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NEP’s Archive Chronicles: A Brief Guide Through Some Archives in Gaborone and Serowe, Botswana

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NEP’S Archive Chronicles explores the role archives play in historical research, offering insight into the process of conducting archival work and research. Each installment will offer a unique perspective on the treasures and challenges researchers encounter in archives around the world. NEP’s Archive Chronicles is intended to be both a practical guide and a space for reflection, showcasing contributors’ experiences with archival research. In this installment of NEP’s Archive Chronicles, “A Brief Guide Through Some Archives in Gaborone and Serowe, Botswana”, Gerardo Manrique de Lara Ruiz presents an overview of the main archives in Botswana where he has conducted research for his doctoral project.

Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, is a planned city. The Botswana National Archives and Records Services (BNARS) sits right in its center, next to the parliament buildings, the statue of Sir. Seretse Khama (the country’s first president), and the Main Mall (a strip of shops, restaurants, and banks.) The building is low-slung and beautifully decorated on the outside with metal sculptures. Its small size, central location, and function give it a special aura of tranquility and silence. In the middle of the day, when office workers leave the tall government buildings to eat their lunch, the archive’s small reading room keeps the researchers, students, and old men reading the paper safe from the commotion.

I have visited several archives in Botswana in past years as part of my pre-dissertation research on the practices and strategies of people under colonial rule. My research focuses on how people, from local rulers to marginalized communities, used new institutional frameworks like colonial courts and councils to advance political and economic claims. At first, I was looking for records that would speak to the relationships between politically active Batswana leaders and the colonial administration. As a foreigner, Botswana’s archives were initially a black box. Discovering access routes and figuring out the kinds of documents I needed became parge piece of the intellectual puzzle I was trying to solve. Slowly and with the help of many kind archivists, librarians, interns, and museum directors I have become more familiar with Botswana’s archival repositories.

Picture of Botswana Archives and records management centre contact page
Botswana Archives and records management centre. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The main archival repository of Botswana is the BNARS. While the nucleus of the archive is made up of colonial administrative papers and post-independence government files, its collections have been enriched oral histories, photographs, and audiovisual materials. The archives also host multiple collections of personal papers, including some of the field notes of anthropologist Isaac Schapera. Active during the colonial period, Schapera wrote monographs on almost all aspects of life in colonial Botswana, from law and land tenure to marriage and sexuality. Like many scholars before me, I have relied on his notes not only for their detailed descriptions but also to interrogate how anthropologists have shaped our understanding of the past and were themselves influential historical actors.

The reading room at the BNARS, with its ample seating and large wooden tables, is never empty but almost always has available space. A few researchers are usually joined by lawyers, journalists, and members of the general public who go to the archive to read various books and newspapers. The archivists, assisted by interns from the University of Botswana, often lead groups of schoolchildren that come to learn about the history of Botswana, and how the archives work to preserve it. These tours explain why the archive’s walls are decorated with reproductions of photographs and large-print texts about some of Botswana’s most dramatic episodes. One such events, and the favorite of most children, was the journey of three Batswana dikgosi (“chiefs”) to London in 1895 to oppose Cecil Rhodes’ plans to place the territory under his British South Africa Company. After hours of looking at nineteenth-century cursive written with thin pencil, the groups of children waving through the glass are a welcome distraction.

The capital city has other archives. The University of Botswana (UB) archives are located in the library basement. The university keeps a vast collection of theses on various subjects written by its students. Many of them have not been published in any form and are an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the history of Botswana. The UB archives also host multiple collections of personal papers. I have mostly consulted the papers of Tshekedi Khama, who was regent of the Bamangwato (one of the most important communities in Botswana) during the early 20th century. During his regency, he often took a combative attitude towards the administration and repeatedly denounced the colonial government. Famously, he also defended the right of African leaders to pass judgment and punish Europeans who lived within their communities.[1] His papers provide a crucial insight into the history of Botswana during the colonial period. Yet, the collection is not limited to the regent’s papers. It also contains documents from multiple members of the Khama family, which produced many of the country’s key colonial and postcolonial politicians, including it’s first and fourth presidents. The Tshekedi Khama papers contain not only administrative records, court cases, and official memoranda, but also correspondence between the members of the family. Personal objects, like music records and photographs, provide a window into the domestic realm of this influential family.

Picture of entrance to University of Botswana Library.
University of Botswana Library. Picture taken by the author.

However, the records of the Khama family are distributed in multiple repositories. North of Gaborone, in Serowe, the Khama III Memorial Museum has part of the regent’s papers.[2] Here the collections include local administrative records and correspondence, including letters sent to international organizations. Encountering this epistolary archive has reshaped my research. The letters between Tshekedi Khama and Douglas Buchanan, his lawyer, show the praxis of early anticolonial strategies, but also the emergence and transformation of a life-long friendship. Not all the letters in the collection, however, are directly related to the family. The museum, for instance, keeps the letters that Batswana soldiers wrote to their families back home during World War II. This epistolary record speaks not to high politics but to the domestic sphere and the personal experiences of everyday people.

The archive also houses the papers of Bessie Head, one of southern Africa’s most distinguished female writers. The museum has papers, manuscripts, and belongings of the author of When Rain Clouds Gather and Serowe: Village of the Rain-Wind. The Khama III Memorial Museum displays many personal items that belonged to the Khama family and Bessie Head, including a reconstruction of the author’s room. It is an ideal place to work. The archivists have a profound sense of responsibility for local history and pride in their collections. My conversations with them have been equally instructive and inspiring.

Picture of Khama III Memorial Museum
Khama III Memorial Museum, photo by the author.

Serowe is the capital of the Bamangwato and, during the early 20th century, was one of the largest settlements in Africa south of the equator. Gaborone and Serowe, two very different urban areas, have occupied a central position in the history of Botswana at different times. Bessie Head remarked in the 1980s that “Serowe is a historic village but not spectacularly so.”[3] The author meditated on its (relatively) recent foundation, its dynamism, and its willingness to change. For Head, Serowe was the opposite of a planned city since its construction “intimately involved its population.”[4]  The monuments were few, and “a visitor might stare at them blankly, unaware of the drama and high purpose behind those silent stones.”[5]  The museum and its archive, which now tells Head’s own story in Serowe, stands against the silence of the stones. It is insistently trying to make the visitor aware of the drama.

In a way, the differences between Gaborone and Serowe are translated into their respective archival repositories. In Serowe, the archives I consulted did not reflect the practices of colonial bureaucracy like in Gaborone, but a more spontaneous record-keeping that obeyed the needs of the community and of specific individuals, like Tshekedi Khama. Consequently, the BNARS and the Khama III Memorial Museum provide contrasting and complementing vantage points into the early 20th century. Even when describing the same actors and processes, local archives, like the Khama III Memorial Museum, capture a different register than their national and imperial counterparts. Being attuned to the logic behind the production of archival repositories can help us recreate a more complex, and hopefully better, picture of the colonial past.

Gerardo Manrique de Lara Ruiz a third-year PhD student of African History at Emory University. His research centers on the politics of colonial rule in the High Commission Territories of Southern Africa, specifically Botswana and Lesotho. His research examines how multiple actors understood and defended diverse notions of sovereignty, representation, and customary law. It also interrogates how these ideas informed and were themselves affected by local conflicts over political control and the distribution of scarce resources, like land and water.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

[1] For more on the life of Tshekedi Khama and this particular case, see Michael Crowder, The Flogging of Phinehas McIntosh: a Tale of Colonial Folly and Injustice: Bechuanaland 1933 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

[2] Some records related to the family are not in Botswana but in the United Kingdom.

[3] Bessie Head, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1981), xii.

[4] Head, Serowe, xii.

[5] Head, Serowe, xii.

NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Unexpected Archives. Exploring Student Notebooks at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Senegal

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NEP’S Archive Chronicles explores the role archives play in historical research, offering insight into the process of conducting archival work and research. Each installment will offer a unique perspective on the treasures and challenges researchers encounter in archives around the world. NEP’s Archive Chronicles is intended to be both a practical guide and a space for reflection, showcasing contributors’ experiences with archival research. In ‘Unexpected Archives’ Michaela Feinberg writes about the Cahiers William Ponty, a collection of school book assignments produced by students in the early 20th century, through which she studies dance and performance art in Senegal.

I arrived at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar, Senegal in December of 2023, six months into my dissertation research on the history of theater and dance in Senegal. My project explores theater and dance performance in Senegal under colonial rule and marks the ways that African artists creatively navigated and pushed the boundaries of a restrictive colonial system. I had spent my time in Senegal’s national archive tracing the development of dance and theater troupes in the 1950s and 60s. This line of inquiry brought me to an unexpected place – the École Normale William Ponty, which was a colonial all-boys school that educated a new African elite located in Sebikotane, Senegal. The school’s students would go on to become politicians, scholars, and artists; its alumni include Ivoirian president Félix Houphouet Boigny and renowned Guinean choreographer Keita Fodeba. Beginning in 1933, Ponty students began writing and performing plays that creatively rendered African histories and stories, combining dance, music, and dramaturgy. These early playwrights would coin a new genre of performance, théâtre africain d’expression française (African theater of French expression) whose influence would reach into the present.

The school was founded in 1903 in Senegal and aimed to prepare students for careers in colonial administration, teaching, or medicine. The school’s curriculum highlighted colonial anxieties about creating an elite class of Africans that was too alienated from their cultures to properly lead their communities and fulfill the colonial mission. To that end, Ponty students undertook assignmentsthat encouraged students to investigate their histories and cultures and discern values that could be developed in concert with the colonial project.

I visited IFAN to access one very specific collection in its library – the cahiers (or notebooks) that students produced each summer. When I began studying theater and dance, the last thing I expected to be doing was reading the summer assignments of the Ponty students. At the same time students began to write plays, they undertook a separate but (I suggest) interconnected assignment in the summer of their third year. As part of their final grade, they were asked to return home to their villages and produce cahiers (notebooks) on topics like cuisine, dreams, and music. These cahiers can be as long as 75 pages, all handwritten and beautifully illustrated. Students were clearly trained in ethnography and art and meticulously rendered images and descriptions of daily life. They were asked to be translators (often literally) of their cultures and experiences and make these things palatable and legible to their French instructors.

The library of IFAN holds hundreds of these cahiers in a discrete collection. The library collection doesn’t include other documents from the school which compelled me to spend all my time and energy into these assignments. When I arrived, I wasn’t sure if or how these cahiers would tie into my work on theater and dance. Was there a connection between the cahiers and the plays students were writing? What could I learn about dance and performance from these documents?

Picture of IFAN taken by the author
Picture of IFAN taken by the author

IFAN is located on Dakar’s scenic corniche in the Université Cheikh Anta Diop, just a 20 minute oceanside walk from my Fann Hock apartment. On its south facing wall is a large mural of renowned historian and politician Cheikh Anta Diop that looks as if it has been chiseled into the side of the building. The building houses three divisions – a library, the IFAN archive, and the audiovisual archive. I arrived there at a difficult moment – the university had been shut down for over a semester after political protests rocked the country in June 2023. Then-president Macky Sall had launched an increasingly desperate and violent bids for an unconstitutional third term, igniting protests throughout the country. IFAN was mostly empty when I arrived along with a colleague, and a sign on the library door read CLOSED in red marker. The archivist I met with initially was relieved we’d be in Dakar long term since receiving permission to access the archives could take weeks.

I wrote three letters each to the director of IFAN requesting access to each department and handed them in to the building’s mailroom when the director proved elusive. Unlike Senegal’s national archive which doesn’t require special permission, my letter had to make its way through IFAN’s bureaucracy before being approved and forwarded to myself and the archivists. Two weeks later, I received separate emails that put me in contact with archivists in each department and indicated I had permission to access the collections. 

When I arrived at the library on the ground floor of IFAN, I was the only researcher there. I met with the archivist who quickly revealed himself to be a dance enthusiast, and I had many conversations in the next few months about my research and the documents I was looking at. Like me, he was unsure of how exactly the cahiers would be relevant to my project but brought me a finding aid and pointed me towards the notebooks on art and music. After signing up for a library card, I was given a thick stack of papers that listed every cahier by student name. The number of topics that students wrote on was overwhelming. I quickly decided that trying to read a large volume of cahiers was unrealistic and chose a smaller subset to home in on. The prompts of “musical instruments,” “African literature,” and “indigenous arts” seemed the most promising.

