1 A version of this paper was read to the Newberry Library Renaissance Conference (April 27, 1968). The author wishes to thank Professors Peter Reisenberg, Fernand Brandel, and Herbert Klein for their comments. They bear no responsibility, however, for the following presentation.

2 Mexico City is always referred to by Mexicans as Mexico or “the capital.” Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos is commonly referred to as Bahia although this can cause confusion since Bahia is also the name of the province in which the city was located. In both cases I have tried to be as explicit as possible and I hope that context will aid the perplexed reader.

3 Boxer, C. R. has finally identified the origin of this calumny as Patrick Gordon, Geography Anatomiz'd or, the Geographical Grammar, 2d ed. (London, 1699).Google Scholar See Boxer, C. R., Some Literary Sources for the History of Brazil in the Eighteenth Century. The Taylorian Lecture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 23.Google Scholar

4 The bibliography of comparative Spanish and Portuguese colonization is long and very uneven. A most perceptive work is Sergio Buarque de Holanda, Rakes del Brasil (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1955), translated from the Portuguese edition of 1936. The French economic historian, Frederic Mauro, has presented a suggestive and neglected study, “México y Brasil: dos economías coloniales comparadas,” Historia Mexicana 40 (1961): 571-587. See also Sergio Bagú, Economía de la sociedad colonial (Buenos Aires, 1949).

5 Gage, Thomas, The English-American, A New Survey of the West Indies (London, 1648), p. 55.Google Scholar

6 For pictorial representations of colonial Salvador see Leáo, Joaquim Sousa, Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos. Iconografía seiscentista desconhecida (The Hague, 1948)Google Scholar; Silveira, Luis, Ensaio de iconografía das cidades portuguesas do ultramar, 4 vols. (Lisbon, 1957), vol. 4Google Scholar; Smith, Robert, “Colonial Towns of Spanish and Portuguese America,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 14 (December 1955): 3-72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Braudel, Fernand, El Mediterráneo y el mundo mediterráneo en la época de Felipe II, 2 vols. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1953), 1:289-292.Google Scholar

8 For a comparative view of Sevillian society in the sixteenth century see Pike, Ruth, Enterprise and Adventure: The Genoese in Seville and the Opening of the New World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966)Google Scholar. Morse, Richard, “Some Characteristics of Latin American Urban History,” American Historical Review 67 (January 1964): 319, notes that the first ordinances for town planning were issued to Pedrarias Dávila in 1514.Google Scholar This article by Professor Morse and his “Latin American Cities Aspects of Function and Structure,” Comparative Studies of Society and History 4 (July 1962): 473-493; “Recent Research on Latin American Urbanization: A Selective Survey with Commentary,” Latin American Research Review 1, no. 1 (1965): 35-74, are indispensable theoretical studies.

9 Wagner, Henry R., The Rise of Hernando Cortés (Berkeley, California: The Cortés Society, 1944), pp. 390-409.Google Scholar

10 Sarfatti, Margali, Spanish Bureaucratic-Patrimonialism in America, Politics of Modernization Series, no. 1 (Berkeley, California: Institute of International Studies, 1966), p. 64Google Scholar, and sources cited therein. The Pierenne thesis is analyzed by John Mundy, “On Henry Pierenne and the Medieval Town” in Pierenne, Henri, Early Democracy in the Low Countries (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

11 Troncoso, Francisco del Paso y, ed., Epistolario de Nueva España 1505-1818, 16 vols. (Mexico: JoséPorrua, 1939-1942).Google Scholar

12 Epistolario 3, no. 155, Report of the Cabildo of Mexico (September 3, 1534).

13 Ibid. 3, no. 153 (July 13, 1534).

14 Davidson, David, “Negro Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico 1519-1650,” Hispanic American Historical Review 46 (August 1966): 243-245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Gibson, Charles, “The Transformation of the Indian Community of New Spain 1500-1810,” Journal of World History 2, no. 3 (1955): 585.Google Scholar

16 Nuttal, Zelia, “Royal Ordinances Concerning the Laying Out of New Towns,” Hispanic American Historical Review 4 (November 1921): 743-753; 5 (May 1922): 249-254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 León-Portilla, Miguel, ed., The Broken Spears. The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1962), p. 149.Google Scholar These poems were translated from Náhuatl into Spanish and then into English.

