The Elusive Spanish League
A Problem of Measurement in Sixteenth-Century New Spain
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2831927 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roland Chardon (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1980 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 294 |
| Publication date | 1980-05-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Hispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2513219 |
| OpenAlex | W4249434455, W2321796659 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
Almost everyone who has tried to evaluate distances in Spanish colonial North America from sixteenth-century documents has experienced the many frustrations of transferring Spanish colonial leagues to specific geographic distances on the ground (or, for that matter, at sea). The length of the leagues mentioned varies widely, especially where travel distances are concerned. One reason lies in the varying distance estimates attributed by explorers and chroniclers when they roughly transformed subjective travel times into ground distances covered. In New Spain, these estimates were affected by the great diversity of terrain the chroniclers encountered, particularly in parts of Mexico and Guatemala. But a second reason is that, in the sixteenth century, they used one of two specific and different land leagues: the legua legal, or statute league, and the legua comt'Un, or common league. Unfortunately, a given reporter does not usually specify which league is meant, and since most official documents refer to the legua legal, many scholars, including such eminent ones as Woodbury Lowery, have tended to assume that the statute league was the only one employed in New Spain.' If the use of the legua comuvn can be demonstrated in New Spain in the sixteenth century, however, then measurement by the legua legal to calculate distances mentioned in documents and old maps may be shown to be clearly inappropriate
Ancient history · Colonialism · Diversity (politics · Geography · League · Physics · Political science · Statute · Archaeology and Natural History · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Law
Islands in the Lake
Mapeo de la primera rebelión de africanos esclavizados de las Américas (1521)
Collision of Worlds
In Search of Coosa
Reply to Boyd and Schroedl
Medidas y caminos en la época colonial
In Flat Country’
Geographic Information System Modeling of De Soto's Route from Joara to Chiaha
Contested terrain
Uribarri (Ulibarri) and the entrada of 1706
M asters of the L and
| Citations per year | 0.36 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1987 - 2026 (40) |
| Highly cited | No |