indigenous knowledge Archives

Review of We the King: Creating Royal Legislation in the Sixteenth-century Spanish New World by Adrian Masters (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

In late 1546, auditor-president Pedro de la Gasca landed in the New World charged with retaking the entire continent for the crown, from Nicaragua to Chile. After having beheaded the viceroy, Gonzalo Pizarro had declared himself ruler of larger Peru with a fleet controlling the South Sea, from Callao to Panama. Curiously, La Gasca came with no armies, just a pile of blank decrees signed by Charles V. In one year, however, La Gasca quickly took over Pizarro’s fleet and routed Gonzalo into the Peruvian heartland. He was able to accomplish this because of the power of royal decrees and edicts granting rewards to any potential turncoat. La Gasca quickly dispatched the Pizarros, reorganized Peru, and promptly went back to become bishop of Palencia in 1550.

This largely bloodless, swift conquest of conquistadors by paperwork seems not to have caught the attention of historians of the sixteenth-century Spanish Indies, who were accustomed to narrating gory blood baths in Tenochtitlan. How did a faraway monarch manage to control a sprawling empire teeming with violent and ruthless factions, including, not only raiding conquistador-pirates but also thousands of theocratic friars and rebellious indigenous lords, all willing and able to seize control. This is the subject of Adrian Master’s extraordinary We, the King which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.

Anyone superficially familiar with the history of conquest and colonialism in the Americas knows two things: First, Spain imposed a ruthless autocratic regime via top-down religious bureaucracies that enforced religious compliance and cultural uniformity. Second, Anglo America was a decentralized society of settlers with loose crown oversight until the eighteenth century, when overreach triggered revolution. This is not a cartoon version of history but rather our current historiographical canon. It is the argument at the heart of John Elliott’s monumental Empires of the Atlantic (2006). The Anglo-American bottom-up and Spanish American top-down dichotomy also structures the writings of the entire Cambridge School, from J.G.A Pocock to Quentin Skinner to David Armitage. Clerical Dominican and Jesuit theology allegedly organized top-down state formation in the south whereas bottom-up markets and indirect providence did it in the north.

Drawing of Guaman Poma — *GKS 2232 4º: Guaman Poma, “Nueva corónica y buen gobierno” (1615), Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen*

In a bold, deeply researched book drawing on no less than twenty-six archives, Masters shatters this paradigm. The liberal and decolonial obsession with top-down Spanish autocracy has overlooked that the discourse of tyranny, underlying all neo scholastic theories of regicide, implied vast bottom-up forms of communication between vassals and monarchs. To claim legitimacy, that is not to be a tyrant, the crown encouraged all sorts of bottom-up paperwork communication via petitioning, audits, and denunciation (which was the point of the Inquisition). In the Spanish Indies, the state was created from the bottom up every bit as much as it was in Anglo America.

Masters’ subject is the hundreds of thousands of royal decrees created in the sixteenth century, but he does not discuss the millions of viceroyal edicts, mandamientos. Scholars have argued that the crown regulated everything from the length of trousers of Purepecha commoners to the number of horses of Nahua lords. We have been told that the crown rounded up natives into towns and issued top-down decrees on how to sleep on mattresses. The topic of race is especially dear to this scholarship. The crown decreed out of thin air prefigured categories of human difference. From the top-down, it engineered republics of Indians, Spaniards, Mestizos, and some forty Casta out of the Reconquista experience with purity of blood statutes.

Masters has no patience with any of this. Most decrees, he shows with brilliant empirical skill, came from bottom-up petitioning from millions of vassals, including both enslaved people and women. Even the very language of the decrees was often taken verbatim from bottom-up petitioning. The function of the Council of Indies was primarily to handle bottom-up paperwork on unsolicited reform and legislation. To be sure, this was no democracy where commoners had unmediated access to the Council and paperwork, but neither, it should be said, is ours. Be that as it may, Masters shows that systems of legislating petitioning were largely responsible for the creation of most racial categories in the Indies. Indigenous factionalism prompted petitions to draw casta (caste) and mestizo distinctions. Every bit as much as friars, bishops, and viceroys, native commoners participated in the creation of colonial categories of human difference.

Map of Teozacoalco — Mapa de Teozacoalco (1580) was part of a set of documents made in response to inquiries from the Spanish King Philip II. Source: Relación de Teozacoalco y Amoltepec, Relaciones Geográficas of Mexico and Guatemala Collection, Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas, Austin.