18 Population estimates for Central Mexico in the sixteenth century are highly controversial. Woodrow Borah and Sherburne F. Cook of the “Berkeley School” have steadily revised their figures upward to their most recent calculation of 25 million people in Central Mexico at the time of conquest. For Mexico City, estimates varied between 100,000-300,000 although no sixteenth-century writer ever estimated less than 100,000. Gibson, Charles, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 112Google Scholar, calculates a population of 80,000 in the 1560s. By 1580 there were 3,000 Spanish households in the city. Cf. Borah, and Cook, , The Aboriginal Population of Central Mexico on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963); The Indian Population of Central Mexico 1531-1610 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960).Google Scholar

19 de Gomara, Francisco López, Cortés. The Life of the Conqueror, trans, and ed. by Simpson, Lesley Byrd (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 324.Google Scholar

20 Fray Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía) described the rebuilding of the city and compared it to the plagues of Egypt because of the labor and dangers involved. See the citation in McAndrew, John, Open Air Churches (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 2-3.Google Scholar

21 Vitruvius, Pollio, De Architecture 2 vols., trans. Frank Granger (New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1931-1934)Google Scholar; Alberti, Leone Battista, De re (¡edificatoria libri decern (Strassburg, 1541).Google Scholar See also the sources cited in Kubler, George, “Mexican Urbanism in the Sixteenth Century,” Art Bulletin 24 (1942): 160-171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 de Salazar, Francisco Cervantes, Life in the Imperial and Loyal City of Mexico in New Spain and the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, Castañeda, Carlos E., ed., Minnie Lee Barrett Shepard, trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1953), p. 42Google Scholar; Stanislawski, Dan, “Early Spanish Town Planning in the New World,” Geographical Review 37 (January 1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 101. For various plans and maps of Mexico City see Julio González y González, Planos de Ciudades Iberoamericanos y Filipinas existentes en el Archivo de Indias, 2 vols. (Seville 1951)Google Scholar; Stampa, Manuel Carrera, “Planos de la Ciudad de Mexico (desde 1521 hasta nuestros días),” Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística 67 (March-June 1949): 265-347Google Scholar; Ubaldo Vargas Martínez, La Ciudad de México, 1325-1960 (Mexico, 1961).Google Scholar

23 Toussaint, Manuel, “Alonso García Bravo, alarife que trazó la ciudad de México,” Artes de México, no. 49-50 (1964)Google Scholar, special issue entitled La Ciudad de México, pp. 24-28. On this interesting early town planner there is also the study by Benítez, Jose R., Alomo García Bravo, planeador de la Ciudad de México y su primer director de obras públicas (Mexico, 1933)Google Scholar; McAndrew, Open-Air Churches, p. 112; Stampa, Manuel Carrera, “El autor o autores de la traza,” Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de la Historia 19 (1960): 167-176.Google Scholar

24 Stanislawski, , “Early Spanish Town Planning,” pp. 101-105.Google Scholar

25 The pro-Renaissance plan school is best represented by Stanislawski, Dan, “Origin and Plan of the Grid-Pattern Town,” Geographical Review 36 (1946): 105-120Google Scholar; and his article cited above in footnote 22. The opposite approach has an eloquent exponent in George Kubler, “Mexican Urbanism.” McAndrew, Open-Air Churches presents a compromise position. See also the discussion in Palm, Erwin Walter, “Orígenes del urbanismo imperial en América,” Contribuciones a la historia municipal de América (México: Instituto panamericano de geografía e historia, 1951), pp. 241-268Google Scholar; and Kubler's, George more recent exposition “The Unity of Cities in the Americas,” Journal of World History 9, no. 4 (1966): 884-890.Google Scholar

26 Kubler, “Mexican Urbanism,” p. 169; McAndrew, Open-Air Churches, pp. 114-115; Kubler, George, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948), 1: 98.Google Scholar The plaza existed in Italian cities like Venice and Pienza but was relatively unplanned and irregular.

