Revista Complutense de Historia de América

Ciclo de Conferencias sobre Historia de América, 2024-2025. Máster Universitario en Historia y Antropología de América, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

2025-10-29T08:28:11+00:00

Santos Pérez, José Manuel: El Brasil de Felipe III. Corruptelas, “castellanización” y conquista en tiempos de reforma (1598-1621). Madrid: Sílex, 2025. 540 pp.

2025-10-29T09:06:43+00:00

Ciaramitaro, Fernando y Rodrigues Lourenço, Miguel (eds.): Historia imperial del Santo Oficio (siglos XV-XIX). México-Lisboa: Bonilla Artigas-UACM-Cátedra de Estudos Sefarditas A. Benveniste-Red Columnaria, 2024, 1144 pp.

2025-10-29T09:05:26+00:00

Polo y La Borda, Adolfo: Global Servants of the Spanish King. Mobility and Cosmopolitanism in the Early Modern Spanish Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024, 343 pp.

2025-12-10T08:57:22+00:00

Hernández Rodríguez, Alfonso J.: Soldados de la Carrera de Indias. Estructuras militares y conexiones atlánticas de la Monarquía Católica en el siglo XVII. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles, 2025. 418 pp.

2025-10-29T09:01:15+00:00

McClure, Julia: Empire of Poverty: The Moral-Political Economy of the Spanish Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. 229 pp.

2025-10-29T08:59:33+00:00

Astigarraga, Jesús – Usoz, Javier – Zabalza, Juan: The Economic Legacy of José Joaquín de Mora. Spreading Classical Political Economy in the Hispanic World. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, 339 pp.

2025-12-10T08:57:25+00:00

Book Review Menesteres y negocios de mujeres hispanoamericanas, siglos XVIII-XIX

2025-04-10T17:12:53+00:00

Rueda Ramírez, Pedro: Libros y bibliotecas en Puebla de los Ángeles: circulación atlántica y consumo de impresos (siglos XVI-XVII). Puebla: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 2023. 276 pp.

2025-08-24T19:31:08+00:00

Rodríguez Domínguez, Guadalupe – Corpus Saldaña, Judith Elisa: Derroteros del grabado en el libro impreso novohispano. México: Notas Universitarias, 2024. 644 pp.

2025-12-10T08:57:29+00:00

Antúnez López, Sandra (ed.): Los artífices de la confección. La industria del vestido en el Palacio Real (1789-1829). Madrid: Silex Ediciones, 2024, 307 pp.

2025-10-29T08:54:15+00:00

Fares, María Celina: Derechas e izquierdas nacionalistas en los 60. Universidad y prensa local en la encrucijada nacional e internacional. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2024. 430 pp.

2025-08-20T16:33:28+00:00

Jurisdiction in the Culture of the Monarchy. Its personal nature in the culture and legal tradition

2025-12-10T08:57:41+00:00

This study examines the question of jurisdiction in the kingdoms of the Indies from the perspective of a specific approach to reading the sources. Based on the rubric of one of the titles of the Ordinances of Audiences of 1563, the categories of jurisdiction and office, as well as the essentially personal nature of jurisdiction, are reviewed in their cultural context

Resistance as a service to restore good government in the kingdoms in Europe and America (16th and 17th centuries)

2025-12-10T08:57:44+00:00

This study’s goal is to analyse armed resistance in different kingdoms of the Spanish Habsburg’s monarchy under the idea that those could be seen as a service to the king, a way to show him that they are badly governed and that his intervention is needed in order to restore good government. In a way, it would be an extension of the well know concept of “obey, but do not comply”. It would also be clearly distanced from rebellion which, by definition, would be an illegitimate behaviour by the vassals. To carry out this study, we use key concepts of this era, such as good government, justice, council and service. The analysis will be done around the ideas of royal absenteeism, the misinformation of the King and the appeals towards him to restore justice. In order to show the universality of this phenomenon we use examples from different territories of the monarchy and even Crown’s relationship with indigenous people, without intending, in any way, to include the totality of possible cases that could be included.

The collection of the gracious service and borrowing of 1589 in the Audiencia de Charcas: institutional actors, political diligences and persuasive rhetoric, 1590-1593

2025-12-10T08:57:42+00:00

Contemporary research has focused on the donations or services provided free of charge that enabled the Crown to generate extraordinary revenue in Spanish America from the 16th century onwards. This was facilitated by the absence in Spanish America of a Cortes, which would have forced negotiations and delayed this tax collection. However, donations were also based on shared social representations of the loyal vassal who had to demonstrate his love for the monarch and repay his protection, particularly in his defence of the Catholic faith, as well as on conceptions of donation. Based on published and unpublished sources from Spanish and Bolivian archives, this article analyses the collection of the gracioso service tax in 1589 in the Audiencia de Charcas —which continued until the early 17th century— examining the participation of institutional actors, political proceedings and persuasive rhetoric aimed at sensitising and persuading Spanish and indigenous subjects to commit to the gracious service and borrowing contributions.

