The entire record collection of Spain's activities in Louisiana
and Florida covering the period of the American Revolution (1776-1783),
is housed in a building in Seville Spain. But there are microfilm
copies of various files, including sets in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, LA.
These records include military records, info about marriages, and land grants.
Apparently, Louisiana and Florida until 1801 were governed from Cuba
and those records were then sent to Spain. They kept very detailed records
so there is a wealth of knowledge.
Background
· Founding
· Documentary Holdings
· Organization of Holdings
· Finding Aids
· The AGI Building
· Consultation of Holdings
· Restoration Laboratory
· Microfilm Service
BACKGROUND
5. Founding
In 1781, King Carlos III decided to found the AGI at the urging
of his Secretary of the Indies, José de Gálvez. The goal was
to gather at one site all the documents concerning Spanish administration
in the Americas and Philippines. The original documents were
to be used as source material for writing a new history
of the Spanish presence in the Americas. The new history would respond
to some of the histories being published abroad that Spanish officials
and intellectuals feared were auguring a new episode of the anti-Spanish "black legend."
6 The move would also free up space at the Simancas Archivo,
the central archive of the Crown since the sixteenth century,
which was then so overwhelmed it could not offer proper service.
Documentary Holdings
The first shipments of papers from Simancas arrived in October 1785,
forming the initial core of the AGI. They would later be supplemented
by new transfers, especially from Madrid and Cáádiz. Today, the AGI
holds about eight kilometers of shelving containing more than 43,000
bundles of original papers.
These documentary holdings are drawn from the metropolitan
agencies responsible for colonial administration,
primarily the Consejo de Indias (Council of the Indies),
Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade), State Secretariats
responsible for Indies affairs, and the Consulados (Boards of Trade)
of Seville and Cádiz, as well as other agencies.
Organization of Holdings
The AGI was provided with an excellent series of Ordenanzas
(ordinances) promulgated by King Carlos IV in 1790.
7 Among other functions, these Ordenanzas established what
eventually came to be known as the "principle of provenance."
This principle obligated the Archives to keep together all
the documents generated by each agency,
8 without mixing them with the documents of other agencies.
9 Article V of the Ordenanzas reads: "The first division of papers
should be into collections corresponding to the remitting offices.
Thus, those from Simancas, Víía Reservada, and each of the offices
of the Consejo should remain together and be maintained separately
from the others."
10 Although this obligation was observed for the most part,
trends in the history of the AGI eventually led to the current
organization of documents into 15 sections that usually,
but not always, hold all the documents of a unique generating agency.
More detail on this organization is given on p. 12.
Finding Aids
During the first few years of its history, the AGI made
a great effort to organize and describe its holdings
in order to create a "general inventory."
11 Although this general inventory was never completed,
the AGI today has many guides, inventories, catalogs, and indices
that make it possible to control the holdings and facilitate access
to the information. Some of the old inventories, painstakingly
drawn up at the end of the eighteenth century, have continued
to be useful in their manuscript format.
The AGI Building
The AGI is located in the old building of the Casa Lonja
de Mercaderes (Commodity Exchange) of Seville, constructed
between 1583 and 1646 as a meeting place for dealers
who traded between the metropolis and its colonies.
The building was renovated to serve as the headquarters
of the AGI at the time it was founded. Besides being
a Spanish historical monument,
12 the site has been declared part of the World Heritage by UNESCO.
Consultation of Holdings
The AGI is visited daily by an average of 50 researchers.
More than 900 different researchers visit each year.
Half come from outside Spain; almost 40 percent of all researchers
come from the Americas. The AGI fills requests for 300,000 to
400,000 copies on paper and microfilm each year and responds
to almost a thousand written requests annually.
Restoration Laboratory
The AGI has a restoration laboratory to handle its conservation problems.
All papers are more than a century old, and some are 500 years old,
with a concentration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The documents have been affected by different storage conditions.
Many have also undergone the vicissitudes of a long Atlantic crossing,
although great effort was made to ensure optimal packing for shipment.
In some cases, the papers and ink themselves have caused degradation.
For example, the Philippines Audiencia often used fragile rice paper for documents.
In recent years, documents have been excessively handled in the Reading Room.
Microfilm Service
The AGI also contains a small microfilm laboratory which,
because of staffing limitations, generally only fulfills researchers'
requests for copies. However, a policy of backup microfilming and
microfilm editions has gradually been adopted over the years,
so that about two million frames in unperforated 35 mm rolls are currently available.
13 References
5 The General Bibliography lists useful titles about
the AGI's history and holdings.
6 According to Juan Bautista Muñoz, founder of the Archivo:
"In order to fulfill these worthy purposes, to silence once and
for all our many fiery defamers and rivals and to show their ignorance
to be inexcusable, it was necessary to go to the root of the matter,
to the sources, and study irrefutable documents, as if nothing [else]
had been written and published." Juan Bautista Muñoz to the Secretary
of State of the Indies, José de Galvez, 28 November 1783.
Archivo Históórico Nacional, Diversos 29, Doc. 16
7 Ordenanzas para el Archivo General de Indias
[Ordinances for the AGI] Article V (Madrid, 1990).
See bibliography on the 1790 Archivo Ordinances in the General Bibliography.
8 This principle identifies the "fonds", an archival concept
widely used in Europe. The ISAD(G) standard defines the term
as the "whole of the documents, regardless of form or medium,
organically created and/or accumulated and used by a particular
person, family, or corporate body in the course of that creator's
activities and functions."
9 The "principle of provenance" is understood today
to include not only the separation of documents generated
by each agency but also the conservation of their original order.
French archivist Natalis de Wailly first enunciated the principle
in 1841 as "respect de fonds." The Germans then developed the Strukturprinzip,
which later became part of the "principle of provenance."
The Ordenanzas clearly expressed this principle in 1790,
even though the terms had not yet been developed.
10 Ordenanzas, Article V.
11 Ordenanzas, Article XXVII.
12 The site was declared a national monument by Royal Decree
on April 20, 1983, and a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987.
13 The list of AGI documents available on microfilm through
the Document Reproduction Service of the Ministry of Education
and Culture is contained in the Boletíín de Informacióón del CIDA
(Centro de Información Documental de Archivos), n. 1 (1993).
Click here for a further description from the Council on Library and Information Resources