27 Gibson, Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, pp. 352-353, 396; Bernal Diaz del Castillo, companion of Cortés, commented that “some soldiers among us who had been in many parts of the world, in Constantinople and all over Italy, and in Rome, said that they had never seen before so large a market place so full of people, and so well regulated and arranged.” See The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico (London, 1936).

28 The city's water supply was brought in from nearby springs by aqueducts. Water could be obtained at a depth of four to five feet but it was undrinkable. Gibson, Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, p. 386.

29 Schnore, Leo F., “On the Spatial Structure of Cities in the Two Americas,” in Hauser, Philip M. and Leo F. Schnore, The Study of Urbanization (New York: Wiley, 1966), pp. 347-398.Google Scholar The emphasis on access to centers of authority and the changing urban pattern are pointed out by Haynes, Norman S., “Mexico City: Its Growth and Configuration,” American Journal of Sociology 50 (January 1945): 295-304.Google Scholar

30 The bibliography of the Spanish American municipal councils is extensive. A good although legalistic approach is Constantino Bayle, , Los cabildos seculares en la América española (Madrid: Sapientia, 1952)Google Scholar. The composite volume, Contribuciones a la historia municipal de América contains suggestions and guides for research. The most detailed monograph in English is Moore, Preston, The Cabildo in Peru Under the Hapsburgs (Durham: Duke University Press, 1954)Google Scholar. The basic documents for the study of the cabildo of Mexico are the minutes of the town council or Actas de Cabildo de la Ciudad de México, 15 vols. (México, 1889-1900).

31 Howell, Ellen Douglas, “Continuity of Change: A Comparative Study of the Composition of the Cabildos of Seville, Tenerife, and Lima,” The Americas 24 (July 1967): 18-32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 A distinction was made between vecino and habitante. The rights of vecino were at first acquired by a grant from the town founder and later by ownership of certain property plus four years of residence in the city pending approval of the cabildo. Encomenderos were invariably vecinos. See Bayle, pp. 56-76.

33 See the suggestive article by Phelan, John L., “Authority and Flexibility in the Spanish Imperial Bureaucracy,” Administrative Science Quarterly 5 (June 1967): 47-65Google Scholar. Borah, Woodrow, “Representative Institutions in the Spanish Empire in the Sixteenth Century; the New World,” The Americas 12 (1955-1956): 246-256Google Scholar, points out the failure of the American cabildos to establish a representative corte.

34 Gibson, Charles, “Rotation of Alcaldes in the Indian Cabildo of Mexico City,” Hispanic American Historical Review 33 (May 1953): 212-223.Google Scholar

35 Pike, Frederick, “The Cabildo and Colonial Loyalty to Hapsburg Rulers,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 2 (October 1960): 410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Pike, Frederick, “The Municipality and the System of Checks and Balances in Spanish American Colonial Administration,” The Americas 15 (October 1958): 153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Morse has emphasized the preemption of lands and status in his articles of 1962 (cited above in note 8), p. 333; 1964, p. 475; 1965, p. 38, but he gives very little attention to the personal competition for power or changes in the local elite. This aspect is emphasized by Woodrow Borah, “Representative Institutions,” pp. 255-256.

38 Cartas del Licenciado Jerónimo Valderrama y otros documentos sobre su visita al gobierno de Nueva España 1563-1565. Documentos para la historia del México colonial 7 (México: Porrua, 1961), 205-252.

