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Manufacturing Landscapes in Spanish America: The Case Study of Copper Exploitation in Mexico (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)

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Mining, Money and Markets in the Early Modern Atlantic

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Abstract

Assuming that the cultural systems of colonisers and indigenous peoples were mutually interdependent, the paper discusses two ideas: (1) Syncretism, mutual adaptation and assimilation processes were integral parts of a transformative process of society and environment in colonial contexts; (2) European cultural patterns were not the only ones responsible for altering landscapes in colonial spaces. These theoretical assumptions will be submitted to empirical evidence by analysing the human and environmental impacts of indigenous-Spanish copper production on the cultural and natural landscapes of South-Central Michoacán, Mexico.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Such panels included: “The Power of the Commoners: Informal Agent-Based Networks as Source of Power in the First Global Age”, organised by Amélia Polónia, Social Science History Conference (Chicago 2010); “Beyond Empires: Self Organizing Cross Imperial Networks vs Institutional Empires, 1500–1800”, coordinated by Amélia Polónia and Cátia Antunes, European Social Science History Conference (Glasgow 2012); “Fighting Monopolies, Building Global Empires”, coordinated by Amélia Polónia and Cátia Antunes in conference on “Colonial (Mis)Understandings: Portugal and Europe in Global Perspective (1450–1900)” (Lisbon 2013). As for conferences, see, e.g., cooperation under the Premise of Imperialism, coordinated by Tanja Bührer, Flavio Eichmann and Stig Förster (Bern 2013).

  2. 2.

    “Why did indigenous actors engage in negotiations with imperial interlopers at all? To what extent did their interests overlap? Was a faithful and mutually beneficial relationship possible or could empires only produce contingent accommodations? How far did these cross-cultural interactions create imperial situations on the ground, and to what extent did pre-colonial cultures, socio-political and economic realities determine co-operative structures?”—those are specific questions raised by Bührer.

  3. 3.

    The latter understood, according to the proposition of Wayne E. Lee, as those forming part of “generations of experience with the local climate, terrain, and subsistence system” which “operated according to different cultural systems” (see Lee 2011, pp. 1–16).

  4. 4.

    This data is mentioned in a document of 1533 published by Warren (1968) with the name “Minas de Cobre de Michoacán”. The original is held at the AGI, INDIFERENTE, 1204. The document offers the testimony of Alonso de Escobar, corregidor of the town, appointed by the king, who says that the shipment had occurred two years before the hearings of 1533 and the quantity of copper shipped was the result of two years of native’s work.

  5. 5.

    Aparejo is a Spanish word that defines a set of certain things necessary to make something.

  6. 6.

    It is possible that this Rodrigo Martinez was the same Rodrigo Martín who was the captain of artillery in the fleet of Pánfilo de Narvaez and who was convinced by Cortés to join his forces before the conquest of Tenochtitlan (Díaz del Castillo 1862, p. 528). If he is the same person, then it is possible that he was the one in charge of making the artillery pieces that Cortés made with the copper and tin he found and bought from the natives of Tenochtitlan and Taxco in 1522 after the fall of the city.

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  1. CITCEM, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Amélia Polónia & Johan García Zaldúa

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  1. Amélia Polónia
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  1. Institute of History, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Renate Pieper

  2. Department of Economics, City, University of London, London, UK

    Claudia de Lozanne Jefferies

  3. Historisches Seminar Lehrstuhl für, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Markus Denzel

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Polónia, A., García Zaldúa, J. (2019). Manufacturing Landscapes in Spanish America: The Case Study of Copper Exploitation in Mexico (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries). In: Pieper, R., de Lozanne Jefferies, C., Denzel, M. (eds) Mining, Money and Markets in the Early Modern Atlantic. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23894-0_6

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