“He was deprived of reason due to drunkenness”: Negotiating criminal liability for crimes committed under the effects of alcohol y late colonial Chile

2025-12-10T08:57:39+00:00

This article examines judicial records in which drunkenness and its disturbing effect on reason was used as an argument to plea for a mitigation of sentence during the 18th century in the Capitanía General de Chile. Drunkenness was conceived as a vice, passion and excess typical of the lower sorts, and was associated with incivility and lack of control. The article explains that although the judicial framework of the Spanish Monarchy conceived drunkenness as an extenuating circumstance from legal responsibility, the argument rarely was successful in mitigating penalties. It suggests that drunkenness, understood as a state temporary mental disturbance, was conceived as an illness similar to madness but not completely like it. Judicial records examined in the article show that although it was believed that this illness had begun through the voluntary act of drinking, the effects alcohol had on the mind and rational judgement were beyond one’s control, like any other effects of illness. However, given the negative and dangerous consequences of this behavior on social order, the judicial system was reluctant to accept it as a mitigating circumstance.

Justicia y jurisdicciones en la América hispánica: casos y proyecciones

2025-10-29T08:30:07+00:00

The captaincies of Brazil under the gaze of the Spanish Monarchy: reports from ambassadors, spies and the Council of the Indies (1530-1579)

2025-12-10T08:57:38+00:00

This study will focus on analysing the information gathered by agents of the Spanish Monarchy about the captaincies of Brazil. Through the compilation of the topics covered in the reports produced by ambassadors, spies, cosmographers, members of the Council of the Indies, and officials residing in the Viceroyalty of Peru from the 1530s, when the captaincy system was established, until the years prior to the union of the Iberian crowns. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the knowledge that agents of the Spanish Monarchy had about the captaincies of Brazil throughout the 16th century.

Ambassador of the Kingdom of Portugal, donatary captain and governor-general of the Estado de Brasil (1588): Francisco Giraldes, a Portuguese fidalgo of Florentine origin

2025-12-10T08:57:37+00:00

The following article investigates the unique trajectory of Francisco Giraldes, a member of the Italian-origin Giraldi family, who gradually rose through the social ranks of the Kingdom of Portugal in the 16th century. Following his family's efforts to become a prominent and wealthy lineage within the Portuguese Kingdom, Francisco Giraldes succeeded in gradually increasing the family's prestige. He was first appointed ambassador of the Kingdom of Portugal to England and France. After the incorporation of the Portuguese Crown into the Spanish Monarchy, he managed to gain the favor of Philip II. Thanks to an inheritance he received, Giraldes would ultimately become a singular case, as he inherited the donatary captaincy of Ilhéus in Portuguese America and was later appointed governor-general of the Estado de Brasil. In short, this article analyzes a remarkable case of social ascension within the Kingdom of Portugal and Portuguese America in the second half of the 16th century.

The power disputes in a kingdom that was interested in preserving: Governor Alonso de Ribera, viceroy Luis de Velasco and the local elites in Chile (1598-1605)

2025-12-10T08:57:49+00:00

This work aims to analyze the confrontations of power between governor Alonso de Ribera, the viceroy of Peru Luis de Velasco y Castilla and the local elites of the governorship of Chile related to the war in the transitional period between the reigns of Felipe II to Felipe III. It’s important to focus on the political war phenomena from a local perspective in dialogue with the central powers that were redefining the objectives to preserve dynastic domains. 1598 marks a milestone in the history of Chile due to the death of the then governor and his host, which at the same time provoked a general crisis in several of the cities of the governorship. In that context, Ribera was appointed governor, because as an experienced soldier of the Royal Thirds he was the ideal man to put an end to the war. However, in 1605 he was displaced from his post by order of the king, due to the complaints and intrigues of various local factions linked to the interests of the viceroy of Peru. In those years, the bases of political management were still being defined. Their construction was not linear or vertical, but rather conflictive and complex, especially because of the confrontation between the same local elements who claimed their own “remedie” and proposals to govern and manage war. Therefore, when focusing on the agents (viceroy, governor, elites), together with a critical reading of a vast documentation (letters, memorials, relationships, instructions, chapter records, among others), it’s possible to understand how the the dynamics of power worked in a kingdom that the king sought to preserve and defend within the Catholic monarchy. Eventhough historians have often pointed out that these dominions were considered worthless, peripheral, poor and unattractive by contemporaries, the existing documents nuances that opinion and even denies it.

