The New Spain Fleets: Delving into three centuries of socioeconomic colonial history through Artificial Intelligence

欧洲和美洲在十五世纪末和十六世纪初的相遇无疑改变了世界。西班牙将建立对美洲大部分地区的控制，开启我们今天生活的现代全球体系。西班牙王室获得的财富和资源超出了想象，建立新西班牙和秘鲁的总督将能够创建一个以前看不见的、无与伦比的社会、经济和政治网络。这只是因为查理一世授权建立西班牙舰队，在1520年至1790年期间，西班牙和美洲之间的所有跨大西洋航行都是由西班牙舰队完成的。西班牙船队不仅运送黄金、白银和在这些领土上发现的所有传统财富，而且还使各种资源的交换成为可能，包括植物、动物、食物，最重要的是，土著和欧洲的人和知识。这将产生前所未有的后果，从引进新的高度抗病作物导致欧洲人口增长，到获得新的资源和知识，最终将影响大西洋两岸的医学、天文、化学、地理、历史和文学等许多领域的发展。西班牙舰队由皇家机构贸易之家(Casa de la Contratación)监管。它在广泛的文件收集中记录了数千次旅行，提供了关于形成这些第一个全球网络的人的宝贵信息，以及最终塑造拉丁美洲和世界现代历史的活动。这个项目将在历史考古收集证据和分析信息的方式上产生阶段性的变化，同时改变我们对新西班牙舰队(NSF)的知识，NSF是早期现代历史上最重要的海事机构和基础设施之一。这将通过以下方式实现：第一，以计算机可读格式提供史无前例的关于NSF的数千份文件；第二，通过深入研究NSF的关键社会、经济和空间方面的五个尖端历史案例研究，转变我们对西班牙殖民海上贸易的知识。利用基于人工智能技术的创新计算方法，NSF项目将1)创建一个无与伦比的数字收藏，将来自两个主要档案馆的数千份与NSF有关的历史文件汇集在一起；2)对该收藏进行半自动转录，解锁数千份文件中的历史信息；3)使用自动注释方法从这些来源中识别、挖掘和分析有意义的信息；4)创建一个在线平台，方便任何学者探索、查询和提取新西班牙舰队文件中的信息；5)在五个案例研究中进行一系列历史分析，大大提高我们对新西班牙舰队推动的社会、经济和科学革命的了解。通过这样做，该项目将为研究人员和感兴趣的公众打开机会，以获取过去只有专家才能获得的信息和记录。此外，案例研究将探索一系列远未被全面和完全理解的主题，从而开启各种潜在的新研究领域和研究，其规模目前是不可能的。这些将包括土著人民早期移民到欧洲，船队中人的社会网络，贸易路线和运输货物的经济影响，非官方的西班牙奴隶贸易，美洲动植物的商业化和研究，以及关于健康、疾病和医学的科学思想交流。

The encounter between Europe and the Americas in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries undoubtedly changed the world. Spain would establish control over most of the Americas, inaugurating the modern global system we live in today. The richness and resources to which the Spanish crown got access were beyond imagination, and establishing the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru would enable the creation of a previously unseen and unparalleled social, economic, and political network. This was only made possible through Charles I's mandate to establish the Spanish Fleets that, between 1520 and 1790, carried out all transatlantic voyages between Spain and the Americas. The Spanish Fleets transported not only gold, silver, and all the traditional riches found in these territories, but also enabled the exchange of all sorts of resources, including plants, animals, foods and most importantly, people and knowledge, both Indigenous and European. This would have unprecedented consequences ranging from population growth in Europe thanks to the introduction of new and highly resistant crops, to the acquisition of new resources and knowledge that would eventually impact the development of areas such as medicine, astronomy, chemistry, geography, history, and literature, among many others, in both sides of the Atlantic. The Spanish Fleets were overseen by the royal institution House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación). It recorded thousands of trips in an extensive document collection that provides invaluable information about the people that shaped these first global networks and the activities that would eventually mould the history of modern Latin America and the world.This project will create a step-change in the way historical archaeology collects evidence and analyses information while transforming our knowledge about the New Spain Fleets (NSF), one of the most important maritime institutions and infrastructures of early modern history. This will be accomplished by, firstly, making readily available an unprecedented collection with thousands of documents about the NSF in computer-readable format; and secondly, by transforming our knowledge about the Spanish colonial maritime trade through five cutting-edge historical case studies delving into key social, economic, and spatial aspects of the NSF.Making use of innovative computational methods based on artificial intelligence techniques, the NSF project will 1) create an unparalleled digital collection bringing together thousands of historical documents related to the NSF from two major archives; 2) carry out the semi and automated transcription of this collection, unlocking historical information in thousands of documents; 3) use automated annotation methods to identify, mine, and analyse meaningful information from these sources; 4) create an online platform that will facilitate to any scholar the exploration, query, and extraction of information from the New Spain Fleets documents; and 5) carry out, in five case studies, a series of historical analyses that will substantially advance our knowledge of the social, economic, and scientific revolutions facilitated by the New Spain Fleets.In doing so, the project will open the opportunity for researchers and the interested public to access information and records that have been only in the remit of specialists in the past. Furthermore, the case studies will explore a series of topics that are far from being comprehensively and completely understood, thus opening a variety of potential new research areas and studies at a scale that is impossible at the moment. These will include the early migration of Indigenous peoples to Europe, the social networks of people in the fleets, the trade routes and the economic impact of the goods transported, the unofficial Spanish slave trade, the commercialisation and study of American plants and animals, and the exchange of scientific ideas about health, disease, and medicine.