciones en Santo Domingo en el
siglo XVIII,” in Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Cultura, ed., Las nuevas pobla-
ciones en España y América: Actas del V congreso histórico sobre nuevas poblaciones
(Seville: Consejería de Cultura, 1994), 373–80.
52. Paul Th. Romain, Le traité des frontières, haïtiano-dominicaines (Port-au-Prince:
Imprimerie Centrale, 1929); Manuel Arturo Peña-Battle, Historia de la cuestión
fronteriza dominico-haitiana (Ciudad Trujillo: Luis Sánchez Andujar, 1946);
Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, “Cuestión de límites en la isla Española, 1690–1777,”
Temas americanistas 1 (1982), 22–4; Frank Moya Pons, “Las tres fronteras: Intro-
ducción a la frontera dominico-haitiana,” in Wilfredo Lozano, ed., La cuestión
haitiana en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Flacso, 1992), 17–32; François
Blancpain, Haïti et la République Dominicaine: Une question de frontières (Matoury:
Ibis Rouge, 2008).
53. See n. 13 above.
54. A similar passing of the baton took place after Cuba’s industrial revolution,
when it took over from Saint-Domingue as the world’s largest sugar exporter;
see Reinaldo Funes Monzote, “Especialización azucarera y crisis de la ganadería
en Cuba, 1790–1868,” Historia agraria 57 (2012), 105–34; and García Muñiz, “La
plantación,” 173–91.
55. Gutiérrez Escudero, “La estructura económica,” 83–5.
56. Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, Fonds Ministeriel, Premier

empire colonial, correspondance à l’arrivée, Serie C, C9, carton 1, fols 200–5.
57. Ibid., fols.160–2.
58. Ibid., fol. 151.
59. Ibid., fols 153–4.
60. Ibid., fols 160–2.
61. Fernando Chavarria Múgica, “El ‘ruido’ de los confines de Navarra: Servicio,
reputación y disimulación durante la negociación del intercambio de princesas
(1609–1615),” in Alicia Esteban Estríngana, ed., Servir al rey en la Monarquía de
los Austrias: Medios, fines y logros del servicio al soberano en los siglos XVI y XVII
(Madrid: Silex, 2012), 227–57.
62. Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1999).
63. Carole Shammas, “The Revolutionary Impact of European Demand for Tropical
Goods,” in John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan, eds, The Early Modern Atlantic
Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 176–7; Jeremy Black, Trade, Empire
and British Foreign Policy, 1689–1815: The Politics of a Commercial State (London:
Routledge, 2007), 144–52; Joyce Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and
Science on the Anglo-American Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2001), 158–9.
64. Blancpain, Haïti, 29–38.
65. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Consejos, legajo 20759/2, report by Rafael de
Luna, 9 January 1769.
66. Ibid., statement by Don Juan de Santa Ana, 10 January 1769.
67. Ibid., statement by Don Tomás de Santa María, 10 January 1769.
68. Ibid., statement by Francisco Andujar, 9 January 1769.
69. Ibid., statement by Tomás de Araujo, 10 January 1769.
70. AGI, SD, legajo 281, Manuel de Revenga to Philip V, 26 August 1726.
71. François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Histoire de l’isle Espagnole (Paris: J. Guerin, 1731),
vol. II, 484–5.
73. Ibid.
74. AGI, SD, legajo 281, auto, 11 December 1726.
75. AGI, SD, legajo 281, Manuel de Revenga to José Patiño, 28 October 1729.
77. Ibid.
78. Charlevoix, Histoire de l’isle, vol. II, 482.
79. Antonio Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor de la isla Española (Madrid: Pedro Marín,
1785), 149–50; on Sánchez Valverde see Alain Yacou, “A. Sánchez Valverde:
Idea del valor de la isla Española (recomposition d’après les documents de
l’èpoque),” in Alain Yacou, ed., Saint-Domingue espagnol et la révolution nègre
d’Haïti (1790–1822): Commémoration du bicentenaire de la naissance de l’État d’Haïti
(1804–2004) (Paris: Karthala, 2007), 19–52.
80. Sánchez Valverde, Idea, 118, 142.
81. Ibid., 56, 165–8.
82. On this sort of urban slavery see José Luis Belmonte Postigo, Ser esclavo en Santiago
de Cuba: Espacios de poder y negociación en un contexto de expansión y crisis, 1780–1803
(Madrid: Doce Calles, 2011).
83. Charlevoix, Histoire de l’isle, vol. II, 392.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Rodríguez Demorizi, Viajeros de Francia, 79.
87. Sánchez Valverde, Idea, 205.
88. Rodríguez Demorizi, Viajeros de Francia, 24–5; Hernández González, El sur domini-
cano, 210.
89. Rodríguez Demorizi, Viajeros de Francia, 27.
90. Sánchez Valverde, Idea, 205.
91. Ibid., 149.
92. Ibid., 207.
93. Jean-Paul Zuñiga, “Visible Signs of Belonging: The Spanish Empire and the Rise
of Racial Logics in the Early Modern Period,” in Pedro Cardim, Tamar Herzog,
José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez, and Gaetano Sabatini, eds, Policentric Monarchies: How
Did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain a Global Hegemony?
(Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), 133–4, 125–46; Jean-Paul Zuñiga,
“‘Muchos negros, mulatos y otros colores’: Culture visuelle et savoirs coloniaux
au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales 68 (2013), 67–9; Anthony Padgen, Lords of All the World:
Ideologies in Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c.1500–c.1850 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995); Pedro Ureña Rib, “La genèse de l’antagonisme entre les
deux parties de Saint-Domingue,” in Yacou, ed., Saint-Domingue espagnol et la
révolution nègre d’Haïti (1790–1822), 53–70.
14
The Resilience and Boomerang Effect
of Chocolate
A Product’s Globalization and Commodification
Irene Fattacciu
In the last 30 years historians have become increasingly interested in under-

standing how changes in patterns of consumption reproduced themselves
as well as to what degree they acted as agents of social change. Enriched
by interdisciplinary contributions, the history of consumption constitutes
one of the privileged terrains where different historiographies meet in the
attempt to reconcile structure and agency, the individual and the social, and
local and global dimensions in order to explain long-term historical shifts.1
By focusing on chocolate, one of the major goods in Spanish Atlantic trade,
this chapter develops a series of reflections on the shaping of competing
and evolving patterns of consumption in an imperial context. In this way,
it attempts to enrich and to complicate our understanding of the product’s
diffusion.2 Because it was a good closely connected to Mesoamerican culture
before the conquest and to criollo and Spanish identity since the end of the
seventeenth century, chocolate’s versatility makes it a privileged product to
explore the importance and the evolving meaning of rituals of consumption
in the Spanish Empire, functioning over time, as we shall see, as an identity
shaper for different social groups in different cultural contexts.3
Geographical discoveries and the conquest of “other” spaces on non-
European continents brought new categories of products to Old World tables,
accompanied by a universe of symbolic values and promoting new possibilities
of commercialization. Because of the rich symbolic world and the sociabil-
ity linked to it, chocolate not only prompted a large number of medical and
religious texts at the time of its first diffusion in the seventeenth century, but
continues today to inspire commercial and academic monographs in almost
every language. The rich symbolic universe linking consumption and sociabil-
ity to the definition of identities and relationships has placed chocolate, coffee,
tobacco, tea, and similar commodities at the center of numerous historical,
anthropological and philosophical studies.4
Food history, colonial history and the history of consumption have all
dealt with the diffusion of these products, giving different explanations for
their success among different consumers in different geographical spaces.
255
256 Irene Fattacciu
In the continuous tension between an understanding of food consumption

as a biological imperative on the one hand, and as cultural construction on
the other, historians have continued investigating these themes by insert-
ing processes of the assimilation of exotic foods within the complex plots of
cultural and social relations characterizing European societies in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries.5
At the heart of scholarly interest in products like chocolate there is an
attempt to understand the reasons, modalities and outcomes of their appro-
priation and subsequent diffusion by the colonizers, as well as an attempt
to assess the degree of agency that the colonized had in this process and in
determining forms of cultural hybridization. During the last decades histor-
ians have challenged the idea of the adoption of products and elements of
New World material culture by settlers as a one-way process of assimilation,
emphasizing the role of colonized populations in forging the symbolic world
associated with colonial products.6 This effort introduced a multiplicity
of actors and agents into what was still a “push and pull” process of the
European assimilation of exotic goods. This interpretative framework shaped
not only our understanding of the process itself, but also indirectly deter-
mined the way historians looked at and interpreted the same mechanisms
that led to a product’s diffusion on a national or transnational level.
Although the answers differ widely according to the disciplinary per-
spective employed, most studies share an underlying concern with the reasons
why certain substances such as cocoa have been adopted and adapted in
the Old World.7 But how, without any intention of neglecting the power
relations implicit in the appropriation and reformulation of the material
elements of an alien culture in a colonial context, can we escape the one-
way logic of assimilation in the process of diffusion of exotic goods such as
chocolate?
On both sides of the Atlantic, to understand the importance of new prod-
ucts reaching Europe from the sixteenth century, it is necessary to take into
account different levels of analysis that the consumption of these new goods
implies. Two distinct symbolic universes overlap in this process: the cultural
dimension and the social dimension of identity. An analysis of the cultural
dimension of consumption cannot ignore how the adoption and adaptation
of products from areas outside Europe was essentially an act of supremacy,
particularly in the case of the New World: through this process “otherness”
was defined, marking a boundary stating superiority and control over what
was unknown. At the same time, the differentiation in modalities of pro-
duction and consumption (not only in relation to the original context of the
product, but also within Europe) marked another layer of cultural dis-
tinction. The other dimension, namely, the importance of material culture in
defining social class, entails the most studied but no less controversial aspect
of the history of consumption in different European regions. The process of
adoption and adaptation of new products in the European context was not
The Resilience and Boomerang Effect of Chocolate 257
a simple replacement operation, and the consumer culture that was built
through these products cannot be dismissed as a mere side effect of colonial
expansion.
These practices changed through an interesting dialectic between producers
or sellers and consumers, in a constant process of re-assignment of meanings
to the object, of reinvention of luxury and competing social languages. By
studying different forms and competing practices of consumption we add
the social variable to the cultural function of the debate, and are thus able
to understand how this product’s identity was continuously reshaped and
challenged and how these transformations contributed to its spread. Despite
the impossibility of introducing here the whole set of factors and actors that
determined chocolate’s path into people’s everyday lives on both sides of the
Atlantic, this chapter introduces some of the variables that influenced this pro-
cess, highlighting how they intertwined, diverged and converged over time.
Fears of assimilation and cultural appropriation
While it was a beverage associated with King Montezuma and the Aztec nobil-
ity, chocolate’s remote history is uncertain. Greatly valued in Amerindian
societies, it was used as a drink (chocolate), as money (cacao beans), in re-
ligious ceremonies as a votive offering and, in general, as an article consumed
by the privileged classes.8 Before the arrival of Europeans, chocolate drinking
was a pleasure restricted to nobles, religious men and very rich merchants,
being used also for rituals and to treat some health problems.9 But the habit
of drinking cocoa, at first confined only to the indigenous population, spread
among Spanish settlers as early as the end of the sixteenth century.
Cocoa’s continual and growing demand in Mexico City and the paral-
lel decline in its availability encouraged a growth in its production in the
regions of Guayaquil and Caracas.10 These regions, where first attempts to
transplant cocoa in order to supply the Novohispanic market date back to the
beginning of the seventeenth century, quickly established themselves as
the most important cocoa-growing areas in Spain’s colonies.11 This process
simultaneously was fueled by and facilitated its popularization in the col-
onies from the late seventeenth century onward, when chocolate became
an everyday reality for all strata of the Novohispanic population. On the
other side of the Atlantic, chocolate spread slowly from the beginning of
the seventeenth century and more consistently from the second half of the
century through the European aristocratic and clerical networks. Although
still confined to the elite, chocolate found considerable success first at the
Spanish court and among aristocratic families in Spain, then spreading into
the territories under Spanish influence (Italy and the Netherlands) and to
other European courts.12
The increase in cocoa production and the growth of imports to Veracruz and
Europe from the second half of the seventeenth century onward were preceded
258 Irene Fattacciu
and paralleled by considerable debate, which reflected contemporaries’ need

to situate the new products within their interpretative categories. Medical and
scientific controversy about the nature of cocoa and chocolate arose from the
larger debate involving the role of new plants (especially those with as high
a commercial and medical potential as cocoa) found in the materia medica of
the time.13
In the early seventeenth century, one of the first debates surrounding
chocolate, and at first even tobacco, arose in a religious controversy over
whether or not drinking chocolate broke the fast, addressing its nature as
either a drink or a food. The early popularization of chocolate consumption
in New Spain and affection for the drink at the court posed the serious prob-
lem of reconciling existing practices with Catholic teaching.14
This religious debate paralleled a medical debate on the properties of
cocoa, influencing it and at the same time being informed by it. The querelle
generated huge discussion, continuing through the following century. Was
cocoa cold or hot? Was chocolate food or drink? Did chocolate maintain the
same properties as cocoa when processed with other ingredients? The cold
and hot schools confronted each other in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, with the “temperate school” slowly becoming prevalent, being
interested less in the nature of cacao and more in establishing how choc-
olate’s various uses (depending on the ingredients and the times and ways
it was consumed) affected “each individual according to his/her natural
disposition.”15
Chocolate’s association with a place outside Europe, and therefore outside
of European moral norms, which was part of its appeal, also prompted a
lengthy debate about its social acceptability and commercial possibilities.
The association of cocoa with the cultural and geographical “otherness”
of the territories on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean obliged medical
and religious authorities to subsume it within European moral and medical
schema, while simultaneously determining the modalities of its assimi-
lation. This effort, in turn, led contemporaries to modify their interpretative
categories, to question scientific, medical and social knowledge and to adjust
their consumption practices.16 Therefore the need to normativize chocolate’s
consumption entailed an increasingly strict definition of acceptable prepar-
ations and uses, as well as an active invention of rituals of consumption
associated with it.
It is worth noting that this debate did not reflect an early popularization
of chocolate in Spain, where it remained rare and confined to aristocratic
networks until the late seventeenth century. Data about the actual presence
of cocoa help explain how the attention received by the product did not corres-
pond to the quantity of cocoa exported, but reflected, rather, its consumption
among Spanish settlers in the colonies. In Europe, chocolate traveled mainly
as a gift within aristocratic networks,17 and quantities imported into Spain
were not relevant until the second half of the seventeenth century. Prices also
help confirm chocolate’s restricted circulation. At the end of the seventeenth

century the cost of one pound of chocolate in Madrid oscillated between 10
and 17 reales (slightly more than a master carpenter’s daily wage), making its
consumption impossible for the majority of the population.18
At the end of the sixteenth century and during the seventeenth century,
Creole elites were aware of the contradictions and limitations of the process
of evangelization carried out in the Spanish possessions, as well as of the
persistence of what Serge Gruzinski called “colonial idolatry.”19 Although
the texts of the period in question never explicitly articulated this concern,
they clearly register fear of indigenous cultural influence.20
As demonstrated by Rebecca Earle, food was at the center of Spanish
preoccupations about the maintenance of the settlers’ Spanishness, because
the correct foods were believed to protect Europeans from the rigors of an
unfamiliar climate (see Chapter 8). Diet had the power to create or dilute
bodily differences, destabilizing the borders between colonizers and colon-
ized peoples.
The vulnerability of early modern bodies explained by Earle, and all the
contradictions created by this dual intention of assimilating the Amerindian
populations and keeping them separate at the same time, make clear the
complex context of the Spanish colonial enterprise. 21 In the case of the adop-
tion and “accommodation” of cocoa there was certainly a profound fear of
any persistence of indigenous religious practices (as with the whole materia
medica of the New World).22 Indeed, many texts dedicated to chocolate in the
seventeenth century attempted to reconcile commercial opportunities with
the adaptation of Spanish emigrants to conditions in the colonies, and the
need to monitor the introduction of new products in the Old World.
In the seventeenth century the controversy around chocolate on the one
hand fueled and on the other responded to the interest in this product.
Rather than through the image transmitted by texts, chocolate acquired
value through circulation within aristocratic networks and the creation of
social practices. If chocolate’s commercial circulation in Europe remained
limited at the end of the seventeenth century, travelers and texts written
about chocolate give a clear perception of its international circulation
through personal networks.
Around 1655 the Duke of Albuquerque sent the royal family 8,000 pounds
of chocolate—each pound packed in a little foil of gold—plus another 16,000
pounds for the nobles.23 The correspondence of the nobility offers countless
testimonies of gifts of chocolate, which assumed an important role as a “repu-
tation product.”24 Chocolate had rapidly become part of a series of codified
practices of socialization and kindness, gifts and ceremonies and, then,
a customary gift among nobles. The consumption of luxury goods, especially
exotic goods, was a sign of distinction for the aristocratic elite of the modern age.
Chocolate became a symbol of a cosmopolitan elite and an icon of
refinement. The great importance attached to the abundance of food and
260 Irene Fattacciu
delicacies at the table facilitated the incorporation of chocolate, providing

an opportunity for the renewal of consuming habits and sociability, as well
as becoming, above all, a field of competence and competition for show-
ing one’s degree of refinement. This process occurred through rituals, and
especially through recipes, which provided a field of competition for elites
to innovate and excel, as discussed in Chapter 10 above.
Changing rituals, changing meanings: competence

and competition in chocolate’s social circulation
Investigating changes in the methods of preparing chocolate is one way in