Picture of one of the cahiers held in the Senegal national archive
One of the few cahiers held in Senegal’s national archive (Keita Modibo, “L’enfant Saraholle,” 1935-1936, Série O: Education, 556(31) Devoirs d’élèves de Ponty, Archives Nationales du Sénégal). Picture taken by the author.

The first cahier I requested was titled Instruments de musique by Baba Male, a student from Koutiala, Mali (then French Soudan). The notebook was covered in newspaper with World War II headlines: The Allied air offensive; Allied raids on Austria; The total occupation of Cassino is only a matter of hours away! On the title page was a full color drawing of a jaunty chasseur (hunter) performing a hunting dance with a rifle in hand. He has a cigarette in his mouth and a small smile as he looks out at the reader. His yellow pointed shoe is poised to step forward and his blue boubou flows around him. He is accompanied by three drummers (whose drums Male will go on to diagram later) and a group of women clapping along. The scene is saturated in purples, oranges, blues, and yellows. Throughout the notebook, Male meticulously diagrams each musical instrument, allowing me to return to this illustration and recognize each drum.

Photography is not allowed at all in the archive, so the process of transcribing these documents is long and often difficult. But it feels fitting, like an acknowledgement of the work that these students put into their assignments. Attending to every word, image, and subheading rather than simply photographing the whole document and moving on is meditative. That first day, I was so captivated by the image of the dancer that I made a (poor) sketch in my own notes in the hopes of capturing the sense of movement and directionality the student was able to create. I wanted to remember the sense of motion and emotion of the image and be able to describe it accurately in my writing. Deciphering the looped cursive (which often became difficult to read towards the end of the cahiers) made me acutely aware of how much time and effort had gone into this assignment.

Drawing made by author of a doodle in one of the cahiers

“Reading” dance in the archive is a challenging task, especially since colonial descriptions fall into racist tropes, describing “frenetic” and “primitive” movement and flattening and distinction between different dance techniques. Male’s illustration gives us a very different and much more detailed rendition. However, this kind of diagramming and categorization is also fraught. As I accessed the collection, I became hyperaware of how these cahiers could be an often-disturbing window into how young students were asked to strategically devalue their cultures. Male praises the colonial project and lauds the French for their investment in “progressing” African art. This kind of evolutionist rhetoric permeates these documents. I found that there was a constant tension between the care students demonstrated when diagramming their cultures and the formulaic regurgitation of colonialist thinking. What are the possibilities and limits of these assignments? What did it mean for these young people to stand at the junction of colonial and African society and act as mediators of information? Are these documents simply performances of colonial ideologies? I am still thinking through these questions as I write my dissertation, but ultimately, I don’t think so. I think that the cahiers are intimate and creative evidence of students grappling with their new roles in the colonial order.

What started as an experimental foray into the archives of the Ponty school in the end completely changed the trajectory of my dissertation project. I returned to IFAN in February of this year to continue my work with this collection. The university is no longer deserted, and the library is full of students and researchers. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of this archival collection. I hope that, by zooming into a small selection of cahiers, I can highlight the details and take seriously the ways that these students were proposing an enacting a new artistic practice, one that would reverberate for decades to come.

Michaela is a PhD candidate at Yale University. Her dissertation explores the politics of Senegalese dance and theater from the colonial period to independence. Her work synthesizes diverse archival sources, including plays, performance programs, and colonial administrative documents.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of For God and Liberty: Catholicism and Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1780-1861, by Pamela Voekel (Oxford University Press, 2022). 

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In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Iberian Peninsula, forcing King Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII to surrender their rights to the Spanish throne. While a brutal war ravaged the peninsula, various municipalities and corporate bodies throughout the Spanish Atlantic World formed juntas (councils) to govern in the absent monarch’s name. This episode opened an unprecedented period of political experimentation that culminated in the fragmentation of the empire and the emergence of new polities. Pamela Voekel’s latest book, For God and Liberty, challenges the notion that this period marked a triumph of secular political modernity. Instead, she reveals how these political transformations were deeply intertwined with broader historical forces. 

For God and Liberty chronicles the emergence of a religious divide among Catholics in the Spanish Atlantic World. It presents two contrasting factions: Reformist Catholics, who championed a more democratic model of church governance and advocated for a simpler, more austere Church, and Ultramontane Catholics, who fervently defended absolutism and upheld rigid secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies. Voelkel argues that individuals from both factions engaged in expansive intellectual networks, participating in what she terms a “transatlantic Catholic civil war” spanning from the late colonial period through to the post-independence era (1808-1861). She convincingly illustrates that the clashes between these groups stemmed from fundamentally different approaches to biblical exegesis and distinct interpretations of the Church’s early history.

book cover for For god and liberty

Focusing primarily on Mexico and Central America, Voekel carefully reconstructs the contours of this controversy in seven chapters organized chronologically. The first three chapters are dedicated to the period of imperial crisis. Chapter one examines the debate between Mérida’s Sanjuanistas and Rutinarios. The Sanjuanistas were a faction of the clergy that supported Bourbon initiatives aimed at strengthening a secular clergy under more direct control of the Crown. However, following the promulgation of the Cadiz Constitution in 1812, their positions became more radical, transitioning from autonomists to strong defenders of independence. Chapters two and three delve into the period of independence in Central America, illustrating the impact that religious arguments had on how the actors of that time understood politics. For instance, the Catholic reformist critique on luxury was later deployed by El Salvador’s indigo growing elite to argue from greater autonomy from Guatemala’s merchant guild. 

Chapter four through eight focus on post-independence Mexico and Central America. Voekel shows that during the first half of the nineteenth century, both liberal and conservative parties inherited the conflicts from the Catholic reformists and ultramontane Catholics steaming from the era of imperial crisis. However, the emphasis of the debate shifted from popular sovereignty to the extent of civil authorities’ control over ecclesiastical matters, such as the election of archbishops, public expressions of religiosity, and clerical celibacy. Notably, chapter eight contends that the Reforma period in nineteenth-century Mexico, often characterized as a time of radical secularism, was, in fact, a conflict among various factions of Catholics debating the appropriate relationship between the state and the church.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City, circa 1890
The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City, circa 1890. Source: Wikimedia Commons

One of the book’s most significant contributions is its reexamination of the role of religion in the history of the public sphere. By analyzing newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, and letters, Voekel illustrates how debates during the early phase of Mexican and Central American liberalism were deeply rooted in religious controversies. Participants in the public sphere, both layman and clergy, did not distinguish between electoral politics and religious discussions. Moreover, the author reveals that the parish church served as a vital conduit for the dissemination of political ideas long before the arrival of the printing press. This evidence enables Voekel to assert that religion was not confined to the private sphere but was, in fact, central to public discourse.

Although this book may not fit neatly into Atlantic history, it compellingly encourages moving beyond the national history framework that has largely influenced the study of Catholicism in Spanish America. For God and Liberty presents fascinating comparisons and highlights unexpected connections among the various participants in this transatlantic Catholic confrontation. For instance, the text illustrates how the arguments advanced by schismatic clerics in the province of Socorro in New Granada (present-day Colombia) for establishing an independent archbishopric and democratically electing their archbishop in 1810 served as a significant intellectual reference for reformist clergy in Salvador and Guatemala during the early years of independence. Similarly, Chapter Four transports the reader across the Atlantic to Rome, following the journey of Salvadoran envoy Victor Castrillo, who sought to negotiate the granting of a new “Patronato Regio” for the Republic of Central America with Pope Leo XIII. In doing so, the book effectively conveys the polycentric nature of these debates, steering clear of simplistic models that place Europe at the center of intellectual production.

Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII, 1878. Source: Wikimedia Commons

For God and Liberty is a timely and valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship that, over the past two decades, has integrated religion into the historiography of the Age of Revolutions, an area where Spanish America has received comparatively less attention. Voekel’s book presents a methodologically rigorous study that demonstrates a deep engagement with both English and Spanish-language authors. I would be interested to know whether dissenting voices existed within the reformist and ultramontane factions, given that historians of nineteenth-century Latin America have highlighted the diversity of political positions within the “liberal” and “conservative” parties. On the whole, however, I recommend this book to anyone interested in the revolutionary era, the history of Catholicism, and popular politics in Latin America. 

Juan Sebastián Macías Díaz earned a BA in History from the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and an MA in Latino/a and Latin American Studies from the University of Connecticut. Currently, he is a second-year PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include indigenous history and popular politics in the Northern Andes during the Age of Revolutions.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

“Muhammad’s Law” in Latin America: Outlining Historiographical Legacies of Early Modern Atlantic Islam

“Muhammad’s Law” in Latin America invites readers to explore Islam in the early modern Iberian Atlantic—a historiographical field examining the interconnected histories of Islam across the Atlantic world. It is rooted in the lived experiences of Muslims who crossed the ocean, the metaphorical uses of “Muslimness” in Iberian colonial thought, and the material and intellectual legacies of the Islamic world that shaped the Americas. The six foundational books discussed here seek to disrupt traditional narratives of Atlantic history and highlight Latin America as an active participant in global modernity, shaped by cultural exchange and intellectual collaboration.

This exploration is a deeply personal one. My fascination with the legacies of Al-Andalus and the Middle East—metaphors for an Islamic continuum linking Spain, the Maghreb, the Sahel, and the Levant—has profoundly shaped how I understand the Americas. This intellectual journey began with my first reading of Albert Hourani’s A History of the Arab Peoples, a book that sparked my passion in history. The possibility of connecting the stories of Islam to Latin America captivates me, as it reframes the region as a global crucible for understanding modernity.

Al-Andalus, with its imperfect but real interreligious coexistence, continues to challenge us to rethink Latin America’s colonial history—not only as a story of vertical oppression but also as one marked by the incorporation of cultural difference, often through contested processes. These Muslim legacies, often referred to as alborotados (noisy and persistent), remain subtly yet powerfully visible in ways we often overlook. They complicate our understanding of the complex interplay between Christianity, native cultures, and the specters of Islam in the Americas. The following books, central to my comprehensive exams and my master’s thesis, The Alborotado Caribbean: Archiving Rowdy Gentes and Specters of Islam in the Long 16th Century, have helped me unravel these connections and reveal a more complex and interconnected Atlantic world.

African Muslims and the Atlantic World: Sylviane A. Diouf and Michael A. Gomez

Together, Sylviane Diouf’s Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (1998) and Michael A. Gomez’s Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (2005) provide a comprehensive exploration of the role of African Muslims (mainly Wolof, Mandinka, and Fulbe) in shaping the Atlantic world. Diouf’s work emphasizes the resilience of Islamic faith and practices among enslaved Africans, while Gomez extends the discussion to encompass the broader social and cultural legacies of African Muslims across the Americas.

Diouf’s study highlights the enduring presence of Islam in West Africa, particularly in Senegambia, and how it influenced the identities of enslaved Muslims who crossed the Atlantic. Her meticulous analysis of primary sources, such as colonial decrees and inquisitorial records, reveals how African Muslims preserved their faith through practices including the use of protective talismans, dietary restrictions, and acts of resistance, such as the 1522 Wolof rebellion in Hispaniola (Enriquillo’s revolt). Diouf positions Islam not merely as a religion but as a framework for resilience and cultural survival in the face of dehumanizing conditions.

Gomez builds on this foundation by situating the experiences of African Muslims within a broader historiographical context, incorporating both Latin America and the United States. The narrative spans from West Africa to the Americas, examining how Islamic traditions adapted to different colonial contexts. For instance, Gomez explores how African deity names containing the particle Allah such as Ọbatala, the presence of Marabouts (Sufi holy people) and the practice of Taqiyya (religious dissimulation) facilitated the survival of Islamic practices in the early colonial Americas. He also delves into the intersections between African Islamic traditions and syncretic religions in the Americas, such as Lukumi in Cuba.

Both authors underscore the significance of African Muslims in shaping the cultural and religious landscapes of the Atlantic world, but they also diverge in their emphases. Diouf focuses on cultural retention and the religious practices of enslaved Muslims, while Gomez extends the discussion to the legacies of these practices, particularly in North America. Together, these works correct a long-standing historiographical neglect by emphasizing the centrality of African Muslims to the history of the Atlantic world. They reveal how Islamic traditions, both as faith and cultural practice, shaped the identities, resistance practices, and legacies of enslaved Africans and their descendants across the Americas.

