Old World Methods, New World Pots. The Introduction of the Potter’s Wheel to the Spanish Colonies of Concepción de la Vega and Cotuí (Dominican Republic 1495–1562)

Wheel-made ceramics from early colonial Caribbean sites (1492–1562) have traditionally been labelled as European imports. This paper challenges that assumption, as the intercultural interactions within colonies in the New World have led to the creation of new social identities and changing material culture repertoires. Macro-trace ceramic analysis from the sites of Concepción de la Vega and Cotuí (Hispaniola, present-day Dominican Republic) show that the potter’s wheel was in fact introduced to the Spanish colonies at an early stage. The evidence of RKE (rotative kinetic energy) on sherds and the discovery of parts of a potter’s wheel are the earliest traces of the potter’s wheel found in the Americas. Here we aim to present how the potter’s wheel was introduced within the context of transcultural pottery forming. This paper will show that traditional coiling techniques were supplemented with finishing techniques on the wheel. The transformation processes within ceramic repertoires are assessed through theories of colonialism and learning processes, combined with archaeological and ethnoarchaeological assessment of the ceramic chaîne opératoire. Evidence from ceramic analysis is combined with historical sources to understand social processes surrounding the technological changes behind the introduction of the potter’s wheel to the New World colonies.

Latin American Art, Visual and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Introduction

The temporal frame of this Special Issue of Arts—the long eighteenth century—comprises a complex period of development in the Spanish colonies of Latin America that reverberates throughout the region’s visual culture [...]

The Enclosure of the Ejidos of Bogotá Imperial Wars and the End of Common Lands in Colonial New Granada

The article analyses the enclosure of the ejidos of the city of Bogotá in the second half of the 18th century, one century before the liberal government definitively abolished common property in Colombia. It shows how, as the land demand increased with population and economic growth, not only landowners but also the Crown sought to increase their income at the expense of common lands. Unlike the classic enclosures in England, the Cabildo kept control over the ejidos of Bogotá. By furthering the private use of municipal ejidos without expropriating Cabildos, the Crown sought to activate the agrarian economy safeguarding, at the same time, the local financial structure that sustained the empire. Emphasizing the fiscal nature of municipal ejidos, this article shows how imperial dynamics transformed land use on both sides of the Atlantic and explores the specificities of common-land enclosures in some of the Spanish colonies.

The Caribbean, Carlos Finlay, Walter Reed, and Serendipity

This chapter reviews the role of expanding sugarcane plantations throughout the Caribbean in the movement of slaves, mosquitoes and disease, as world empires jockeyed for dominance in world sugar markets. It relates how increased sugarcane production and exports to Europe led to increased importation of slaves to work the fields. As the African embarkation point of slaves moved north to the Slave Coast, yellow fever and the mosquito Aedes aegypti came into play, though when England banned slaveholding, sugar production shifted to the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba. The brief Spanish-American War of 1898, over control of Cuba, cemented the fame of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt but resulted in more deaths from yellow fever than combat, with the outbreak continuing during the post-war occupation of Cuba. Serendipity played a significant role in the subsequent discovery of the cause of the disease, connecting the Yellow Fever Commission, led by Major Walter Reed, with Cuban physician, Dr. Carlos Finlay, whose early experiments pointed to mosquitos and others while a series of experiments by Reed's team showed Aedes aegypti was the vector.

The Voyage and Sea Routes

Chapter 4 focuses on the voyage and sea routes that figured in France’s Europe trade with China. A knowledge not only of ship handling but also of wind systems was essential to a vessel’s safe arrival at her destination; so was the ability to deal with navigational hazards at a time when many regions remained to be accurately charted. The timing and duration of a voyage were also affected by the number of ports of call, the length of stay at each, and the route taken. Mariners were guided by sailing instructions such as d’Après de Mannevillette’s Neptune oriental, which described routes, winds, currents, navigational hazards, landmarks, port entrances, and more. While the majority of ships sailed via the Cape of Good Hope, the French also made use of routes via Cape Horn, both in the years 1706–1717, when they combined trade at Canton with that of supplying Spanish colonies on the Pacific coast of South America, and in the nineteenth century. Closer to China, the increasing use of alternative routes freed vessels from restrictions imposed by monsoons in the South China Sea, enabling ships to arrive year-round and ultimately lessening the control of Chinese authorities over international trade.

