Article contents
Diets, Food Supplies and the African Slave Trade in Early Seventeenth-Century Spanish America*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
Much has been written about the spread of Old World crops and livestock in the Americas. However, very little is known, except in very general terms, about the availability of different foods, diets and nutrition, particularly among the common people, in different regions of Spanish America in the early colonial period. This derives in part from the shortage of evidence, but it also reflects the difficulties of researching these complex issues, where environmental conditions, access to land and labor, income distribution, regulation of food supplies and prices, as well as food traditions, all interact.
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2007
Footnotes
The authors would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for financial support to undertake this research. This is part of a larger study of the Portuguese slave trade to Spanish America in the early seventeenth century published as From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
References
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14 For Cartagena, it has been estimated that about 20 percent of 1,700 entries that contained an item of food were compound entries.
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29 AGI AP 30 N23 doc. 1 La ciudad de Panamá to crown 1583, AGI AP 14 Dr. de Villanueva Zapata to crown, Portobello, 12 May 1595.
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35 Villena, Guillermo Lohmann, Historia marítima del Perú: Vol. IV Siglos XVII y XVIII (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Histórico-Marítimos del Perú), p. 227;Google Scholar Pérez-Mallaína, Pablo E. and Ramírez, Bibiano Torres, La armada del Mar del Sur (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1987), p. 201;Google Scholar Bradley, Peter T., “Ships of the Armada of the Viceroyalty of Peru in the Seventeenth Century,” The Mariner's Mirror 79 (1993), pp. 394–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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38 Lizárraga, Reginaldo de, Descripción breve de toda la tierra del Perú, Tucumán, Río de la Plata y Chile. Biblioteca de autores españoles 216 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1968), cap. 57, p. 42.Google Scholar
39 Archivo de la Beneficencia Pública, Lima, 9086 fol.73 Ordenanzas para el hospital de Santa Ana, Lima, 4 Dec. 1590. These basic rations did not differ from the amount of meat provided for administrators, but the latter received two pounds of white bread and in addition two pozuelos of wine, and more vegetables and fruit.
40 An estimated contact population of 30,000 tributaries in the province of Cartagena had fallen to about 1,500 in the early seventeenth century ( Roca, Adolfo Meisel, “Esclavitud, mestizaje y haciendas en la provincia de Cartagena: 1533–1851,” Desarrollo y Sociedad 4 (1980), p. 230;Google Scholar Rivera, Julián Ruiz, Los indios de Cartagena bajo la administración española en el siglo XVII (Bogotá: Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), pp. 24–41).Google Scholar According to Oviedo ( Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, Historia general y natural de las indias (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1959) vol. 2 lib. 29 cap. 10 p. 241 Google Scholar), the Panamanian isthmus possessed two million people when the Spanish arrived. However, it suffered a precipitous decline, so that as early as the 1520s it was importing Indian slaves from Nicaragua to meet the labor shortage ( Newson, Linda A., Indian Survival in Colonial Nicaragua (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), pp. 105, 119).Google Scholar By the 1570s there were only 300 to 400 tributary Indians in the whole Audiencia of Panama ( Velasco, López de, Geografía, p. 171 Google Scholar) and by the early seventeenth century only three small villages remained in the jurisdiction of the city ( Sanz, Serrano y, Relaciones históricas, pp. 169, 216–17 Descripción de Panamá 1607;Google Scholar CDI vol. 9, p. 115 Descripción corográfica 1607). As for the north coast of Peru, David Cook has estimated that the tributary population may have fallen from about 20,000 tributaries in 1570 to less than 6,000 in 1620 ( David Cook, N., Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 118, 120.Google Scholar
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52 52 AGNL SO-CO ca. 20 doc. 201 Money owed by Juan de la Cueva for the purchase and upkeep of slaves 1633; AGNL SO-CO ca. 20 doc. 201 Slaves purchased (Aug.-Dec. 1629). These figures include the cost of transport across the Panamanian isthmus.