Dialogues Between Symbolic and Material Legacies: Barbara Fuchs and Judith Carney

Barbara Fuchs’ Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (2001) and Judith Carney’s Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (2001) approach the legacies of Muslim cultures in the Atlantic world through distinct yet complementary lenses. Fuchs examines how symbolic anxieties about Islam shaped Spanish colonial ideology, while Carney focuses on the environmental and agricultural transformations that were driven by the knowledge and practices of African Muslims. Together, these works demonstrate how the material and symbolic practices descended from Muslim people endured and adapted in the Americas, persisting despite colonial efforts at erasure and invisibilization.

Fuchs focuses on the literary and ideological constructions of “Muslimness” in Spanish colonial thought, showing how Spain’s long history of conflict with Islam informed its treatment of indigenous peoples and other non-Christian groups in the Americas. Her analysis reveals how anxieties about Islam—rooted in centuries of confrontation with Muslim powers in Iberia and North Africa—were projected onto the New World. Drawing on literary works such as Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana and Lope de Vega’s La Dragontea, Fuchs illustrates how Spanish authors used the figure of the Muslim in the Indies to articulate fears about rebellion, idolatry, and cultural otherness. For example, Ercilla’s portrayal of the indigenous Mapuche in La Araucana draws on tropes of Muslim resistance, likening indigenous leaders to Morisco rebels. Similarly, Lope de Vega conflates Protestant and Muslim enemies in La Dragontea by portraying Francis Drake and his crew as “Dracárabes” (Drake-Arabs). These representations reveal how Spanish anxieties about Islam shaped their perceptions of all non-Catholic groups, blurring the lines between religious, cultural, and political adversaries. Fuchs’ reliance on literary sources underscores how deeply embedded these anxieties were in Spanish intellectual and cultural production and demonstrates how the symbolic legacies of Muslimness were instrumental in shaping colonial narratives of conquest and suppression.

In contrast, Carney’s Black Rice foregrounds the material and environmental impact of African Muslims, particularly through their agricultural knowledge and practices. Carney highlights how enslaved Africans from Muslim regions of West Africa, especially Senegambia, brought sophisticated expertise in rice cultivation that transformed the landscapes and economies of the Americas. The rice of Senegambia was a clear expression of the Old-World interconnectedness provided by the Islamic world, from East Asia to West Africa. We cannot think about the typical Caribbean diet nowadays without considering the importance of this rice agricultural knowledge brought by Senegambians. The cultivation of rice, a crop long associated with Islamic agricultural traditions, became central to the economies of South Carolina, the maroon communities of Brazil, and other Atlantic regions. By adapting their agrarian knowledge to new environments, these enslaved peoples ensured both economic viability and cultural continuity. Carney’s work challenges Eurocentric narratives of the Columbian Exchange by revealing the critical role African Muslims played in shaping agricultural landscapes, effectively redefining the Americas as spaces marked by their contributions to environmental knowledge.

While Fuchs reveals how Spain’s anxieties about Muslims were projected onto indigenous peoples and other colonial subjects, Carney demonstrates how African Muslim agricultural expertise reshaped the ecological and economic foundations of the Atlantic world. Together, these works highlight the dual dimensions of Muslim cultural legacies—symbolic and material—and how they endured even in the presence of colonial systems that sought to suppress them. By placing Fuchs and Carney in dialogue, we see a fuller picture of how Muslim-descended peoples and traditions intersected with colonial life. Whether through literary anxieties about rebellion and heresy or the cultivation of rice fields that sustained enslaved communities, these legacies remind us of the profound ways the Islamic civilization influenced the Americas.

Muslim Identities in Individual Flux and Collective Stasis: Karoline Cook and Karen Graubart

Karoline Cook’s Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America (2016) and Karen Graubart’s Republics of Difference: Religious and Racial Self-Governance in the Spanish Atlantic World (2022) offer two different but complimentary perspectives for understanding the dynamics of Early Modern Atlantic Islam. Cook emphasizes the forbidden mobility of individuals marked by “Muslimness” (Turks, Arabs, Berbers, Moriscos, and West Africans), while Graubart focuses on the stasis and semi-autonomy of disenfranchised communities (Jews, Moors, Indians, Africans) within the framework of the Spanish Empire. Together, these works illuminate how both individuals and institutions navigated and reinvented the imperial Atlantic, showcasing microhistories of personal adaptation alongside broader histories of collective self-governance.

Cook’s exploration centers on the movement of Moriscos and other Muslim-marked individuals within the Spanish Empire, particularly their migration to the Americas despite legal prohibitions. Her work uncovers how individuals circumvented colonial restrictions, forging paths that challenged the rigidity of imperial legislation. Through inquisitorial records mainly from Mexico, Cook reveals the liminal spaces these individuals occupied, adapting between Muslim and Christian identities while carrying memories of their prayers in Arabic and material markers of faith, such as talismans and amulets. This “forbidden mobility” underscores the agency of individuals navigating the Atlantic system, even as their movements were surveilled and constrained. Cook’s narrative highlights how the specter of Muslimness shaped the legal, social, and rhetorical frameworks of the empire, with Moriscos often cast as symbols of contamination or rebellion—anxieties that were projected onto indigenous uprisings in the Americas.

Graubart, in contrast, shifts the focus from individuals to communities, examining how disenfranchised groups used the institutional framework of the república to assert forms of self-governance and negotiate their place within the imperial system. By analyzing urban spaces and corporations in Seville and Lima, like alhamas (Moorish communities), cofradias de negros (Black brotherhoods), and Indigenous pueblos, Graubart demonstrates how the Spanish Empire operated as a constellation of overlapping jurisdictions, where legal pluralism allowed for a limited collective autonomy (working as republics). Her use of GIS mapping to study the spatial organization of these communities reveals how they adapted imperial institutions to maintain cultural and religious identities while asserting their collective needs. This framework of collective semi-autonomy contrasts with Cook’s focus on individuals facing persecution or concealing their Muslim identity, highlighting two distinct ways marginalized populations engaged with the empire: through individual strategies of evasion or dissimulation, or by collectively adapting to imperial institutions to assert their communal presence.

By placing these works in dialogue, we see two sides of the same coin: the tension between mobility and stasis of identities within a proto-racial Atlantic world. Cook’s focus on individual trajectories reveals the fluidity and adaptability of particular identities, even in the face of systemic religious oppression. Meanwhile, Graubart’s analysis of micro-corporations highlights the endurance and reinvention of communal structures that facilitated collective action and cultural resilience. Both perspectives underscore how both institutions like the república and individuals traveled and transformed across the Atlantic, shaping the imperial world in reciprocal ways. The broader implication of this dialogue is a realization that the Atlantic world was not a monolithic system but a dynamic space of (re)invention of human difference. Institutions such as alhamas and cabildos evolved as they crossed the Atlantic, just as individuals like Moriscos navigated their roles within shifting social and legal frameworks. Cook’s microhistories and Graubart’s community-focused lens converge to show how Muslimness, both as a lived experience and a conceptual spectral category, was central to the development of the Spanish Atlantic world. Together, they offer a nuanced understanding of Early Modern Atlantic Islam, revealing how people and institutions alike negotiated the complexities of empire.

Final thoughts

Single-volume Qur’an. Ink, color, and gold on paper.
Ottoman single-volume Qur’an (1517). Source: Wikimedia Commons

The field of Early Modern Atlantic Islam opens a window into the complicated and interconnected histories of the Atlantic world. The works examined in this article collectively reveal how Islam shaped this world across multiple dimensions: through the resilience of African Muslims in the Americas, the metaphorical frameworks of “Muslimness” in Iberian colonial thought, and the tangible legacies of Islamic cultural, technological, and intellectual practices. Despite these contributions, there is much work to be done.

These six books disrupt conventional narratives of the Atlantic world as a space defined solely by European dominance. Instead, they reframe it as a region shaped by cultural intersections, shared histories, and dynamic reinventions of identity that go beyond the histories of a top-down successful Catholic spiritual conquest. They challenge us to recognize the complexities of Latin American colonial history, not merely as a story of exploitation and racialization but as one marked by contested incorporation by conversion or mestizaje, and transformation of difference—whether cultural, religious, or institutional. By tracing these legacies, we uncover shared histories that transcend cultural and geographical boundaries. From the rice fields of Senegambia to the “republican” institutions of Lima, these stories illuminate the interconnectedness of the Atlantic world and challenge us to rethink the narratives we take for granted. In doing so, we can see Latin American history was profoundly influenced by the specters and experiences of Atlantic Islam.

Additional Recommended Readings

  • Deardorff, Max. A Tale of Two Granadas: Custom, Community, and Citizenship in the Spanish Empire, 1568–1668. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
  • Gruzinski, Serge. ¿Qué hora es allá? América y el Islam en los albores de la modernidad. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015.
  • Hamann, Byron Ellsworth. Bad Christians, New Spains: Muslims, Catholics, and Native Americans in a Mediterratlantic World. London: Routledge, 2019.
  • Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
  • Rappaport, Joanne. The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Granada. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
  • Reis, João José. The Story of Rufino: Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
  • Schwartz, Stuart B. Blood and boundaries: the limits of religious and racial exclusion in early modern Latin America. Waltham: Brandeis University Press. 2020.

Acknowledgment
This reflection first began to take shape during the seminar “Islam in Europe and America” taught by Dr. Denise Spellberg, to whom I am deeply grateful for her generosity and encouragement to further explore these understudied and often overlooked connections. Dr. Spellberg has herself had the fascinating opportunity to examine some of these connections, particularly in relation to the United States, in her book Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders (2013)—a work that also contributes to broader efforts to understand the complex histories of Atlantic Islam.

Rafael David Nieto-Bello is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at The University of Texas at Austin and a historian from Bogotá, with a double bachelor’s in History and Political Science from Universidad de los Andes and a master’s degree in History from UT Austin. His research examines the intersections of the history of human sciences, race, religion, and the environment in the colonial Caribbean and the Atlantic world. He is currently writing his dissertation and working on digital humanities projects that analyze cartographic and textual representations of the colonial Caribbean.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of Empire of Poverty. The Moral-Political Economy of the Spanish Empire, by Julia McClure (2025). 

In Empire of Poverty, Julia McClure presents an innovative approach to the study of the Spanish Empire. The book analyzes how poverty was conceived in the early years of the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and how it was transformed as attitudes towards the poor were changed by a series of economic, political, religious and social factors. Julia McClure argues that the transition to colonial capitalism in the sixteenth century modified previous attitudes towards poverty and modelled a new approach that shaped the very same institutions of empire.  

The most innovative aspect of this work is the analysis of this ideological change. Rather than emphasizing the material aspects of poverty during the transition to capitalism, as previous Marxist analysis have done (in the case of Europe see: Karls Marx’s Capital and Catherina Lys and Hugo Solis’ Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe), McClure analyzes how the moral-political concepts of empire-building changed and intertwined with social, political and economic factors, eventually influencing the governing models of imperial institutions. As the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World and amassed wealth and riches, new theories of monetary value emerged. These theories were accompanied by framing notions of indigenous people as impoverished and ‘‘uncivilized’’, which were constructed to justify Spanish colonization and the subsequent subjugation of these communities. This also explained the emergence of new theories of sovereignty. 

Debates regarding the natural rights of Indigenous people and their role in colonial society as well as discussions led by scholars of the School of Salamanca followed the scholastic tradition but also inspired new models of governance. McClure demonstrates how poverty was used as an instrument for the control and subjugation of Indigenous people in the Americas. She identifies this period as the genesis of what she calls ‘‘colonial capitalism’’, marked by the emergence of moral-political values that helped shape new theories of empire and expand sovereignty claims over additional individuals and territories.  

Picture of University of Salamanca
University of Salamanca. Source: Wikimedia Commoms

Taking a first look at the Iberian Peninsula, the book first delves with the Spanish arbitristas, intellectuals who wrote treatises to the King on the social, political and economic state of the kingdom. It analyzes the impact the New World wealth had in Spanish society at the time, rejecting previous analysis that regarded Spain as an impoverished kingdom. McClure argues that it was the sudden flow of wealth and riches from the New World that helped construct this idea of decline and poverty at home, with the arbitristas being the first to introduce and articulate this concept.  

