Penal Servitude in the Spanish Empire

Presidio Labor in the Eighteenth Century

Bibliographic Data

ID2834810
AuthorsRuth Pike (corresponding author)
Year1978
Volume58
Issue1
Pages21
Publication date1978-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2513599
OpenAlexW4251439268
LanguageEN
Citations received16

L ITTLE attention has been given to the role of penal servitude in the history of the Spanish Empire for historians traditionally have been more interested in other forms of coercive labor. With the exception of the galleys in Spain and the textile industry in Spanish America, the systematic exploitation of convict labor in the Hispanic World has remained a relatively unexplored field of investigation.' Yet throughout the colonial period, prisoners were an important source of cheap labor both in Spain and Spanish America, and their utilization by the state as well as private interests merits close attention by those interested in colonial labor systems. Moreover, the history of penal servitude presents a good case for the approach to colonial Spanish American history suggested by the Belgian historian Charles Verlinden some years ago.2 Although Verlinden stressed the continuity between medieval European societies based on classical origins and Spanish American colonial societies, he also placed emphasis on the reciprocal contacts between colonies and metropolises. Penal servitude, like slavery, offers one of the best examples of the continuity of classical and medieval influences, but both

Ancient history · Colonialism · Convict · Economic history · Empire · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · History and Politics in Latin America · Law

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