which we can begin to integrate the notion of cultural appropriation and
diffusion with that of social circulation. By juxtaposing cultural and social
rituals, representations and perceptions, we can see how it is impossible to
trace a linear transnational path of diffusion, as these practices were also
part of the building of social identities by different groups at different times.
Bartolomé Marradón and Colmenero de Ledesma provide a particularly
clear idea of the ingredients in the famous chocolate of aristocratic circles,
as well as of how its preparation had changed from that used by American
natives. The essential ingredients referred to in the recipes circulating in the
period were cocoa, sugar, anise, cinnamon and pepper or chili, to which
other flavorings could be added.25
The preparation proposed for example by Ledesma for European aristocrats—
his “recipe for the healthy”—calculated that for every 100 cocoa beans one
mixed the following: two “chilis”; a handful of anise; two of the native
Mesoamerican flowers, Vinacaxtlidos; two pinches of cinnamon; Campeche
vanilla; a dozen each of almonds and hazelnuts; a half pound of sugar; and a
pinch of achiote (a kind of plant to give it color).26 To resolve the difficulty of
finding certain ingredients, Ledesma also suggested substitutes like Spanish
pepper in place of the chili, or roses of Alexandria instead of Vinacaxtlidos
flowers. This entailed a first reinvention of chocolate through the addition
and substitution of American spices and flowers using more familiar and
available ones like cinnamon, rose, anise or black pepper.27
According to Ledesma, the Spanish introduced “modern” chocolate to the
Indies. When they had arrived in the Indies, the favorite beverage among
the governing elite of the Aztec Empire was a compound of roasted ground
cacao beans mixed with red pepper (chili), achiote and sometimes vanilla.28
It was whipped into a froth until almost solid, and often consumed cold. The
sixteenth century produced testimonies of a variety of ways of consuming
the drink among the Novohispanic population, ranging from the simplest
preparation with water to more complex procedures with the addition of
several spices and flowers.29
In Mexico until the first half of the seventeenth century, chocolate could
be acquired directly from natives on the street as cocoa paste in lozenge form,
to which consumers could add what they pleased.30 It could be prepared just
with water or milk, but the most popular way to consume it was hot with
atole (a maize dough), a form better adapted to the large sectors of the popu-
lation interested and to the early popularization.
Chocolate’s cultural relevance in Mesoamerican civilizations, early intro-
duction to Spanish settlers by native populations and pervasiveness among
the Novohispanic population31 surely influenced its forms of adoption
by the colonizers in New Spain. Spanish settlers therefore became accustomed
to the more simple preparations of chocolate, sometimes even without sugar
because of the natural sweetness of the criollo quality of cocoa (the one culti-
vated in the “Venezuelan” area) from Caracas.
As regards the changes in the recipes circulating in seventeenth-century
Europe, it has been debated whether Spaniards really reinvented the recipe
or simply modified it in order to reproduce the original taste. Arguably, they
neither tried simply to imitate the original taste of Amerindian chocolate
nor suddenly tried to omit the original ingredients. A gradual process, in
fact, would appear to have been intertwined with cultural issues and prob-
lems posed by the social diffusion of chocolate’s consumption.
The difficulty of finding the original ingredients was certainly an import-
ant factor, but weighed less when the product remained the domain of the
nobility. Even chocolate’s consumption as a medicine, which involved a
growth in consumers, was based less on indigenous practices and notions
and more on the direct experience of its effects on sick and healthy people,
which helped redefine its ingredients.32
Moreover, we should take into account how much the new modes of con-
sumption and recipes reflected and served the product’s elite nature. In fact,
many chocolate recipes circulated in Spain and the rest of Europe through
aristocratic networks. Even the way it was produced served the way it was
circulated, with a personalized, homemade process that turned the creation
of new recipes into a field of competition among different noble families.33
In Madrid it was usual to have a molendero, or chocolate mill, at home
in order to produce chocolate according to family preferences, and choc-
olate recipes varied among families.34 But not only Spaniards turned to
Madrilenian molenderos to have their chocolate mix prepared as they
desired. As recounted by Bianca Lindorfer, Ferdinand Bonaventura Harrach,
who played a key role as a leading noble in Vienna to spread chocolate con-
sumption through aristocratic networks there, during one of his frequent
trips to Spain said he had awaited the arrival of the ship with cocoa to have
it prepared the way he desired and then transport it, already processed, to
Vienna.35 Probably even in Spain, as in Vienna, there were some families
who, having more contacts and resources, centralized the dissemination of
chocolate among other nobles.36
The type of production and the variety of recipes found in the correspond-
ence of noble families were instrumental to chocolate circulation in the
262 Irene Fattacciu
seventeenth century, showing very personalized preparation methods. It is

certainly true that the modern aristocracy made the consumption of luxury
goods a mark of distinction, a symbol of social prestige and membership. In
the case of chocolate, it was not only access to the product that defined its
preciousness and value, but also the social language that was built around its
consumption and that characterized its consumers. Chocolate, by creating a
series of social practices and moments, an entire world with its own customs
and habits, and at the same time becoming the terrain for expressing dis-
tinction and refinement, was a privileged product within this mechanism
of social affirmation.
The key role played by the Spanish nobility in aristocratic European
networks as a mediator of chocolate diffusion is an essential premise for
understanding the process of “Hispanization” of chocolate that took place
during the eighteenth century and its role in the global spread of its pro-
duction and consumption. The Spanish court’s appropriation of chocolate
was carried out not just as part of the metropolis–colony dynamic but also
within the larger picture of Spain’s role as mediator between the Old and
New Worlds. Spain thus arose as a civilizing agent in a transition where
chocolate was stripped of its exotic identity in order to acquire new symbolic
associations in European and especially in Spanish culture.
It is certainly not my intention to suggest that contemporaries were un-
aware that cocoa had originated in the New World. However, focusing on the
way cocoa was manufactured into chocolate, rather than on the cocoa itself,
positions Spain as the initiator, the founder of “European” chocolate and
its recipes. Because Spain presented itself as its “civilizing agent,” chocolate,
not cocoa, was Spanish. Europe owed the importation and improvement
of Amerindian chocolate to Spaniards, who made it more palatable to the
civilized nations.37 The Spanish had “improved” chocolate during the years
of conquest, after having “enlightened [the natives] with the Gospel.”38
For at least half of the eighteenth century all Spanish and English as well
as French texts credited Spaniards with the beverage’s composition. Being
“more industrious than the savages,” they had corrected chocolate’s original
bad taste by adding sugar and certain drugs from the metropolis. Sugar was
by far the most important addition—the ultimate symbol of the civilization
that redeemed barbarity.39
Hispanization, production and the restructuring

of Atlantic trade
Spain played a fundamental role in the diffusion of chocolate manufacturing

in Europe and remained, at least until the second half of the eighteenth
century, the point of reference for everyone who wrote about the product.
A series of diverse components—that is, chocolate’s slow and timid social
diffusion beyond the strict confines of the nobility, the birth of a Spanish
artisanal industry that was both cause and consequence of an increase in

chocolate consumption, and the differentiation among practices of con-
sumption, increasingly embedded in the medical and cultural mentality of
the age—signal the beginning of a European chocolate tradition in which
Spain arose as the undisputed point of reference.40
One of the earliest effects of this transition was the transformation of
chocolate’s preparation and its standardization in the eighteenth century, as
chocolate started to be sold increasingly as a standard paste with all of the
ingredients already included, beginning with sugar. The recipe for Spanish
chocolate, now famous throughout Europe, was a basic blend of cocoa,
sugar and cinnamon, excluding most of the exotic spices heretofore used. Its
high quality was determined by the technique used to prepare it (toasting,
grinding, blending), an art in which Spanish chocolateros excelled, as trav-
elers to Spain recognized.41
Over the eighteenth century, the transnational elite circulation of
chocolate through ecclesiastical and noble networks gradually ceded to the
geographical concentration of its consumption in Spain and a parallel dif-
fusion outside aristocratic circles. Chocolate took on such importance in
eighteenth-century Spain that even the entry on cocoa in the Encyclopédie
opens with an acknowledgment of its diffusion in Spain, stating that “lack-
ing chocolate in Spanish homes is like here [in France] being so poor as
not to have bread.”42 Chocolate spread beyond the capital, reaching the
countryside through small and medium-sized cities, becoming a daily
product for the upper classes and a semi-luxury good in which a growing
number of people could occasionally indulge. It was not by chance that by
the mid-eighteenth century authorities for the first time explicitly started to
express their concern over the accessibility of chocolate consumption “for
the poor.”43
Claims of Spanish excellence in the art of chocolate production went
hand in hand with an increasing identification of Spanish culture with the
product. At the same time this development paralleled the standardization
of the production process, with chocolate makers starting to reinvent and
differentiate different qualities of the product in order to match an increas-
ingly differentiated demand.44
The possibility of differentiating different qualities of chocolate to match
and stimulate the growth of demand also depended on the increase of
imports from Guayaquil in the second half of the eighteenth century. As previ-
ously stated, Caracas and Guayaquil production became strongly oriented
toward the cultivation of cocoa at the beginning of the seventeenth century
in an attempt to increase profits and to become more competitive in response
to the needs of a growing market in New Spain.
During the seventeenth century, Caracas cocoa had managed to remain
prevalent in the Novohispanic market also because of the reiterated royal
prohibitions of Guayaquil entering the trade. The Spanish crown’s position
264 Irene Fattacciu
on the matter caused constant tensions with Guayaquil and Novohispanic

interest groups, who were anxious to allow Guayaquil cocoa to enter into
New Spain.45 In fact, despite the crown’s prohibitions, Guayaquil cocoa
became a constant presence and gained increasing importance in the
Novohispanic market.46 Not only did the lack of alternative outlets for
Guayaquil’s production help establish a strong black market, but the popu-
lation’s hunger for cocoa also led Novohispanic authorities to connive in the
creation of a dense trade network between the two regions.47
There were several reasons for this increase in imports of Guayaquil cocoa
in the Novohispanic market, but two of them are particularly worth men-
tioning here as their combination produced a series of unexpected results
and contributed to shape the patterns of cocoa’s global spread. The first
reason stemmed from the fact that Caracas cocoa, with its high quality and
price, could not satisfy the demand for chocolate in places like Mexico City,
where it could even be argued that the lower strata of the population con-
stituted the largest part of chocolate consumers, as “without exaggeration it
could be claimed that New Spain is always lacking Guayaquil cocoa, which
is the one for the poor.” Therefore, a huge demand for chocolate in New
Spain boosted both the cultivation and the imports of Guayaquil cocoa; on
the other hand the progressive increase in the amount of Guayaquil cocoa
entering New Spain throughout the eighteenth century facilitated a deep
democratization of chocolate consumption, which it further fueled.
The second reason for this change in regional trade is to be found in the
re-structuring of eighteenth-century Atlantic trade, as Guayaquil cocoa did
not just reach New Spain’s markets because of its price and availability,
but became the top import for the entire century after Spanish authorities
granted the Guipuzcoana Company a monopoly over the Atlantic cocoa
trade from Caracas in 1728. The Guipuzcoana’s entry onto the scene, which
was intended to regain control of the Atlantic trade in cocoa from the
Dutch, had significant consequences for cocoa’s trade balances on both the
interregional and the Atlantic level.48
After its arrival, the company re-oriented exports and modified economic
equilibriums by acquiring a monopoly on cocoa imports and exports,
imposing prices, and by changing the equilibriums of the interregional trade
between Caracas, New Spain and Guayaquil, with great consequences for
the cocoa economy of all the regions as well as for European markets.
There is much debate on the ability of the Guipuzcoana Company to ac-
tually regain control of the cocoa trade from the hands of Dutch smugglers.
Data show a huge increase in Spanish imports after the company’s for-
mation, but the causes of the even sharper boost that emerges from the Spanish
data, namely the exponential growth that took place between 1762 and 1794
(with 10,972,300 pounds imported directly to Cadiz in 1794), have puzzled
historians. While some economic historians have interpreted the apparent
surge in cocoa imports as the re-emergence of cocoa contrabanded by the
Dutch that coincided with free trade, others have attributed this growth to
the efficiency of the free market, which increased demand (see Figure 14.1).
Although the re-emergence of the smuggled cocoa in the data—especially
the contrabando de tonelaje that involved Spanish ships49—surely played a
role in increasing the quantity of recorded cocoa coming in, a cross-checking
of all data available from studies and sources on the Spanish and Dutch
cocoa trade shows how the growth of imports cannot be interpreted solely
in terms of the contraposition between legal and illegal commerce,50 and
that the transition from monopoly to free trade merits more attention and
research. Certainly part of the increase in cocoa imports to Spain during
the period of the company’s monopoly depended on its role in stimu-
lating production, which (as reported by the company’s data, biased but still
Cacao imported by the Dutch Cacao imported by the Spanish

Total estimate of cacao imported to Europe
14,000,000
12,000,000
10,000,000
Cacao (pounds)
8,000,000
6,000,000
4,000,000
2,000,000
0
00
18
21
24
27
31
35
38
49
53
60
63
66
69
72
75
78
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
Figure 14.1 Weights of cocoa imported by the Dutch and by the Spanish, 1770–78,
with an estimate of Europe’s cocoa imports
Sources: Lutgardo García Fuentes, El comercio español con América, 1650–1700 (Diputaciòn
Provincial de Sevilla, 1980); Antonio García-Baquero Gonzalez, Cádiz y el Atlántico (1717–1778):
El comercio colonial español bajo el monopolio gaditano, 2 vols (Diputaciòn Provincial de Cadiz, 1988),
vol. II, 360–400; Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Indiferente, legajo 2469; Josep Fontana, ed.,
La economia española al final del antiguo regimen, 3 vols (Madrid: Alianza, 1982), vol. III, 234–49;
Willem Klooster, Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648–1795 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998),
188, 228–9; Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven, eds, Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch
Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585–1817 (Boston: Brill, 2003); Cornelis C. Goslinga, The Dutch
in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast 1580–1680 (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., 1971).
266 Irene Fattacciu
meriting consideration) increased from about 60,000 fanegas51 a year in 1728

to 130,000 in 1765.52
The company therefore definitely played a role in increasing Venezuelan
(criollo) cocoa exports toward the Spanish and European market to meet and
at the same time fuel demand, but also had the indirect effect of stimulating
Guayquil production. Once the Guipuzcoana Company came onto the scene
and oriented the exportation of Caracas cocoa (the criollo cocoa, which was
the most valued quality) to Spain, the prohibition of Guayaquil cocoa in
New Spain became more of a formality than anything else.53
Chocolate’s “globalization” between resilience

and the boomerang effect
With the Novohispanic market increasingly inundated by Guayaquil