This is not a minor contribution. The scholarship on colonial Latin America is plagued by teleological narratives. As with any bad script, we all know how the movie ends. Categories, institutions, allegedly all came down prefigured from Spain. Masters shows throughout that the labor of making of the law not only took up a lot of actants (scribes, paper, ink, tlacuilos, ships, rowers, servants, porters, muleteers, magistrates, rivers, oceans, candles, seals, chasquis) but also rendered the system unpredictable. It took individual and communal agency to succeed. It also involved, stubbornness, networking, resilience, corruption, lying, luck.

Along with the top-down authoritarian shibboleths, the literature on the Spanish Empire is packed full of picaros, the much-needed Macondo picaresque in our much-loved liberal and decolonial narratives. Masters is aware that the Indies was not Spain and that petitioning in the Indies changed over time. Corruption and deception were the twin bête-noir of legislation (decrees, edicts, ordinances).

Masters shows that over the entire century the crown struggled to stem corruption and misinformation from undermining its own legitimacy before vassals. In fact, this was the main function of Council magistrates. In a series of riveting chapters, Masters shows how various council audits transformed Indies systems of communication, relegating elite women from legislative decisions, for the wives and daughters of magistrates were the main conduits used by petitioners to communicate and sway the will of magistrates. Masters also shows that the battle to control misinformation led to the creation of a far less passive crown toward the end of the century, capable through its own archives of finally assessing the credibility of Indies testimonies accurately. For every picaro there was an archive.

This book is a tour de force that ought to transform our understanding of Latin American colonial state formation. We, the King: Creating Royal Legislation in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish New World is a brilliant study that I recommend to all.

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra is the Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History at the University of Texas.

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 A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa (2022) by Robyn d’Avignon

Using the goldfields in Kedougou in southeastern Senegal, historian and anthropologist Robyn D’Avignon, in Ritual Geology, explores the instrumentality of African indigenous knowledge systems in developing modern mining economies in French West Africa from the nineteenth century to the present. D’Avignon defines ritual geology as a set of practices, prohibitions, and cosmological engagements with the earth widely shared and cultivated across a regional geological formation in French West Africa. Her work affirms African agency in West Africa’s literature on the environment and challenges French colonial narratives about West Africa. For those familiar with the literature on mining in Anglophone West Africa, her work bridges an intellectual gap by providing the Francophone perspective on the development of mining in West Africa. Also, Ritual Geology significantly contributes to West Africa and Africa’s growing body of environmental history. It points to new avenues of research on vital themes in West African history, such as indigenous knowledge systems, religious syncretism, the historical relationship between artisanal and industrial mining, material culture, migration, and international relations, all within environmental history. D’Avignon’s work provides a conducive entry into the ecological history of French West Africa.

In Ritual Geology, D’Avignon sought to provide a narrative that gives agency to African mining culture in a relatively unbalanced field historiographically. Colonial narratives of geological exploration relegated African indigenous knowledge systems in mining economies to the base of the imperial pyramid while extolling Western knowledge systems as effective and environmentally friendly, which became a significant justification for colonization. Traditional mining was described as customary or artisanal and, thus, limited to a locale, whereas Western mining was industrial and global. This perception, d’Avignon argues, has gained popularity in the environmental histories of Africa, leading scholars to overlook the central role of African expertise in geological exploration in colonial and postcolonial periods. D’Avignon challenges common historiography by proposing to examine the region’s Ritual Geology. Regarding the role of Africans in modern geology in West Africa, d’Avignon identifies two threads: Africans as intellectual actors in the emergence of contemporary exploration geology and, second, Africans’ claim to mineral resources and trade as their natural rights.

Divided into seven chapters, d’Avignon begins by mapping Kedougou (the study area) and identifying the book’s main characters. The characters are presented as personalities (communities), corporate firms, and the political state (colonial and postcolonial). She argues that the various characters blur the line between legal and illegal artisanal and industrial extractions. However, she skillfully weaves different anthropological narratives of characters that paint a vivid picture of artisanal mining in Senegal. The study period witnessed women’s changing role in artisanal mining at Kedougou as the scale of dominance tilted to men from the colonial period to the present. Before colonial rule, women were key at both the exploitative and refinery stages of artisanal mining. However, excessive competition for geological resources during the colonial period led to the relegation of women to the base of production in artisanal mining. Another pattern of change was the emergence of Islam in the study area and how, over time, indigenous miners have been able to merge traditional religion and Islam in mining activities.

