Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire's Periphery

Abstract

Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire’s Periphery examines how distance was conceptualized in an empire that at its height spanned four continents, stretching from Europe to the Philippines. Distance mediated most aspects of how the Spanish empire functioned, but we know little about how it was envisioned and understood. This book argues that documents, particularly official documents, were crucial to overcoming long distances. Focusing on Guatemala, a part of the empire that has long been considered “peripheral,” the book examines how the creation, movement, and storage of documents reflect particular conceptions of distance. The travelers and officials who wrote documents, the mailmen who carried documents hundreds of leagues across the isthmus, and the scribes who stored documents in local archives shed light on how both spatial and temporal distance were understood and overcome. Various segments of the population viewed space and distance in different ways: the official view of space, which cast long distances as “dangerous” and areas off the route as “Indian,” was not shared by all. Conceptions of distance in Guatemala changed in the late eighteenth century, as Spanish Bourbon reforms created a more rapid, integrated communication system and the weight of document production and storage was re-distributed. As a result of these changes, local places that had been considered “distant” within Guatemala were perceived to be “closer,” and new locations – notably Mexico and Spain – that had once been closely linked to Guatemala came to be considered “distant.”

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