The book then takes the reader to America to first analyze the economies of pre-Columbian societies such as the Maya, Inca or Aztec. McClure argues that these indigenous political entities had their own mechanisms to face poverty and scarcity. She defines these economic systems as ‘‘moral ecologies’’, characterized by their interactions with their surrounding environment and resources. These systems developed their own mechanisms to reduce poverty and scarcity at times of risk, whether that be it as a result of a natural disaster or harvest failure (pp.54-67). Despite the existence of these mechanisms, the author shows how Spanish officials and intellectuals constructed Indigenous people as poor, and began classifying them in different social ranges, often denoting their economic status and racial features. This only mirrored the developments that were happening at the same time in the Iberian Peninsula.  

Picture of Codex Mendoza folio 64r. The top two lines of the page on display here depict the training of a priest (which involved public works such as the repair of temples and bridges). The remaining images feature warriors, and illustrate the importance of war captives in the acquisition of social rank.
Codex Mendoza folio 64r. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Focusing again in Europe, McClure stresses the importance of the new theories of state and government that were emerging at the time. She defines them as contractual and collaborative in nature, emphasizing the negotiated relationship between vassals and rulers, despite the increasing power of European monarchs. These new theories of state –often embedded within the ‘mirror for princes’ literature– actively supported the provision of the poor and the existence of welfare systems as the monarch was regarded as the main benefactor and provider of the poor and those in need. As a result, intellectuals from the School of Salamanca legitimized the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and with it, the emergence of colonial capitalism. Their theories of sovereignty and government framed the King as the main supporter and provider of welfare and charity in the kingdom, stressing the contractual nature of this negotiated sovereignty.  

At the same time, attitudes towards poverty shifted. These shifts in approaches to poverty and poor relief formed part of a wider trend in Europe where the poor began to be increasingly policed and controlled by government institutions. Treaties such as Juan Luis Vives’ De Subventione Pauperum (1530) or Miguel de Giginta’s Tratado de remedio de pobres (1579) offered new solutions to relief poverty and advocated for a tighter control toward vagrancy. New classifications emerged between deserving and undeserving poor, which further widened the gap between legal and illegal forms of poverty. Moreover, the issue of new poor laws during the reigns of Charles V (1516-1556) and Philip II (1556-1598) meant the further criminalization of poverty, and an acceleration in state-controlled legislation (p.126). 

Additionally, the construction of poverty toward Indigenous people often meant their appropriation of their land and labor, which helped further cement the colonial project. McClure analyzes the various forms of labor appropriation and exploitation, including the encomienda system, the repartimiento, and the capture of individuals in combat through just war rhetoric (pp.138-142). In addition, as a result of the creation of novel forms of debt and tributary legislation, new forms of poverty emerged that widely affected Indigenous communities. The appropriation of lands and the legal mechanisms used to claim ‘empty’ lands or legalized already occupied ones, formed a model that ultimately favored Spanish colonists (p.164).  

At the same time, the categorization of Indigenous people as ‘‘childish’’ and in need of protection helped Spanish officials to implement further governing structures in the Americas, strengthening the visualization of the Spanish Monarchs as the benefactors of these communities. The Crown exploited this discourse to build around its institution the myth of protector of the Indians and dispenser of justice. Yet, McClure also shows that Indigenous people navigated through the intricate system of Spanish colonial law, and often sought rewards and compensation for their miseries and poverty. This bottom-up system of petitions, rewards, and amparos also shaped the imperial institutions of the Spanish empire in the New World, and created a precedent for a passive resistance and cemented the survival of pre-conquest privileges and rights among Indigenous people and communities (pp.172-173). 

In conclusion, Empire of Poverty shows how moral and political concepts of poverty influenced the governing institutions of the Spanish empire while also laying the foundations for the modern unequal systems that affect the exact same societies that were first colonized in the sixteenth century. Simultaneously, the monograph shifts attention from the Anglophone historiographical tradition that has usually overemphasized the Protestant models to study poverty and charity (highly influenced by Weber’s thesis on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) to explain early modern attitudes towards poverty. This offers a new paradigm to explain the role and impact of Catholicism in poor relief and poverty management.  

As a result, McClure concludes that scholars and officials of the Spanish Empire ‘reinvented poverty’ to legitimize their expansion of sovereignty in these new territories. In doing so, they created new forms of poverty through alien systems of labor extraction, tribute collection, and land appropriation. Despite this, the negotiated and participative nature of the Spanish empire also enabled its vassals to negotiate and even lobby for their own interests. At times, this led to the preservation of their rights and status, or the obtaining of rewards, in the newly created colonial society, evidencing the participatory and contractual nature of this system of rule and government. Finally, McClure stresses how the colonial capitalist model that developed over the sixteenth century paved the way for modern inequalities that continue in these territories, often shaping Indigenous ways of life and survival. 

Jorge García-García is a first-year PhD History student at the University of Texas-Austin. He studied History as an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom), obtaining a MA with Honors of the First Class. He then studied a postgraduate degree in World History at the Pompeu Fabra University (Spain). His research focuses on Colonial Latin America and the Spanish Empire.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Pensar el archivo hasta no ver. Ceguera y redes afectivas

NEP’S Archive Chronicles explora el papel que desempeñan los archivos en la investigación histórica, ofreciendo una visión del proceso de trabajo e investigación archivística. Cada entrega ofrecerá una perspectiva única de los tesoros y retos que los investigadores encuentran en los archivos de todo el mundo. Crónicas de archivo de NEP pretende ser tanto una guía práctica como un espacio para la reflexión, mostrando las experiencias de los colaboradores con la investigación archivística. En esta entrega de las NEP’s Archive Chronicles, publicada en inglés y español, Juan David Osorio Vargas piensa el el archivo hasta no ver, así como la ceguera y las redes afectivas

Note: Click here to access the English version.
Nota: Haz click aquí para acceder a la versión en inglés.

Jacques Derrida nos dice que existen, fundamentalmente, dos tipos de experiencias que son muy diferentes entre sí.[1] Una de ellas se establece en el presente y se refiere a aquello que podemos neutralizar con nuestros ojos. En este caso, una de las funciones del ojo es ver venir, anticiparse ante lo desconocido o ante la presencia de lo otro. Esta constituye una de las dos experiencias posibles. La otra, que quiero profundizar a continuación, es la experiencia de la ceguera. Es aquella que traza un viaje inesperado, imprevisible y abierto hacia la heterogeneidad de lo otro, ese otro que está allí para sorprendernos. Se trata, precisamente, de un viaje no programable, una cartografía de lo indeterminado, carente de finalidad. Es la experiencia del presente que nos remite a la incertidumbre de un evento histórico.

Como historiador ciego, estoy convencido de que las formas de conocimiento organizadas por otros sentidos son valiosas en sí mismas. La pregunta de si el historiador ciego puede acceder a los materiales del mundo visual tiene una respuesta afirmativa. Podemos trazar un lenguaje con estas características si ampliamos significativamente el alcance democratizador del archivo, así como las preguntas que lo rodean, mediante tecnologías de compensación que aseguren que la traducción de un registro a otro no pierda su estatus de legitimidad.

Quien se enfrenta al archivo atraviesa la experiencia de la ceguera. No todos los historiadores tienen ojos para ver venir por adelantado. El archivo nos enseña que, cada vez que entramos en él, se torna más incontenible y ajeno. Si partimos del segundo concepto de experiencia, podemos percatarnos que el archivo es un viaje sin horizonte aparente, con vista a lo que no está a la vista, una idea que se aproxima profundamente a la práctica del historiador.

El archivo es la experiencia de la ceguera porque no podemos anticiparlo. No sabemos con qué nos sorprenderá ni a través de qué nueva tecnología o pregunta nos responderá.  Mucho se ha hablado del silencio de los archivos y de las borraduras que contiene, pero poco se ha reflexionado sobre la cualidad de la ceguera que habita en ellos y sobre la relación que establece con la visibilidad.

El verano pasado, mientras realizaba investigación de archivo en Colombia y Panamá, me encontré con esta realidad: no bastaba con ser ciego y vivir la doble experiencia de la ceguera para enfrentar el archivo, pues el habla también implica, estructuralmente, la no visión. Y es el habla mi primer acercamiento al archivo. Pareciera que aquellas voces familiares, que no se ven, son la realidad inmediata de su presencia. Percibo palabras que pueden   interesarme. Hago una pregunta y me encuentro con el silencio. El archivo, otra vez, está mudo. Mi mamá se esfuerza por encontrar la palabra que busco en un documento que se está haciendo polvo, pero ella tampoco la ve. Nos quedamos a tientas. Estamos ciegos.

Reflexionaba sobre como esa materialidad podía actuar y hablarme para que yo pudiera interrogarla con mis indicios e intuiciones. Percibí el archivo como ese dispositivo irremediable que debemos transitar para llegar a algún lugar del pasado o del conocimiento histórico, de una manera similar a como concibo el bastón que, día a día, me permite tantear los espacios aún desconocidos que atravieso al caminar. La naturaleza de esta experiencia es la aprehensión: esa propiedad que habilita el desplazamiento entre la voz y el archivo, análoga al espaciamiento de la relación coordinada entre la mano y el bastón.

Considero que las múltiples mediaciones que permiten acceder al archivo son tecnologías que ayudan a comprender aquello que se revela. Representan una suerte de antropología muy antigua de la captura del mundo, cuya función es la de reducir la complejidad o familiarizar lo desconocido. Estas formas descargan el extrañamiento que produce la distancia temporal y la imposibilidad de leer un testimonio del pasado a través de la biología misma de los ojos. Estas tecnologías múltiples deben ser entendidas como partes constitutivas de las redes de lectura, interpretación y trabajo que ejecutan la práctica del historiador: voces que comunican sus trazos, grafos y huellas. Permitamos, entonces, que las tecnologías que circundan al archivo también hablen, rodeándolo críticamente. Son esas voces -como la de mi madre, mi padre y amigos- las que intentan hacer hablar al archivo en una red compleja de pregunta, respuesta e interpretación; un círculo hermenéutico que refuerza creativamente esta experiencia del no ver.

Más que cualquier técnica contemporánea relativa a la digitalización masiva o a la utilización de la inteligencia artificial, es la proximidad de la voz lo que pone en presencia al archivo y lo acerca a la vida tanto de quien lee como de quien escucha. La ausencia de estas mediaciones es palpable y dramáticamente evidente en nuestra arquitectura archivística. La hegemonía de la visualidad parece gobernar la práctica del historiador, reforzando de manera positiva los hechos del pasado: lo que se lee es lo que es, y lo que registra el archivo se percibe como verdad.

Para quienes no vemos, sabemos que el archivo aparece desde el momento en que se accede a cualquier institución que custodia materiales y lleva su nombre. El archivo es todo este circuito material que lo sostiene. Su inaccesibilidad es un testimonio tangible de un tiempo pasado, con sus escaleras diseñadas para ciertos cuerpos, con ubicaciones en lugares que filtran ruido, y su ambiente predominantemente visual, desde el catálogo hasta el material de consulta, en su mayoría ilegibles para quienes no están inmersos en la lógica visual.

El archivo se inspira en las afecciones que lo hacen decir algo tras la experiencia imprevisible de la ceguera. De ahí que prescindir de los ojos no impide interrogarlo y hacerlo visible. Recuperando a Derrida, esta experiencia se presenta como una paradoja de la mirada, donde emerge un desacuerdo radical. Derrida nos invita a pensar en la elección que hacemos al mirarnos al espejo: debemos elegir entre mirar el color de nuestros ojos o mirar el influjo de la mirada que vemos. Parece que el archivo nos invita a reflexionar sobre esta paradoja. Podemos limitarnos a ver lo que nos dice o trazar el influjo de su mirada para interrogarlo y juzgarlo críticamente a través de la perspectiva. En cualquiera de estas alternativas no hace falta empezar con los ojos. El archivo nos aparece desde el comienzo en completa oscuridad; solo después emerge la mirada, con toda la potencialidad del encuadre.

La paradoja de este proceso radica en que la mirada que usamos para examinar el archivo necesita, desde el principio, un punto ciego. Aquello que iluminamos debe estar rodeado de una zona de ceguera, un borde que excluye lo inteligible del resto. Esta zona de indeterminación es el desafío que enfrenta la perspectiva: la visión de la mirada que, al enmarcar, selecciona.