*The Kedougou region in Senegal. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

D’Avignon explores the development of West African ritual geology from the eighth to the twentieth century. Drawing on oral tradition, she recounts how, within the context of survival strategies, gold-producing communities occupied Birimian rocks over the past millennium and identifies three elements in West Africa’s ritual geology. First, the existing literature is silent on gold-producing communities and their relationship to mineralized land. She attributes this to scarcity of sources and argues that non-centralized societies controlled gold mining during this period. Second, the emergence of Islam in West Africa began the denigrating and racializing of African miners as pagans. Lastly, the West African communities of the Savanna and Sahel regarded gold as a dangerous occult substance tied to spirits, including malevolent ones. The latter position is very prevalent in the sub-region, and there is a need for further research into other Anglophone regions in West Africa. Another area that needs further research is the recent incursion of Chinese miners into West Africa. Questions like what led to the incursion and whether these developments have impacted artisanal mining need to be interrogated.

In examining the role of African expertise and technological knowledge in colonial mining economies, d’Avignon contests colonial narratives of mining and shows how it displaced indigenous mining economics in French West African colonies of Soudan, Senegal, and Burkina Faso. Colonial mining records presented Indigenous mining as inferior in expertise and technology and gave Indigenous miners as degrading the land and engaging in fetish activities. The latter was considered among the Abrahamic religions as barbaric and unconventional. D’Avignon maintains that French colonial narratives defined African mining customs based on a vertical and horizontal rights division. The former presents African technological machinery as inferior, and the latter explains how African mining rights are geographically limited. Irrespective of the negative tag, orpaillage customary rights triumphed over time, allowing indigenous peoples to earn personal wealth. Furthermore, D’Avignon discusses the ambivalent nature of traditional rights in French West Africa; those rights prohibited Africans from mining gold, but they were seasonal and usufruct rights that territorial administrators could rescind. Also, Africans were barred from accessing more stable mineral property rights because they were consigned with customary rights.

*Gold miners at work in the Tarkwa Gold Mine, Ghana, 1957. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

D’Avignon explores subterranean rights in gold mining among the Kedougou people (Southeastern Senegal) in the mid-2000s. She does this within the context of legitimizing indigenous mining and focuses on the discursive elements of claim-making. According to D’Avignon, there were four primary modes of Africans asserting their claim to gold mines. First, the claim to discover or produce. Second, orpailleurs (local miners) claim juura (mining sites) as a subsistence right. Thirdly, orpaillage claims to mine only surface mining. Finally, orpaillage have the right to gold mines because they have been marginalized from colonial to postcolonial periods. D’Avignon, therefore, documents the language of subterranean rights innovated by Africans.

Focusing on mining during the colonial period, d’Avignon explores French articulation in West Africa and how French geologists relied on it for their mining activities in the region. The period witnessed how the French capitalized on indigenous mining systems in mapping the geology of West Africa. However, it is essential to note that little has been revealed about the role and identity of West Africans who participated in the geological exploration. Here, d’Avignon’s work inserts African agency in developing geology in West Africa by examining the role of some key personalities from different regions. D’Avignon avers that West Africa’s ritual geology witnessed rapid evolution during the colonial period as orpailleurs adopted new techniques from European geologists and moved to new Birimian fields for mining.

Valdiodio Ndiaye (Interior Minister), Mamadou Dia (Prime Minister), and Léopold Sédar Senghor (President) at a reception at the palace of the Republic of Senegal, November 1960. — Valdiodio Ndiaye (Interior Minister), Mamadou Dia (Prime Minister), and Léopold Sédar Senghor (President) at a reception at the palace of the Republic of Senegal in November 1960.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The politics in the aftermath of World War II played a crucial role in the development of mining in West Africa. D’Avignon brings West African mining activities into the narratives of the Cold War. She extends our knowledge of the Cold War politics of mineral resources in the Congo basin to the Birimian regions of West Africa. The Cold War period witnessed an influx of mining companies into West Africa as newly independent states began to leverage competing offers for technical assistance to meet their national goals. The period thus saw interactions between African states and the main actors of the Cold War. For example, Senegal engaged Euro-American and Soviet geologists in mining initiatives. An essential highlight during this period was the criminalization of orpaillage in some independent West African states such as Senegal. Influenced by the politics of the Cold War, African leaders saw orpaillage as antithetical to the principles of African socialism and a hindrance to newly African governments’ efforts to build modern nationalized industries. However, a series of droughts in the 1970s made most West African leaders to reconsider the criminalization of orpaillage adopted at independence.