39 Gonzalo Gómez de Cervantes, La vida económica y social de Nueva España al finalizar el siglo xvi (1599), Alberto María Carrefio, ed. (México: Porrua, 1944), p. 124.

40 Parry, John H., Cities of the Conquistadores, Canning House Eighth Annual Lecture (London, 1961), pp. 15-17.Google Scholar

41 Epistolario 7 no. 401, Diego Ramirez to Prince Philip (July 23, 1554). The complaint seems constant throughout the sixteenth century. Cf. Advertimientos generales que los virreyes dejaron a sus sucesores para el gobierno de Nueva España 1590-1604, Documentos para la historia del México colonial, 2 (México, 1946): 35-36.

42 Parry, Cities, pp. 15-16; and in more detail his The Sale of Public Office in the Spanish Indies Under the Hapsburgs, Ibero-Americana 37 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953).

43 Gómez de Cervantes, La vida, pp. 93-94,125.

44 Morse, “Recent Research on Latin American Urbanization,” p. 38.

45 Gibson, , Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, p. 376.Google Scholar

46 Advertimientos generales, p. 47.

47 González, Elda R. and Mellafe, Rolando, “La función de la familia en la historia social hispanoamericana colonial,” Anuario del Instituto de Investigaciones históricas, no. 8 (Rosario, 1965), p. 63.Google Scholar

48 Gibson, , Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, p. 384.Google Scholar

49 For comparative purposes and provocative suggestions on colonial social structure see Lockhart, James, Spanish Peru 1532-1550: A Colonial Society (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968).Google Scholar

50 Gage, , The English-American, p. 56.Google Scholar

51 Bagú, Economía.

52 Sjoberg, Gideon, The Pre-Industrial City: Past and Present (New York: Free Press, 1960)Google Scholar. The Indian population of Mexico City had a long pre-Hispanic tradition of artisan activity. The crafts were family-oriented and each craft had its own patron deity. After the conquest, Indian artisans were encouraged by the crown but were disliked by their Spanish competitors. The Spanish guild system was transferred to Mexico City, apparently in response to Indian competition, but Indians were eventually incorporated into the guilds albeit with marked disabilities. See Gibson, Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, pp. 399-401; Stampa, Manuel Carrera, Los gremios mexicanos (México, 1954), pp. 223ff, 247.Google Scholar

53 Two suggestive essays are José Miranda, España y la Nueva España en la época de Felipe II (México, 1962); and Florescano, Sergio, “La política mercantilista española y sus implicaciones económicas en la Nueva España,” Historia Mexicana 67, no. 3 (January-March 1968): 455-468.Google Scholar

54 See Torquato Brochado de Sousa Soares, Apontamentos para o estudo da origem das instituicdes municipais portuguesas (Lisbon, 1931); de Oliveira, Eduardo Freiré, Elementos para a historia do Municipio de Lisboa, 19 vols. (Lisbon, 1882-1943).Google Scholar

55 Still the best general history of Brazil is de Varnhagen, Francisco Adolfo, Historia geral do Brasil, 4th ed., 5 vols. (Sao Paulo: Edicoes Melhoramentos, 1948)Google Scholar. For the early history prior to 1550 the composite volumes of C. Malheiro Dias, ed., Historia ¿a colonizacao portuguesa do Brasil (HCPB), 3 vols. (Oporto: Litografía Nacional, 1921-1924) are indispensable. The hotly debated nature of these grants is discussed in Marchant, Alexander, “Feudal and Capitalistic Elements in the Portuguese Settlement of Brazil,” HAHR 22 (1942): 493-512.Google Scholar