Lo interesante es que no se necesitan ojos para complicar y hacer hablar al archivo: la mirada es el punto de vista de la selección, un régimen sensible que organiza la relación entre el ver y el no ver, o, dicho de otro modo, la teoría que ilumina las zonas de ceguera del pasado histórico.

La historia intelectual nos ha mostrado que el pensamiento se ha construido en torno a la metáfora de la visión.[2] Estamos permeados por su carga semántica y translaticia. Lo que yo propongo, siguiendo a Derrida, es pensar en el no ver, y creo que el archivo nos permite explorar esta singularidad. La ceguera plantea un conjunto de preguntas sobre la indeterminación de la historia. Son aquellos caminos de investigación que debemos emprender sin una carta de navegación. Por eso, la brújula de nuestra configuración antropológica nos impulsa a valorar la naturaleza de la pregunta y la respuesta tentativa.

Considero que emplear la ceguera como metáfora metodológica del archivo no solo tiene implicaciones interpretativas, sino que anima una agenda de investigación que puede ser fructífera para los estudiosos del archivo. En primer lugar, nos muestra las posibilidades sensoriales de los materiales del pasado, en una suerte de interdependencia de los sentidos como formas de conocimiento: tacto, visión, escucha, olfato; en segundo lugar, nos amplía la noción de accesibilidad y los públicos destinatarios del mismo, de acuerdo a una perspectiva democratizadora; y en tercer lugar, nos permite abordar las opacidades del archivo a través de una lectura enriquecida, planteando  preguntas a tientas,  respuestas provisionales, e interpretaciones nuevas.

Para cualquier desciframiento del archivo debemos enfrentarnos a la paradoja de la visión y la ceguera. Precisamente, el desafío al ocularcentrismo radica en esta paradoja: vemos sin mirar, y miramos seleccionando. Lo que propongo aquí es asumir el archivo como una experiencia de ceguera. Cubrámonos los ojos para recibirlo como un evento desconocido y singular, algo que no puede anticiparse ni percibirse por adelantado. Dejemos que la experiencia de la ceguera nos brinde la posibilidad de abordar el archivo en toda su complejidad, interrogándolo con todos los sentidos a nuestra disposición. Veámoslo desde el principio como un evento impredecible, imposible de agotar de una vez y para siempre.

Juan David Osorio Vargas es politólogo e historiador. Cursa una maestría en Estudios Latinoamericanos en UT Austin. Sus intereses de investigación incluyen las historias intelectuales de América Latina, las historias de la discapacidad y la política del cuerpo.

Los puntos de vista y opiniones expresados en este artículo o vídeo son los de su autor o presentador y no reflejan necesariamente la política o los puntos de vista de los editores de Not Even Past, el Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Texas, la Universidad de Texas en Austin o la Junta de Regentes del Sistema de la Universidad de Texas. Not Even Past es una revista de historia pública en línea y no una revista académica revisada por pares. Aunque nos esforzamos por garantizar que la información de los artículos procede de fuentes fidedignas, Not Even Past no se hace responsable de errores u omisiones.

[1] Jacques Derrida, Thinking out of Sight. Writings on the Arts of Visible. The university Chicago Press, 2021, 35-36.

[2] Martin Hay, Downcast eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century Thought French. University of California Press, 1993, 33.  

NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Archives & Blindness

Banner for NEP's Archive Chronicles: Archives & Blindness

NEP’S Archive Chronicles explores the role archives play in historical research, offering insight into the process of conducting archival work and research. Each installment will offer a unique perspective on the treasures and challenges researchers encounter in archives around the world. NEP’s Archive Chronicles is intended to be both a practical guide and a space for reflection, showcasing contributors’ experiences with archival research. In this installment of NEP’s Archive Chronicles, published in English and Spanish, Juan David Osorio Vargas explores the connection between archives and blindness.

Nota: Haz click aquí para acceder a la versión en español.
Note: Click here to access Spanish version.

Jacques Derrida tells us that fundamentally there are two types of experiences.[1] One of them is anchored in the present and refers to what we can balance with our eyes. In this case, one of the functions of the eye is to foresee, to anticipate the unknown or the presence of the other. This constitutes one of the two possible experiences. The other, which I wish to explore in this article, is the experience of blindness. It is the one that charts an unexpected, unpredictable, and open journey toward the heterogeneity of the other—the other that is there to surprise us. It is, precisely, a journey that cannot be programmed, a cartography of the indeterminate, devoid of purpose. It is the experience of the present that connects us to the uncertainty of a historical event.

As a blind historian, I am convinced that forms of knowledge organized through other senses are valuable in themselves. The question of whether a blind historian can access materials from the visual world is met with a clear yes. We can develop a language with these characteristics if we significantly expand the democratizing reach of the archive, as well as the questions surrounding it, through compensatory technologies that ensure the translation from one record to another does not lose its legitimacy.

To engage with the archive is to undergo the metaphorical experience of blindness. Not all historians possess the vision to anticipate what lies ahead, for some navigate the past without sight. The archive teaches us that every time we enter it, it becomes more uncontrollable and unfamiliar. If we consider the Derrida’s second concept of experience, we can recognize that the archive is a journey without an apparent horizon, directed toward what is not visible—an idea that closely aligns with the practice of being a historian.

I say that the archive is the experience of blindness because we cannot anticipate it. We do not know what will surprise us or through what new technology or which questions it will respond. Much has been said about the silence of archives and the erasures they contain, but little thought has been given to the quality of blindness that resides within them and the relationship it establishes with visibility.

Last summer, while conducting archival research in Colombia and Panama, I encountered this reality: being blind and experiencing blindness in a dual sense was not enough to navigate the archive, as speech itself structurally implies non-vision. And speech is my first point of contact with the archive. It seems that those familiar voices, unseen, are the immediate reality of their presence. I perceive words that might interest me. I ask a question and am met with silence. Once again, the archive is mute. My mother strains to find the word I am looking for in a document crumbling to dust, but she cannot see it either. We are left groping in the dark. We are blind.

I reflected on how that materiality could act and speak to me so that I could question it with my clues and intuitions. I perceived the archive as that inescapable device we must navigate to reach a place in the past or historical knowledge, much like I conceive of my cane, which allows me to feel out the unknown spaces I traverse each day. The nature of this experience is apprehension—the quality that enables movement between voice and archive, analogous to the coordinated relationship between hand and cane.

I consider the negotiations that grant access to the archive as technologies that help us comprehend what it reveals. They represent a kind of ancient anthropology of capturing the world, serving to reduce complexity or make the unfamiliar more accessible. These forms alleviate the estrangement caused by temporal distance and the impossibility of reading a testimony from the past through the biology of our eyes alone. These multiple technologies must be understood as constitutive parts of the networks of reading, interpretation, and labor that underpin the historian’s practice: voices that communicate traces, graphs, and imprints. We should allow the technologies surrounding the archive to speak as well, critically engaging with it. It is these voices—which remind me of those of my mother, my father, and my friends—that strive to make the archive speak within a complex network of questioning, response, and interpretation; a hermeneutic circle that creatively reinforces this experience of not seeing.

More than any contemporary technique related to mass digitization or the use of artificial intelligence, it is the proximity of the voice that brings the archive into presence and draws it closer to the life of both the reader and the listener. The absence of these mediations is palpable and dramatically evident in our archival architecture. The dominance of visuality seems to govern the historian’s practice, positively reinforcing the facts of the past: what is read is, and what the archive records is perceived as truth.

For those of us who cannot see, the archive appears the moment we access any institution that houses materials and bears its name. The archive is the entire material circuit that sustains it. Its inaccessibility is a tangible testimony of a past time, with its stairs designed for certain bodies, its locations in spaces that filter sound, and its predominantly visual environment—from the catalog to the reference materials, most of which are illegible to those who, like me, are not immersed in the visual logic.

The archive is inspired by the affections that make it speak after the unpredictable experience of blindness. Hence, to be without sight does not prevent us from questioning it and making it visible. Drawing on Derrida, this experience is a paradox of sight, where a radical disagreement emerges. Derrida invites us to think about the choice we make when we look at ourselves in the mirror: we must choose between looking at the color of our eyes or looking at the influence of the gaze we see. The archive also invites us to reflect on this paradox. We can limit ourselves to seeing what it tells us or trace the influence of its gaze in order to question and judge it critically through perspective. In either case, we do not need to begin with the eyes. The archive initially presents itself in total darkness; it is only later that the gaze emerges, carrying with it the full potential of the frame.

The paradox of this process lies in the fact that the gaze we use to examine the archive inherently requires a blind spot from the very beginning. What we illuminate must be surrounded by a zone of blindness, a boundary that excludes the intelligible from the rest. This zone of indeterminacy is the challenge faced by perspective: the vision of the gaze that, in framing, selects.

It is striking is that eyes are not necessary to complicate and give voice to the archive. The gaze is the point of view of selection—a sensory regime that organizes the relationship between seeing and not seeing, or, in other words, the theory that illuminates the blind spots of historical memory.

Intellectual history has taught us that ideas have been constructed around metaphors of vision.[2] We are permeated by their semantic and metaphorical weight. What I propose, inspired by Derrida, is to think about the act of not seeing, and I believe the archive allows us to explore this singularity. Blindness raises profound questions about the indeterminacy of history, guiding us toward research paths that must be navigated without a predefined map. For this reason, the compass of our anthropological framework urges us to value the nature of the question and the tentative response.

I believe that framing blindness as a methodological metaphor for the archive not only carries interpretative significance but also fosters a research agenda with transformative potential for archival scholarship. First, it reveals the sensory possibilities of materials from the past, reflecting an interdependence of the senses as forms of knowledge: touch, vision, hearing, and smell. Second, it broadens the notion of accessibility and the intended audiences of the archive, aligning with a democratizing perspective. And finally, it enables us to address the archive’s opacities through a more nuanced reading, formulating tentative questions, provisional answers, and new interpretations.

Deciphering the archive requires us to confront the paradox of vision and blindness. The challenge to ocularcentrism lies precisely in this paradox: we see without looking, and we look by selecting. What I propose here is to embrace the archive as an experience of blindness. Let us cover our eyes and receive it as an unknown and singular event—something that cannot be anticipated or perceived in advance. Let the experience of blindness offer us the possibility of engaging with the archive in all its complexity, interrogating it with every sense at our disposal. Let us approach it from the start as an unpredictable event, one that can never be fully exhausted or definitively grasped.

Juan David Osorio Vargas is a political scientist and historian pursuing a master’s degree in Latin American Studies at UT Austin. His research focuses on Latin American intellectual histories, disability histories, and body politics.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

[1] Jacques Derrida, Thinking out of Sight. Writings on the Arts of Visible. The university Chicago Press, 2021, 35-36.

[2] Martin Hay, Downcast eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century Thought French. University of California Press, 1993, 33.  

Review of Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940 by Jason Oliver Chang (2017)

Studies on racial systems in Mexico have often explored the myth of mestizaje or the continued oppression of Indigenous people even after the abolition of institutionalized racism. In Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, Jason Oliver Chang directs our attention towards the “other” that delimits the borders of the unstable pact of Mexicanity. Chinese people — both Chinese-Mexican and foreign born — represent the “them” that demarcates the emerging Mexican “nosotros” or “us”. It is this delineation, in Chang’s telling, which supports the incorporation of Indigenous people into the nation, as well as other biopolitical projects of the state. This review of Chino highlights how Chang’s work reframes discussions of race and national identity in Mexico.

Chang’s proposition is novel: he offers an important Asian Americanist perspective on the role of anti-Chinese action and discourse in the construction of postrevolutionary Mexican nationalism. The responsibility lies with racial systems and the historical processes of nation-building. But the author is clear in stating that the experience of the Chinese in Mexico is not an importation of the xenophobia of the United States, but rather a unique historical racialization process. It responds to evolving economic and social realities during Mexico’s Porfirian, revolutionary, and postrevolutionary periods.

In the first part of the book, Chang explains how Chinese immigration to Mexico commenced in response to the openness of the Porfirian regime to foreign investment, paired with the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which forbade Chinese people from entering the country. While some migrants came from the U.S. to Mexico, many moved directly from China, as proven by recruitment advertisements in Canton for workers to come to Mexicali that Chang discovered during archival research. Additionally, other Chinese people arrived in Yucatán after escaping Caribbean plantations where they had been indentured servants.