cocoa (the forastero variety, bitter but more productive) in the eighteenth
century, we see another shift in its forms of consumption. Even here
different qualities of chocolate were established, with the upper classes
composed of nobles, merchants, ecclesiastics and public officials develop-
ing consumption habits much more similar to those in Spain, consuming
only criollo cocoa and preparing chocolate according to Spanish recipes.
Criollo cocoa therefore remained more highly valued and appreciated for
its large fruits and greater sweetness, and was the genre better adapted to
the refined taste of the time. The more bitter forastero cocoa instead made
the lowest quality of chocolate, which required larger amounts of sugar to
make it edible.54
On the other side of the Atlantic a similar process took place toward the
end of the eighteenth century. While the composition of chocolate had
been standardized as a blend of cocoa, sugar and cinnamon, the differ-
entiation of different qualities became increasingly important. By investi-
gating primary sources on the struggle that involved chocolate molenderos in
Madrid in an attempt to establish an independent guild, it has been possible
to reconstruct the changes that took place in chocolate’s commercialization
in the second half of the eighteenth century.55 Madrid’s chocolate makers,
whose struggles to become a guild dated back to 1723, achieved their goal
in the 1770s by renouncing a monopoly on the sale of chocolate in order
to have different qualities of chocolate approved.56 Indeed, while Atlantic
policies helped keep the price of cocoa high throughout the eighteenth
century, as demand grew, the supply had to be adjusted in response to dif-
ferent possibilities and needs. Supply and demand converged at this most
pliant of points, which was modulated according to the constant tension
between distinction and popularization. Owing to the dynamic demand of
a constantly growing market, “quality” and “price differentiation” became
key words as promoting consumption became essential for increasing profits
in such a crowded market.
The recipe for chocolate began changing in Madrid during the second half
of the century to accommodate different qualities, as chocolate producers
sought to encourage the growing demand and to expand their businesses
while at the same time keeping chocolate’s status high by “reinventing
luxury” through the highest class of chocolate. This was based upon increas-
ing imports of Guayaquil cacao as much as it fueled them.57
The early popularization of chocolate among the lower sectors of the
Novohispanic society and the subsequent social segmentation of that
market, as well as the monopoly of Caracas cocoa brought to Europe imple-
mented by the Guipuzcoana Company, fueled Guayaquil production and
indirectly had the boomerang effect of promoting greater availability of the
product in Europe.
In this context the company had a decisive if involuntary effect in
promoting the introduction of Guayaquil cocoa in Europe, which thus
hijacked exports of Caracas cocoa across the Atlantic by the beginning of
the eighteenth century. The saturation of the Novohispanic market and the
competition between the two types of cocoa kept prices low, and the wide
availability of sugar (of which there was more in the chocolate containing
the Guayaquil cocoa) determined a further decrease in the price of the final
product, the chocolate.
This was a major step in the global spread of chocolate thanks to the possi-
bility of its full democratization, which made it one of the most craved and
common comfort and energy foods until today. Furthermore, the promin-
ence that Guayaquil cocoa had reached by the turn of the century was
destined to last (especially because of its major resistance and productivity),
and it became the standard quality of cocoa once its cultivation moved to
Africa well into the nineteenth century.
Atlantic trade politics and social segmentation of the demand on both
sides of the ocean determined the pattern of diffusion of chocolate into
Spain and Europe, and were also the product of chocolate’s resilience in differ-
ent geographical, cultural and social contexts. The evidence of fractures,
ramifications and differentiations further enriched chocolate’s image and
influenced how its consumption spread, complicating our understanding of
the cultural appropriation of exotic products.
This process of cultural and social appropriation led not only to a continu-
ous redefinition of the identity of the product and to fragmentation of its
modes of and reasons for consumption, but also to a series of boomerang
effects that show the interconnection and mutual influences between differ-
ent areas (and competing empires) of the Atlantic World. Cultural appro-
priation, social circulation and Atlantic politics all intertwined to sustain
and promote chocolate’s diffusion as well as competition in its production.
This process remained confined to the Atlantic World in the eighteenth
century, but it represents an essential step into the passage from Atlantic to
global commodity in the following century.58
268 Irene Fattacciu
Notes
The preparation and revision of this chapter have been supported by the Junta of
Andalusia’s “Proyecto de Excelencia” P09-HUM 5330, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos,
ciencia, guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen.”
1. The literature on the subject is rich, including Fernand Braudel, Civilization and
Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, trans. Siân Reynolds (London: Collins, 1981); Neil
McKendrick, John Brewer and John H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The
Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1982); Daniel Roche, La culture des apparences: Une histoire du vêtement,
XVII–XVIII siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990); John Brewer and Roy Porter, Consumption
and the World of Goods (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 1993); Pierre
Bourdieu, La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit,
1979); Mary Douglas and Baron C. Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an
Anthropology of Consumption (London: Routledge, 1996); Colin Campbell, The
Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford University Press,
1987); Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 1988); Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and
Jaume Elias Torras, eds, Consumo, condiciones de vida y comercialización (Valladolid:
Consejería de Educación y Cultura, Junta de Castilla y León, 1999); Daniel Muñoz
Navarro, ed., Comprar, vender y consumir: Nuevas aportaciones a la historia del con-
sumo en la España moderna (Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2011);
Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University
Press, 2005); Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of
Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: A. Knopf, 1987).
2. The diffusion of chocolate in the eighteenth century and its role in promoting
both modernization, with respect to the secularization of forms of consumption
and their democratization, and national economic growth in Spain, have been
at the centre of my Ph.D. thesis: Irene Fattacciu, “Across the Atlantic: Chocolate
Consumption, Imperial Political Economies and the Making of a Spanish
Imaginary (1700–1800)” (Ph.D. thesis, European University Institute, 2011).
3. For an account of the importance of chocolate as a drink and as money prior the
Spanish conquest, see Sophie and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate
(London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), 67–103.
4. Examples of this rich literature include Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane,
Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2008); Coe, The True History; Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Das
Paradies, der Geschmack und die Vernunft: Eine Geschichte der Genüssmittel (Vienna:
Hanser, 1980); Francesca De Palma, Dolceamaro: Storia e storie dal cacao al ciocco-
lato (Florence: Alinari, 2003).
5. For an example of the rich literature on the subject and of its variety in terms of
approaches, see Jean L. Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, eds, Food: A Culinary
History from Antiquity to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008);
Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New
York: Penguin, 1986); Maxine Berg and Erin Eger, eds, Luxury in the Eighteenth
Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2002); Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600–
1800 (New York: Routledge, 2002); Piero Camporesi, Il brodo indiano: Edonismo
ed esotismo nel Settecento (Milan: Garzanti, 1990); Brian Cowan, The Social Life of
Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2003); James Walvin, Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste, 1660–1800
(New York University Press, 1997); Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador:
Food, Race, and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700 (Cambridge
6. See Serge Gruzinski, La pensée métisse (Paris: Fayard, 1999); Serge Gruzinski and
Berta Ares Queija, Entre dos mundos: Fronteras culturales y agentes mediadores
(Seville: Consejo Superior de Investigación Científicas, 1997); Jorge Cañizares-
Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: History, Epistemologies, and
Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford University Press,
2001); Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds, Merchants and Marvels (London:
Routledge, 2002); Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture,
and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge University Press, 1991). Concerning
chocolate in particular, Norton argued that the organization of the Spanish
Empire and its methods of colonization led to an “internalisation,” both by the
Spaniards in the colonies and in large cities (and later elsewhere in Europe), of
“Mesoamerican aesthetic values.” Marcy Norton, “Tasting Empires: Chocolate
and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics,” American
Historical Review 111:3 (2006); Norton, Sacred Gifts.
7. For an overview of the historiography on the subject see Norton, “Tasting
Empires,” 660–70.
8. For more information about the first period of chocolate discovery, as well as
about its uses among Amerindians, see Coe, The True History, 67–130.
9. For more information see: Gabrielle Vail, “Cacao Use in Yucatán among the Pre-
Hispanic Maya,” in Louis E. Grivetti and Howard Yana Shapiro, eds, Chocolate:
History, Culture and Heritage (Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2009), 3–16; Coe, The True
History, 67–130.
10. For further details of the reasons for this transfer see Eugenio Piñero, “Food of
the Gods: Cacao and the Economy of the Province of Caracas, 1700–1770” (Ph.D.
diss., University of Connecticut, 1987), 57–60.
11. Archivo General de Indias (henceforth AGI), Seville, Santo Domingo, 869-6-152,
Descubrimiento de árboles de cacao en Maracaibo, 1612; AGI, Quito, 28, n. 55,
Arrendamiento de montaña de cacao en Moporo, 1613.
12. Jaime Hernández Jaimes, “El Fruto prohibido: El cacao de Guayaquil y el mer-
cado Novohispano, siglos XVI–XVIII,” Estudios de historia novohispana 39 ( July–
December 2008), 43–46.
13. Francisco Hernández, Historia de las plantas de Nueva España (Mexico City, 1577),
304; Juan de Cardenas, Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Madrid:
Alianza Editorial, 1988 [1591]), 88; José de Acosta, Historia moral y natural de la
Indias Occidentales (Seville, 1589), chap. XXII, “Del cacao y de la coca,” 79–80;
Juan de Barrios, Libro en el cual se trata del chocolate, y que provecho haga, y si es
bebida saludable ó no, y en particolar de todas las cosas quel leva, y que receta con-
viene para cada persona, y como se conocerá cada uno de que complexión sea, para que
pueda beber el chocolate de suerte que no haga mal (Mexico City, 1624); Santiago de
Valverde Turices, Un discurso del chocolate (Seville, 1624); Don F. Afan de Ribera
and I. Enriquez, Un discurso del chocolate (Seville, 1624).
14. The Jesuits, the most powerful religious order in Latin America, whose members
were both avid chocolate consumers and major financers of cocoa plantations,
maintained that it did not break the fast, while the Dominicans took the oppos-
ite view. The Dominicans, who were closer to the Inquisition, promoted severe
rules about chocolate-drinking, especially in the case of “non-Christian” uses. See
Antonio de León Pinelo, Questión moral si el chocolate quebranta el ayuno eclesiastico
270 Irene Fattacciu
(Madrid, 1636); Tomàs Hurtado, Chocolate y tabaco: Si este le quebrante el chocolate: y el

tabaco al natural, para la sagrada comunion (Madrid, 1645); Cardinal F. M. Brancaccio,
De chocolate potu diatribe (Rome, 1664).
15. Thomas Cortizo Herraiz, Discurso apologetico medico astronomico: Con un examen
sobre el uso del chocolate en las enfermedades (Salamanca, 1729), 106. On the role
of humoral theory and the six res non naturales in eighteenth-century medi-
cine see Antoinette Emch-Deriaz, “The Non-Naturals Made Easy,” and Enrique
Perdiguero, “The Popularization of Medicine during the Spanish Enlightenment,”
both in Roy Porter, ed., The Popularization of Medicine, 1650–1850 (London:
Routledge, 1992), 134–94.
16. On the Mesoamerican heritage of chocolate see Norton, Sacred Gifts, 13–44.
17. See I. Fattacciu, “Atlantic Politics and Strategies of Commercialization: The Role
of Bourbon Reformism in the Diffusion of Chocolate, Eighteenth Century,” in
Gabriel Entin, Alejandro E. Gómez, Federica Morelli and Clement Thibaud, eds,
L’Atlantique révolutionnaire: Une perspective ibéro-américaine (Paris: Perséides, 2013),
137–57; Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l’Atlantique (1504–1650) (Paris:
SEVPEN, 1955–60), vol. VI, table 760F; Willem Klooster, Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade
in the Caribbean, 1648–1795 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998), 182–8; Jean Le Moine
de L’Espine, Le negoce d’Amsterdam: Ou traité de sa banque, de ses changes, des
compagnies orientales & occidentales, des marchandises qu’on tire de cette ville, & qu’on
y porte de toutes les parties du monde, des poids, des mesures, des aunages, et du tarif
(Amsterdam, 1710), 91, 145, 353.
18. In 1692 Madrid prices ranged between 12 and 17 reales per pound “de cacao no
labrado siendo de buena calidad” (“of unrefined cacao of good quality”), and
between 10 and 13 reales per pound “de chocolate labrado siendo de buena cali-
dad”) (“of refined chocolate, being of good quality”). Archivo Historico Nacional
(henceforth AHN), Madrid, Consejos 1.277, 1692.
19. Carmen Bernand and Serge Gruzinski, De la idolatría: Una arqueología de las ciencias
religiosas (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992).
20. A perfect example is Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las
Indias (Seville, 1535).
21. See Rebecca Earle, “‘If You Eat their Food …’: Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial
Spanish America,” American Historical Review 115:3 (2010), 688–713; Earle, The
Body of the Conquistador.
22. This is true especially in the case of the first medical texts, for which authors
often based their treatment upon indigenous knowledge, and also because indigen-
ous and European medical theories shared the dichotomy between cold and hot.
Norton, Sacred Gifts, 120.
23. “He visto el presente de chocolate que envía el de Alburquerque á Consejeros
y Señores. Son 16.000 libras á 2 reales, de á 8 cada libra, fuera del presente del
Rey, Reina, Infanta y D. Luis de Haro, que dicen serán otras 8.000.” Jeronimo de
Barrionuevo, Avisos de D. Jerónimo de Barrionuevo (Madrid: Editorial Atlas, 1996
[1654–58]), letter 27.
24. Among these see AHN, Diversos-Colecciones 27, n. 26, Carta original del gober-
nador, D. Fernando de la Riba Agüero Sobre regalos de Chocolate y oro al conde
de Fernanbuco, 1652; AHN, Sección Nobleza, Osuna carpeta 56, documento 119,
Memorias de regalos remitidos por Gaspar de la Cerda Sandoval, VII conde de
Galve y virrey de Nueva España a su hermano, Gregorio de Silva Mendoza, IX
duque del Infantado, y varios cortesanos: ajuar doméstico, chocolate, vainilla,
aves exóticas, etc., 1693; Madame D’Aulnoy, “Relación que hizo de su viaje por
España … ,” in J. García Mercadal, ed., Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal,

6 vols (Madrid: Casa Editorial de Medina, 1999 [1679]), Carta XII, 161.
25. Bartolomé Marradón, “Dialogue entre un medecin, un Indien, et un bourgeois,”
in Sylvestre P. Dufour, De l’usage du caphé, du thé, et du chocolate (Lyons, 1671);
Colmenero de Ledesma, Curioso tratado de la naturaleza y calidad del chocolate
(Madrid, 1631), 13, 15.
26. De Ledesma, Curioso tratado, 14.
27. Cardenas also gives information about ingredients used in the New World at the
turn of the sixteenth century, making a distinction between European and non-
European ingredients.
28. Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, “Arbitrio que el Capitan Andres de Deçá, vezino de
la Ciudad de Leon de Gianuco de los Cavalleros, en los, Reynos del Pirú, dá a su
Magestad en su Real Consejo de Indias, es como se sigue. En Madrid a 4. de Yunio
Año 1627.”
29. Hernández Jaimes, “El fruto prohibido,” 50–1.
30. In 1619 chocolate selling in the streets and in private houses was prohibited; only
the tianguis públicos were authorized to sell chocolate, and this definitely favored
Spaniards who wanted to take control of this branch of commerce.
31. For an account of its popularity see Robert Ferry, “Trading Cacao: A View from
Veracruz, 1629–1645,” Nuevo Mundo/Mundos Nuevos 6 (2006), http://nuevomundo.
revues.org/document1430.html.
32. On the medical use of chocolate in the eighteenth century see Cortizo Herraiz,
Discurso apologetico medico astronomico; Antonio Lavedán, Tratado de los usos, abusos,
propiedades y virtudes del tabaco, café, té y chocolate (Madrid, 1796); Manuel Navas de
la Carrera, Dissertación historica phisico quimica, y analisis del cacao, su uso, su dosis
que para beneficio común da al publico Don Manuel Navas de Carrera (Saragossa, 1751);
Vicente Lardizabál, Memoria sobre las utilidades de el chocolate para precaber las incom-
didades, que resultan del uso de las aguas minerales, y promover sus buenos efectos, como
los de los purgantes y otros rimedio… (Pamplona, 1788); Desiderio de Osasunasco,
Observaciones sobre la preparación y usos del chocolate (Mexico City, 1789); Daniele
Concina, Memorie storiche sopra l’uso della cioccolata in tempo di digiuno, esposte in una
lettera a monsig.illustriss., e reverendiss. arcivescovo N.N. (Venice, 1748); Humphrey
Broadbent, The Domestick Coffee-Man, Shewing the True Way of Preparing and Making
of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea (London, 1722); P. J. Buch’oz, Dissertatión sur le tabac,
le café, le cacao, l’ipo e quassi … (Paris, 1767); Francesco Merli, Guida medica intorno
all’uso del thé, caffé e cioccolata (Naples, 1768).
33. See the discussion of circulation among nobles in Bianca M. Lindorfer,
“Cosmopolitan Aristocracy and the Diffusion of Baroque Culture: Cultural
Transfer from Spain to Austria in the Seventeenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., European
University Institute, 2009), 173, 64–7.
34. See as an example Anónimo (1700), in García Mercadal, ed., Viajes de extranjeros,
Carta VIII, 475.
35. This was of course very expensive: 150 pounds of cacao at 22½ reales per pound,
84 pounds of sugar at 4 reales and 3 cuartillos per pound, 300 vanilla pistils at
1½ reales, 1½ pounds of cinnamon at 60 reales, making 304 reales altogether.
Lindorfer, “Cosmopolitan Aristocracy,” 173.
36. Jean Herauld, Señor de Gourville, in Spain to negotiate with the king about a
debt with the Gran Condé for the war in the Low Countries, in 1669, relates that
he “started to get some confidence with the Marquis de Aytona, who sometimes
offered me chocolate, claiming I could take it without any worry as it had been
272 Irene Fattacciu
prepared by his wife” (“comencé a introducirme bastante en las buenas voluntades

del marqués de Aytona, que, de tiempo en tiempo, me hacía tomar chocolate,
diciendome algunas veces que podía tomarlo con toda seguridad, porqué era su
mujer la que se había ocupado de hacerlo”). García Mercadal, ed., Viajes de extranje-
ros, 570.
37. There are several references to this; for an example see José V. Diaz Bravo, El Ayuno
Reformado por los cinco breves … (Pamplona, 1754), 214, 312, “Chocolat”; Denis
Diderot and Jean d’Alembert, Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des
arts et des métiers … (Paris, 1751–72), entry on chocolate.
38. Diaz Bravo, El Ayuno Reformado, 312.
39. Lavedán, Tratado de los usos, 214.
40. Irene Fattacciu, “Gremios y evolución de las pautas de consumo en el siglo XVIII:
La industria artesanal del chocolate,” in Muñoz Navarro, ed., Comprar, vender y
consumir, 157–77.
41. Ibid.
42. Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, entry “Cocoa.”
43. Fattacciu, “Gremios y evolución,” 172.
44. Ibid., 172–5.
45. For an example of the pressing requests of Guyaquil to trade with New Spain
see AGI, Audiencia de Quito, 212, legajo 5, 147–9, Cacao de Guayaquil, 1629;
AGI, Audiencia de Quito, 212, legajo 4, 158–9, Comercio del cacao, 1622; AGI,
Audiencia de Quito, 212, legajo 4, 157–8, Comercio del cacao de Guayaquil, 1622.
46. “el Procurador General Don Francisco Antonio de Bolívar ante los individuos del
Cabildo, 27 de Abril de 1693,” in Enrique B. Nuñez, ed., Cacao (Caracas: Banco
de Venezuela, 1972), 181–3. See also Hernández Jaimes, “El fruto prohibido”;
Eugenio Piñero, “The Cacao Economy of the Eighteenth-Century Province of
Caracas and the Spanish Cacao Market,” Hispanic American Historical Review 68
(1988), 75–100.
47. See n. 46.
48. On this see Manuel Miño Grijalva, “El ‘cacao guayaquil’ en Nueva España: Siglo
XVIII,” Mexican Studies 25:1 (2009), 1–18; Hernández Jaimes, “El fruto prohi-
bido,” 43–6; Fattacciu, “Atlantic Politics and Strategies of Commercialization.”
49. The term refers to the cocoa hidden for transport in regular Spanish ships in order
to partially avoid the payment of taxes.
50. Especially because if for the seventeenth century we only have random data, for
the following century the data provided by Klooster, Illicit Riches are consistent
and reliable.
51. A fanega was 110 pounds.
52. Real compañia Guipuzcoana de Caracas: Noticias historiales practicas de los succesos,
adelantamieentos de esta Compañia, desde su fundación año 1728 hasta el de 1764, por
todos los ramos que comprende su negociación (Madrid, 1765), 69–72. Although the
company was of course interested in developing its role in the region, Olavarriaga’s
report seems to confirm these data, reporting a production of 67,822 fanegas in
1722. Piñero’s study of the diffusion of cocoa in Central America confirms this
tendency, which actually contradicted the previous hypothesis of R. J. Ferry,
according to whom the Guipuzcoana would not have significantly stimulated
cocoa production just by taking over and reorienting the region’s exports. Robert
J. Ferry, The Colonial Elite of Early Caracas (Berkeley: California University Press,
1989); Piñero, “The Cacao Economy,” 75–100.
53. On this see Miño Grijalva, “El ‘cacao guayaquil’ en Nueva España.”
54. The difference in quality also entailed a lower price for the Guayaquil cocoa,
which in 1721 cost 2¼ reales (compared with 3½ reales for the cocoa from
Caracas). Miño Grijalva, “El ‘cacao guayaquil’ en Nueva España,” 6. See also Pilar
Gonzalbo Aizpuru, “Del decoro a la ostentación: Los límites del lujo en la ciudad
de México en el siglo XVIII,” Colonial Latin American Review 16:1 (2007), 3–22.
55. For further details of the process of the guild’s formation and its consequences on
chocolate’s consumption see Fattacciu, “Gremios y evolución,” 157–77.
56. The three qualities of chocolate approved were: first class, made with 25 pounds
of Caracas cacao, 16½ pounds of white sugar and 10 ounces of cinnamon;
second class, made with 25 pounds of cacao (half Caracas and half Guayaquil),
18½ pounds of azucar terciada buena and 8 ounces of cinnamon; third class, made
with 19 pounds of Guayaquil cacao and 6 pounds of Caracas cacao, 21 pounds of
terziado sugar and 4 ounces of cinnamon. Archivo de la Villa de Madrid, Secretaría
2-245-1, Molenderos ... , 1774.
57. By 1793 Guayaquil cacao represented 20 percent of the total cacao imported
to Spain, and its percentage was destined to grow rapidly. William G. Clarence-
Smith, Cocoa and Chocolate, 1765–1914 (London: Routledge, 2000), 39.
58. For an overview of the subsequent global spread of chocolate see ibid.
Final Thoughts
15
The Spanish Empire, Globalization,
and Cross-Cultural Consumption in
a World Context, c. 1400–c. 1750
Do cultures dialogue only through oral and written words or also through
the exchange of material goods? Anthropologists and historians completely
agree on this matter: cross-cultural exchanges of objects and goods are also
a means of intercultural dialogue.1 Societies interact by transferring pieces
of their material cultures, by exchanging values, social habits and practices,
or political representations, all of them frequently inherent to those objects.
By rejecting these exchanges, societies also reject each other. Very often this
cross-cultural relationship involves violence and hate, as well as war and
conflict. This is not only a discourse of anthropologists. The idea, in fact,
was advanced by the historian Fernand Braudel several decades ago at a
global level and then applied also to the Spanish Empire in the Americas by
Serge Gruzinski and others.2 In the long run the exchange of material goods
has been so intense that it is impossible to encapsulate it in a few pages. Yet
some examples can be suggestive of the ways in which cultural intertwining
has affected and will continue to affect the lives of human beings. To such
an end the dramatic change in the history of humanity that took place
beginning the fifteenth century and more specifically after 1492 is taken
here as a starting point for a general and necessarily incomplete reflection.
As stated in the introductory chapter, the main aim of this volume is to
understand the reception of “new” American products in Europe under the
umbrella of the Spanish Empire.3 The following pages aim to specify the role
of this particular empire with respect to the history of consumption, ma-
terial culture, and the circulation of new products.4 They also try to broaden
its scope beyond the Atlantic and to set its contribution in the context of
the first globalization. By doing this we will try to establish a general histor-
ical framework for the cases studied here, but also to reflect upon a series
of assumptions about the process of globalization, often depicted from the
present as a desirable, linear development toward the convergence of the
societies of the globe. We will also reflect on how these processes are changing
the way in which the history of consumption is written today. In this sense,
we depart from a premise: while teaching Western societies many new
277
278 Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
things about the rest of the world, the history of globalization is becoming,
above all, a powerful instrument that transforms our image of the history
of Europe itself.
The Spanish Empire: a special case? Agents for

