Black Tribute in the Spanish Americas

From the late 16th to the early 19th centuries, free individuals, families, and corporate groups whose reputations or self-descriptions defined them as Black in the Spanish Americas were subject to a specific tax. The royal tribute tax established the relationship between loyal vassals and a responsive Crown. Under Habsburg rule, tribute circumscribed the freedom of Black subjects but offered a path to privileges for those who provided services to the Crown. Attempts to levy the tax in the 16th and 17th centuries were wide-ranging but yielded comparatively small amounts of revenue. Tribute, nevertheless, affected many regions of the Spanish Americas, either by its collection or via the strategies Black people took to avoid it or contest its imposition. The responses of Black people and local officials to the tax determined how regularly it was enforced and how much revenue it would generate. Even where it failed, debates over tribute and attempts to collect it can reveal what it meant to be Black for colonial officials and ordinary people. Bourbon reforms led to an increasing emphasis on the fiscal potential of Black tribute, much of which became concentrated in the heart of New Spain. Hundreds of thousands of people not only paid tribute but were registered using new methods. The information produced within the tribute regime approximated the density, distribution, and interconnectedness of Black and Indian populations. In addition to the revenue and data its collection yielded, the imposition of Black tribute remains fundamental to understanding the colonial status, sense of identity, and experiences of Black people in the Spanish Empire.

Reseña de: Escribano-Páez, José M., Juan Rena and the Frontiers of Spanish Empire, 1500-1540

Reseña de: Escribano-Páez, José M., Juan Rena and the Frontiers of Spanish Empire, 1500-1540, Nueva York, Routledge, 2020, 234 pp., ISBN: 978-0-367-46081-5.

Reseña de: Commentary to Tatiana Seijas’ review of The Atlantic World and the Manila Galleons: Circulation, Market, and Consumption of Asian Goods in the Spanish Empire

El presente texto es un comentario y réplica a la reseña escrita por Tatiana Seijas en New West Indian Guide (94, 2020) asobre el libro de José L. Gasch-Tomás titulado The Atlantic World and the Manila Galleons: Circulation, Market, and Consumption of Asian Goods in the Spanish Empire (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2019. 258 pp.).

Deportation of “Undesirable” Chinese in the Philippines, 1837–1882

Between 1837 and 1882, the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines deported “undesirable” Chinese—vagrants, drunkards, unemployed, idlers, pickpockets, undocumented, and the “suspicious”—to various parts of the archipelago. Deportation, in this context, refers to the transportation or banishment of individuals deemed “dangerous” by the state to different far-flung areas of the islands or outside the colony but still within the Spanish empire. Deportation primarily served as a form of punishment and a means to rehabilitate and improve the wayward lives of “criminals.” This paper examines the deportation of “undesirable” Chinese in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Using underutilized primary materials from various archives in Manila and Madrid, it interrogates the actors, institutions and processes involved in banishing such individuals. It argues that while deportation served its punitive and reformative functions, Spanish authorities also used it to advance their colonial project in the islands. Chinese deportees formed part of the labor supply the state used to populate the colony’s frontier areas and strengthen its control over its newly-acquired territories.