Staggered Mobilities and the Construction of an Imperial Space:Caracas, 1715

This piece reconstructs the staggered mobility of two radically different people –a Navarrese soldier, provincial governor, and a Turkish enslaved woman in domestic service– whose life trajectories intersected in Caracas in 1715. It demonstrates that complex forms of mobility are not a recent development and that staggered mobility was a heterogeneous phenomenon that affected a diverse range of people in the early modern Spanish world. Engaging with the “new mobilities paradigm” and recent work on “ongoing” migrations, it demonstrates that experiences, knowledge and expectations accumulated through successive relocations contributed to the construction of diverse “imperial spaces” and to the specific characteristics that, in the case of early 18th-century Caracas, contributed to the failure of one of the first joint stock trading companies in the Spanish world

Introduction: Staggered Mobility in the Early-Modern Spanish World

Staggered mobility was everywhere in the early modern Spanish world. Yet, scholars have not systematically studied individuals whose lives were marked by repeated instances of relocation interspersed with more or less prolonged periods of residence in one place. Drawing on insights from recent studies of contemporary migration, the articles in this special section use longitudinal approaches to demonstrate how this kind of mobility contributed to the construction of imperial spaces, the implementation of reforms, the development of migration patterns and petitioning practices, and the governance of the Spanish Monarchy more generally. At the same time, they explore how individuals who practised staggered mobility interpreted and deployed their experiences at different points in their lives

The Spanish Monarchy and the Creation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717-1739):The Politics of Early Bourbon Reform in Spain and Spanish America

In The Spanish Monarchy and the Creation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717-1739), Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso analyzes the politics behind the most salient Bourbon reform introduced in Spanish America during the early eighteenth century. Readership: Scholars and students of colonial Spanish America, the Spanish Atlantic, and early modern Spain interested in both empire and colonialism and, furthermore, the development and administration of early modern, fiscal military states