Between foundations, mystical visions, and apostolic expectations. María Magdalena de la Cruz, the Poor Clares of Macao, and the female construction of a global Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century Iberian Worlds

2025-12-10T08:57:33+00:00

This essay aims to explore the role that women, and in particular nuns, played in the Asian edges of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in shaping a sort of Iberian Catholicism. It examines the terms and conditions that defined their forms of religious life and their interactions with the social and cultural contexts in which they were integrated. Not only does it consider their ability to influence the public sphere through visions, writings, and devotions that ultimately contributed to strengthening religious identities and political ties between the territories of the Portuguese and the Spanish monarchies. It also raises questions about the missionary contexts that encompassed these women and the way in which they arranged their obligations of seclusion and prayer with mobility and a clear vocation to participate in the tasks of conversion. To this end, the research analyzes the life of the Poor Clare nun María Magdalena de la Cruz, who, in the 1620s, travelled from Seville to Manila, participating in the well-known expedition led by Jerónima de la Asunción. In 1633, she moved to Macao to establish a new monastery in this Portuguese city of Southern China, and, in 1644, spent some time in Cochinchina, where she was able to partially fulfil her apostolic expectations. Known for her visions, she recorded her contemplative experiences in an extended immaculist treatise entitled Floresta franciscana, which she composed under the auspices of her confessor.

Discourses on survival and the fight against religion transgression in the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos (Upper Peru, 1691-1720)

2025-12-10T08:57:43+00:00

The objective of this article is to analyze the discursive character of the phenomenon of religion transgression in the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos, contained in the letters annuities of the Jesuit province of Paraguay, during its first decades of existence (1691-1720), emphasizing the sin of idolatry and the rhetorical means necessary to confront the phenomenon of demonic influence. We consider that the analysis of this documentation at an early stage allows us to reconstruct some narratives concerning the process of indoctrination among the Indians of the Alto Peruvian frontier. We seek to explain the characteristics of an official rhetoric that formed a set of missionary knowledge and wisdom that legitimized the Jesuit project and that were closely in tune with the political dominion exercised by the Hispanic Monarchy in its overseas territories.

Social interactions and dynamics of daily life in the Gran Nayar: A look at the end of the 18th century through Captain Calleja’s report

2025-12-10T08:57:47+00:00

This article studies various aspects of daily life in the province of Gran Nayar at the end of the eighteenth century, focusing on the social interactions between the Cora Indians and the colonial authorities, particularly the missionaries and the military. The proposal that is developed adopts a sociocultural perspective to analyze local transformations through cultural manifestations and social relations. The methodology used is based on historical synthesis, which allowed the reconstruction of a general panorama from the analysis of the information provided by the primary sources reviewed. The results of the research show that relations between the indigenous people and the colonial authorities were marked by the abuse of power, which generated suffering, hunger and a decrease in economic activities such as mining and trade in the area. In addition, the deterioration of the religious and civil infrastructure was documented, as well as the depopulation of this area at the end of the 18th century.

Partitions and inventories of assets in 19th century Venezuela: an approach to the study of the legal framework. Canton of Petare. 1820-1899

2025-12-10T08:57:48+00:00

In the 19th century, the majority of the inhabitants of the canton of Petare and the regions under its administration, Baruta, El Hatillo, Guarenas, Guatire, dedicated themselves to the cultivation of coffee and sugar cane, and built an estate thanks to the exploitation of these items, which, after their death, was divided among their heirs. The objective of this work is to study these partitions that were registered between 1820 and 1899, which are preserved in the General Archive of the Nation, in Caracas, in a repository of notarial protocols organized under the name of the Registry Office of the First Circuit of the Sucre District of the State of Miranda, which includes precisely the localities of the former Petareño canton, to know the mechanics of the partition process and who was involved: the hereditary community on the one hand and the competent authority on the other. another, and establish how the first, interested in legitimizing the process, was related to the second, although it resorted to it from the beginning or after the partition was carried out. In this regard, the study seeks to specify when these were judicial efforts and when they were extrajudicial. Finally, it investigates the work of the notary public when appointing the experts responsible for preparing the inventory that is drawn up prior to the partition. For all these purposes, the study takes into account the legal regulations in force at the time, including the laws of Castile and the nineteenth-century national civil codes.