Geduldete Fremde

Martin Biersack's study, whose title translates to “Tolerated strangers: Spanish colonial rule and the extranjeros in the Americas,” is a pathbreaking analysis of how migrants became, remained, and ceased to be vecinos (recognized residents with rights and duties) in Bourbon Spanish America from 1700 to 1810. Biersack shows that integrating into society did not result merely from a crown fiat or community practice. Instead, the author praxeologically traces the manifold negotiations among metropolis, American authorities and corporations, and residents of foreign descent. A community usually regarded immigrants—by which the author mainly refers to male European immigrants as opposed to forced African migrants or spatially mobile Indigenous people—as transeúntes (transients) until they took up residence, desired to become vecinos, and were acknowledged as such, even if the crown continued to view them legally as foreigners. Marriage to a local was key, whereas the length of residence and landownership mattered less. Yet requirements to become a vecino shifted according to circumstance and were often vague. For instance, the municipal council of Montevideo raised money from vecinos to build a jail in 1752. The council cast a wide net by including those who were married in the district and those who owned a house, regardless of foreign descent. Shortly afterward, in 1763, however, the crown ordered the Montevideo municipal council to expel all Portuguese. While advocating for Portuguese immigrants, the Montevideo council applied a different standard and listed only those who were married to a local as vecinos. Even those who owned real estate in the city or had resided there for extensive periods were denied the status of vecinos and potentially faced deportation. Over time, the patterns of exclusion changed, too. The crown evicted foreigners in seven large-scale campaigns between 1700 and 1810. Regional expulsions also occurred in Buenos Aires Province and the Kingdom of New Spain. Sometimes merchants of foreign descent moved into focus as a group, because they challenged commercial interests of the municipal council of Buenos Aires, the consulados of Lima and Cádiz, and traders in Chile and Cuba. Toward the end of the century, the crown paid closer attention to security, especially as proponents of the French Revolution in 1789 washed ashore in the Americas.Biersack also engages the old question of the early modern state's efficacy. While royal law denied aliens access to the Americas and crown jurists increasingly demanded stricter compliance, the American authorities deported only 238 people during the Bourbon period. This was a minuscule amount compared to the large number of resident foreigners. Biersack adds that legal latency also pressured many migrants to conform with local values in order to avoid drawing attention and risk being reported. Therefore, the law and the nascent bureaucracy, while seldom springing into action, were successful in tamping down conflicts and fostering integration.By advancing these ideas, the author departs from Tamar Herzog's fundamental argument in Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (2003) that communities viewed settled foreigners as domiciliados (residents) and later accepted them as vecinos, which the king mainly confirmed by naturalizing them. Subsequently, Fabricio Gabriel Salvatto and Eleonora Poggio maintained that vecindad did not necessarily entail naturalization and that the king actively managed foreign populations, especially in sensitive border regions. Biersack adds to this discussion by illuminating the varied residency negotiations that could deny or even rescind the status of vecinos.This book draws on years of research in the Latin American, European, and US scholarship in various languages. The author mainly reviewed lawsuits and official communications in the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, while also consulting repositories in Buenos Aires, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico City, and Chile. He also examined padrones de extranjeros (alien resident lists) to demonstrate that foreigners concentrated in great ports, such as Buenos Aires and Veracruz, while also migrating to the region connecting the mines in Peru with the Río de la Plata. Biersack complements these documents with reports from travelers and observers such as Alexander von Humboldt and Richard Cleveland.This is a highly erudite, thoughtful, and deeply analytical book that opens new perspectives on social belonging. I strongly recommend that Dr. Biersack publish his work in English, although he may want to foreground even more storylines. For that end, Biersack could expand the curious history of Federico Saul. Saul arrived in Tehuantepec (in Oaxaca) in 1795, claiming to be a Turkish Muslim and seeking conversion to the Catholic faith. When word got around that he had already been baptized, he knew that he could not rely on clemency and changed his tune. Three fellow jail inmates now cheerfully supported Saul's assertion to be an expert botanist. Two physicians interviewed him hoping to find new cures, but Saul's new identity fell apart when he was found drunk in jail after smuggling bottles of brandy past the warden. He forcibly left New Spain, and his ship sank off the Spanish coast after a British naval attack. Such stories about exclusion would certainly garner much attention among a US readership

Political science · Cuban History and Society

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  Open Access•Martin Biersack•Itinerario•2025

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