the circulation of new goods
Empires and, for obvious reasons, especially the Iberian empires that opened
the path for world links from the fifteenth century were the corridors of
power for cultural exchanges and dominion. They created the administrative
infrastructures to help or impede the circulation of products. They developed
political economies to regulate that circulation. Empires were the frame-
works for the construction of trust among social agents and for legal and
social enforcement in the sense that Douglas North emphasized.5 They were
also crucial for the geographical expansion of informal institutions, such as
family and kinship ties, personal contacts, and even reputation, which also
helped to reduce transaction costs and to create networks of trust through
which many products, habits of consumption, and forms of material culture
circulated.6 Empires provided the protection costs that traders, missionaries,
soldiers, bureaucrats, and nobles needed to keep their networks. They also
financed the acculturation processes (and violent impositions) that created
some similarities among distant societies and offered a basis for matching
supply and demand. We should also remember that imperial systems were
not isolated but inextricably interlinked, as Subrahmanyam has emphasized.
As he says, and this is also true for many other cases, Portuguese and
Spaniards—and, one would add, to the extent that these categories exist
and can be dissociated for the period—were mixed and intertwined in spite
of the institutional split of the two empires that coexisted under the same
composite monarchy from 1580 until 1640.7
How did this process develop in the Spanish case? It is to be noted as a first
comment that, from a global perspective, the Iberian expansion that started
in the fifteenth century was not an exceptional phenomenon. By 1492,
Christian Europe still lived in the expansive wave that had drawn it out
of the crises of the fourteenth century and the terrors of the black plague.
This expansion was clear in the Iberian kingdoms and in their Atlantic pro-
jection. But Iberian or even European overseas expansion entailed part of a
process undertaken by other Europeans and non-Europeans.
While Iberian kingdoms were exploring and conquering the Atlantic to
the West and South, to the East of Europe the Slavs were able to unify differ-
ent territories with their capital in Moscow under the authority of the tsars.
Acting as a contention wall against the Turkish and the Mongolians from
Central Asia, by 1500 they were ready to initiate their advance from Russia
to the Pacific, beyond the river Volga and the Urals. Moreover, Christian
European civilization was not the only one in expansion.8 Islamic society
The Spanish Empire in a World Context 279
was particularly unstoppable. The Ottomans conquered Anatolia as far as

Constantinople (1453) and also Egypt and parts of North Africa. From Egypt
and from Morocco the diffusion of Islam continued toward Southern and
Central Africa as well as toward the East, sometimes based on conquest, at
other times on religious expansion facilitated through merchant networks.
Islam also extended its frontiers toward Southeast Asia and Indonesia. At
the end of the sixteenth century, the kingdom of Morocco also expanded
toward the Sudan. China had to resist the attacks of Tamerlane from Central
Asia but was able to expand in the fifteenth century and to create tributary
links within Tibet and its southern neighbors.9
Without considering this plurality of expansions and of the contacts that
they provoked, it would be difficult to explain the global circulation of new
goods. American silver may be the best example. As some historians have
emphasized, the needs of the Ming Empire in the East increased the value
of precious metals and the thirst for them in Europe.10 The Ming’s interest
in silver only stimulated that of the Spanish and the Portuguese.11 Whether
or not one agrees with this explanation, the discovery and exploitation of
American silver mines clearly activated commercial networks among the
planet’s different empires. In the same way, the spice trade predated the
Iberian empires and the expansion of other political entities over the globe.
Yet it was the expansion of the Ottoman Empire that, if it did not interrupt
Italian traffic through the famous silk route, made the search for alternative
routes more attractive, first by circumnavigating Africa and then by sailing
to the West.12 This search for alternative routes also gave Europeans a means
to counteract Arab commercial expansion toward Asia. Furthermore, as Abu-
Lughod saw years ago, the Sino-Arab connections that had been constructed
across the Indian Ocean by Muslim and even Chinese expansions also facili-
tated Portuguese (European) penetration of the area.13
Then, after the middle of the sixteenth century, the silver provided by
the Spanish Empire invigorated Russian expansion toward Siberia and
Asia and the skin trade upon which it was based. It also contributed to
change and even enhance the Chinese and the Mughal empires in both
fiscal and monetary terms.14 But it also had other, less-considered effects.
The abundance and cheapness of American silver in Europe and its higher
ratio in relation to gold in Asia stimulated the transfer of silver toward
Africa and, bypassing the African continent, toward India and Indonesia
in exchange for spices. In the sixteenth century a flow of gold from Africa
to Southeast Asia, and China thanks to Portuguese and Islamic trade in
the Indian Ocean, kept the ratio between gold and silver relatively low
and accelerated the river of silver flowing to the East. Very interestingly,
and very significantly for the silver roads’ flexibility, the Portuguese tried
to develop their trade with their empire in Brazil, where they sent increas-
ing numbers of African slaves and other commodities, many of them also
toward Peru, thus enhancing another direction of silver circulation from
the Andes to Buenos Aires and from there to Africa and Europe, and always
across empires.
It is essential to note that this flow of silver all around the world not
only reinforced inverse flows of merchandise but also gave stronger consist-
ency to traders’ networks, thus creating conditions for the development of
cross-cultural exchanges through them. Yet, and this is a second important
consideration, global empires’ connections, far from being devoted ex-
clusively to trade, were much more complex. The Spanish Empire offers excellent
examples of this.15 This volume emphasizes that the emergence and consoli-
dation of the Spanish Empire permitted the creation and the enhancement in
some cases of global (or proto-global) webs of officials, soldiers, ecclesiastics,
and traveler-colonizers in general, who covered unprecedented distances.16
Built around viceroyalties, audiencias (tribunals), municipalities, ports, and
defensive enclaves, these functionaries’ networks would be the key to power
and to administering the empire, and were also crucial in creating cross-
cultural connections. We know that the first exchanges of goods between
Acapulco and Manila, a key road and more important for globalization than
is usually thought, were carried out largely thanks to personal contacts, in
which functionaries traveling from New Spain and the Philippines were
crucial.17 The correspondence among these soldiers and functionaries and
their families and relatives, from the American colonies to Castile, also
demonstrates the intensive trade in goods, particularly, but not only, to
America, as well as the importance of gifts and reciprocity in these exchanges.
Sometimes the purpose was not only the direct use of these goods by the
people involved, but rather the sale of the articles after arrival in America,
where, as many of the letters say, they would fetch higher prices.18 Spanish
soldiers were also responsible for the spread within the Americas of some
original Indian products, thus contributing to cultural exchanges within
the New World. The case of yucca (also called manioca or cassava) and its
product, cazabe, which the Spanish took from Central America to Colombia’s
Magdalena valley, is a very well-studied example.19 But we could add others,
such as the cacao or the yerba mate.20
Dominicans and Franciscans were also pioneers in this process, the out-
come being a network of ecclesiastical institutions whose members were
in constant contact. The Jesuits, a strongly Iberian organization at first,
composed the densest socially active network. Their presence in America
and Asia dates from the year of the foundation of the Society of Jesus. In
1541, Francis Xavier reached Goa, from where the Compañía expanded to
China, where it would be very active. It was already in Brazil in the 1560s.
One should think of these religious orders not only in terms of the trans-
mission of beliefs, but also in terms of a dense network of communication
and of contact with local societies, as Antonella Romano’s essay in this
volume clearly shows. Franciscans and Jesuits were extremely active in the
production of grammars and dictionaries of local languages, from Quechua
to Nahuatl and from Vietnamese to Japanese. The Jesuits’ letters are excellent
proof of how a web of correspondence spread all over the world and, having
its epicenter in Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, became a tool for the com-
munication of news and knowledge within a truly multilateral system. José
Luis Gasch-Tomás’s dissertation demonstrates the importance of ecclesiastics
in the transference of consumption patterns in the Spanish Empire.21 These
missionaries, together with crown officials, were responsible for the custom
of “dressing natives,” even by force if necessary, which spread from the first
moments of the conquest.22 Later, the Jesuits were very active in promot-
ing the cultivation of products such as cacao or yerba mate, as well as in
experimentation with tropical plants.23 And we know that the Hieronymite
friars had a crucial role in the introduction of the cultivation of sugar cane
in a place as emblematic as the island of Santo Domingo.24
A less massive, but no less important, role should be attributed to the
doctors and intellectuals of the period. Authors including Acosta or Possevino,
studied here by Romano, were crucial in the discovery of American flora
and fauna. They described the ecological contexts in which the goods that
caught Europeans’ attention were produced and stimulated responses. In
doing so, individuals like Arias Montano, Monardes, or Hernández gave
them the social, religious, and cultural connotations that mediated, for
a time, in their use or rejection. Through processes of taxonomy, they
assigned diverse products properties that made them apt, or otherwise, for
use or consumption.25 In an argument that seems surprising in the twenty-
first century, some of them attributed such curative properties to tobacco
that it was already being consumed massively in the eighteenth century,
owing, in part, to such beliefs.26 Doctors displaced in the colonies should be
seen as no less important not only for the circulation of American products
in Europe, but also for the reverse process. The little-known case of Juan
Méndez Nieto, the author of a most interesting autobiography, may be
among the most significant.27
Equally decisive were social networks, even the less structured and regular
ones, not only with respect to contacts in America, but also in the expansion
of the use and consumption of products from America in Europe. The case
of cacao is quite significant. The aristocrat’s social gatherings, courtly festiv-
ities, salons, and cooking recipes were breeding grounds for the diffusion of
a product that, on the other hand, was considered an aphrodisiac and, con-
sequently, a solution to the most imperious need in the great households:
that of assuring numerous offspring who would guarantee the perpetuation
of the lineage.28 As the work of Francisco Zamora Rodríguez in this volume
demonstrates, elites’ receptivity was crucial for the circulation of specific
products. In this sense, consular and diplomatic networks mixed with others
of a religious nature. Great households like that of the Medici avidly sought
news about new goods for reasons of prestige and profit. This was also the
case with many of the Flemish and Castilian families that Bethany Aram
studies in her text. All of them contributed to consumption practices and

even forms of symbolic language and mutual recognition that facilitated
and, in some cases, impeded their diffusion.
Scholars today identify the key role of emigration in the circulation of
models of consumption among distant societies. Between 1500 and 1650,
about 500,000 registered Castilians crossed the Atlantic toward America.
Though the exportation of European habits and products to America is
not the object of this volume, it is to be noted that Iberian peoples took to
America (and also to Asia) their patterns of consumption and their material
culture, habits, and goods.29 There were Spanish emigrants to the Americas
who, upon their return, became agents in the distribution of American
products. If, as the doctor Antonio de Lavedán said, tobacco initially
reached Europe when it was carried by mariners who crossed the Atlantic,
we are faced with a typical case of temporal migration with clear results.30
The letters of emigrants mentioned above demonstrate that the transfer of
products occurred within family networks. In this situation, the important
component of gender and the relevant role of women should be recalled. In
part, this circumstance stemmed from the fact that the first step in emi-
gration to America was the construction of a dowry, on many occasions in the
form of a domestic trousseau, which always reflected forms of consumption
and material culture.31 The great importance of artisans in emigration is
known.32 It is, hence, worthwhile to reflect on the significance of this fact.
On the one hand, it was this non-elite social group whose taste as consumers
appeared most eclectic as early as the sixteenth century.33 Furthermore, its
emigration was crucial for the transfer of products made by the same artisans
which, often with significant changes, spread throughout the colonies.34 In
spite of attempts to control the process, the Spanish Empire became the
conduit for the emigration of Jews, even Irish people, and other white
communities to the other side of the Atlantic.35 The Iberian polities also
pioneered the transatlantic slave trade, although empires much more active
in this respect would follow. In this way the “product” being carried was
immediately converted into merchandise which would be crucial for the
racial mix of the Americas. By the 1550s the Spanish chronicler Gonzalo
Fernández de Oviedo called Hispaniola “New Guinea” in allusion to the
presence of African cultures and African peoples on the island. Current
historiography, moreover, calls attention to its cultural effects and to the fact
that African slaves were far from passive subjects in the introduction of new
forms of consumption in the Americas.36
The expansion of the Spanish Empire in America coincided with a key
fact in European history that was bound to affect its role abroad: the
development of written culture and the printing press. These tools proved
essential to a system in which written communication played a vital
role in administrative, political, and military direction of distant com-
munities of settlers in the New World, keeping them united, beginning with
the religious orders and the ecclesiastical structures dependent on Rome.