53 53 AGNL SO-CO ca. 20 doc. 201. Differences in the prices reflect differences between Angolan slaves and those from Upper Guinea, which were known as Ríos. The latter were more expensive to purchase but sold in Lima at higher prices.
54 AGNL SO-CO ca. 18 doc. 197 Accounts regarding 138 ½ piezas taken to the Indies (1614–15). Those caring for confiscated slaves were paid between 1 real and 1.75 reals per slave a day for food, lodging and medical care (AGI Escribanía de Cámara 632A pieza 6 fols. 17–65 Procedido desclavos negros que se condenaron por descaminados…Cartagena, June 1617 to 15 Nov. 1619, Pieza 9 fols. 37r–41 v, 52r–55v Testimonios sobre descaminos…Cartagena 1625).
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73 It is very difficult to calculate the precise percentage, because although the quantities of rice are generally recorded separately, the same is not true for bread, where the entries often include other items. As such it is not easy to calculate the total expenditure on cereals and bread, and therefore the proportion spent on different types.
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78 In 1630 3 barrels of capers cost 85 pesos.
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84 AGNL SO-CO ca. 20 doc. 201 Memoria de los gastos… 1633. In 1633 Sebastián Duarte purchased 377 slaves for Manuel Bautista Pérez, while he bought a further 46 slaves for other clients, of which two large lots were of 16 and 11 slaves; the remaining 19 were purchased in ones and twos. The dates of the purchase of the 19 slaves are not known, so they have not been included in the calculations. One batch of 205 slaves was shipped to Portobello on September 15 and the other on November 2. During this period 18 slaves died.
86 AGI SF 40 R3 N61 doc. 3 Oficiales reales 30 Jul. 1639; Hamilton, , “Wages and Subsistence,” p. 434;Google Scholar Bennassar, Bartolomé and Goy, Joseph, “Contribution à l’histoire de la consummation alimentaire du XIVe au XIXe,” Annales ESC 30:2–3 (1975), pp. 421–23,425;Google Scholar Cook, and Borah, , Essays, vol. 3, p. 176.Google Scholar
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88 AGI Contaduría (hereafter cited as CO) 496 Las raciones que se deben de hospital de Cartagena de los enfermos 1575. The ration of one pound of meat appears to have been fairly consistent through the colonial period (See also AGNB Colonia Hospitales 6 fols. 544–552 Administrador del hospital, Don Nicolás García, Cartagena, 29 Oct. 1760). For the consumption of meat in Venezuela in the late eighteenth century, see: Lovera, José R., Historia de la alimentación en Venezuela (Caracas: Monte Àvila Editores, 1988), p. 67.Google Scholar
89 Apart from the 80 pesos that were spent on salt fish, fourteen of the entries were multiple entries, in which the main other item was amaranth. Since amaranth is likely to have accounted for only a small proportion of the expenditure, it is estimated that 75 of the other 79 pesos were spent on fish, of which 20 were on salt fish and 55 on fresh fish. Expenditure on salt fish for the journey has been excluded.
90 Unfortunately, there is only one entry that gives the price of salt fish by quantity, which was 3 pesos an arroba. That salt fish was more expensive is suggested by the arancel for Cartagena in 1588, where one real could buy only one and a half pounds of salt fish, compared to two pounds of barbecued fish ( Urueta, , Documentos, p. 226 Google Scholar).
91 On days when turtles were purchased, a total of 1,027 rations were needed.
92 Super, , “Spanish Diet,” pp. 61–62 Google Scholar
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94 Urueta, , Documentos, p. 226.Google Scholar
95 AGI SF 40 R 3 N 61 doc. 3 Oficiales reales, Cartagena, 30 Jul. 1639.
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99 AGI CO 496 Las raciones que se deben del hospital de Cartagena de los enfermos 1575 and Relación de las raciones …de los dichos galeones en esta ciudad de Cartagena 1575.
100 AGNB Colonia Hospitales 6 fols. 533r–536v Razón de la ración diaria…Cartagena, 1755 and fols. 544r–552r Administrador del hospital, Don Nicolás García, Cartagena, 29 Oct. 1760.
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