“Not a City but a World”: Seville and the Indies*

“Not a City but a World”: Seville and the Indies*
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“不是一座城市,而是一个世界”:塞维利亚和印度群岛*

DOI:
10.1111/j.1931-0846.2001.tb00478.x
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发表时间:
2001
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
W. G. Lovell
W. G. Lovell
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文献类型:
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作者:
W. G. Lovell

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*位于塞维利亚的中心,坐落在摩尔人城堡的堡垒和哥特式大教堂的飞行扶壁之间,坐落着印度档案馆--印度档案馆(图1)。世界其他地方的许多档案馆都收藏着重要的帝国收藏品,但就地点和相关性而言,没有一个档案馆能与塞维利亚档案馆相提并论。忘掉伦敦吧。忘了巴黎吧。忘了罗马吧。里斯本值得一提;马德里、热那亚和安特卫普也值得一提。然而,塞维利亚赋予了人们一种明显的地方和帝国之间的联系的感觉,这是其他任何地方都无法比拟的,至少是我所知道的。对于历史地理学家来说,档案研究是一项田野工作。从25年前读研究生开始,我就一直从事这样的田野工作。尽管研究旅行带我穿越了欧洲和拉丁美洲,但没有什么比塞维利亚档案馆的田野工作更能激发我的想象力了。是什么把我带到了那里?甚至在我还是个小学生的时候,地理就激发了我的冒险精神,让我相信,在格拉斯哥的界限之外,确实存在着一个更广阔的世界。然而,我在大学的第一年有点失望,这不仅仅是因为我的地理期中考试不及格。然后,格拉斯哥大学的教学重点放在地球上遥远的部分,这些部分在装饰着我们演讲厅的巨大墙上地图上被涂上了粉色。关于大英帝国的过去和现在的讨论占据了大量的课堂时间--非洲、北美、印度、东南亚、澳大利亚和新西兰。从地图上看,这种皇家粉色皮疹几乎无处不在。诚然,有很多有趣的东西要学,但我想要的是更多地了解那些所有人都能看到的非粉色飞溅,即使是在最破旧的全球代表上。直到我第二年的一半,才开设了一门迎合我好奇心的课程。我十几岁时是一名集邮者,对加勒比海地区的粉色斑点略有了解,对大陆上的两个粉色脚趾知之甚少,但据我所知,拉丁美洲大部分地区都是令人耳目一新的非粉色地区,这意味着在我们的课程中,要处理英国以外的殖民列强留下的遗产。就这样了。一门关于拉丁美洲的课程让我接触到了与我习惯于阅读和听到的历史和文化进程非常不同的历史和文化进程。它也让我接触到卡尔·奥特温·鲍尔的思想。我的《土地与生命》一书,由于经验丰富的咨询,自发地打开了《历史地理学序言》。在短短一段名为《历史地理档案》的章节中,他有这样一句话(Sauer 1963,366):从教区[登记册]到提交给国王的摘要报告,古老的西班牙记录中存在着令人尴尬的财富……有早期探索的日记和记述,详细报告的视察官员的访问,传教士的信件,在16世纪和18世纪多次为所有西班牙美洲人订购的所谓的地理关系[relciones geografias],纳税和贡品的支付记录,关于矿山、盐碱和道路的数据。也许新大陆的其他地方都没有这样详尽的文件。这一声明引起了我的兴趣,所以我在亚当·斯密图书馆中搜索了鲍尔以及他在伯克利的同事伍德罗·博拉、舍本·F·库克和莱斯利·B·辛普森的进一步著作。事实证明,这些“旧的西班牙记录”可以为各种目的进行卓有成效的查阅。到我在格拉斯哥的第二年结束时,想要更多地了解拉丁美洲的渴望已经根深蒂固。但是,伊托怎么会有这样的兴趣呢?在菲利普·埃利斯(Philip Ellis)的建议下,我在四年级申请了几个研究生项目,最终收到了来自大西洋两岸的录取通知。他的演讲吸引了我对该地区的兴趣。…
********** In the heart of Seville, squarely set between the ramparts of a Moorish citadel and the flying buttresses of a Gothic cathedral, lies the Archivo General de Indias--the Archive of the Indies (Figure 1). Many archives elsewhere in the world house important imperial collections, but none equals the Seville repository in terms of site and relevance. Forget London. Forget Paris. Forget Rome. Lisbon warrants a mention; Madrid, Genoa, and Antwerp too. It is Seville, however, that imparts a palpable sense of the connection between place and empire that no other locale can match, at least none that I'm aware of. For a historical geographer, archival research is fieldwork. I have been engaged in such fieldwork since graduate school a quarter-century ago. Although research trips have taken me across Europe and throughout Latin America, nothing captures my imagination more than fieldwork in the archive in Seville. What was it that took me there? Even as a schoolboy, geography sparked my spirit of adventure, convincing me that beyond the confines of Glasgow lay truly a wider world. My first year at university, however, was a bit of a disappointment, and not merely because I failed my midterm examination in geography. Instruction at Glasgow University then focused on far-flung parts of the earth that were colored pink on the huge wall maps that adorned our lecture theaters. Discussion of the British Empire, past and present, took up large chunks of class time--Africa, North America, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand. Cartographically, that imperial pink rash manifested itself almost everywhere. There was much of interest to learn, granted, but what I wanted was to know more about those nonpink splashes visible for all to see, even on the most tattered of global representations. Not until halfway through my second year was a course offered that catered to my curiosity. Having been a stamp collector in my teens , I knew a bit about the pink flecks in the Caribbean, less about the two pink toeholds on the mainland, but as far as I could discern, Latin America for the most part was refreshingly nonpink, which meant dealing in our curriculum with the legacy of colonial powers other than Great Britain. That was it. A course on Latin America exposed me to historical and cultural processes very different from the ones about which I'd been accustomed to reading and hearing. It also exposed me to the ideas of Carl Ortwin Sauer. My copy of Land and Life, by reason of well-thumbed consultation, opens of its own accord to "Foreword to Historical Geography." In a short, one-paragraph section called "The Archive in Historical Geography," he has this to say (Sauer 1963, 366): There is an embarrassment of riches in the old Spanish records, from parish [registers] up to summary reports that were sent to the king.... There are diaries and accounts of early explorations, the visitas made by inspecting officials who reported in detail, letters of missionaries, the so-called geographic relations [relaciones geograficas] ordered for all Spanish America at several times in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, records of payments of taxes and tributes, data on mines, salines, and roads. Perhaps no other part of the New World has as elaborate a documentation. The statement intrigued me, so I searched in the Adam Smith Library for further writings by Sauer as well as those of his Berkeley associates Woodrow Borah, Sherburne F. Cook, and Lesley B. Simpson. Those "old Spanish records," it turned out, could be consulted fruitfully for all sorts of purposes. By the end of my second year at Glasgow, the urge to know more about Latin America had become firmly established. But what was Ito do with such an interest? At the suggestion of one Philip Ellis, whose lectures hooked me on the region, I applied during my fourth year to several graduate programs, eventually receiving offers from both sides of the Atlantic. …