Political cartoon of Chester A. Arthur offering a "Bill Excluding Chinese for 10 Years".
Political cartoon of Chester A. Arthur offering a “Bill Excluding Chinese for 10 Years”.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

In areas where Indigenous people resisted Mexican colonization, such as Sonora and Yucatán, investors, with government acquiescence, brought Chinese workers under fraudulent contracts to work as semi-enslaved laborers, particularly for railroad and agricultural projects. After they completed these contracts, many Chinese immigrants stayed, married Indigenous women and started businesses, especially grocery stores, taking advantage of their far-flung commercial networks.

To the industrialists exploiting their labor, they were but “motores de sangre”—racialized as docile and durable blood engines that would not rebel like the Yaquis or Mayas. To the locals, they were agents of the oligarchy brought to break their strikes and dampen their spirit by replacing Mexican peasants and proletarians in the fields and train tracks. Further, the Porfirian regime set up a colonization program that gave companies one third of the land they mapped. This incentivized U.S. investors to settle places like the Mexicali Valley by employing Chinese laborers, leasing the land to them in exchange for improvements such as fencing and irrigation infrastructure. This all changed when the revolution began.

In the second section, the book delves into the chaos of the Mexican Revolution and the explosion of anti-Chinese violence in many locations across the country, including Nacozari, Sonora, Tapachula, Chiapas and the infamous massacre in Torreon, Coahuila. According to Chang, this last event remains the largest act of anti-Chinese violence in the western hemisphere. His meticulous recounting of the Torreon massacre is one of the most gripping sections of the book.  A key aspect of his telling is that it was the townsfolk, rather than the revolutionaries, who inflicted most of the violence. The author shows us how this and other acts of radical othering through annihilation mask the ongoing social and racial injustices embedded within the mestizo pact. As the author eloquently puts it: “anti-Chinese violence ushered into being new political subjectivities” (p.108)

Picture of 1911 when the people following Madero (Maderistas) entered the Casino of la Laguna and enacted the massacre
Maderistas at the entrance to the Casino de la Laguna, 15 May 1911. Source: Wikimedia Commons

An organized political movement emerged from this explosion of violence. Anti-Chinese ideology became institutionalized as part of the budding revolutionary state apparatus. Anti-chinismo became a movement that held sway among Mexican elites, turning a nativist argument for expelling Chinese people from Mexico into service for the emerging mestizo nation. This movement was comparatively successful in Sonora and Sinaloa but was present in other states across the country.

While Anti-chinismo competed with other revolutionary ideologies, it stood out because it claimed to solve the “Indian problem” by othering the Chinese as a way to unite Mexicans. Ideologically, it centered capitalism, racism, and sexuality as key elements for the defense of the nation, all deriving from a biopolitical program of racial purity. This coincided with the objectives of the postrevolutionary state and within this context Anti-chinistas were able to stand out and score political victories. The largest of these was the presidency of Abelardo L. Rodriguez, a zealot of this deplorable cause.

After the Revolution, the constitution articulated that the goal of the state was “public good”, a concept that stands in sharp contrast with the colonial imperative. Anti-chinismo articulates “mestizo good” through economic, legal, and sexual racial protection. It places a heavy onus on women as “keepers of the race” whose virtue guards the purity of the mestizo nation. This further increased the state’s dominance over marriage in the post-revolutionary context.

Picture of the Chinese Young Men's Christian Association in Tampico
Chinese Young Men’s Christian Association in Tampico. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Furthermore, Chang provocatively challenges the idea that Manuel Gamio and Jose Vasconcelos were key players in the creation of Mestizo nationalism, as they were both absent from Mexico during the crucial decade of the 1930s. He argues that narratives focusing on their ideas of cosmic race and the assimilation of Indian people, shift the emphasis away from the importance of Anti-chinismo, which was able to garner actual political power at both the state and federal level. Just as Chinese people’s work depended on regional conditions, Anti-chinismo also served different functions depending on the context. In Sonora, it distracted from the Yaqui Genocide. In Baja California, it supported land distribution. In Yucatán and Tamaulipas, expulsions of Chinese were used to calm peasants that were not given land. In Oaxaca and Tlaxcala, states with virtually no Chinese residents, symbolic expulsions helped local elites claim credit for defending the mestizo race.

Chang also analyzes the Chinese diaspora in its complexity with pages dedicated to the conflict between the Chee Kuo Ton and the Kuomintang, two rival Chinese fraternal organizations in Mexico. The intrigues of this dispute included denouncing each other to immigration authorities and conspiring with the Mexican government for protection. They scapegoated each other with narratives of “good” and “bad” Chinese, claiming they were the former and their rival the latter. This fight also gave fuel to Anti-chinista ideology, because it helped them paint the Chinese as violent and combative. After this confrontation escalated to a shootout in the streets of Hermosillo, Sonora passed laws allowing for the segregation of Chinese people and prohibiting intermarriage. But these laws applied only in cities, allowing for undisrupted colonization of Yaqui land.

This is a prime example of the tendency of the selective application of anti-Chinese laws in Mexico.  Where it served the state, Chinese migrants were allowed to live— to plow otherwise deserted fields, and to provide vital groceries through their fraternal supply chains in remote areas — and harassed where it did not.

The final section of the book focuses on the Governor of Baja California Norte and then President Abelardo L. Rodriguez, who used a tripartite strategy to oppress the Chinese in Baja California: taxes to profit off them, casinos to feed into negative stereotypes (and profit off them), and deportation of leaders to weaken their ability to resist.

When Rodriguez became president, Anti-chinismo spread from the capital to the rest of the country, completing its transformation from vigilante violence to a state sponsored crusade. It was coupled with the import substitution model, the institutionalization of eugenics in labor laws, the revamping of the census and the opening of a foreigner registry, all elements that served the state in its project of control of immigrants and construction of the nation. 

Cover of Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940 by Jason Oliver Chang

Despite the important and generally persuasive arguments presented in the book, Chang’s lack of attention to the Spanish spelling of names is unfortunate. The frequent mistakes distract from the main argument and, more importantly, make the reader question if the manuscript was reviewed by a Mexicanist scholar. These include the names of characters and publications, where Rudolfo stands for Rodolfo and “La Economista Mexicana” for “El Economista Mexicano”. While I won’t list them all here, there are enough to warrant attention, and possible correction down the line.

Overall, the book is a well researched and novel approach to an understudied subject. The Asian Americanist perspective brings a much-needed change of lens to the study of sinophobia in Mexico, highlighting its key role in the construction of post-revolutionary nationalism. Succinctly put: “Anti-chinismo gave millions of nonwhite people permission to enact a state-endorsed identity of racial superiority” (P. 187). This key element of the racial pact in Mexico is the great contribution of the book to our knowledge on Mexican nationalism.

José E. Múzquiz is a PhD Candidate in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Cultural Studies from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. His research interests are Borderlands History, Hispanic Republicans in the United States, Mexican immigration to the US and racism in Mexico.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Tips for using PARES (Portal de Archivos Estatales)

Banner for NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Tips for using PARES (Portal de Archivos Estatales)

NEP’S Archive Chronicles explores the role archives play in historical research, offering insight into the process of conducting archival work and research. Each installment will offer a unique perspective on the treasures and challenges researchers encounter in archives around the world. NEP’s Archive Chronicles is intended to be both a practical guide and a space for reflection, showcasing contributors’ experiences with archival research. This article, part of a two-part series by Diana, focuses on three tips for using PARES, the digital platform of the Archive of the Indies in Spain.

In the first part of this archive chronicle, “”An experiential approach to the Archive of the Indies”, I discussed why PARES is the AGI’s front façade for virtually every researcher nowadays. Even though PARES is an online tool, my user experience changed significantly once I was in the reading room. After months of searching for references and organizing them, I thought I had mastered PARES through Scott Cave’s helpful guide. But I was humbled during the first week at the archive when it became obvious that PARES does not reflect the entire holdings or archival organization of the AGI. This is certainly true for any archive or collection. Still, I did learn a few tricks along the way that changed how I approached the archive and its online catalog. This piece has three how-to’s in PARES to help make the research experience easier for researchers.

1)  How to explore the AGI’s numerous subsections or how to use PARES like a print catalog 

Most of the search results I initially got from PARES were located in the section of Contratación. However, this is the archive’s largest section with close to six thousand legajos and fifty-one sections. When I finally started consulting some of these references, I wondered why most of them came from “Autos entre partes” (litigation between private parties). Did this mean that this subsection was described in greater detail than others? What else was out there in this immense section?

Two PARES features make it easier to answer these questions:

Clicking on “Location in the Archive Classification Scheme” shows where a document or section is located within the archive.

Screenshot of system

If we click on any of the hierarchical locations, it will open a new tab or window where we can see how many units a section has and a broad description of its contents.

Screenshot of system

In this case, the subsection of “Autos entre Partes” has 207 legajos, but the Content and Structure section does not provide a substantial description. For many other archival sections, there might be a finding aid on the index file that lists references to print catalogs which you can consult at the AGI’s reading room. Identifying these broader archival sections along with the legajo range they cover is quite handy when consulting microfilmed portions of the AGI. While now considered an almost defunct technology, it is important to remember that several libraries across the Americas have AGI microfilms such as the Benson Latin American Collection, the Bancroft Library, or the Eusebio Dávalos Library at Mexico’s National Anthropology Museum.

Screenshot of system

Once we click on “207 units more”, I recommend sorting the Description Unit by Reference number. This places the oldest legajo on top of the list and allows you to systematically review the section. I also like to use the “text filter” to make targeted searches within a single description unit.

2) How to find digitized files that do not look like they have been digitized

One of the best tips an AGI archivist shared with me was how to find apparently non-digitized documents from bound volumes known as libros. For example a reference with a geographical marker (e.g. Lima, Guatemala, Charcas, Indiferente) and an L such as MEXICO,1064,L.2,f.283r-283v indicates it comes from libros on the Gobierno section (including Indiferente). While the description and digitization of these books is almost complete, they are not always subdivided by individual files in PARES.

Here’s an example of a book that is clearly subdivided and can be easily accessed by clicking on “View Images”.

Screenshot of system

The reference below, however, looks like it has not been digitized because it does not have the camera icon. But since it has an “L”, we can almost be sure it has been digitized. Expanding the “Location in the Archive Classification Scheme”, shows that its containing section has a fully colored camera icon (when a camera is gray, it means the section has been partially digitized).

Screenshot of PARES system

Once we click on this location, it will open a new tab where we can access the fully digitized libro.

Screenshot of PARES system

Now it is only a matter of clicking on “view images” and finding the folios from the original reference. Since the PARES viewer operates by image number, this means we have to multiply the folio number by two if it’s a verso folio and subtract 1 if it’s a recto folio. Our reference number (283r-283v) suggests the image number should be 565.

Screenshot of PARES system

Sometimes this might not work precisely so you might need to skim through a few pages to find the specific page numbers.

3) How to start identifying relevant documents for your research

Compared to its earlier version, PARES 2.0 has two new tools that are a good starting point to explore a new topic: the Authorities Search and MetaPARES.

The Authorities Search works similarly to a subject search in a library catalog. The main difference is that the results will lead you to a virtual index file that lists at the end a list of the Spanish Archives where you can find your topic and the number of documents previously identified by archivists. This search is by no means comprehensive, but it is a good starting point. For instance, to know more about the bison found in New Mexico, an authorities search would be useful to identify the jurisdiction and place names used for this region during colonial times.

Screenshot of PARES system

Screenshot of the AGI documents associated with the subject of New Mexico

Another tool that connects published and unpublished academic work to the holdings of the Spanish State Archives is MetaPARES. The goal of this portal is to refer researchers to secondary literature that cites Spanish Archives. The tool is still in development, but it is a good way to quickly become acquainted with Spanish scholarship and document collections.

Screenshot of PARES system

The MetaPARES search for New Mexico lists four results. They are not many, but they are more targeted than your typical Google Scholar search and will likely be in Spanish.

It also goes without saying that learning Spanish paleography and early modern Spanish vocabulary is key to identifying relevant documents. There are many online tools and software such as the Dominican Studies Institute Paleography Tool, the Diccionario de Abreviaturas Novohispanas, or Transkribus that make this endeavor easier nowadays. Additionally, reading transcribed document collections and getting acquainted with the structure of Spanish bureaucratic documents will improve your own reading and comprehension of the materials you collect. Navigating the archives and documents of Colonial Latin America demands practice and patience, but this experience can be slowly built throughout the years and from afar. For me, it took about seven years, but it was worth the wait.