Yet, even more interestingly for our purpose, emigrants’ handwritten corres-
pondence, often transported by merchants, officials, and clerics, as the
so-called cartas de llamada conserved in the Archivo General de Indias in
Seville demonstrate, created a web that transmitted cultural values, news,
and even products of all kinds.37 International postal services, though very
precarious compared with today’s, also developed in this epoch. The Tassis
family created in Spain the first official postal service in Europe and also
expanded it to Italy and America, thus linking different corners of a vast
empire.38 Though historians today tend to diminish the importance of the
so-called “printing revolution,” books and printed pamphlets had a great
impact on international contacts. Print permitted the massive production of
the same ideas and images (thanks to engravings) with the highest degree
of precision and accuracy with respect to the original, which is crucial for
the transmission of ideas in fields such as religion, natural history, botany,
the description of animals and landscapes, warships, and so on. Particular
printers and publishers such as Plantin in Antwerp were very important
in the book traffic from Seville to the New World.39 In spite of the filter
of inquisitorial censorship, the Atlantic circulation of books was a crucial
factor in contact between the two societies, whose impact on the circulation
of products remains to be studied in detail.40
If the workings of these relational networks should be counterposed to
the market and mercantile relations, the role of these networks in the intro-
duction and early distribution of products and cultural practices perfectly
connected to each other and, of course, to the action of the market also merits
attention. The way in which, for example, missionaries and officials brought
Asian novelties to Europe as gifts that would, nevertheless, end up mixing
with other, mercantile forms of distribution, sometimes toward the Iberian
Peninsula or affecting Mexican industries, reveals this interlinking.41 Zamora’s
work in this volume brings to light the close relations among Jesuits, consuls,
and merchants that facilitated the diffusion of knowledge about American
products between Iberian and Italian environments in the seventeenth century.
Was all this a peculiarity of the Spanish Empire? The heuristic value of this
reflection is important, because when it is considered in a wider compara-
tive perspective it becomes obvious that these networks for the circulation of
new products and information, as well as the diversity of agents, filters, and
contexts in which this communication took place, were far from exclusive
to the initial process of Spanish imperial expansion. Rather, they occurred to
a greater or lesser degree in empires such as the British or the Dutch, with,
if possible, an even more accentuated mercantile and massive commercial
orientation, and that was also the case for non-European empires and
expansions. A similar process occurred, for example, in other areas: great
numbers of Arabs immigrated to India and the Asian Southeast, and the
Russian Empire increased its presence in Central Asia thanks to emigration.
Like Spanish emigrants to the Americas, the English and other peoples
carried habits of consumption to their colonies to the point that processes
of imitation and convergence can be detected that, although not due ex-
clusively to emigration, had one of their most solid bases in it, at least at first.42
The leading role of black slaves in the introduction of African consumption
habits is certainly also evident.43 The mixture of religiosity, the social agents
deeply immersed within it, and the limits or catalytic effects that it could
have in other environments can be observed to the present day. Many of
the Arab merchants who opened paths toward Asia in the sixteenth century
were Islamic scholars well versed in and concerned with Koranic doctrine.44
The fact that religion traveled in the Islamic world to Africa and between
it and the Far East through networks of traders who were something more
than traders is very significant in this sense.45 These merchants did not act
simply as sellers, but rather as agents in a phenomenon of cultural and re-
ligious transmission that itself would affect forms of consumption and that
was based on the established custom of marriage to widows originating in
the areas of expansion. The meeting between European and Chinese traders,
or among traders from one area and the inhabitants of another, was import-
ant not only because they exchanged commodities, but also because their
very simple contact as a sort of vicarious consumers led to the commodit-
ization of the different products they used in their day-to-day lives. The role
of religion or religious agents in colonial relations is likewise evident in the
leading role of religious communities such as the Quakers and other groups
of Puritans in the formation and development of the North American col-
onies.46 Many further examples could be cited.
The decisive role of written correspondence in connecting distant spaces is
more than evident in other empires. The large mercantile networks created
by the Dutch around the Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie (GWIC)
and the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) had the same effect on
the circulation of gazettes and correspondence among private indviduals.47
In all these empires the outcome of displacement was always a blend of
cultures and cultural exchanges. According to John Thornton, in a state-
ment referring to the Atlantic but mutatis mutandis containing a more global
significance, “disenclavement … not only increased communication” but
contributed to “the reshaping of whole societies and to the creation of a
‘New World.’”48 As in the Spanish Empire, the exploitation of mines and the
monetization of silver and gold, especially of Brazilian gold, much of which
was destined for England, was also present in these political structures and
facilitated trade among different regions.
The importance of historical contexts
The character of Iberian expansion emerges not only in the role of its agents,
but even more in the contexts and historical coordinates in which it took
place. This fact has sometimes been overlooked in the simple comparisons
that have, until recently, dominated the history of empires.49
Contrary to what is often thought, far from having a weak political
system and a backward economy, sixteenth-century Castile found itself in
good shape to lead the expansion and colonization of new territories. It
was a highly urbanized kingdom by the standards of the day. It possessed
a solid political system comparable to that of the kingdom of France and a
fiscal system more highly developed than that of England, for example,
and was capable of mobilizing appreciable resources, even at the expense
of high debt.50 With vast experience in military conquests and the re-
population of territory, Castilian society had adequate institutions for such
endeavors as well as a system that encouraged conquest and colonization
by transferring almost all of their costs to the occupied territories and
societies through the concession of lands, encomiendas, and mining rights
in situ. There existed a relatively dense university network that would
nourish the formation of the necessary bureaucrats and intellectuals.
From an international point of view, the kingdom accumulated a crucial
knowledge of cartography and navigational techniques thanks, in part,
to its mediating position between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
The need for gold, silver, spices, and other goods brought by Genoese or
Venetian merchants up to that time must have been especially import-
ant, while these minorities comprised, at the same time, the commercial
interests that would drive (and finance) the discoveries and colonization.
This would occur, moreover, at a time when the financial vacuum left by
the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 only reinforced the influence of the
Genoese and made the monarchy and Castilian society more sensitive to
their interests, which emerged with force from the fifteenth century in the
exploitation of sugar in the Canary Islands.51
These facts already indicate important conditions for understanding the
Spanish Empire’s capacity to propel the circulation of Atlantic products.
The institutional solidity of Spanish administrative and political organiza-
tion in the New World undoubtedly played an important role. Unlike the
British Empire in America, a group of colonies less politically articulated
with respect to the metropolis, or the Portuguese or Dutch empires of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from its beginning the Spanish Empire
had an ambition to cover large territories and create new institutions inland,
with a strong sense of hierarchy and dependence on central authority.52
In a more or less systematic way, this political formation exercised its power
by facilitating the introduction of European habits, and not purely through
persuasion, as we shall see. At the same time, it provided a foundation
for large-scale emigration, an early, selective yet notable territorial pene-
tration highly regulated by the crown, which would explain the diffusion of
Peninsular patterns of consumption in America. In principle, this political
organization brought Castilians into contact with more and more American
products and, at the same time, provided a base for the exploitation of mines
and plantations that would stimulate the forced migration of Africans.
At the center of this political formation, from the beginning, there was
a great interest in the New World’s medicinal, social, and economic possi-
bilities. The action of the crown and its institutions in this regard should not
be ignored. The Portuguese and Spanish crowns sporadically participated in
this spirit of curiosity.53 Emperor Charles V tried to encourage and control
the discovery and introduction of new “drugs and balsam” (“drogas y bál-
samo”) from America. His son, Philip II, appointed a general cosmographer-
chronicler to describe America’s resources and ordered the “Geographical
Reports” (Relaciones Geográficas) to collect information about any aspect
interesting for the crown, including, for example, tobacco or chocolate, on
which he commissioned a whole treaty from Francisco Hernández in order
“to discover and understand their properties and experiment with their
varieties.”54 In the same spirit, and following the strong sense of a mon-
opoly over the New World that the monarchs sought to impose on overseas
relations, the Consejo de Indias (Council of the Indies) and the Casa de la
Contratación (House of Trade) in Seville attempted, by all means possible, to
make themselves the center for the reception of and monopoly over drugs,
plants, and products, at times with a degree of secrecy that, obviously, could
not be completely imposed.55
Iberian contacts on a global scale, in contrast to what would come later,
also took place at a time when Europe remained in the hold of a notably
Aristotelian world and a natural philosophy that saw the divine plan in the
formation of the world. This was a filter through which many of the im-
pressions produced by plants, drugs, and animals and much of the news
about them crossed the Atlantic. María M. Portuondo depicts in this volume
Arias Montano’s efforts to classify America in this plan of divine origin,
which had an important filter in Biblical tradition. Acosta and Possevino,
studied here by Romano, would not be very different in some respects. For
many years, we have known that Aristotelian thought, which had not fore-
seen the existence of America, provided this type of filter.56 Nor was Spain
exceptional in this respect. It was only another space, and to the degree to
which it encompassed more than mercantile networks, Europeans’ mental
or intellectual schemes were finely sifted by these components and by the
personal networks that comprised them.
As an example, it should suffice to consider the proximity between
doctors and elites. Every self-respecting prince had his own Galen.57 But,
in addition, it should be remembered that he would have also had his con-
fessor, and that even medicine was deeply influenced by moral and religious
principles. When the impact of America is felt in Europe, both superstition,
on the one hand, and the Inquisition, on the other, played an important
role.58 Superstition, present among Protestants as well as among Catholics,
imposed more than a few parameters for understanding the New World.59
The Inquisition, on the other hand, threatened to limit the freedom of

scientific pursuit and the circulation of books and acted as a filter in the
reception of some of these products, as has been already noted. Moreover,
if the first impact of America on Iberian scientific culture took place at a
time of more or less open communication, measures such as that of Philip
II to limit the travels of scholars abroad, although not an insurmountable
obstacle, created particular impediments to the circulation of ideas and
information.60
Yet it is no less true that by the sixteenth century, Europeans had opened
themselves to the study of nature and to scientific experimentation that
explain the attitude of Monardes, as well as to an enthusiasm for technology,
due above all to the demands of war, that was visible in figures like Leonardo
da Vinci, and even to a taste for the exotic that had already manifested itself
(although not exclusively) in Renaissance Italian society.61 On the other
hand, attitudes like that of Monardes were not exceptional. Even the memoirs
of Méndez Nieto, a Portuguese doctor trained in Salamanca and Alcalá, reveal
him to have been a fairly open-minded, restless experimenter with herbs and
other remedies.62 Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europeans were especially
open to the idea of experiencing new cures, and this made plants and herbs
particularly interesting to them, as well as collections of any type of exotic
objects.63
This was, moreover, a world of networked intellectuals, a group of persons
who, as can be seen in the way Monardes mediated between the products
that reached Seville and his scientific correspondents, had created signifi-
cant ties to transmit knowledge that would broaden the impact of America
in terms of the circulation of news and products as the bases for the production
of new knowledge. Europe, and the Iberian Peninsula within it, was a very
connected world, where the communications among regions were already
relatively fluid and political frontiers could barely limit the circulation of
knowledge. The Republic of Letters that so deeply penetrated Spain and the
Spanish Empire did not stand alone. It mixed with networks of ecclesiastics
and religious orders with broad international projection, which conveyed
news and information with notable efficiency, especially toward Rome, which
became an unprecedented center of communications, as Antonella Romano
reminds us.
Consular and diplomatic networks played a similar role.64 As we have
seen, far from working in an isolated fashion, these networks intersected,
and their effects were multiplied. This was the case not only when know-
ledge was transmitted across the Atlantic, but also once this knowledge
had reached Europe. Doctors in Seville maintained close contacts with
merchants in the Indies trade. Some of them, like Monardes, belonged to
families of merchants, in this case the Genoese ones. Letters preserved at
the Archivo General de Indias reveal his close ties to American emigrants.65
The same could be said of the consuls, such as the Florentines studied by
Zamora in this volume. Far from being the base of a marginal empire, very
early on the Atlantic entered European networks transmitting news and
knowledge, which doubled their impact and were further nourished as they
passed through the Iberian Peninsula.66
In its early moments the Spanish Empire cannot be expected to have
had the same impact on intellectual life and scientific development as sub-
sequent empires would have on the scientific revolution contemporary to
them, as would be the case in England. It would be incorrect to expect that.
Yet it would also be incorrect to overlook the Spanish Empire’s importance
in this respect.
The Spanish Empire occupied a privileged position in networks for
the circulation of knowledge and goods. It encompassed the most fertile
area in the confluence of Hebrew, Islamic, and Christian traditions of
thought, as well as the circulation of products among diverse civilizations
including those of North Africa. Products such as sugar had caught on in
Iberia thanks to Islamic influence. From the Iberian Peninsula they would
be transferred first to the Canary Islands by the Genoese merchants and then
to the Americas. African slavery had an important tradition, at least from
the fifteenth century, which would be projected over the Canary Islands and
subsequently the Americas. In this way, the first African presence in America
and other areas of the Atlantic would be a simple prolongation of previous
encounters between Europeans and Africans in the North and West of that
continent. There was a very great mixture among Castilians and Portuguese
in the period, in which national differences were much less notable than in
the present day, to the point that some of the great explorers, like Magellan,
are considered Spaniards although, in fact, they were subjects of the King
of Portugal. The biographies of some physicians of the epoch, such as the
above-mentioned Méndez Nieto, who traveled all across Spanish America, or
even Andrés Laguna, are indicative of the strong transnational component
of this intellectual community and the projections of this mixture from the
Iberian Peninsula toward Europe and America.67 The image of Columbus, a
Genoese citizen, offering his ideas and services first to the King of Portugal
and subsequently to the Queen of Castile is undoubtedly the most vivid
representation of a capillarity that was very present in the avant la lettre
transnational circulation of ideas, products, and persons, in a cultural space
that brought together very different global heritages.68
The political structure of which Castile was a part could also provide a
model for the circulation of products. In recent years the dispersed character
of the composite monarchy of the Habsburgs has been emphasized: it was
a mosaic of separate political units, with a large component of institutional
negotiation between each of them and the crown. For precisely this reason,
it cannot be understood within the parameters of a proto-national or absolut-
ist state sensu stricto.69 But this institutional dispersion and fragmentation,
far from creating insuperable obstacles among the different parts, was one
of the reasons for the intense relations among the elites and the general
population of each of these units.70 This dispersion would be a notable reason
for the circulation of persons, merchandise, and news among distant spaces
that helps explain the dynamism of (and the filters upon) the transmission
of news and products. These relations were already very intense in the
fifteenth century. Portugal, Castile, Aragon, Naples, Sicily, and even some
areas in central and northern Italy were connected by an intense mesh of
relations among their merchants, nobles, and ecclesiastics, who spoke simi-
lar languages and crossed frontiers much less perceptible than those of the
present day. The strong influence of the Habsburg dynasty in this space and
in broader European spaces in the Low Countries, the Holy Roman Empire,
and the court of Vienna activated channels of contact even more. It is not sur-
prising that chocolate was consumed in Vienna earlier and more actively than
it was in France. The incorporation of the Portuguese Empire into this dense
political network from 1580 through 1640 would only intensify these relations
(logically, with the conflicts that also derived from more intense contact). And,
in fact, the circulation of new products on a global scale cannot be understood
without considering the notable capillarity existing among Portuguese and
Castilians. An excellent example is tobacco, which the Castilians brought
from America and the Portuguese introduced in China in the mid-sixteenth
century, when it was still a “new” product in Europe, in virtue of its supposed
medicinal properties. More examples are cited in the following pages.
The composite Habsburg monarchy combined an enormous technical
and social capacity for violence, which would permit the exploitation of
American mines with the need to finance very costly wars in its states in
central and northern Europe. This was essential to contribute to the “silver
belt” that embraced the whole world and would be decisive for global-
ization and for the exchange of many more products. This is not to say that its
internal constitution was an indispensable requisite for the globalization of
American silver. We must consider the possibility that the negative balance
of trade between Europe and Asia, a pre-existing and distant cause of the
exploitation of mines, exercised a similar effect. It is certain, however, that
the characteristics of the dispersed monarchy conditioned the way in which
this process took place.
Sharing the world from the South of Europe: circulation

and rejection of “new” goods from China to Mexico and
from the African Atlantic to the Pacific
The Spanish Empire has to be considered as a part of wider, global, and multi-
lateral set of interconnections and clashes among different civilizations. The
Iberian discoveries created webs of diffusion for plants across political, re-
ligious, or societal borders in many different directions, which included the four
continents and not only Europe as highlighted by an excessively Eurocentric
perspective for decades.71 Many years ago Nikolai I. Vavilov established that
of 640 of the most important cultivated plants, 100 originated in the New
World.72 As María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper brilliantly explains, many
American products such as sweet potatoes, cacao, tobacco, maize, tomatoes,
pineapples, papaya, cochineal, vanilla, squash, chilies, pumpkins, and other
plants were brought from America to Europe. Yet some of these products did
not come directly (or only) to Europe and did not even remain there. Before
1550 maize of American origin had been introduced into the Cape Verde
islands and West Africa. By the seventeenth century, while many regions of
Europe had rejected maize, it was cultivated in Sudan, Congo, and Angola
and was known in Zanzibar and East Africa. Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) were
already cultivated in Senegambia in the 1560s, and after some decades they
were also known in India and China. There were crops of American origin—
maize, manioc, sweet potatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, squashes, and chilies—in
India, Indonesia, and China as early as the sixteenth century. Tobacco even
reached India’s Deccan Plateau in the sixteenth century, and it was diffused
in China during the seventeenth century to become a popular product in
the eighteenth, thus stimulating an industry producing small containers and
pots. And these are only some examples.
The Portuguese and Spaniards (and then the English and Dutch) brought
sugar cane (of Arabian origins) to America. Coffee, also originally from
Yemen, was spread on the “new” continent. Cloves, nutmeg, and mace were
imported by the Portuguese from Asia straight to Brazil, as well as bananas,
red pepper, and yams from Africa. Many Eurasian weeds were introduced in
the New World. Already in 1555 the Aztecs had a name for European clover:
Castilian ocoxichitli.73 A number of new species of animals, including horses,
pigs, mules, cows, and others populated huge areas of the new continent.
The vine, the olive tree, some species of wheat, the fig tree, and other crops
of European origin were soon part of American landscapes. This was the
outcome of a process in which a violent redefinition of property rights, dis-
possession of lands, coercion, and ecological changes were very much present.74
By 1600 a converging yet heterogeneous process in patterns of consumption
of these goods was already evident. First Lisbon and then Amsterdam had
become huge markets in which Europeans could find the same type of spices
that Chinese or Indians consumed. Pepper, cloves, and other products had
become common in many European recipes. The former was also used for
food conservation. European elites liked to dress in Chinese silks. The deep
and refulgent red, black, and blue colors of their costumes, visible in many
paintings of the epoch, were obtained by using large quantities of cochineal
from Mexico, as Carlos Marichal shows, as well as brazilwood and indigo.
These three dyes displaced the weaker medieval dyes to obtain colors that
were considered symbols of distinction among European aristocrats and
kings precisely because of their very high cost. Imports from America
of some of these commodities skyrocketed from the last decades of the
sixteenth century, which explains the fact that their prices, that of cochineal
being a good example, remained stable in spite of the increasing demand.75
As is shown by the essays included in this book and by the literature on
globalization, products such as chocolate, tobacco, tea, Chinese silks and
furniture, and other items had already become global commodities by the
seventeenth century, and in many senses the process of globalization of
some of these goods was not Eurocentric at all.
The intention of this book has been to emphasize the processes of filter-
ing, adoption, and selection that these goods underwent and the rejections
that many of them encountered. These facts are important, for they are
overlooked even more frequently as a transnational history, poorly under-
stood, becomes established among specialists whose point of departure is
too often the supposition that the reception of new products and goods in
diverse societies was an automatic, natural process that provoked little resist-
ance. This effort implies a double approximation to the subject. On the one
hand, historians always try to explain the present in terms of developments
that were successful in the past. On the other hand, the history of cultural
transfers, including those of material culture and consumption, has tended to
place emphasis on the long run in many cases. The result is that we often
forget that many products simply did not circulate or did not do so for many
years or that—and here is where the short-term perspective makes the most
sense—independently of the success of these transmissions, detailed analysis
almost always demonstrates the important role of rejections, and the need
to adapt products to the societies that received them, as well as the processes
of hybridization without which their success cannot begin to be understood.
As if this were not enough, historians of consumption have often placed
the emphasis on the role of commerce and mercantile circulation of prod-
ucts, leading us to forget filters crucial to their adoption that would have
been detected under other premises. The commercial perspective and
emphasis on mercantile circulation forcibly—or perhaps not so forcefully,
but nevertheless habitually—center attention on processes of the balance
between supply and demand in periods in which they are relatively well
adjusted to each other and in which the initial clash that characterizes cul-
tural confrontation, and especially that of material cultures, has already or
nearly been overcome. Yet once we recognize that cultural exchanges among
very different societies took place not only through market relations, but
rather through very diverse agents, the importance of these filters and re-
jections becomes more evident. From this perspective, first of all, the reception
of new products can be studied in the moment before their conversion in
merchandise. This key moment barely figures in classical economic visions
(in which supply and demand presuppose homogeneous cultural habits), but
is vitally important, as anthropological and many recent historical studies
have demonstrated. Moreover, placing the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Iberian empires at the forefront of research on globalization necessarily
obliges us to study the possible negative reactions to novelty, which was