Ritual Geology is an excellent addition to the study of the relationship between African knowledge systems within the context of indigenous mining culture and Western (colonial) science in West Africa. The latter operates under the pretext of regulating the environment of settler communities. In this vein, settler communities function as “laboratories” where colonial theories are experimented. This is evident in the works of scholars such as Richard Grove, Peder Anker, Helen Tilley, and Megan Black, who illustrate how the colonial powers of the West established research stations in Africa as centers for ecological research. D’Avignon’s work, therefore, demonstrates the resilient nature of African knowledge systems of mining in French West Africa in the face of Western science incursion from the colonial period to the present. Again, D’Avignon shows how the collaboration between African mining culture and Western science has contributed to modern mining in French West Africa, a position that gives primacy to the instrumentality of ethnoscience in Africa.

Victor Angbah is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include education, agriculture, and riverine histories of Africa. He is currently researching the symbiotic relationship between the Pra River and the Akan people of Ghana, West Africa, in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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.

Republics of Knowledge, Democracy, and Race in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America (2020) by Nicola Miller

banner image for Republics of Knowledge, Democracy, and Race in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America

Professor Nicola Miller’s research on intellectual history, knowledge, and modernity in nineteenth-century Spanish America has informed my own work in several meaningful ways. In her recent book Republics of Knowledge: Nations of the Future in Latin America (2020), Miller understands Spanish American republics as “communities of shared knowledge,” rather than as “imagined communities” à la Anderson. By focusing on “republics of knowledge,” Miller illuminates how the historical processes of nation-building and the creation of collective identities intersected and were negotiated in the realm of public knowledge during the nineteenth century. This helps us to better understand how an extraordinary array of historical actors, networks, institutions, and settings contributed to crafting these political communities. As Miller argues, knowledge, however imperfect or fragmentary, is more substantial and evidence-based than imagination.

book cover for Republics of Knowledge: Nations of the Future in Latin America

Miller proposes the term localized transnationalism to analyze the multitude of exchanges, connections, and comparisons that took place between the countries of the region. I found this analytical category particularly productive. By highlighting those transferences of knowledge within the region’s borders, so often overlooked by scholars, Miller counteracts well established understandings of Spanish American knowledge as derivative and mimetic and challenges the traditional approaches to the directionality of knowledge in the region. Through this concept, Miller’s work transcends historiographical binomials—such as global and local, modernity and tradition, center and periphery—that have structured both the practice of intellectual history and the ways we understand the relations between Latin America and the world until recent times.

Miller’s approach goes beyond analyzing how knowledge is produced and circulated in Spanish America. Her work delves deep into the fundamental question about how certain forms of knowledge acquire greater legitimacy and status than others, adding methodological breadth to the field. By bringing the problem of the recognition and validation of knowledge to the center of Spanish American intellectual history, Miller underscores how knowledge is deeply entrenched in global hierarchies of power, while at the same time it cannot be reduced to its imperial and colonial dimensions. Knowledge has its own dynamics and is not merely subsidiary to wider economic, political, and social processes.

*Portrait of Alexis de Tocqueville by Theodore Chasseriau, ca. 1850. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

Building upon Miller’s methodological contributions and engaging in conversation with her work, my paper analyzes the ways Spanish American intellectuals envisioned the creation of social and political knowledge from the region as the main path to achieve political modernity and respond to entrenched global hierarchies of democracy, empire, and race. Like Miller, I am interested in the creation, validation, and recognition of knowledge. U.S. democracy became “universal” at the expense of rendering alternative knowledges in Spanish America as “local.” I study how Tocqueville’s ideas about Spanish America were received, deployed, and contested in the Atlantic world. While some Spanish Americans endorsed Tocqueville’s diagnosis of the region as a self-evident reality, others claimed his interpretation was the product of racial prejudice and eagerly refuted his ideas.

The alternative sociological knowledges these Spanish Americans created have remained buried and ignored. In the North Atlantic, meanwhile, Tocqueville’s ideas provided a political rationale for US expansion into Spanish America. Tocqueville’s ideas were not only validated and recognized in the North but also became fundamental to proclaim the historical teleology of US racial exceptionalism. The problem of the recognition of the political and social knowledge produced about democracy and race in Spanish America is at the heart of these discussions.

Alexander will present his paper “Democracy and Race in the Americas: Readings of Tocqueville’s ‘Democracy in America South of the Rio Grande'” on Monday, September 13. Dr. Nicola Miller (University College London), Dr. Lina del Castillo (University of Texas at Austin), and Dr. James Sidbury (Rice University) will offer comments. More information on this event can be found here.

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