56 Calmon, Pedro, Historia do Brasil, 7 vols., (Rio: José Olympio, 1959), 1: 199.Google Scholar

57 de Holanda, Sergio Buarque, Historia geral da civilizacao brasileña, 4 vols, to date (Sao Paulo: Edicoes Melhoramentos, 1960- ), 1: 114.Google Scholar The 400th anniversary of the city's founding resulted in the publication of a number of useful monographs. Most useful are Calmon, Pedro, Historia da fundagáo da Bahia (Salvador: Museu do Estado, 1949)Google Scholar; de Azevedo, Thales Povoamento da Cidade de Salvador, 2nd ed. (Sao Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1949)Google Scholar; Ruy, Affonso, Historia política e administrativa da Cidade do Salvador (Salvador: Preifeitura municipal, 1949).Google Scholar

58 Butler, Ruth L., “Mem de Sá, Third Governor-General of Brazil 1557-1572,” Mid-America 25 (1943): 163-179.Google Scholar

59 Varnhagen, Historia geral, 1: 273; Documentos históricos da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (DHBNR), 35: 3-6.

60 The crown's dispute with the heirs of Francisco Pereira Coutinho is de scribed in Varnhagen, Historia geral, 1: 279. See also the decision of the Casa da Suplicacáo in As Gavetas do Torre do Tombo 2 (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinao, 1960-1965): 649-652.

61 Opposition to the centralized government was most strongly expressed by the proprietor of Pernambuco, Duarte Coelho. See his letters in HCPB 3: 318-321.

62 The best sixteenth-century account of Salvador is provided by Gabriel Soares de Sousa, Noticia do Brasil, Piraja da Silva, ed., 2 vols. (Sao Paulo, 1940), written about 1584. See also Smith, Robert C., “The Arts in Brazil: Baroque Architecture,” Portugal and Brazil. An Introduction, Harold V. Livermore, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 349-384.Google Scholar

63 Ribeiro, Orlando, Portugal: O Mediterráneo e o Atlántico, 2nd ed., (Lisbon: Sá da Costa Editora, 1963), p. 104.Google Scholar

64 The Portuguese were aware of the Spanish methods and institutions. In 1559 Father Manuel da Nóbrega noted that the colonists in Bahia wanted the Indians distributed “como se fez ñas Antilhas e no Peru.” See Leite, Serafim, ed., Cartas dos primeiros Jesuítas do Brasil, 3 vols. (Coimbra: Comissáo do IV Centenario da Cidade de Sao Paulo, 1956-1958), 1: 92.Google Scholar Such suggestions continued into the seventeenth century in the memorials of Bento Maciel Párente. The conflict between the Jesuits and the colonists became a major theme of Brazilian history. The Jesuits won the controversy and have dominated the historiography as well. For balance, however, there is the procolonist polemic, Leite, Serafim, ed., “Os ‘Capítulos’ de Gabriel Soares de Sousa,” Ethnos 2 (1941): 5-35.Google Scholar

65 Mauro, Frederic, ed. he Bresil au XVII’ siecle, “Información de la Provincia del Brasil para Nuestro Padre,” (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra), p. 139.Google Scholar Land grants were given by the governors. See Costa Porto, Estudo sobre o sistema sesmarial (Recife: Imprensa Universitaria, 1965).

66 Oliveira Vianna, Francisco José, Populacóes meridionaes do Brasil, 2nd ed. (Sao Paulo: José Olympio, 1938)Google Scholar, was a leading advocate of this theory but Buarque de Holanda, Raices, pp. 53-76, is its most eloquent exponent.

67 Atlases of Brazil usually included a separate leaf of the Bay of all Saints with the sugar mills, marked and named. The atlases of Joáo Teixeira Albernaz (1602-1649) are especially revealing. See Cortesáo, Armando, Portugaliae monumento cartographica, 4 vols. (Lisbon, 1960).Google Scholar

68 A Portuguese Jesuit noted in 1577 that it was easier to carry out religious duties in Bahia than in Pernambuco since “all the settlements and plantations are reached by sea …” Ixite, Serafim, “ ‘Emformacáo dalgumas cousas do Brasil’ por Belchior Cordeiro,” Anais da Academia Portuguesa da Historia, 2nd series, 15 (1965): 188.Google Scholar

69 See for example his Nordeste, 3d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1961); or The Masters and the Slaves, 2nd ed. in English (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1956). Documentos para a historia do Acucar, vol. 2, 3 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto do Acucar e do Alcool, 1956), is the account book of the plantation of Sergipe de El Rey which indicates quite clearly the many personal and commercial contacts of plantation and city.