present in all empires but was especially prevalent at the time.
In this sense, as always in history, cross-cultural exchanges and inter-
cultural dialogue were very complex. The very same commercial networks that
we have described had their problems. Trade was very often interrupted by
war, as was the case with Atlantic trade. Warfare, together with piracy, was
also a problem not only in the Atlantic, but also in many other areas of the
world, such as the China Sea, where Japanese and Chinese corsairs created
many problems in trade with the Spanish and Portuguese. Distance was a
real problem in this period, and distance, combined with climate, could
have a decisive impact, as in the case of voyages from Europe to America or
in the Indian Ocean, where seasonal monsoons made travel impossible. The
very same process that we have described had its social limits. Societies do
not communicate or trade automatically, nor do the goods of each of them
pass to the other without cultural, political, or economic filters.
Rebecca Earle, in her essay in this volume, emphasizes the rigidities
in food consumption derived from Europeans’ humoral perceptions of
the body. Some years ago, J. H. Elliott drew attention to the fact that for
decades European and particularly Spanish societies were quite indifferent
to or scarcely interested in American peoples. Later on, when interest in
them became fashionable, Europeans tried to fit the new reality into their
own intellectual schemes. It was then that references to classical antiquity
were used to try to decipher a society that was not comprehensible from a
European perspective.76 Nor were the Spanish at all unusual in this effort. Like
the Chinese when they expanded to the Asian Southeast, the Spaniards saw
in America just what they wanted to see.77 The description of an intelligent
observer, like Fernández de Oviedo, trying to describe a rare tree by alluding
to the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci or Andrea Mantegna is perhaps one
of the most telling images that can be mentioned in this respect.78 But there
were thousands of people like him, and some of the examples provided in
this volume by Consuelo Varela are very significant. The engravings produced
by Jean Léry or Teodor de Bry are also very significant in their portrayal of
a complex intercultural exchange whose initial and crucial problem was the
impossibility of adapting a new reality to old stereotypes and the difficulty of
understanding it in itself without getting lost in intellectual “translation.”79
And the same could be said about the attempts to understand the Indies
through the prism of the Bible and the philology of ancient texts, which
Portuondo examines in the case of Arias Montano.
Power and the need to preserve one’s own ideas were crucial in many
cases. Steven Harris has pointed out that in spite of contact and exchanges,
Europeans failed to export to China “the very things deemed central to
the West’s scientific revolution.”80 This was in part because of the slow
circulation of “conceptual structures or social institutions” for learning in
comparison with that of objects and practices. Some historians, Harris also
admits, have explained the difficulties that the Jesuits had in introducing
the Copernican revolution in China because of “the Catholic Church’s
injunction against heliocentric astronomy,” and the Jesuits faced well-known
problems because of Rome’s restrictions on their “experiment of promoting
Christianity in Chinese dress.” In Japan there was a strong and cruel reaction
against Jesuits at the end of the sixteenth century and a closing to outside
influences, including forbidding travel abroad. This was the outcome of the
reticence provoked by increasing contacts with the Portuguese.
Such barriers and clashes always had an impact on the transference of
goods which had an unacceptable social meaning for one of the two or more
societies involved. But many examples can also be drawn from the history
of consumption or material culture. One obstacle to the acceptance of choc-
olate and tobacco by Spanish natural philosophers and apothecaries was
the introduction of Renaissance medical practices and the fact that these
products were completely absent from Hippocrates’ and Galen’s systems of
knowledge. Economic historians have assumed that America provided an
unlimited market for European goods from the time of its conquest. From
there comes the image of lost opportunity to which they have accustomed
us. Descriptions of early encounters, like those of Ginés de Sepúlveda, belie
such a vision. Vast cultural distances make it difficult to imagine substantial
similarities between the material cultures of the Spaniards and the native
Americans. Therefore, the possibilities of trade between the two sides of the
Atlantic were more restrictive than is usually thought. The Spaniards sought
gold and markets for their textiles, while the natives went naked and desired
trinkets, with little impact on the Castilian economy.81
Indifference and negative reactions are always more difficult to explain
for historians, whose job consists of constructing explanations of what
happened but who are normally less interested in what did not happen. But
there are also examples that could be easily expanded if we tried to look
at the past from this perspective. The yerba mate, whose highly developed
market in the pampas is quite well known, was never successfully intro-
duced in Europe until twentieth-century American immigration created the
social conditions for it. Coca, which was brought to Spain at the same time
as cacao and which induced similar medical reactions, was never accepted,
for reasons that are still unclear.82
These are only two out of many examples showing that cross-cultural
exchanges of new goods were not easy or simple, and that is the origin of
one of the main arguments of this book. Reluctance has always been pres-
ent, and the condition for success has often been adaptation and cultural
translation, as well as resilience, as Irene Fattacciu proves in her essay in this
volume. In this process, mediators seem to have been crucial. Franciscans
and Jesuits, sometimes considered to have been contaminated by their
original societies and always permissive in the areas where they operated as
a way of understanding local cultures, are good examples. Reluctance often
came hand in hand with adaptation. The need to adapt chocolate’s flavor to
the tastes of European elites appears crucial in Fattacciu’s analysis.83 Cross-
cultural exchanges are always linked to some sort of syncretism: things and
even social gestures change in the process of transmission. This is espe-
cially clear in the case of religions and beliefs. Years ago the anthropologist
Nancy Farris showed that the Maya’s conversion to Catholicism—that is,
from a polytheist to a monotheist faith—was grounded in the possibility of
considering Catholic saints as pseudo-gods to which the Maya could pray
for small miracles, which, on the other hand, is understandable and logical
if we think about the saints’ similar role in the popular Catholicism of the
epoch.84 Such transformations are always found in the transmission of goods
and cultural values.
Global history and entangled history, as well as using network theory to
study the circulation of goods, sometimes only as a metaphor, have been
accused of hiding violence and political dominium, in contrast with the
traditional history of empires. But it is more than obvious that when speak-
ing of the adoption of European patterns of consumption in Latin America,
and when we emphasize the role of social and trade networks in that process,
we must never forget that this was a consequence of violence. Rather than
speaking of intercultural dialogue or exchange we should speak of inter-
cultural violence. The cases of many Indians adopting hybrid diets during
their seasonal work in mines after very long-distance forced migrations,
and of thousands of Africans consuming American products, are excellent
examples. The same could be said about religion and conversion, in which
persuasion was blended with pressure in many areas of the world (e.g. in
the attendance at Catholic rituals and religious ceremonies), which makes
dissimulation easier to understand,85 not to mention the imposition upon
many Amerindians of the obligation to pay tributes in cloth, which served
to promote metropolitan styles.86 The examples could be extended beyond
the Iberian empires to include those of the French, the Dutch, or the British.
But this is not the most important point. The key message is the need to
understand social and physical violence and the mix of the complex dual-
ity of persuasion and imposition when studying the diffusion of patterns of
consumption, which is usually neglected by specialists who limit themselves
to intra-European examples.
As far as cultural exchanges were associated with traumatic historical
experiences, their effects were also disruptive in many ways. European
“ecological imperialism,” to use Alfred Crosby’s term, provides the key to
the deterioration of American ecosystems and, consequently, a reason for the
demographic cataclysm that America experienced after the conquest. 87 The
reasons were not only the new diseases, but also the fact that the weeds
and the new animals, like the thousands of horses and pigs that prolifer-
ated within just a few decades, attacked very delicate links of the previous
ecosystems, creating problems for the agrarian economies of the Indians, as
the case of Hispaniola, analyzed by Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, and other

areas studied by Pérez Tostado reveal. As is well known, the expansion of
mining was the reason (or the pretext?) for the development of a sector that
led to a systematic and cruel exploitation of men by men, and which was
crucial for the global circulation of precious metals which fed the “silver
belt,” without which the circulation of commodities on a massive scale
would have been impossible. Likewise, the development of the plantation
economies devoted to products like sugar, cacao, tea, or tobacco caused the
growth of slavery in all of the Americas. The outcome was that societies
that were progressively becoming more closely connected were also increas-
ingly different and divergent. As the traditional historiography based on
underdevelopment theory has many times emphasized, the evolution of
European societies toward freedom and citizenship rested upon an expan-
sion of slavery in the areas of the world to which they were most connected.
New global and interconnected history should not neglect this conclusion.
Globalization thus joined different peoples together but also paved the way
for increasing distances among the different localities and disparities among
the peoples composing the web that linked them.
Furthermore, rather than relaxing the tension on those borders among
peoples and civilizations, the discovery and conquest of America furthered
European expansion and brought to light more frontiers among human
beings. America appeared, to the eyes of people like the Pizarros, Cortés, or
Valdivia, as a conflictive religious frontier to be broken by any means, including
violence and destruction. As is known, America itself was a disputed space
among European powers, and the chapter by Pérez Tostado is very significant
on the different levels and even on the bottom-up dimension of those con-
flicts. The competition for America’s raw materials and for Asian products
enhanced the opposition and led to war between the Iberian empires, the
English, and the Dutch, particularly after the religious rupture and the Dutch
revolt. From the end of the sixteenth century new mercantilist ideas were
formulated, which stressed the need to create, defend, and fight for external
markets as a way to developing domestic economies.
Globalization, empires, and the history of consumption
The history of consumption, today in vogue, has rarely been seen from the
perspective of the political economy of empires. Sidney Mintz and many
others have made substantial contributions in this area, although historians
of consumption in general have until very recently too frequently been
carried in the direction established by Neil McKendrick and his followers
toward studies centered on demand. In this way, internal social and cul-
tural changes within Europe created new forms of consumption that have
been considered the key factors for change. But when a global perspective
is adopted, as has been the case during the last decade, empires’ political
economies, how they channeled their fiscal and military resources, and how
they identified with certain products (e.g. Spaniards with chocolate and the
English with tea), may prove central to explaining how supply and demand
met each other and how institutions regulated this encounter. It may also
explain the complex of interests articulated around these institutions and
behind the increase in the consumption of particular products.
The importance of these contacts as well as the relevance of the develop-
ment of Iberian empires in world economies has to be adequately em-
phasized. To provide only one example, today we know that maize became
vital for Chinese economic development. If we distance ourselves from the
conventions that oblige us to understand agrarian development in terms
of the “agricultural revolution” that took place in eighteenth-century
England, products like the potato and maize take on fundamental signifi-
cance in Europe also. These products were crucial for encouraging agrarian
and demographic growth in many areas of Europe from as early as the
seventeenth century. They were also crucial in many other senses. The old
argument which shows America and Asia and the control of their markets
of goods and slaves as a source of wealth and richness in Europe can be also
reviewed from this perspective, even if one does not accept underdevelop-
ment and center–periphery dependency theories as they were formulated
years ago by authors such as Wallerstein and the late Gunder Frank.88 These
products, in becoming profitable commodities, fed the development of
trade, strengthened fiscal systems able to defend their colonial markets,
permitted an accumulation of wealth in the West, and activated political
and economic competition among European regions, thus enhancing techno-
logical development, and were also one of the reasons for industrious
revolutions in Europe.89 They also were an incentive for industrial imitation
and export substitutions that increased economic diversity and the develop-
ment of a more complex and active industrial sector.90
It is also important to consider the way in which the demand for plants
and products from overseas broadened to different sectors of society, along-
side the social components of the process and obstacles to it. As we have
mentioned in a previous article, in a society with very established habits
of consumption regulated by custom and even by law, these completely
unknown products may have been—and this would need to be proven—
more likely to be consumed, with no obstacle beyond the capacity to obtain
them. The result would be that, if they were initially symbols of distinction,
their “democratization” may have known no barrier other than purchas-
ing capacity. Testing this hypothesis, which runs, for example, through
the study of the eighteenth-century polemic around luxury, might provide
interesting counterpoints to such theses as those of McKendrick or Daniel
Roche or certain sociological economists like Thorstein Veblen.91 But it also
would entail problematizing the degree of flexibility of the society of the
period and oblige us to approach the process of the erosion of a society of
orders and how it understood social transgressions through consumption,

which clearly would allow us to formulate more interesting comparisons
among social structures. For example, English society, which is said to have
been dynamic, would not seem to have been more receptive to tea than
Spanish society, assumed to be rigid, has been toward chocolate.
The relation of these products to the creation of gender and national
identities appears clearer today in studies of chocolate, tea, and coffee. It is
equally well known that the consumption of these products—tobacco offers
an excellent example but not the only one—reinforced gendered attitudes
whose foundations we would like to study from the point of view of the
mechanisms and the reasons for transgressive practices and the repression
associated with them. Arjun Appadurai coined the very interesting concept
of “the social life of things.” But it is very evident when reading some
of these chapters, as well as the recent history of consumption, that rather
than studying the lives that new objects had per se, we need to consider
the uses that different societies made of them, the way the origins of these
goods and the way they were adopted and “translated” in Europe (and not
only in Europe) conferred on them a capacity to be used by social groups,
women or men, social classes, nations and imagined communities, as well
as the impact all this had upon the different countries’ economies, their
political imagination, and the invention of their tradition and social lan-
guage. In other words, the introduction of space, cross-culturality, and a
proper notion of circulation and adaptation can be used for a more inter-
disciplinary history in which old paradigms that were too much linked to
the narrowest national narratives are overcome without neglecting the role
of the local and the proto-national dimension to understand economic,
social, cultural, and political history.
This book also challenges a very simplistic view of the history of con-
sumption, and it parallels other attempts in the same directions. The diversity
of mediators in the first phase and the way different filters acted in the selection
and rejection of “new” products open new dimensions. They show that the
process by which a “new” product becomes a commodity is not automatic,
linear, and predetermined. It was something that depended on something
more than economic factors. Medicine, conceptions of the world, natural
philosophy, and mentalities always played a crucial role. These essays also
show that, even when the consumption of a “new” product was accepted, it
first circulated through social non-mercantile networks, which also played a
role in filtering and creating, or not creating, a new demand for it. If, as is to
be expected, the global cross-cultural approach will become essential in the
field of the history of consumption and material culture, it is more than obvi-
ous that historians, and economic historians in particular, who are normally
so much focused on the role of traders, markets, publicity, and so on when
studying circulation and supply as well as social and cultural factors, the role
of fashion, the restrictions of income levels and standards of leaving, and so
on when they deal with the demand side, will need to consider the subject
in an even more complex but more interesting way.
All this raises some crucial problems. The introduction of new goods was
a selective process and there are different models of selection, which are
explained in this volume. The relatively fast diffusion of cochineal, studied
here by Marichal, is linked to the fact that the product was directly con-
nected with a pre-existent demand for similar products in Europe. Cochineal
rapidly became a substitute of higher quality than a European product, and
the process of passing from a good to a commodity was fast and simple. It
was also used in America as a dye, and the process was decisively facilitated
as a result. In other cases, maize for example, the conditions were similar.
From the beginning it was seen as a solution for scarcity, the main problem
in European societies. But here the problem was the institutional con-
strictions and the type of agrarian contracts that, as Giovanni Levi indicates,
obstructed its introduction for many years. Very similar is the case of the
potato. Thus two products which were crucial for Europeans took decades
to be introduced. A hitherto unknown product like tobacco also took some
time, but its reception was facilitated by the lack of social codes constraining
its consumption—in this sense novelty played a positive role—and by the
positive medical discourses which considered it a remedy for various illness.
Obviously, social discourses of the epoch were crucial. The diffusion among
the European elites of the bezoar stone, a product that today has almost
disappeared or that Western people consume unconsciously, responded in
fact to the desires of an elitist society in which this rock was supposed to
enhance fertility, thus satisfying the main concerns of those elites who were
constantly aware of the issue of reproduction of their lineages and families,
the key to their political power and lives.92 Some products like cochineal
were traded in Europe, but they were not produced there and there was
no process of import substitution. In this case this was due to secretism, as
Marichal emphasizes; in other cases it might be due to ecological or social
barriers. Obviously, Europeans preferred to accept the type of products they
were looking for (or their substitutes). But the process was greatly biased by
very different factors, which oblige us not to generalize but rather to look
for the reasons for each case and the conditions of very complex processes.
Twenty-first-century Europeans tend to conceive of intercultural dialogue

and cross-cultural exchanges as a part of globalization, which is seen as a
process leading to more homogeneous societies. They often express alarm
that globalization may impose homogeneity. They also tend to think of
globalization as something very recent.
Global history shows that globalizing processes have been present for
centuries in the history of humanity. Furthermore, we can conceive of a
single history of humanity because of these processes. The period between
approximately 1400 and 1800 was not an exception, and the cross-cultural
exchange of and resistance to “new” products played a crucial role. The

so-called European expansion paved the way for more intense contacts
among the different regions of the globe. That expansion was not unique.
Other similar processes had been present in other parts to the world for
centuries, and more in particular after the fifteenth century, which for some
historians was supposedly the start of modern globalization. Those contacts
forced dense intercultural dialogue and cross-border exchanges over long
distances. The outcome was very much influenced by the way the Iberian
empires, and more particularly in our case the Spanish Empire, were organ-
ized, by the social networks that crossed them, by the historical contexts in
which they acted, and by the way those networks were embedded in prac-
tices of persuasion and violence, as well as by the natural philosophy and
mental framework predominant within them. The outcome, however, was
not a more homogeneous world. The experience of sharing was inherent
to the experience of self-assertion, assimilation, adaptation, and even re-
jection by different imagined communities. The intellectual, cultural, social,
and economic filters that each society placed upon the reception of others’
goods and material cultures were many. Those societies were what they were
because they had more intense relationships. They were aware of who they
were also because of their contacts. At the same time they were building a
common legacy, the legacy of humanity. They were constructing a common
history by sharing ideas and goods but also by being different. Cross-cultural
exchanges were not symmetrical or lacking in violence. The history of global-
ization and exchanges was—and still is—the history of contact and also of
tensions and divergence. To keep this in mind is perhaps the main lesson
that the historian can provide to societies today as a way to combat the
negative and disruptive collateral effects of cross-cultural relationships and
to remind us of the complexity of a process of convergence and diversity.
Notes
This study and my overall participation in this book have been undertaken as part
of my activities as professor at the Department of History and Civilization at the
European University Institute, Florence (2003–13). I express here my gratitude to that
institution, as well as to my colleagues and students who work on these subjects, for
their support over these years. This study would not have been possible without their
support, although, as is often said, the errors remain my exclusive responsibility. Like
this book, this study is part of the activities of the research group P09-HUM 5330,
“Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia, guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo
régimen,” financed by the Junta de Andalucía. I also thank Dr. Bethany Aram for her
help in the translation of some parts and editing of this chapter, as well as for her
comments on some different aspects.
1. See the pioneering studies of Appadurai, two of which are especially relevant
in this context: Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in
Cultural Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Arjun Appadurai,

Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis and London:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
2. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, trans. Siân
Reynolds (London: Collins, 1981); Serge Gruzinski, Les quatre parties du monde:
Histoire d’une mondialisation (Paris: Martinière, 2004). The importance of contacts
and personal networks has also been emphasized by many historians in recent
decades.
3. Some general but very interesting comments, though mainly referring to the
British Empire, are in Ratna Ghosh, “AHR Forum: Another Set of Imperial
Turns?,” American Historical Review 117:3 (2012), 772–93.
4. For two good examples of the interest on this perspective, see Alex Nützenadel
and Frank Trentmann, “Introduction,” in Alexander Nützenadel and Frank
Trentmann, eds, Food and Globalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics in the
Modern World (Oxford: Berg, 2008), 1–21, and John Brewer and Frank Trentmann,
“Introduction: Space, Time and Value in Consuming Cultures,” in John Brewer
and Frank Trentmann, eds, Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical
Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 1–18.
5. See mainly Douglas North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York:
Norton, 1981).
6. From a more strictly economic perspective, the reflections of Avner Greif in vari-
ous works are of interest, including, among others, Avner Greif, Institutions and
the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade (Cambridge University
Press, 2006). A good example of how these informal institutions operated, in this
case kinship and family relationships, can be found in Marta A. Vicente, Clothing
the Spanish Empire: Families and the Calico Trade in the Early Modern Atlantic World
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
7. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories
of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500–1640,” American Historical Review 112:5
(2007), 1359–85. See also Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, “Las instituciones y la
economía política de la Monarquía Hispánica (1492–1714): Una perspectiva
trans-‘nacional,’” in Fernando Ramos Palencia and Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, eds,
Instituciones y crecimiento económico en el Mediterráneo, 1500–1800 (Universidad de
Valencia, 2012), 139–62.
8. See in this respect J. Darwin, The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400–2000
(London: Penguin, 2008), 50–99. The idea of a need to relativize the exceptional
character of European expansion can also be seen in Felipe Fernández Armesto,
“Empires in their Global Context, ca. 1500 to ca. 1800,” in Jorge Cañizares-
Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman, eds, The Atlantic in Global History, 1500–2000 (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007), passim, first published in Spanish
in M. Lucena Giraldo, ed., Debate y perspectivas: Cuadernos de historia y ciencias
sociales. Las tinieblas de la memoria: Una reflexión sobre los imperios en la Edad
Moderna (Madrid: Fundación Mapfre Tavera, 2000), 27–45.
9. On some of these aspects, see Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo, “Cultural Contacts
and Exchanges,” in Peter Burke and Halil Inalcik, eds, History of Humanity:
Scientific and Cultural Development, vol V: From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth
Century (New York: Routledge–UNESCO, 1999), 50–60.
10. Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “China and the Manila Galleon,” in Dennis
O. Flynn, World Silver and Monetary History in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London:
Ashgate, 1996), 71–7.
11. Pierre Vilar, Oro y moneda en la historia (1450–1920) (Barcelona: Ariel, 1969).
12. Ibid.
13. Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, A.D. 1250–1350
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
14. As is known, a good proportion of American silver had a deep economic impact
in China and India (and also in the Spice Islands, particularly Indonesia and
the Philippines). The effects are also known. To offer a good example, in both
sixteenth-century China and seventeenth-century Mughal India, this flow of
American silver made possible crucial changes in the taxation systems, when
taxes collected in silver replaced rice, raw materials, or copper as the basis for
state income. In turn, this new fiscal method elevated the value of silver in
Asia, further favoring the flow described here. The very same monetary system
in Mughal India was based on Spanish silver, the famous melted-down rupia
being reales de a ocho or “Spanish dollars.” All this is even more significant
when one considers that the Japanese production of silver, also flowing to
China, was also extremely important. See Artur Attman, American Bullion in the
European World Trade 1600–1800 (Göteborg and Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell
Tryckeri, 1986).
15. The best book on what follows is, without any doubt, Arnold Bauer, Goods, Power,
History: Latin America’s Material Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
16. Particularly interesting in this respect is Domingo Centenero de Arce, “¿Una
Monarquía de lazos débiles? Veteranos, militares y administradores 1580–1598”
(Ph.D. diss., European University Institute, 2009). For two excellent examples
of functionaries’ biographies, including their American careers, see Enrique García
Hernán, Consejero de dos mundos: Vida y obra de Juan de Solórzano Pereira (1575–1655)
(Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2007) and José Manuel Diaz Blanco, Razón de estado y
buen gobierno (Universidad de Sevilla, 2010).
17. José Luis Gasch-Tomás, “Global Trade, Circulation and Consumption of Asian
Goods in the Atlantic World: The Manila Galleons and the Social Elites of Mexico
and Seville (1580–1630)” (Ph.D. diss., European University Institute, 2012).
18. See for example the letter that Pedro Matín sent to his wife, Gregoria Rodríguez, in
1582, recommending that she travel to the Americas with “un manto de tafetán
con su ribete de terciopelo, y una ropa de tafetán y una basquiña de raso negro y
un jubón bueno y otro vestido blanco … y una espada, con sus vainas de tercio-
pelo, que costará hasta cuatro ducados, tráemelo porque acá vale doce ducados,
y también traeréis la más ropa blanca que pudieres y alguna para cama de red”
(“a taffeta shawl and a black satin skirt and a good doublet and another white
dress … as well as a sword, with a velvet sheath, which will cost up to four ducats,
because it is worth 12 ducats here, and also bring as much white cloth as you
can, including some for a hammock”). This is only an example of hundreds like
this. Enrique Otte, ed., Cartas privadas de emigrantes a Indias, 1540–1616 (Jerez:
Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía, 1992).
19. Gregorio Saldarriaga, “Alimentación e identidades en el Nuevo Reino de Granada,
siglos XVI y XVII” (Ph.D. diss., Colegio de México, 2007), chap. 5. I thank
Professor Saldarriaga for allowing me to read his work before its publication.
The book has been published as Alimentación e identidades en el Nuevo Reino de
Granada, siglos XVI y XVII (Bogotá: Universidad del Rosario, 2011).
20. Juan Carlos Garavaglia, Mercado interno y economía colonial: Tres siglos de historia
de la yerba mate (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1983).
21. Gasch-Tomás, “Global Trade.”
22. Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, “The History of Consumption of Early Modern Europe in

a Trans-Atlantic Perspective: Some New Challenges in European Social History,” in
Veronika Hyden-Hanscho, Renate Pieper, and Werner Stangl, eds, Cultural Exchange
and Consumption Patterns in the Age of Enlightenment: Europe and the Atlantic World
(Bochum: Dieter Winkler, 2013), 25–40.
23. See A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808 (Baltimore and
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 154–6.
24. Sidney Mintz, Storia dello zucchero: Tra politica e cultura (Torino: Einaudi, 1990), 35.
For the English edition, see Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar
in Modern History (New York: Penguin, 1985), 34.
25. One of the best examples in this respect is the text of Monardes, a work first
published in 1569, which would see various additions and developments in 1571
and 1574. Nicolás Monardes, Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la Historia medici-
nal de las cosas que se traen de vuestras Indias Occidentales que siruen en medicina
(Seville: Alonso Escriuano, 1574). Many years ago Charles Boxer drew attention
to this Seville doctor and another famous Portuguese physician and author in
Two Pioneers of Tropical Medicine: Garcia d’Orta and Nicolás Monardes (London:
Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1963).
26. See, for example, Antonio Lavedán, Tratado de los usos, abusos, propiedades y virtudes
del tabaco, café, té y chocolate (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1796), 9ff., for whom, like
many others, tobacco had two principal qualities, “being hot and dry.”
27. Juan Méndez Nieto, Discursos medicinales (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León,
1989).
28. Bianca Lindorfer, “Las redes familiares de la aristocracia austríaca y los procesos
de transferencia cultural: Entre Madrid y Viena, 1550–1700,” in Bartolomé Yun-
Casalilla, ed., Las redes del Imperio: Élites sociales en la articulación de la Monarquía
Hispánica, 1492–1714 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2009), 261–88.
29. Bauer, Goods, 63ff.
30. Lavedán, Tratado, 20.
31. Amelia Almorza, “Genero, emigración y movilidad social en la expansión atlán-
tica: Mujeres españolas en el Perú colonial (1550–1650)” (Ph.D. diss., European
University Institute, 2011).
32. María del Carmen Martínez Martínez, La emigración castellana y leonesa al Nuevo
Mundo: 1517–1700 (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1993).
33. Bartolomé Bennassar, Valladolid en el siglo de oro: Una ciudad de Castilla y su entorno
agrario en el siglo XVI (Ayuntamiento de Valladolid, 1983).
34. The cloth industry in Puebla, Mexico, offers a good example. Ida Altman,
Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain & Puebla, Mexico, 1560–
1620 (Stanford University Press, 2000).
35. Erik R. Seeman, “Jews in the Early Modern Atlantic: Crossing Boundaries.
Keeping Faith,” in Cañizares-Esguerra and Seeman, eds, The Atlantic in Global
History, 39–59; Stuart Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation
in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Francisco
Bethancourt, The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478–1834 (Cambridge University
Press, 2009); Igor Pérez Tostado and Enrique García Hernán, eds, Irlanda y
el Atlántico ibérico: Movilidad, participación e intercambio cultural (1580–1823)
(Valencia: Albatros Ediciones, 2010).
36. The literature on this aspect is abundant today. See, for example, Barbara L. Solow,
ed., Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
As is known, a recent shift has been the increasing interest in cultural history,
and in this aspect also the literature is very rich today. Some general views on this
trend can be seen in Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges,
and Opportunities,” American Historical Review 111 (2006), 741–57. An example of
this approach can be found in the seminal work of Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic:
Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1993); David Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David Richardson, “Agency and Diasporas
in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution in the Americas,”
American Historical Review 112 (2007), 1329–58. A more recent general mono-
graph is John K. Thornton, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820
37. Such is the case of the previously cited collection of letters edited by Enrique
Otte, Cartas, to which one may add the collection edited by Isabel Testón Núñez
and Rocío Sánchez Rubio, El hilo que une: Las relaciones epistolares entre el Viejo
y el Nuevo Mundo (siglos XVI al XVIII) (Cáceres: Universidad de Extremadura,
1999) and, for a subsequent period, that of Isabel Macías and Francisco Morales
Padrón, Cartas desde América, 1700–1800 (Jerez: Junta de Andalucía, 1991).
An especially interesting case in that it deals with private letters which, in
contrast to the cartas de llamada, had the sole function of communication, in
this case among family members, is presented and analyzed by Patricio Hidalgo
Nuchera, Entre Castro del Río y México: Correspondencia privada de Diego de
la Cueva y su hermano Juan, emigrante a Indias (1601–1641) (Universidad de
Córdoba, 2006).
38. María Montáñez Matilla, El correo en la España de los Austrias (Madrid: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953).
39. On Plantin see, for example, Fernando Checa Cremades et al., Cristobal Plantino:
Un siglo de intercambios culturales entre Amberes y Madrid (Madrid: Nerea, 1995).
40. On this question, see, in particular, Carlos A. González Sánchez, New World
Literacy: Writing and Culture across the Atlantic, 1500–1700 (Lanham: Bucknell
41. Gasch-Tomás, “Global Trade.”
42. Carol Schamas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1990), 76–100.
43. Eltis, Morgan, and Richardson, “Agency and Diasporas.”
44. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Atlantic in World History (Oxford University Press,
2012), 23.
45. Céspedes del Castillo, “Cultural Contacts,” 57.
46. Nicholas P. Canny, ed., Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration,
1500–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
47. See the importance of traders’ correspondence in Michel Morineau, Incroyables
gazettes et fabuleux métaux: Les retours des trésors américaines d’après les gazettes
hollandaises (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: Cambridge University Press and Maison
des Sciences de l’Homme, 1985).
48. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800,
2nd edn (Cambridge University Press, 1998 [1992]), 14.
49. The most recent demonstration of changes in ideas that can take place by con-
sidering the spatial and temporal contexts in which empires, like the English
and Spanish, developed is the influential book by John H. Elliott, Empires of
the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2006), which has transformed many of the common stereotypes
regarding the Spanish and British empires.
50. I have developed these ideas in Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, Marte contra Minerva:
El precio del imperio español c. 1450–1600 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2004), 115–20.
51. Felipe Fernández Armesto, The Canary Islands after the Conquest: The Making of a
Colonial Society in the Early Sixteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1982).
52. Elliott, Empires, chap. 5.
53. The role of the Council of the Indies would be decisive in this respect. Ernesto
Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias, vol. II: La labor del Consejo de Indias
en la administración colonial (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2003), 293–379.
the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 121.
55. Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo. On the attempt to improve the information
systems within the Spanish Empire see Arndt Brendecke, Imperio e información:
Funciones del saber en el dominio colonial español (Madrid and Frankfurt am Main:
Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2012).
56. John H. Elliott, The Old World and the New 1492–1650 (Cambridge University
Press, 1970).
57. A good example is that of Isaac Orobio de Castro, appointed as a physician by the
Duke of Medinaceli: Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac
Orobio de Castro (Oxford and Portland: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization,
2004), 65ff.
58. The writings of Méndez Nieto, referred to above, are full of warnings for safe-
guarding his medical practices from possible Inquisitorial action. For this reason,
when he refers to a remedy to increase male sexual potency and thereby increase
the woman’s “pleasure,” he cannot finish the discourse, and it is plagued by quite
a few phrases of notably hedonist content, all of it justified “to help with licit and
honest generation, and no for no other pleasure or impertinent thing.” Méndez
Nieto, Discursos, 466.
In more than a few cases judged by the Inquisition in the Americas, the accus-
ations had to do with the administration of medicines, herbs, or meats (prescrib-
ing the consumption of donkey brains seemed to be one of the most common
causes). In this way, we are dealing with a filter that, although theoretically
directed against apparently superstitious practices, in practice implied the cre-
ation of a restrictive attitude toward the possible methods of experimentation
with remedies that were local or brought by the African slave populations.
Concrete examples can be seen, such as those of Luis Andrea, the mulato Juan
Lorenzo, and others, in Ana M. Splendini et al., Cincuenta casos de Inquisición en
el Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias, 1610–1660: Documentos inéditos procedentes del
Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid, libro 1020, años 1610 a 1637 (Santa Fe de
Bogotá: Centro Editorial Javeriano, 1997), vol. II, 36, 50, 66.
59. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “The Devil in the New World: A Transnational Perspective,”
in Cañizares-Esguerra and Seeman, eds, The Atlantic in Global History, 21–37.
60. A solid and revisionist view of the negative stereotypes on scientific and techno-
logical change in Philip II’s Spain can be found in David C. Goodman, Power
and Penury: Government, Technology, and Science in Philip II’s Spain (Cambridge
61. Although the bibliography on this subject is extensive, a synthesis of these ideas
appears in Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Luca Molà, eds, Il Rinascimento italiano
e l’Europa, vol. V: Le scienze (Vincenza: Fondazione Cassamarca, 2008).
62. Méndez, Discursos, passim. A similar attitude again can be seen in other physicians,
including Monardes himself, Andrés Laguna, or another Portuguese important in
these respects, the aforementioned García de Orta, whose work touches upon the
most distinctive products, drugs, and herbs from the most distant parts of the
world, particularly the Portuguese dominions. Conde de Ficalho, ed., Coloquios dos
simples e drogas da India (Lisbon: Academia Real das Scencias de Lisboa–Impresa
Nacional, 1981). There is also a recent version in French, Colloques des simples et
des drogues de l’Inde (Lisbon: Fundaçao Oriente, 2004) and a version in English in
Spices in the Indian Ocean World (Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1996), 1–50.
63. Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit of Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from
Antiquity to the Present (London: Harper Collins, 1997), 169. On Renaissance col-
lectionism and openness to Oriental products, see, for example, Jerry Brotton, The
Rennaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford University Press,
2002). On collectionism, see Marjorie Swann, Curiosities and Texts: The Culture of
Collecting in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2001) and Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Orientalism in Early Modern France: Eurasian
Trade, Exoticism and the Ancien Regime (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2008).
64. What some authors have called the new diplomatic history is revealing of how
the role of diplomats, both ambassadors and consuls, did not end in political
mediation but included a crucial aspect of cultural mediation. See, for example,
Michael Levin, Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005) and Douglas Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors
and Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy (University of Chicago
Press, 2002). In addition to the case studied by Zamora in this volume, the
Florentine Ginori family’s connections are examined in Isabel Lobato, “Francisco de
Ginori, cónsul de la nación florentina en Cádiz: Entre sus negocios y la represen-
tación (1672–1713),” in Isabel Lobato and José M. Oliva, eds, El sistema comercial
español en la economía mundial (siglos XVII–XVIII) (Universidad de Huelva, 2013).
65. References to Monardes and his ties with America can be found in some emi-
grants’ letters. In a letter that Pedro Martín sent to his wife, Gregoria Rodríguez,
from Mexico, he reported having encountered “un mercader que es de mi tierra y
está casado con una hija del doctor Monardes” (“a merchant who is from my land
and is married to a daughter of the doctor Monardes”). Otte, ed., Cartas, 106.
66. See the volumes of Robert Muchembled and William Monter, Cultural Exchanges
in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
67. Méndez, Discursos, ix–xxxiii; Luis Sánchez Granjel et al., Vida y obra del doctor
Andrés Laguna (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1990).
68. An excellent overview that sets Columbus in a global context is William
D. Phillips, Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips, The World of Christopher Columbus
69. John H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present 137 (1992),
48–71.
70. Yun-Casalilla, ed., Las redes del Imperio.
71. Most of what follows comes from Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire and
Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900
72. Nikolai Vavilov, “The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated
Plants,” Chronica botanica 13 (1949–50), 1–366.
73. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism, 152.
74. Ruggiero Romano, Mecanismo y elementos del sistema económico colonial ameri-
cano: Siglos XVI–XVIII (Mexico City: Colegio de México and Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 2004), 84–158.
75. Carlos Marichal, “Mexican Cochineal and the European Demand for American
Dyes, 1550–1850,” in Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank, eds, From
Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World
Economy, 1500–2000 (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2006),
76–92.
76. Elliott, The Old World, chap. 1.
77. See Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2007).
78. Quoted by Elliott, The Old World, 35.
79. Teodoro de Bry, America (Madrid: Siruela, 1992).
80. Steven J. Harris, “The Study of Nature and the Universe,” in Burke and Inalcik,
eds, History of Humanity, vol. V, 83–95.
81. Yun-Casalilla, “The History of Consumption,” 25–40.
82. Garavaglia, Mercado.
83. Irene Fattacciu, “Across the Atlantic: Chocolate Consumption, Imperial Political
Economies and the Making of a Spanish Imaginary (1700–1800)” (Ph.D. diss.,
European University Institute, 2011).
84. Nancy Farris, The Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of
Survival (Princeton University Press, 1984).
85. Tzvetan Todorov, La conquête de l’Amérique: La question de l’autre (Paris: Seuil,
1982).
86. José De la Puente Brunke, Encomienda y encomenderos en el Perú: Estudio social y
político de una institución colonial (Seville: V centenario del Descubrimiento de
América, 1992), 201–12.
87. The literature on this has become huge during recent decades. See especially
the two seminal works of Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological
and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972) and
Ecological Imperialism, as well as William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden
City, NY: Anchor Press, 1976).
88. See, above all, Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2011 [1974, 1980]) and Andre Gunder Frank, World
Accumulation, 1492–1789 (London: Macmillan, 1978).
89. Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household
Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2008).
90. The idea is becoming more and more present among historians after the seminal
article of Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer
Goods in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 182 (2004), 85–142.
91. I am summarizing here and developing in different directions some ideas from
Yun-Casalilla, “The History of Consumption.”
92. On the diffusion of the bezoar, and not only on this product, in Europe, see
Renate Pieper, “From Cultural Exchange to Cultural Memory: Spanish-American
Objects in Spanish and Austrian Households of the Early 18th Century,” in
Hyden-Hanscho, Pieper, and Stangl, eds, Cultural Exchange, 215–34.
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Index
Acapulco, 26, 59, 153, 156, 207, 280 257–8, 260, 265, 267, 280–1, 290,
Acosta, José de, 7, 19–20, 23, 27, 32, 293, 295
58–64, 66, 68, 90, 93–4, 129, 144, Cádiz, 9, 45, 47, 176–7, 179–83, 187,
218, 281, 286 202–7, 209, 225, 227, 264
Africa, 17–18, 26, 56–7, 67, 119, 139, capitulaciones, 39, 43–5
146, 175, 234, 267, 279–80, 284, Campeche wood, 176, 200, 205
288, 290 Canary Islands, 20–1, 28, 38, 43, 50,
agriculture, 18, 111, 142–3, 208, 230, 211, 213, 216, 219–20, 238, 245–6,
232, 238, 245–7 285, 288
ají, see pepper, red Canton, 160, 165
Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 93 Caracas, 9, 235, 257, 261, 263–4, 266–7
aljófar, see pearl Carvajal, Pedro de, 236
Almeyda, Father, 177, 180 Casa de la Contratación (Seville), see
Amazons, 7, 49–50 House of Trade (Seville)
anona, see custard apple Casas, Bartolomé de las, 27, 39, 41,
Antwerp, 17, 66, 79, 81–8, 94, 124, 43–5, 220
202–3, 283 Castro Rivera, Gaspar de, 236
araticù, see custard apple cattle, 9, 21–2, 46, 103, 105, 141, 217,
Arias Montano, Benito, 7, 78, 79, 81–8, 219, 235, 243
89–94, 281, 286, 292 Cavalli, Tommaso, 180
Aristotelian philosophy, 54, 62, 78, Charles I, King of Castile and Aragon,
80–1, 93–4, 286 see Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Atlantic history, 1–5, 154 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 23, 25,
axí, see pepper, red 46, 67, 121, 125, 127, 198, 286
chili or chile, see pepper, red
Bacon, Francis, 80, 91 chinoiserie, 167
bezoar stone, 83, 128–9, 154, 298 chirimoya, see custard apple
biombo, see folding screen chocolate, 4–5, 7, 9, 25–6, 28–32, 46,
Blois, 123 120, 162, 182–4
Bobadilla, Francisco de, 43–4 makers’ guild, 263, 266
bodies, European understandings of, recipe, 31–2, 182, 263, 266–7, 281
137, 140, 146–7 chronicler, 7, 19, 29, 45–6, 67, 141–2,
border, 4, 9, 57, 60, 65, 79, 81, 233–4, 184, 217, 282, 286
238–48, 259, 289, 295, 299 climate, 20, 42, 48, 80, 103, 138–9, 143,
Brazil, 17, 64, 120, 175–7, 180, 182–4, 145–6, 219–20, 248, 259, 292
186, 237, 279, 280, 290 cochineal, 5, 9, 181, 197–213, 290–1, 298
brazilwood, 7, 40–1, 45, 47, 176, 182, cocoa, 9, 256–67
200, 221, 290 criollo, 261, 266
see also Campeche wood forastero, 266
Cold War, 1–2
cabinet of curiosities, 57 collection, 32, 83–4, 287
see also collection see also cabinet of curiosities
cacao, 7, 25–6, 31, 34, 40, 46, 124, 183, Colón, Cristóbal, see Columbus,
187, 221, 230–1, 233, 235–8, 245, Christopher
319
320 Index
Colón, Diego, see Columbus, Diego Española, island of, 9, 20, 22, 32, 39,
colonialism, 137, 146 41–7, 49, 127–9, 144, 216–24,
colonial trade office, see House of Trade 230–5, 237–8, 240–1, 247–8, 282,
(Seville) 295
Columbus, Christopher, 7, 17, 19–20,
25–7, 32, 38–50, 84, 120, 127, Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 19–21,
139–40, 143, 218–19, 288 28, 32, 141, 184, 198, 217–20, 282,
Columbus, Diego, 39–40, 218, 220 292
commerce, 3, 28, 79, 126–7, 175–9, 181, fish, 38–9, 49, 144–5
197, 200, 204, 216, 222, 230, 236, Florence, 102, 174–82, 184, 186–7,
239, 244, 265, 291 201–3, 205
commodification, 255 Florentines, 175, 287
see also commoditization folding screen, 154, 157–8, 159, 163–4
commoditization, 284 food, history of, 100–6, 111–12
complexion, 137–40, 142–5
confection, 121, 123–4 Genoa, 28, 47, 175, 183–4, 187, 205–6
contraband, 9, 130, 211, 213, 219–20, Genoese or Genovese, 175, 202, 207,
222–3, 234, 239, 264 282, 287–8
see also smuggling ginger, 31, 45, 121, 124, 127–30, 218–19,
consul, 8–9, 174–81, 182–4, 186–7 221, 233–5
consumption, history of, 9–10, 177, 179, Ginori family
255–6, 277, 293, 295, 297 Bartolomeo, 180
corn, see maize Francesco, 180, 182
Cortés, Hernán, 25, 46, 49–50, 198–9, Lorenzo, 175, 177, 180, 182–6
295 Niccolò, 180
cross-cultural exchange, 274, 280, 292– globalization, 4, 6, 8–10, 18, 33–4, 54,
3, 297–9 120–1, 130, 153–4, 200, 237, 255,
Cuevas, Las, Carthusian monastery of 266, 277–8, 280, 289, 291, 295,
(Seville), 43 298–9
Cuneo, Michele de, 47 Goa, 277
custard apple, 32–3, 183–6 gold, 23, 26, 38–41, 45, 47, 84–5, 93,
125–6, 144, 163, 165, 178, 199, 200,
Dajabón, 243–4 205, 208, 217–20, 231–2, 234, 259,
discourse, 60–4, 153, 232–3, 239, 246–7, 279, 284–5, 293
274, 298 Guayaquil, 9, 257, 263–4, 266–7
Drake, Sir Francis, 219 Guipuzcoana Company, 9, 264, 266–7
drugs, 38, 121–4, 126–7, 129, 131, 262,
286 health, 8, 27, 42, 106, 109, 120, 123,
Dutch East Indies Company, see VOC 128–30, 139, 142–7, 257
Hernández, Francisco, 23, 27–8, 46, 79,
Empire 286
British, 3, 5, 119–20, 283–5 hides, 220–2, 234–5, 239
Dutch, 282–5 Hincha, 242–3
Ming, 279 Hispañola, island of, see Española, island
Mughal, 279 of
Ottoman, 119, 279 homesickness, 140, 142–3, 145
Portuguese, 1, 5–6, 17–18, 55, 278–9, House of Trade (Seville), 47, 79, 127–8,
285, 289, 291, 294–6, 299 218, 220–1, 225, 227, 286
Spanish, 1, 5–6, 17–18, 55, 278–9, humoralism, 8, 120, 137–8, 140, 145–6,
291, 294–6, 299 292
Index 321
illness, 7–8, 100–5, 137–40, 142–5, 235, Oaxaca, 6, 9, 197, 199, 204, 207–13
298 olive oil, 20, 22, 25, 141, 143
indigo, 181, 200, 205–6, 230, 237, 290 Ophir, 84–5, 89, 93–4
Isabella I, Queen of Castile, 7, 23, 39–40, orchard, 23, 27, 230
42–5, 122 Ortelius, Abraham, 67, 82–3
Jews, 182, 187, 282, 285 Palano Tinoco, Manuel, 235

