The Empirical Empire: Spanish Colonial Rule and the Politics of Knowledge

✍ Scribed by Arndt Brendecke

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 334
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

How was Spain able to govern its enormous colonial territories? In 1573 the king decreed that his councilors should acquire "complete knowledge" about the empire they were running from out of Madrid, and he initiated an impressive program for the systematic collection of empirical knowledge. Brendecke shows why this knowledge was created in the first place – but then hardly used. And he looks into the question of what political effects such a policy of knowledge had for Spain’s colonial rule.

• 2012: Preis Geisteswissenschaften International
• 2010: Habilitationspreis des Verbandes der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands
  

✦ Table of Contents

Appreciations
Content
Illustrations
Introduction
I The king – all-seeing and blind
1 The spider in the web: Philip II and the Escorial
2 The center’s eyes and ears: cognition and communication
3 The idea and imagery of the watchful ruler
4 Observation and punishment: The inquisitorial legal culture
5 Observation and reward: Distributive justice
6 The blindness of the king and the corridors of power
II Knowledge as the ruler’s postulate
1 Integra informatio: Empirical methods in the Late Middle Ages
2 Ex certa scientia: The absolutist appeal to certain knowledge
3 Somos informados: Linking information to decisions
III Strolls through the world. The epistemic setting of the court
1 The Spanish court
2 Spaces of knowledge
3 Media of knowledge
4 Land recording projects in Spain
IV The authorities of colonial rule
1 The Casa de la Contratación: Nautical knowledge becomes political
2 The Council of the Indies
3 Institution-building in Spanish America
V Knowledge in the setting of colonial rule
1 The vigilant triangle
2 Beginnings of knowledge acquisition
3 Early initiatives: land recording, control, and participation
4 Objectivity as technique for control and exoneration
5 Listen, describe, and decide: the viceroy’s court
VI Entera noticia: Ovando’s project of complete knowledge
1 America cannot be understood: The path to reform
2 The Visitator’s work
3 Positions in the reform discourse
4 The Ovandian Reform’s measures
4.1 Compiling colonial law
4.2 The Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of America
4.3 The Law on the Permanent Description of America
VII Practices of knowledge acquisition
1 Mirror on the world
2 Traveling science
3 The permanent description of America
4 Interrogative methods
5 The questions
6 The answers
VIII Consulting: scenarios for the application of knowledge
1 Authorities without eyes: The dilemma of the court chronicler
2 Everyday decision-making: The epistemic setting of the Council
2.1 The little tools of colonial knowledge
2.2 The performance of media and mediators
IX Conclusions
Appendix
1 Abbreviations
2 Printed sources
3 Books, chapters, and journal articles
4 Index