Diana Heredia-López is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally trained as a biologist in Mexico, she has specialized in the history of science and colonialism since 2012. Her current research examines dye cultivation and commerce as a framework to investigate early modern Hispanic extractivism, knowledge production, and material culture.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

An Overlooked Success: How the Failed Annexation of Santo Domingo led to the Successful Prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan

Banner for An Overlooked Success: How the Failed Annexation of Santo Domingo led to the Successful Prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan

The 19th century in American history is marked by rapid territorial expansion, from the Louisiana Purchase to the Mexican-American War. By 1850, the continental U.S. had taken a familiar shape. The Civil War interrupted this expansion as the nation grappled with the future of slavery and the role of the federal government. However, at the close of the war, during Reconstruction (1865-1877), territorial expansion resumed with the purchase of Alaska and the failed annexation of Santo Domingo, modern-day Dominican Republic. Yet, this attempt at expansion stands out from other additions to U.S. territory. The Annexation was not merely a land grab but a Reconstruction project, recognized as such by both its supporters and its detractors. It yielded no territorial gains, but surprisingly, it was this political fight over Santo Domingo that helped achieve one of Reconstruction’s great successes: the Prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan—America’s first organized terrorist threat.

On the first of July 1870, The Baltimore Sun reported that “The treaty for the annexation of the island of San Domingo to the United States was rejected by the Senate this afternoon by a vote of 28 to 28, being ten less than the required two-thirds to secure its ratification.”[1] The tie vote also saw thirteen abstentions, effectively killing what had become a pet project of President Ulysses S. Grant, though the initiative did not start with him. In 1867, Grant’s predecessor, President Johnson, intervened with the government of the recently independent Santo Domingo to aid in its defense against raids from Haiti. In his fourth annual message to Congress in 1868, Johnson detailed the support provided to Santo Domingo and expressed the desirability of acquiring land suitable for a naval base. He also proposed the idea of annexing both republics on the island of Hispaniola: Santo Domingo and Haiti.[2] However, Congress seemed uninterested in this suggestion, mainly because it had already allocated 7.2 million dollars to purchase Alaska in the spring of 1867, under the Johnson Administration.[3]

A High Price to Pay

During the Civil War, Russia was the only major European power to support the Union. Secretary of State William Seward[4] framed the purchase of Alaska as a gesture of goodwill towards the Czar, who was contending with his own conflict in Crimea.[5] Moreover, Congress appeared reluctant to purchase more land, particularly after the establishment of the Joint Special Committee on Retrenchment in 1866, aimed at cutting government spending.[6] The Civil War had cost nearly $5.2 billion, leaving a remaining debt of $3 billion (unadjusted for inflation). To put it into perspective, the annual budget of the government at the start of the war was $63.1 million. This financial reality made it clear in Washington that cost-cutting measures were necessary.[7] Additionally, President Johnson began losing allies in Congress that had helped him with the Alaska deal since he had tried to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, resulting in Johnson’s impeachment in February of 1868.[8] While Congress would not find Johnson guilty nor remove him from office, the American people effectively did so by electing Ulysses S. Grant in November 1868.

Picture of Annexation demonstration in San Domingo City--the Seybo regiment in the citadel, bearing the U.S. colors
Annexation demonstration in San Domingo City–the Seybo regiment in the citadel, bearing the U.S. colors. Source: Library of Congress

In his relatively short first inaugural address, President Grant spoke of bolstering law enforcement in the South as new terror threats arose, touched on a foreign policy of mutual respect, promised to see the 15th Amendment ratified, and pledged to pursue respectful policies regarding the Native Americans. As important as these subjects were, Grant spent most of his inaugural address talking about debt[9]: “A great debt has been contracted in securing to us and our posterity the Union. The payment of this, principal and interest, as well as the return to a specie basis as soon as it can be accomplished without material detriment to the debtor class or to the country at large, must be provided for.” [10] In over two paragraphs, he laid down a clear mandate to cut spending and pay off the debt.

Indeed, Grant would succeed in this reconstruction project by 1870, having reduced the public debt to $3.1 billion.[11] For Grant and many other radical Republicans, paying off the debt was a part of Reconstruction. However, this prioritization of debt reduction would undermine Congressional support for other Reconstruction projects like the Freedman’s Bureau and the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo. Opposition to the purchase was often linked to its financial cost, as well as broader tensions surrounding the abolition of slavery and the challenges of Reconstruction. While prejudice against the Dominican people was a factor for some, the resistance seemed more rooted in larger national debates of the era than in targeted animosity toward Santo Domingo. Democrat Representative Fernando Wood would say in debating against the treaty, “I am opposed to the San Domingo annexation, not only because of a large sum of money at this time, but also it is another step in the demoralization of the American People”[12]. In this case, “demoralization” refers to the effects of Grant’s Reconstruction.

Map of Provincia de santo Domingo 1861 - for An Overlooked Success
Provincia de Santo Domingo 1861. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In a letter to President Baez from President Grant on July 13, 1869. This tells us Buenaventura Baez reached out to Grant sometime between January and July 1869. Whatever Baez’s emissary said to Grant piqued his curiosity enough to greet him as a “Great and Good Friend. In the letter, Grant tells Baez that he would be sending Brevet Brigadier General Orville E. Babcock[13] as a special agent to assess the viability of annexing Santo Domingo.[14] Babcock went on to make two trips to the island and serve as the President’s chief emissary in the annexation negotiations. Once there, Babcock quickly realized the extent of Santo Domingo’s disputes with its neighbor, Haiti, with whom it shared the island of Hispaniola. Although Haiti was the smaller country on the island, it had a larger population compared with the sparsely populated Santo Domingo.[15] After gaining independence from Spain in 1821, Haiti invaded Santo Domingo within weeks, leading to a period of occupation. Despite its disadvantage in manpower, Santo Domingo prevailed in the face of a Haitian occupation until 1844.[16] Following its independence, Haitian raids along the borders became a regular occurrence. During this period of rising Dominican nationalism, caudillos (military strongmen or dictators) like Buenaventura Baez seized the moment to gain power, often for personal enrichment. Baez increased military spending to ward off Hattian raids, but this led to a mounting national debt, which reached $1.3 million by 1859[17]. As a result, Baez began seeking protectorate assistance from foreign powers, including the United States.[18]. In his diaries from his second trip to the Island, Babcock notes, “He (Baez) seemed in good spirit, much in favor of annex.”[19] Indeed, there seemed to be widespread support within Santo Domingo.

The Role of Fredrick Douglass

When Babcock returned to Grant, having confirmed that Baez was interested in Santo Domingo being annexed, Grant began using his influence to promote the idea. When word had reached Charles Sumner, he asserted that the people of Santo Doming were opposed to such an arrangement. In response, Grant enlisted Fredrick Douglass to travel to the island in 1871 and determine whether the citizens would support such a move. Douglass had long advocated for normalizing relations with black republics such as Haiti and Santo Domingo.[20] In 1873 he was happy to report that “they want to join their country to the United States and to become citizens of the United States.”[21] While Douglass’ report was based on anecdotal evidence from his conversations with the island’s inhabitants, there had also been a referendum ordered by President Baez with an admittedly low turnout. Still, of the 15,169 votes cast, only 11 were cast against annexation.[22] Despite this turnout, people like Douglas and Grant pointed to this result to demonstrate a political will on the part of the Dominican people to join the US.

Portrait of Frederick Douglass
Retouched portrait of Frederick Douglass taken in the 1840s. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Frederick Douglass was not simply advocating for territorial expansion. He viewed the annexation of the island as an opportunity to challenge prevailing prejudices and demonstrate the potential for all people, regardless of race. In his lecture on the annexation of Santo Domingo, Douglas compared the Spanish and French attempts to reenslave the black and mulatto inhabitants to the actions of the Klan in the South, who, after being paroled at Appomattox now formed a terrorist group to strengthen white supremacy. In his own words: “The fact is significant and has a lesson for those men in our county who are still endeavoring by violence and midnight crimes to worry the American negro back into slavery. The negro is no less a man here than in Santo Domingo.”[23] Thus, for Douglass, the annexation of Santo Domingo was closely associated with Reconstruction and civil rights, providing African Americans in the South with an example of resistance to white supremacy. Grant, like Douglas, linked the proposed annexation to the widespread terror of the Ku Klux Klan across the South.

Annexation as Part of Reconstruction

Grant’s first term was marked by intractable domestic issues, from the fight for the Fifteenth Amendment to the war he waged against the Ku Klux Klan in the South. Thus, he turned to foreign policy for what he thought would be an easy victory via the annexation of Santo Domingo. When he argued for annexation, he cited all the usual reasons for the acquisition, such as fertile soil and tropical produce, and strategic interests, such as having a naval base in the Caribbean to bolster the Monroe Doctrine, all common arguments made by the initiative’s supporters in Congress. But Grant went even further. In a memorandum issued to the State Department describing the benefits of the proposed annexation, Grant writes:

Caste has no foothold in San Domingo. It is capable of supporting the entire colored population of the United States, should it choose to emigrate. The present difficulty in bringing all parts of the United States to a happy unity and love of country grows out of the color prejudice. The prejudice is a senseless one, but it exists. The colored man cannot be spared until his place is supplied, but with a refuge like San Domingo, his worth here would soon be discovered, and he would soon receive such recognition as to induce him to stay.[24]

Frederick Douglass (seated, left) with The Commissioners to Santo Domingo for An Overlooked Success
Frederick Douglass (seated, left) with The Commissioners to Santo Domingo, Brooklyn Navy Yard, January 1871. Source: Getty’s Open Content Program.

The quote above shows that the annexation of Santo Domingo was wrapped up in Grant’s vision for Reconstruction. This excerpt shows that Grant wanted to keep Black communities in the US while also providing them with a refuge from Ku Klux violence. By the time of this writing, the emigration movement had gained considerable traction, even among the freedmen’s community. With the advent of Klan terror in the South, many Black communities sought refuge in places like Haiti and Liberia. Elias Hill, a notable leader of a Black church from South Carolina—where Klan activity had been incredibly violent—led the whole of his congregation in a move to Liberia.[25] However, offering a place to flee wasn’t the only way Grant linked Santo Domingo to Reconstruction. He also saw the annexation of Santo Domingo as a way of ending slavery in other parts of the hemisphere. In a speech after the treaty was rejected, Grant urged Congress to reconsider, arguing that an American government on the island would prompt enslaved people in the Caribbean to flee to Santo Domingo as a refuge. He further asserted that “Porto Rico and Cuba will have to abolish slavery as a measure of self-preservation to retain their laborers.”[26]

Grant wasn’t the only one that connected Santo Domingo to the Reconstruction, those opposed the annexation also made this link. In 1870, many of the arguments used by Democrats against the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment were echoed in their opposition to annexing Santo Domingo. Representative Fernando Wood, for instance, recycled his arguments against the Fifteenth Amendment in a Congressional debate stating, “As wicked as is the attempt to compel the fusion of two such opposite races existing among ourselves, it would be far more suicidal and criminal to add the people of San Domingo also.”[27] Importantly, when Wood referred to the “fusion of two opposite races,” he was speaking of the impact of the amendment on the communities of freed blacks born in the United States, as it granted them citizenship. Indeed, the democrats’ opposition to the proposed annexation reflected their broader resistance to naturalizing freed Blacks.

Picture of Ulysses S. Grant on horseback - for An Overlooked Success
Ulysses S Grant on horseback. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Predictably, Democrats opposed the annexation of a Latin American republic with a significant Black and mixed-race population. Still, those sentiments were shared by less radical Republicans like Senator Justin S. Morrill, who allied with Charles Sumner in his opposition to the treaty. In an 1871 speech, Morill spoke of the formerly enslaved Americans who had recently been made citizens by the 15th Amendment, saying, “It is useless to disguise the fact that the people of a portion of our present territory have not become assimilated with the American people and American Institutions, and the time when they will do so must be computed, not in years, but by generations.”[28] Even critics of the acquisition recognized the connection between the proposed annexation and Reconstruction. Sentiments like those expressed by Morrill and Sumner led to fissures in the Republican party, leaving President Grant feeling betrayed.