Sephardic, 6, 176, 182, 187 palo de Campeche, see Campeche wood
João III, King of Portugal, 121, 127 pan de palo, see yucca
papa, see potato
katana, 157–8, 164 Paradise, Earthly, 48–9
pearl, 7, 40–1, 45, 47–8, 85, 128–9
Legazpi, Miguel López de, 153 peasantry, Italian, 7–8, 100–9, 111–12
Lescallier, Daniel, 230–1, 246 pellagra, 7–8, 100–6, 109, 113
Lisbon, 2, 9, 17, 38, 124–5, 156, 175–7, pepper
179–83, 185–7, 290 red, 23–31, 33–4, 41, 122–6, 128, 130,
Livorno, 9, 175–6, 178, 181–3, 186–7, 175, 177, 205, 260, 290
202–3, 205 Spanish, 260
Peru, 17, 19, 21, 26, 29–30, 55–9, 62,
Madrid, 25, 30–1, 59, 159, 161, 164, 64, 85, 93–4, 127, 167, 175, 178,
174, 176, 180, 182–3, 238–9, 243, 184, 199, 279
259, 261, 266–7 Philip I, King of Castile, 122
maize, 5, 7–8, 18–19, 21–6, 26, 28–30, Philip II, King of Spain, 18–23, 46, 63,
32, 40–1, 100–9, 111–12, 141, 203, 81, 127, 129, 153, 177, 234, 286–7
208, 221, 223, 261, 290, 296, 298 Philippines, 17, 26, 59, 127, 153, 155,
Manila, 59, 153, 160, 165, 207, 280 165, 168, 207, 223, 280
Manila galleon(s), 26, 153, 159, 162, Philip “the Handsome,” see Philip I,
165, 168, 207 King of Castile
Margaret of Austria, 122, 125–6 Piedmont, 5, 8, 105, 106, 108, 110–11
Martyr d’Anghiera, Peter, 67, 143, 219 pigs, 21, 46, 141, 186, 221, 290, 294
Medici, 5, 8, 38, 174–87 plantation, 2, 4, 120, 209, 216–19, 220–4,
medicine, early modern, 8, 27, 101–3, 226–7, 231–4, 236–7, 239, 241–8,
126–7, 137–9, 286, 297 286, 295
Moluccas, 27, 64, 127, 130 Plantin Press, 81–3, 283
Monardes, Nicolás, 24, 27, 32, 46, political economy, 127, 238, 278, 295
79–80, 125, 128–9, 281, 287 porcelain, Chinese, 8, 153–4, 157–9,
162, 166
não, see nef Possevino, Antonio, 4, 7, 58, 64–8, 281,
natural history, 61–2, 78–80, 82–3, 129, 286
283 potato, 7, 21–6, 28–30, 32, 41, 87, 221,
nef, 125–6, 130–1 290, 296, 298
networks Pouancey, Jacques Neveu de, 240–1, 246
aristocratic, 183, 187, 257–9, 261, Puerto Plata, 240
262–3
consular, 9, 179, 281, 287 ranching, 22, 234, 244–5
diplomatic, 281, 287 Redi, Francesco, 185–6
Dominican and Franciscan, 7, 280 repartimiento system, 209
functionaries’, 280, 285, 287 Revenga, Manuel de, 243
Jesuit missionary, 7, 54, 56–8, 66, 68, Rodríguez de Fonseca, Juan, 42, 122–3,
174, 180, 187, 280, 287 127
322 Index
Royal Tobacco Factory (Seville), 224–5, 240–2, 245, 257–8, 261–3, 265–7,
227, 237 281, 283, 286–7, 293
Ruíz Martín, Felipe, 202–3, 205–6 spice(s), 5, 8, 17–18, 23, 27, 29–31, 38,
40, 119–31, 260, 263, 279, 285, 290
Saint-Domingue, 212, 216, 220, 230 spice ship, see nef
see also Española, island of Suárez, Francisco, 81
Santiago de los Caballeros, 220, 223–4, sugar, 7, 9, 20, 29–32, 41, 46, 119–20,
230, 240, 243 122, 124–5, 130, 146, 175–6, 182–3,
Santo Domingo, city of, 32, 41, 47, 184, 204–5, 216–21, 224, 230–7,
128–9, 216–17, 219–22, 224–7, 230, 244–5, 260–3, 266–7, 281, 285, 288,
235, 238, 239–40, 242–3, 245 290, 295
science, history of, 10, 53–6, 58, 78–81,
106–8, 112–13, 289 tithe (diezmo), 108–9, 111, 208, 224
scientific revolution, 54–5, 107, 154, tobacco, 4–5, 7, 31, 39, 46, 120, 175,
288, 292 181, 183, 187, 205, 216, 221–7, 230,
Segura Sandoval, Francisco, 240 232–5, 237, 255, 258, 281–2, 286,
Seville, 3, 5, 8, 17, 22, 24, 26, 32, 289–91, 293, 295, 297–8
38–9, 41, 43, 45–7, 59, 79–80, 82–3, tomato, 24–5, 28, 33–4, 41, 290
87, 94, 125, 127–9, 154–9, 161–7, Tovar, Simón de, 83, 87
179–81, 186, 202–6, 218–19, travel, dangers of, 138–40, 142–6
221–5, 227, 234–5, 237, 283, 286–7 turkey, 21, 23, 25, 27–9, 46, 210
sharecropper, 100, 109, 112, 244 Tuscany, Grand Duchy of, 8, 174–8,
sheep, 21, 109, 141, 221 180–1, 183, 186
silk, Chinese, 5, 8, 153–5, 159–63, 166,
200, 290–1 unicorn horns, 128–9
Silva Enriques, Pedro de, 175
Silva family, 175, 183 Valladolid, 57, 124
silver, 5, 83, 125–6, 162, 163–5, 178, Venetians, 119–20, 128, 203, 285
179, 198–200, 204–5, 207–12, 220, Vespucci, Amerigo, 45, 48, 67
279–80, 284–5, 289, 295 vineyard, 22, 68
siren, 7, 49–50 violence, 4, 9, 120–1, 154, 240–1, 247–8,
slaves 277, 289, 294–5, 299
African, 2–5, 9, 22, 42–3, 129, 142–3, VOC, or Vereenigde Oostindische
216–19, 221–2, 224, 226, 231–8, Compagnie (Dutch East Indies
238, 243–5, 247, 279, 282, 284, 288, Company), 120, 284
295–6
American, 7, 9, 41, 43, 57, 144–7, 197, wheat, 8, 18–19, 22–3, 28–9, 100, 104–6,
209, 257 108, 110–12, 141, 143, 146, 217–18,
smuggling, 45, 127 220, 290
Spain, 3, 9, 17, 19–23, 25–33, 38, 41, wine, 19, 21–2, 32, 40, 109, 121–4, 126,
46, 48–9, 54–5, 57–8, 82, 100, 102, 129, 140–1, 143–4, 146, 202, 220
127–8, 131, 140–1, 143, 146, 165,
176–7, 181, 183, 186, 200–3, 206, yerba mate, 280–1, 293
210, 216–19, 221, 224–5, 227, 234, yucca, 220, 280

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Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824

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List of Figures and Tables vii

1 Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824:

10 Interest and Curiosity: American Products, Information,

Selected Bibliography 307

5.1 “Orbis tabula,” in Benito Arias Montano, Phaleg siue

6.1 Distribution of production of main cereals in four provinces

This book represents the culmination of a four-year research project directed

Bethany Aram and Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla

Bethany Aram is a Ramón y Cajal scholar in the Area of Early Modern

Igor Pérez Tostado is a permanent lecturer in Modern History at the

Atlantic history, defined by Alison Games as global history applied to the

fruitfully extended to Haiti.7 At times, however, the field’s foundational

agency of free as well as enslaved Africans in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-

the “collective destiny” or unity of the oceanic world and an avoidance

The present volume makes no attempt at comprehensive coverage of any

Americas. They suggest that the “conquest” of Europe by American goods

While highlighting attempts to control the circulation of peoples and

the idea of an effortless, automatic diffusion of American products in

rather than “cultural transfer” or “exchange,” facilitates attention to the

1. Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,”

From Spain to America

by Hernando de Montenegro, who in 1551 produced the first major grape

unloaded. It was said that maize (discussed in Chapter 6) and potatoes, by

From America to Spain: the impact of new things

them back to Spain. In the seventeenth century, tomatoes commonly were

Time and rhythm

A passion for chocolate: the allure of sweetness

Foreign travelers considered chocolate to be a product signifying identity.

Sweetness was also key to the acceptance of sweet potatoes. In 1526

From the exotic to the ordinary

The expansion of Europe in the fifteenth century brought about changes

2. A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808: A World on the Move

The exchange of products in the age of Columbus

As soon as he arrived in the Indies on 11 October 1492, Columbus set out

queen announcing his discoveries, published in Barcelona in May 1493,

Columbus saw and tried other products, including peppers, pineapple,

Indigenous American slaves

Although Columbus’s actions regarding slaves have been studied elsewhere,

Expectations and realities

shipowners to undertake voyages of discovery despite Columbus’s complaints

themselves to the Indians’ food and, as a result, starting with Columbus’s

animals were transported to Europe, and then only as examples of exotic

A successful product: the Indian illusion

cultural goods that missionaries transmitted were incorporated into the

Renaissance, revolution and science: old paradigms

The standard narrative about European modernity developed up to the

in the twelfth century but had been blocked by religious obscurantism in

The history of science may contribute more to understanding the production

Missionary knowledge networks

complemented other texts produced within the Iberian monarchies or by

the Spanish general Francisco de Borgia and structured by the general

America between civilization and barbarism: José de Acosta

The production of the Jesuit theologian, philosopher and natural historian

the Philippines, offered new horizons for Christianization in competition

Nevertheless, Acosta wants to do more than to gather information for a

Acosta’s explicit goal is to incorporate America into a new conceptual frame-

their histories. This is where Acosta’s work is path-breaking compared with

naked and shameless, correspond to the inhabitants of Brazil, Florida and

Acosta aims at emphasizing the commonalities between China and Japan

A Roman missionary agenda? The New World, the Indies,