Maroon Societies in the Americas

Communities formed by Maroons—self-liberated enslaved Africans and their descendants—dotted the fringes of plantation America, from Brazil to Florida, from Peru to Texas. Maroon communities, called palenques in the Spanish colonies and mocambos or quilombos in Brazil, ranged from tiny bands that survived less than a year to powerful states encompassing thousands of members that lasted for generations or, in some cases, centuries. Marronage represented a major form of slave resistance, whether accomplished by lone individuals, by small groups, or in great collective rebellions. Throughout the Americas, Maroon communities stood out as a heroic challenge to white authority, as the living proof of the existence of a slave consciousness that refused to be limited by the whites’ conception or manipulation of it. In the 2020s, Maroons still form semi-independent communities in several parts of the Americas, for example, in Suriname, French Guiana, Jamaica, Belize, Colombia, and Brazil. As the most isolated of Afro-Americans (the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas), they have since the 1920s been an important focus of scientific research, contributing to theoretical debates about resistance to slavery, the heritage of Africa in the Americas, the process of creolization, and the nature of historical knowledge among nonliterate peoples.

“Peruvian balsam”: an example of transoceanic transfer of medicinal knowledge

Background Connections between China and the new Spanish colonies in America are known for an exchange of silver for silks and porcelains. That also medicinal drugs and medicinal knowledge crossed the Pacific Ocean is hardly known or discussed. Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms (“New World“ or “Peruvian balsam“) is a botanical balsam that has a long history of medicinal use, particularly as antiseptic and for wound healing. Except for a Chinese article discussing the reception of balsam in China and Japan, no scientific studies on its impact in China and Japan and the channels of transfer from the Americas to Asia exist. Methods Description: (1) This section provides a general introduction into Commiphora gileadensis (“Old World” balsam) as a medicinal category and discusses the specific medicinal properties of Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms. The section “Historical research and uses” provides a brief survey on some historical analyses of balsam. Aim, design, setting: (2) Applying a comparative textual and archaeological analysis the article critically examines Chinese and Japanese sources (texts, maps) to show (i) what Chinese and Japanese scholars knew about balsam, (ii) where and how it was used, and (iii) to identify reasons why the “digestion” of knowledge on balsam as a medicinal developed so differently in China and Japan. Results and discussion This chapter discusses the introduction of “Peruvian balsam” into, its uses as a medicinal as well as its scholarly reception in early modern China and Japan and introduces the channels of transmission from Spanish America to Asia. It is shown that Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms was partly a highly valued substance imported from the Americas into China and Japan. But the history of the reception of medicinal knowledge on Peruvian balsam was significantly different in China and Japan. Conclusions In Japan, the knowledge on Myroxylon balsamum was continuously updated, especially through mediation of Dutch physicians; Japanese scholars, doctors and pharmacists possessed a solid knowledge on this balsam, its origin and its medicinal uses. In China, on the contrary, there was no further “digestion” or development of the knowledge on either Myroxylon balsamum (L.) Harms var. pereirae (Royle) Harms or Commiphora gileadensis. By the late nineteenth century, related medicinal and even geographic knowledge had mostly been lost. The interest in “balsam” in late Qing scholarship was pure encyclopaedic and philosophic.

Mexican Farm Labor

Mexico, like other Spanish colonies in the Americas, developed a haciendas or latifundia system of farming that required local residents to work for large landowners in exchange for housing and food; 2,000 families owned almost 90 percent of Mexico’s rural land on the eve of the revolution that lasted from 1910 to 1917 and gave land to the peasants. Post-revolution labor reform in the 1920s created ejidos, plots of land that could be farmed and transferred to heirs but not sold. The Mexican constitution was changed in the early 1990s to allow ejido land to be rented or sold on the eve of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), loosening ties between rural Mexicans and ejido land and contributing to massive Mexico–US migration between the mid-1990s and the 2008–9 recession. NAFTA also speeded up changes in Mexican agriculture, contributing to the expansion of farms that export fresh fruits and vegetables to the US. Large Mexican farms that export fruits and vegetables to the US rely on a million hired workers, including local residents employed seasonally and internal migrants from poorer areas.

Anna Semper (1826–1909) and the female scientist in modern Germany

This article uses the work of Anna Semper (1826–1909) to explore the possibilities for understanding women’s contributions to the development of science in Germany from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. By examining the publications of her husband, the naturalist Carl Semper (1832–1893), as well as those of other scholars, traces of the ways that she produced scientific knowledge begin to emerge. Because the Sempers’ work took place in the context of the Philippines and Palau, two different Spanish colonies, and formed the basis of Carl’s professional career, this article also analyzes Anna’s role in the creation of an explicitly colonial science.