A Misunderstanding with Mr. Sumner

Ultimately, it was Charles Sumner’s refusal, as Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which prevented the treaty from being passed. While he had supported the annexation of Alaska just a few years earlier, he refused to admit Santo Domingo. Sumner, along with Thadeus Stevens, had led the radical wing of the Republican party, but the two began to diverge when it came to handling Reconstruction. The more radical Stevens thought the South should be treated as conquered territory, while Sumner sought a conditioned reconciliation with the South.[29] Due to his leadership among the Radicals and his well-established support for Reconstruction, Grant expected Sumner’s support. Before moves had been made in Congress, Grant shared an early draft of the treaty with Sumner, to which Sumner promised his “friendly consideration.” Grant, still relatively new to politics, interpreted this as support for the acquisition.[30] This misunderstanding undermined Grant’s efforts to secure the treaty and led to him to push for a vote in the Senate without the necessary support from his party.

Sumner had his reasons for not supporting the treaty, some of which, as noted above, were rooted on pseudoscientific ideas of geographic racial determination.[31] But Sumner also sympathized with the Dominican nationalist arguments and distrusted Baez, whom he viewed as a despot trying to sell off his country. “A convention was appointed, not elected, which proceeded to nominate Baez for the term of four years, not as President, but as Dictator. Declining the latter title, the triumphant conspirator accepted that of Garn Ciudadano or Grand Citizen with unlimited powers…Naturally, such a man would sell his own country.” [32] Siding with the Dominican Nationalists, Sumner thought that support for the treaty represented a betrayal of its inhabitants by Baez, who he characterized as a villain.

Painting of General Gregorio Luperón
General Gregorio Luperón – Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

A correspondent of Sumner’s, General Gregorio Luperón, a leader in the Dominican Nationalist movement, wrote to Grant in late 1869 expressing his anger with the U.S. Navy in the sinking of the Telegraph, a ship used to transport Dominican Nationalists from Haiti to Cuba. President Johnson sank the ship as part of his established protectorate, but now he directed his anger squarely at Grant. The General wrote, “Spain, in spite of its traditional quixotism, rejected the cowardly Baez’s undignified petition, and to our understanding, the Spanish Government’s course of action was more honorable than yours…Your Excellency had the weakness to order, to authorize the destruction of Telegraph, accepting the immoral decree of Baez’s mercenary Senate.”[33] Issuing the protectorate and the actions of the U.S. Navy were primary reasons for Sumner’s opposition, and would cite incidents like the sinking of the Telegraph in his arguments against the annexation: “It is difficult to see how we can condemn with proper, whole-hearted reprobation, our own domestic Ku Klux with its fearful outrages while the President puts himself at the head of a powerful and costly proceeding operating abroad in defiance of International Law and the Constitution of the United States.”[34] For Sumner, Grant’s actions, which he viewed as violations of the Constitution and an “usurpation of war powers,” undermined the moral authority Grant had built through his prosecutions of the Klan.

The Santo Domingo Purge

In the fight for the annexation treaty, many in Grant’s cabinet saw that Santo Domingo was a losing battle long before Grant. Grant pressed on, ordering his department heads to spend political capital to have the treaty passed. Despite these efforts, support for the treaty was never strong. After many in his cabinet had sided with Charles Sumner, whose support was crucial, Grant began to rail against his disloyal cabinet. According to a diary entry by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, Grant claimed that “the Secretary of the Interior is opposed to it; the Attorney-General says nothing in its favor, but sneers at it; and the Secretary of Treasury does not open his mouth.”[35] Indeed, Grant’s break with Sumner and less radical Republicans led to a purge within his cabinet, and he began dismissing all those members of his administration who served Sumner. While this may initially appear vindictive, there was some positive outcomes. Attorney General Ebenezer Hoar, a long-time friend of Charles Sumner who had opposed the treaty, Was initially recommended for the position of AG by Sumner. On July 15, 1870, Hoar received a letter requesting his resignation.[36] A month earlier, Grant submitted a new name for Attorney General, a man named Amos T. Akerman.[37]

But Akerman’s work as head of the new Department of Justice has largely been a footnote to history. Akerman, a former Confederate officer who has become a staunch Republican, had been personally threatened by the Klan for his shift in allegiance. He would go on to aggressively prosecute the Klan, effectively dismantling the organization for nearly four decades.[38] His appointment seems providential, considering the Act to Establish the Department of Justice does not mention civil rights.[39] Furthermore, it was the Joint Select Committee on Retrenchment and not a judiciary committee that passed it. This represented a move toward civil service reform and a cost-saving measure.[40] Indeed, Akerman ran up against repeated funding shortages throughout the Klan trials. However, Akerman oversaw the prosecutions heavily and even directly called on Grant to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in several counties in South Carolina. While coincidental, the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo led directly to one of the most successful reconstruction projects, the prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan.[41] What appeared to be a typical territorial land grab was, in fact, closely connected to the broader goals of the Reconstruction.

Conclusion

In the end, the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo failed, defeated by a strange alliance between well-meaning radical Republicans and racist Democrats, killing Grant pet project and limiting his vision for Reconstruction. Yet, the political fight over Santo Domingo played a pivotal role in staffing the newly founded Department of Justice with a leader who possessed the will to Prosecute the Ku Klux Klan. Unlike other territorial expansions, this attempt was directly linked to the question of Reconstruction, and not only by President Grant and his supporters, but also by those opposed to the treaty. Regardless of the failure to secure the annexation, it is clear that the debate surrounding this Reconstruction initiative contributed  to one of the era’s greatest successes.

Acknowledgements:
This article originates in Dr. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra’s capstone undergraduate seminar.

Miguel Angel Canto Jr. is a first-generation college student and hopeful law school applicant, expected to graduate this May with a Bachelor’s in History and Philosophy. He is working on his undergraduate honors thesis on the establishment of the U.S. Department of Justice. His research interests include the legal history, history of ideas, history of republics and American history, particularly Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

[1] “The San Domingo Treaty Rejected,” The Baltimore Sun, July 1, 1870, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-baltimore-sun-the-san-domingo-treaty/158127723/.

[2] “December 8, 1868: Fourth Annual Message to Congress | Miller Center,” October 20, 2016, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-8-1868-fourth-annual-message-congress.

[3] United States and Russia, eds., Treaty Concerning the Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America by His Majesty the Emperor of All the Russias to the United States of America (Washington, 1867), https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.treatyconcerning00unit/.

[4] Secretary of State for President Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.

[5] “The Alaska Purchase, Articles and Essays, Meeting of Frontiers, Digital Collections,” web page, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, accessed December 1, 2024, https://www.loc.gov/collections/meeting-of-frontiers/articles-and-essays/alaska/the-alaska-purchase/.

[6] The 39th Congress, “Concurrent Resolution Providing for a Joint Select Committee on Retrenchment” (Congressional Globe, 1866).

[7] “History of the Debt,” TreasuryDirect, accessed August 28, 2024, https://www.treasurydirect.gov/government/historical-debt-outstanding/.

[8] “The Impeachment Trial of President Andrew Johnson | Century Presentations | Articles and Essays | A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress,” web page, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, accessed October 19, 2024, https://www.loc.gov/collections/century-of-lawmaking/articles-and-essays/century-presentations/impeachment/.

[9] Grant Ulysses, “First Inaugural Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant,” Text, Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1989, March 4, 1869), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/grant1.asp.

[10] First Inaugural Addresses, Grant, 1869.

[11] “Public Debt of the United States. 1870, 1880, 1890 and 1902. [Washington, D. C. 1903].,” online text, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, accessed December 4, 2024, https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.2080020a/?st=gallery.

[12] United States Congress, “The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Second Session Forty-First Congress; Together with an Appendix, Embracing the Laws Passed at That Session,  (1870): 3034-3038.,” Book, UNT Digital Library (John C. Rives, 1870), United States, https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30886/m1/209/.

[13] Babcock had served as one of Grant’s aides-de-camp during the Civil War.

[14] “Letter to President Buenaventura Baez of the Dominican Republic | The American Presidency Project,” accessed November 6, 2024, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-president-buenaventura-baez-the-dominican-republic.

[15] John B. Crume, President Grant and His Santo Domingo Project: A Study of Ill Judgement (Florida Atlantic University, 1972) p. 11.

[16] “History of the Dominican Republic, Government, Facts, President, & Flag, Britannica,” October 28, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Dominican-Republic.

[17] Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo, “Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo” 1 (1871): I–II, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.cow/reciqsadm0001&i=1, p. 178.

[18] Luis Martínez-Fernández, “Caudillos, Annexationism, and the Rivalry between Empires in the Dominican Republic, 1844–1874,” Diplomatic History 17, no. 4 (1993): 571–97, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24912228.

[19] Orville E. Babcock, “Orville E. Babcock Diary: The Second Journey to Santo Domingo November 8th to December 2nd, 1869” (Mississippi State University, 1869).

[20] Merline Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and the Annexation of Santo Domingo,” The Journal of Negro History 62, no. 4 (October 1977): 390–400, https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/stable/2717114.

[21] Frederick Douglass, “Frederick Douglass Papers: Speech, Article, and Book File, 1846-1894; Speeches and Articles by Douglass, 1846-1894; Undated; ‘Santo Domingo,’ Manuscripts, Typescripts, and Fragments; 1 of 5” (1873), mss11879, box 28; reel 18, Manuscript Division, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11879.28013/.

[22] Harold T. Pinkett, “Efforts to Annex Santo Domingo to the United States, 1866-1871,” The Journal of Negro History 26, no. 1 (January 1941): 12–45, https://doi.org/10.2307/2715048.

[23] Douglass, “Frederick Douglass Papers.”

[24] Ulysses S. Grant, “Memorandum,” The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, November 1,1869-October 31, 1870, edit. John Simon, vol. 20 (Mississippi State University, 1995), https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/usg-volumes/20, p. 74.

[25] Scott Farris, Freedom on Trial: The First Post-Civil War Battle over Civil Rights and Voter Suppression (Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, 2020,) p. 59.

[26] Ulysses S. Grant, “Making the Case for US Annexation,” in The Dominican Republic Reader : History, Culture, Politics, ed. Eric P. Roorda and et al. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, n.d.), 158–60, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utxa/detail.action?docID=1689436.

[27] United States Congress, “The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Second Session Forty-First Congress; Together with an Appendix, Embracing the Laws Passed at That Session, (1870): 3034-3038.,” Book, UNT Digital Library (John C. Rives, 1870), United States, https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30886/m1/209/, p. 1187.

[28] Justin S. Morrill, “Opposition to US Annexation,” in The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture, Politics, ed. Eric P. Roorda, et al. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014), https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utxa/detail.action?docID=1689436.

[29] Fergus M. Bordewich, Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, First United States edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023,) p. 14-15.

[30] Chernow, Grant, p. 691-692.

[31] Hidalgo, “Charles Sumner and the Annexation of the Dominican Republic.”

[32] Charles Sumner, “Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the St. Domingo Resolutions; Delivered in the Senate of the United States,” March 27, 1871, HathiTrust, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112102553197&seq=3&q1=santo+domingo.

[33] Gregorio Luperón, “Dominican Nationalism versus Annexation,” in The Dominican Republic Reader : History, Culture, Politics, ed. Eric P. Roorda and et al. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014), 171–72, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utxa/reader.action?docID=1689436&ppg=188.

[34] Sumner, “Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the St. Domingo Resolutions; Delivered in the Senate of the United States.”

[35] Chernow, Grant, p. 698.

[36] Ulysses S. Grant, From Grant to Hoar, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, November 1,1869-October 31, 1870, ed. John Simon, vol. 20 (Mississippi State University, 1995), https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/usg-volumes/20, p. 170.

[37] Ulysses S. Grant, Appointment of Amos T. Akerman The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, November 1,1869-October 31, 1870, ed. John Simon, vol. 20 (Mississippi State University, 1995), https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/usg-volumes/20.

[38] Farris, Freedom on Trial, p. 78.

[39]An Act to Establish the Department of Justice.” P.L. 41-97 Stat.162, 1870 U.S.C. 41st Congress. Justice.gov, 2013. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/10/23/act-pl41-97.pdf.

[40]Jed Handelsman Shugerman, “The Creation of the Department of Justice: Professionalization Without Civil Rights or Civil Service,” Stanford Law Review 66, no. 1 (2014): 121–72, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24246730.

[41] Farris, p. 283.

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