Siblings Overseas Foundational landscape, law, land distribution, and urban form in 16th-century Spanish colonial cities. Three cases of new towns in Jaen (Spain), Nueva Granada (Colombia) and Cuyo (Argentina)

Résumé

The PhD project Siblings Overseas aims to contribute to the global urban history of Hispanic grid cities, building connections between practices, morphologies, and ideas from both shores of the Atlantic Ocean. This line of research has its precedent in the previous work Granada Des-Granada, published in Colombia in 2018 (Ed. Uniandes), which offered a survey on Muslim medinas and the evolution of Christian grid cities between the 11th and 15th centuries. Siblings Overseas takes over where Granada Des-Granada ended and focuses on grid cities founded in Spanish domains during the early modern period. After the first fortified settlements in the American coastline were created, the 16th century brought diverse transformations to Spanish colonial new towns both in the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, and the American frontier. Urban laws and foundational acts gained relevance, shifting the main urban efforts in America from fortified positions in the early 1500s to open grid cities in the 1530s. Despite the ample literature studied this phenomenon in America, its presence in Europe and the Mediterranean has received less attention. Spanish archives conserve original 16th-century settlement books and logs of several cities founded in the Iberian south and the former Andalusian frontier, which have been studied and transcribed by local historians who signaled their familiarity with their American sisters. No comparative analysis has been developed in this sense, keeping these "Andalusian colonies" away from international historiography. The objective of this dissertation is to present an in-depth comparative study of European and American urban plantation protocols, focusing on unfortified new towns whose foundational processes evolved during the 16th century. The general hypothesis is that Spanish practices for the plantation of cities in Europe and America present a set of shared aspects based on their common frame of laws, institutions, agents, and beliefs. These elements were in constant evolution in both shores of the Atlantic due to their dynamic socio-political situation. Their similarities and differences have been studied and evidenced through the analysis of primary written sources, historical cartographies, and detailed foundational records. The urban grid is the most visible of these cities’ traits, even an archetypical one; but it did not operate by itself. The evidence presented in Siblings Overseas show that there was no pre-established model for all these new towns around the global Spanish Empire, but a shared set of urban protocols organically applied in diverse contexts. The leading case of study in this project is the foundational process of four new towns in Sierra Sur de Jaen (Andalusia), which took place between 1508 and 1539 and includes the settlements of Mancha Real, Valdepeñas de Jaén, Los Villares, and Campillo de Arenas. Sierra Sur was the main friction point between the kingdoms of Jaen and Granada during the last centuries of the Reconquista, making it a strategic territory for colonization after the Granada War (1582-92). Available primary sources are mainly written documents: instructions for founding agents, judicial processes, lawsuits over land rights, independence privileges, etc. Only one of the four foundational plans survives but is well conserved and show with precision the layout of streets and the distribution of urban parcels. American cases include two cities, both influenced by urban principles stated in the Indies Laws. This legal body reunites edicts from the earliest 16th century until its publication in 1681, each with its respective date and ordering king/queen. Its analysis shows how Laws enacted by monarchs like the Catholic Kings, Juana I, Charles V, and Philip II recommend the same principles and rules for America as those applied in Sierra Sur. However, official records and foundational plans of most early Spanish colonial settlements have not survived. The oldest partition plan conserved of an American foundation is the one of Mendoza, first Spanish city in the province of Cuyo (1561-2), originally under the jurisdiction of Capitanía General de Chile and later included in the Viceroyalty of La Plata (Argentina). Mendoza was founded in two acts, with plans and written records conserved for each of them at the Archivo General de Indias (Seville). The second American case is Villa de Leyva in the Kingdom of New Granada (Colombia), firstly planted in 1572 and then moved in 1582. The foundational acts conserved for this city are some of the oldest in Colombia and South America. Villa de Leyva depended on Tunja's jurisdiction, forty kilometers away, in the same manner that Sierra Sur's new towns were under the authority of Jaen.