70 The records of the cámara from 1549 to 1625 were destroyed in the Dutch seizure of the city in the latter year. Published minute books and other records are extant for 1626-1700, and in manuscript for 1700 to the present. See, Documentos históricos de Arquivo Municipal: Atas da Cámara 1625-1700. 6 vols. (Salvador: Prefeitura Municipal, 1949-1955)Google Scholar. A history of the council has been written by its present archivist Ruy, Afonso, Historia da Cámara Municipal da Cidade do Salí vador (Salvador: Cámara Municipal, 1953)Google Scholar; but a more succinct study is C. R. I Boxer, Portuguese Society in the Tropics. The Municipal Councils of Goa, Macao, j Bahia, and Luanda (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965).Google Scholar

71 de Almeida, Candido Mendes, ed., Código Phillipino ou Ordenagdes e leis do reino de Portugal (Rio de Janeiro, 1870), vol. 1, tit. Lxvii, 1. Cf. Livro primeiro do govérno do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1958), pp. 106-117.Google Scholar

72 HCPB 3, Letter of the Officers of the Cámara of Salvador (December 11, 1556): 381. 73 Varnhagen, Historia geral 1: 379; Leite, “Os Capítulos,” p. 20.

74 Stuart B. Schwartz, “The High Court of Bahia: A Study in Hapsburg Brazil” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1968), especially chapter VI.

75 Langhans, Franz Paul, As Corporagoes dos oficios mecánicos: Subsidios para a sua historia, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional de Lisboa, 1943-1946)Google Scholar; Ruy, Afonso, Contribuigáo ao estudo das manifestagóes corporativas na Bahia do seculoXVll (Salvador, 1960).Google Scholar

76 Mauro, , Le Bresil, p. 126.Google Scholar Other estimates are given in Marchant, Alexander, From Barter to Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1942), pp. 133-135.Google Scholar

77 For example the letters of Father Manuel da Nóbrega of January 6, 1550 and September 14, 1551 in Leite, Serafim, ed., Cartas do Brasil e mais escritos do P.Manuel da Nóbrega (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1955), pp. 79, 102.Google Scholar

78 Quirino, Tarcizio do Régo, Os habitantes do Brasil no fim do século XVI (Recife: Imprensa Universitaria, 1966)Google Scholar, provides the best demographic information but is limited because it depends entirely on Inquisition records of 1591-1593.

79 Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro 26 (1904): 228; Leite, Serafim, ed. Cartas dos primeiros jesuítas do Brasil, 3 vols. (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1956-1958), 2: 449.Google Scholar Compare these statements with those of Jerónimo de Valderrama in Mexico in 1564: “It would be of great utility to deport some of the good-for-nothings from this land who, despite the fact that they are called farmers and artisans, very few have any trade whatsoever … this land is filled with lost souls.”

80 Brito, Domingos Abreu e, Um ínquerito á vida administrativa e económica de Angola e do Brasil, 1591 (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1931)Google Scholar, suggested taking mestizos and using them for the conquest of African colonies. Cf. Morner, Magnus, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1967), pp. 49-52Google Scholar, and especially Martin, Norman F., Los Vagabundos en la Nueva España (Mexico, 1957).Google Scholar

81 Soares de Sousa, Tratado 2: 265.

82 Ligon, Richard, A True and Exact History of Barbadoes (London: H. Moseley, 1657), p. 13.Google Scholar