EARLY MODERN INFORMATION

COLLECTING AND KNOWING IN SPAIN AND ITS EMPIRE

Abstract

Historians of the Spanish empire have described it often as a political formation that was held together by chains of papers. If the Portuguese controlled sea routes, the English took possession of the land, and the French traded with natives, what Spaniards did best was to develop an efficient and powerful administration. This portrait, though presenting Spain as a highly exceptional case, was nonetheless based also on observing the larger developments brought about by the emergence and consolidation of European states. In this article, I question these premises and ask whether the impressive collections that were amassed during the early modern period indeed served to improve governance the way these narratives assumed. In the Spanish case, we have plenty of evidence that written petitions sent to the different imperial authorities were discussed. We also have some evidence that history-writing sometimes depended on archival documentation. But we still lack proof that documents were systematically consulted, that consulting them was a prerequisite for decision making, or that the information accumulated in the archives led to improved knowledge of the territory and its peoples.