An Imperial Knowledge Space for Bourbon Spain: Juan Bautista Muñoz and the Founding of the Archivo General de Indias
2011; Routledge; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/10609164.2011.587264
ISSN1466-1802
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American and Latino Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 AGI, Indiferente General, 1853; 8 June 1784; ‘Informa en cumplimiento de la orden de 23 de Abril.’ For more on the Casa Lonja as the seat of the AGI, including its extensive eighteenth-century renovation, see Humanes Bustamante 1985 and Morales 1988 Morales, Alfredo J. 1988. La casa lonja en el siglo XVIII y su conversión en archivo general de indias. Archivo Hispalense: Revista Histórica Literaria y Artística, 71(217): 273–80. [Google Scholar]. 2 AGI, Indiferente General, 1853. 3 This analysis of the Ordenanzas is informed by Ann Laura Stoler's work on colonial archives as institutions that themselves articulate a narrative of empire (2009) and by Kathryn Burns’ call to read the legal literature of archives as a means of evaluating the ideologies that shape how those archives function (2010). Although driven by distinct critical concerns, Stoler and Burns see the archive as both a powerful symbol for modern cultural production and as a place whose structures and bureaucracies shape the narratives they contain. 4 Arias and Meléndez explore other articulations of Spanish American colonial space and place in Mapping colonial Spanish America places and commonplaces of identity, culture, and experience. The book ‘… presents a case for the intellectual importance of space, place, and territoriality in the reading and interpretation of Spanish American colonial discourse’ (14). Arias and Meléndez argue, ‘In Spanish American colonial texts, space (geographical, physical, and cultural) is at the center of all textual constructions …’ (15). 5 For a discussion of the long history of conflict between Campomanes and Muñoz that spans the final quarter of the century, see Bas Martín 2002 Bas Martín, Nicolás. 2002. El cosmógrafo e historiador Juan Bautista Muñoz (1745–1799), Valencia: Universitat de València. [Google Scholar]. 6 Slade's 2005 doctoral dissertation reads the AGI as a Bourbon institutional project that intersects with literary texts such as Muñoz's Historia del Nuevo-Mundo (vol. 1, 1793) and Clavijero's Historia antigua de México (1780–1781), as well as the 1792 initiative by Revillagigedo II, viceroy of New Spain, to create a new general archive in Mexico City. 7 Maria M. Portuondo (2009 Portuondo, Maria M. 2009. Secret science: Spanish cosmography and the New World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) builds a history of Spanish cosmography at its political and scientific zenith in the sixteenth century. The final chapter of the book narrates the institution's unraveling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 8 Arias (2007 Arias, Santa. 2007. Recovering imperial space in Juan Bautista Muñoz's Historia del Nuevo-Mundo (1793). Revista Hispánica Moderna, 60(2): 125–42. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2008 Arias, Santa. 2008. “The geopolitics of historiography from Europe to the Americas”. In The spatial turn: Interdisciplinary perspectives, Edited by: Warf, Barney and Arias, Santa. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) argues that Muñoz's Historia del Nuevo-Mundo attempts to recuperate imperial space in the context of European historiographical and geographical discourse.Slade (2010) analyzes the Historia and AGI projects in light of Francisco Javier Clavijero's linguistic archive in Historia antigua de México (1780–1781). For more on Muñoz's Historia, including why only the first volume of the work saw publication, see Bas Martín 2002 and Ballesteros Beretta 1942. 9 These texts include writings by Las Casas, Hernán Cortés, Catalina de Erauso, and many others. Copies of some documents from the Academy's collection can also be found in the Obadiah Rich Collection of the New York Public Library. For an excellent index of Colección Muñoz, see the Real Academia de la Historia (1954 Real Academia de la Historia 1954–1956 . Catálogo de la colección de don Juan Bautista Muñoz 3 vols. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. [Google Scholar]–1956). 10 Jovellanos echoes these frustrations with the archives at Simancas as he prepared a new archival system for the Monasterio Santiaguista de Sancti Spiritus in 1790 (Sastre Santos and Jovellanos 1995, 16, 31). 11 AGI, Indiferente General, 1852. 18 August 1781. Letter from Muñoz to Gálvez. 12 Ibid. 13 AGI, Indiferente General, 1853. 14 Besides the general archival connection between Muñoz's work and the Ordenanzas, the working draft of the official text, the ‘Ordenanzas interinas,’ provide the best direct evidence of Muñoz's hand in writing the final 1790 version. This document is published in Gómez Gómez (1993). 15 Several national libraries and archives hold copies of the text, including the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Library of Congress, the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile and other libraries such as the Newberry and the John Carter Brown, among others. 16 Most histories of the modern archive characterize the principle of provenance and original order as a development of the historical method and scientific archival practices of the nineteenth century (Grigg 1991). Duchein suggests that until the beginning of the nineteenth century European archives were indiscriminate in dividing and dispersing a collection within an archive, regardless of its provenance (1977, 72). Romero Tallafigo contests Duchein's claims concerning the history of this archival principle (1986, 128). He notes that the AGI predates the French model as a pioneer in establishing provenance as a guiding principle in archival practice and theory (Romero Tallafigo 1978). According to Bas Martín, Muñoz articulated the need to respect original order as early as 1784, when he wrote to Gálvez arguing that steps must be taken to conserve the provenance of an Archivo de Marina held at the convent of San Francisco in Cádiz, which he noted was in danger of becoming an ‘Archivo de basuras’ (2000, 98–99). 17 While it is beyond this essay's focus to explore the full representational power of the Lonja, it is noted that Muñoz is deliberate in his plans for the symbolic potential of this building. For example, when ordering shelves to be made of Cuban mahogany, he wrote that these majestic furnishings would themselves refute those, such as De Pauw, who theorized that the Americas were a biologically degenerate region (AGI, Indiferente General, 1853; 4 August 1784; Letter from Muñoz and Maestre to Gálvez). 18 In addition to this published text, ‘Ordenanzas para el Archivo general de Yndias,’ also appears in manuscript form with varying orthography in the Archivo General de Indias: AGI, Indiferente General, 1854-A. 19 For more information on the Archivo General de la Nueva España, see Mariscal (1946 Mariscal, Mario. 1946. Reseña histórica del Archivo General de la Nación (1550–1946), Mexico City: Secretaría de Gobernación. [Google Scholar]) and Romero Tallafigo (1994). 20 Portal de Archivos Españoles (PARES) is a website managed by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. The website states, ‘PARES ofrece un acceso libre y gratuito, no solo al investigador, sino también a cualquier ciudadano interesado en acceder a los documentos con imágenes digitalizadas de los Archivos Españoles’: http://pares.mcu.es/
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