The Matter of Empire

What is the matter with empire? Or rather, what is it made of? This question drives Bentancor’s philosophical exploration of scholastic thought and applied science in the colonial Andes, focused on the silver mines of Potosí. In five dense chapters, Bentancor spans a long century to link the writings of Francisco de Vitoria, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (and his nemesis, Bartolomé de Las Casas), José de Acosta, a small group of writers that he labels “the circle of Toledo” (a reference to the Peruvian Viceroy Francisco de Toledo who formalized the Potosí mita labor draft and introduced mercury amalgamation), and Juan de Solórzano Pereira. Adding select metallurgical treatises to their works, including the world-famous Arte de los Metales (Madrid, 1640) by Álvaro Alonso Barba, Bentancor argues that understanding Spanish scholasticism as developed by the School of Salamanca and its heirs is central to understanding the mining and refining of precious metals in early colonial Spanish America. By extension, understanding the “matter of mining” as explained or justified by these thinkers and tinkerers reveals the logic of the early Spanish Empire, the grand global strategies of which were made possible by Potosí silver. More simply, Bentancor sees treatises on colonial governance and mining as mutually constitutive of empire.For Spanish neo-scholastics, matter encountered in nature was raw, demanding perfection through ideal forms, just like Amerindian souls. Bentancor digs for the roots of the modern drive to dominate the material world, and how, in the Spanish case, this drive justified imperialism. Given that Pagden, Adorno, Brading, Dandelet, and others have approached this matter from other angles, Bentancor’s primary innovation, aside from his focus on metaphysical instrumentalism, is to take seriously the writings of metallurgists and miners.1 As for indigenous views, Bentancor suggests that native Andean “vitalism,” a potential critique of Western political economy, must be understood as a “remainder” of colonial struggles.Bentancor’s introduction offers a challenging but valuable exegesis of early modern Spanish scholasticism in light of Heidegger’s idea of “enframing” (seen as an outgrowth of Aristotle’s “handiwork metaphysics”) and Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism.2 An alternative title for the book might be “Aristotle and Commodity Fetishism in South America,” but that would sell it short. By focusing on the mining of precious metals, Bentancor highlights repeated “impasses” or philosophical dead ends, as when the aim or “ends” of mining for the greater glory of God crashed into mining as wealth accumulation for its own sake.Francisco de Vitoria, who had more to say about slavery, war, and trade than about mining per se, is the focus of Chapter 1. At issue for Bentancor is Vitoria’s stance regarding technical mastery. Vitoria uses Aristotelian logic to argue for Spanish superiority and thus rightful dominion. Chapter 2 situates Sepúlveda and Las Casas as adherents of the same logic—one justifying domination as “self-defense” and the other seeking “dominant” restitution for wrongs done to inferior Amerindians. Both narratives deemed native Americans the beneficiaries of a superior civilization, an early “impasse” in the history of the white man’s burden.Acosta, in Chapter 3, is the first to concern himself directly with mining and “mastering” the mineral kingdom, which, for Bentancor, led to new impasses, particularly as regards exchange and money. At the core, however, Acosta was a metaphysical instrumentalist like his forebears. Bentancor sets aside some recent appraisals of Acosta as an early observational scientist to focus instead on his “onto-theological” assumptions, in particular his teleological defense of the encomienda and mita systems of forced labor as mechanisms to “perfect” the “barbaric” natives of the Americas while simultaneously perfecting raw matter (silver ore to silver). But Acosta’s speculations gave way to tactile horror. The Cerro Rico, or rich mountain, of Potosí, where Amerindians were forced to work under extreme duress, is his Exhibit A.Was Acosta differently horrified than was Domingo de Santo Tomás, his predecessor, who described Potosí as a “mouth of hell”? The answer is “Yes,” although it is more accurate to say that he came to a different conclusion despite giving a far more punishing account. In a colonized space where merchants and missionaries traveled freely, and the violence of conquest was a fading memory, Acosta could claim the harvest of souls and the harvest of silver as entwined and self-justifying Spanish imperial projects. In this reading, Amerindian suffering in Potosí was another secret judgment of God that served to enrich heaven and purify souls. For Bentancor, this view and Acosta’s side notes on money suggest a full embrace of commodity fetishism.Chapter 4 examines works by writers active during Peru’s imperial overhaul under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo (r.1569-1580). The central aim of the so-called Toledan reforms was reviving silver production at Potosí. Bentancor comments on three texts not published in the colonial era—the “anónimo de Yucay” (1571); judge Juan de Matienzo’s Gobierno del Perú (1567); and Potosí mill owner Luis Capoche’s 1585 description of the city and mines of Potosí. Whereas the first text directly disputes Las Casas’ restitution claims, Matienzo’s Gobierno is a more comprehensive defense of imperial governance and a blueprint for reform, which was how Toledo used it. Capoche’s treatise, which post-dates Toledo’s visita by a few years, is something between an arbitrio or proposal for improvement in exchange for a royal merced and a relación geográfica, or formal report to the king. A closer comparison of Acosta with Capoche, who were in each other’s orbits, would have been instructive.Bentancor engages with recent scholarship about Toledo’s grand resettlement project and about Potosí as the site of an early modern environmental disaster to conclude that the story told by these texts is again one of Thomist metaphysical instrumentalism running aground, or hitting an impasse. The mine mita and other horrors were now justified by technical difficulties, but the authors of all three texts remained blind to technological metastasis (Heidegger) and the tyranny of the new cash economy (Marx). Bentancor also challenges current notions of decentralized empire to suggest that a state’s engine—in this case, Potosí—might be more relevant than its engineers.Chapter 5 turns to the early seventeenth-century jurist Juan de Solórzano Pereira, whose Política Indiana (1648) summed up the colonial project while sorting 150 years’ worth of laws. As Bentancor shows, Solórzano—who had experience in Peruvian mining—made a special effort to lay out the pros and cons of the mine mita and other perennial burdens of the Spanish royal conscience. Solórzano thus historicizes the great “impasse” of metaphysical instrumentalism first evident in Vitoria’s work and described by Acosta only to relent and endorse the mita, though supplemented by penal labor. Bentancor ends by contemplating a belief shared by Solórzano, Álvaro Alonso Barba, and some highland Andean cultures—that metals regenerate inside the mines. Solórzano’s conclusion is that the Spanish Crown (by the grace of God) owned the wellsprings of its own regeneration. Bentancor argues that Andean parallel beliefs must be understood as products of the same colonial processes and discourses, “the two logics of modernity, technological domination and capitalist deterritorialization” (352).This study is not the work of a specialist on mining, metallurgy, or colonial labor history; those seeking technical description must look elsewhere. Gregorio Agricola should be Georgius (or Jorge), and Luis Capoche does not appear ever to have used the name José. Also, the Spanish term metal is (or was) more inclusive than its English homonym, best translated as ore in texts like Capoche’s and Barba’s. Similarly, ley is not law when discussing metals, but these are miniscule concerns. The Matter of Empire is essential reading for anyone contemplating the philosophical underpinnings of the early Spanish Empire. It challenges several assumptions current in the history of colonial politics and natural science

Ancient history · Archaeology · Colonialism · Empire · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Political science · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Latin American history and culture · Philosophy

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