Juan Manuel Castillo Rubio

Este trabajo se propone analizar la importancia que para las comunidades de mercaderes extranjeros de la Sevilla de Felipe II, entrepôt entre Europa y América, tuvieron sus estrategias de organización urbana. El estudio se centra, en concreto, en el desarrollo de la población flamenca y alemana en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI, cuando empieza un auge que culmina en 1604, año de la fundación de una capilla en el Colegio de Santo Tomás, a escasos metros de la Casa de la Contratación hispalense. Usaremos para ello fuentes censales, en las que se ubica a nuestros protagonistas en la ciudad, y notariales, donde se registra su actividad socioeconómica.

Documental "Espagne, l'histoire vue du ciel" ("España, historia desde el cielo", dirigido por Mike Magidson y producido porel canal ARTE.
El capítulo 4: "Le temps des conquistadors", en el que se repasan las vicisitudes de la ciudad de Sevilla en el siglo XVI, incluye entrevistas a Manuel González Mariscal y a Juan Manuel Castillo Rubio.
Disponible en https://www.arte.tv/fr/search/?q=mike%20magidson&page=1

This conference is the second meeting organised around the project Villes insurgées, villes réprimées (VIVIR), coordinated by Casa de Velázquez and Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Research Group Sociedad cortesana y redes diplomáticas, HAR2015-67069-P), Manuel Herrero Sánchez (Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla, Research Group POLYCENTRICSTATES, HAR2013-45357-P) and Alain Hugon (University of Caen). This project aims to analyse contention in urban contexts during the Early Modern period, including insubordination and symbolic and violent resistance to the directives put forward by the rulers. Apart from these movements of protest and resistance, we are interested in the repression devices implemented by the authorities and in the policing and surveillance mechanisms put in place by the allegedly legitimate governments in order to smoothen the multiple faces of contention.
In the first meeting, celebrated in February 2017 in Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, under the title Exclusión, marginalización y represión de las revueltas urbanas en Europa, we had the opportunity to examine the spatial impact of revolt and insurrection, which resulted in the formation of ghettos, buffer zones, crossroads and spaces of interconnection, both during revolts and after order had been restored.
In this occasion we shall deal with protest, rebellion and resistance processes, as well as with repression mechanisms and the restoration of order, from the point of view of the different models of sovereignty that were in operation in Europe and also in overseas territories. The main objective of the congress is thus to question the classic paradigm that assures that the consolidation of the Modern State was based on the concentration of power in the hands of the sovereign, at the expense of local authorities, in a process that involved the taming of the nobility and the systematic erosion of municipal autonomy and liberties. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, State and sovereignty, far from converging in a process of aggregation that resulted in an inevitable formation of a homogenous national State, crystallised in a large variety of institutional formulas, supported by the vigour of an important urban substratum; this explains the predominance of political models characterised by plural and overlapping sovereignties in the most densely urbanised regions in the European continent. A recent conference, also celebrated in Seville in May 2017, resulted in an interesting debate about the different processes of political reflection triggered by revolts in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. In this case, we have decided to adopt a bottom-up perspective, and we shall be focusing on the agents that instigated revolts and other forms of resistance, as well as on those that implemented the governments’ mechanisms of repression and surveillance. We are interested in examining how was sovereignty perceived by revolt ringleaders and state-instruments alike; who possessed the legitimacy to lead protest movements? How were power and violence expressed? Who had, for instance, the authority to commit tyrannicide or depose an illegitimate sovereign? What cultural instruments (parades, pamphlets, demonstrations, festivals) were used to express sovereign power during revolts in the urban context, and what mechanisms were implemented to reimpose consensus and reassert authority? Our ultimate aim is to discuss who were the agents of sovereignty; who led protest and repression; how was authority deposed, substituted and consensus renegotiated; how was protest organised in a social corporative context characterised by the coexistence of multiple deposits of sovereignty and, therefore, channels of representation. Similarly, we aim to investigate the concurrence and overlapping of sovereignties both among rebels and state instruments (including the appeal to superior powers, such as the pope or the emperor) and the processes of sovereignty fragmentation that could take place during rebellions.
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El presente congreso se enmarca en el proyecto plurianual Villes insurgées, villes réprimées (VIVIR). En una primera reunión celebrada en febrero de 2017 en la Casa de Velázquez de Madrid bajo el título Exclusión, marginalización y represión de las revueltas urbanas en Europa tuvimos ocasión de interesarnos por el impacto espacial de las sublevaciones e insurrecciones urbanas en la conformación de barrios específicos, guetos, zonas de intermediación, encrucijadas o espacios de interconexión durante dichos tumultos o tras el restablecimiento del orden. En esta ocasión, abordaremos el análisis de los procesos de protesta, rebelión y resistencia así como de represión y restauración de la autoridad en el espacio urbano desde el ángulo de los diferentes modelos de soberanía operativos en Europa y en los territorios de ultramar. Durante los dos días de duración del congreso pretendemos discutir en torno a quiénes eran los agentes de la soberanía, quiénes encabezaban las protestas y la represión, cómo se sustituía la autoridad depuesta o se buscaba renegociar el consenso, cómo se articulaban estos movimientos en sociedades corporativas y con múltiples nichos de soberanía y que contaban, por lo tanto, con numerosos canales de representación. Del mismo modo, pretendemos reflexionar sobre la cuestión de la concurrencia y el solapamiento de soberanías tanto entre los rebeldes como entre los encargados de la represión o sobre los procesos de fragmentación o de descomposición de la soberanía durante los periodos de revuelta y rebelión.

Durante los días 12 y 13 de noviembre de 2020 reflexionaremos sobre el espacio urbano como eje vertebrador del proceso de construcción y consolidación del Estado Moderno, desde sus orígenes como estructura imperial policéntrica en la Monarquía Hispánica hasta su triunfo en la contemporaneidad. Se trata de estudiar cómo afecta dicho proceso a diferentes trayectorias urbanas, proponiendo un debate que aborde nociones teóricas como las de habitus, apropiación y representación de las sociedades a través de las ciudades, partiendo desde distintos enfoques que contribuirán a demostrar la vigencia y utilidad de los distintos postulados metodológicos de la historia, la sociología, la arquitectura y la arqueología para superar los marcos estatales contemporáneos en el estudio de las sociedades del pasado.

The colloquium approaches the study of asientos de negros - monopolistic contracts between the Crown and entrepreneurs for the purpose of bringing slaves into the Indies – broadly and from different analytical perspectives. The asientos de negros contracts allowed the Spanish Monarchy to concentrate a series of useful services in the hands of solvent businessmen for the whole of its territories. It did so, firstly, to satisfy the constant demand for slave labor in the Indies. Slave labour was needed on plantations, in mines, domestic service, construction, and in fact for an endless number of economic purposes. The asientos also facilitated the trade in slaves as a luxury product exchanged to access the most valuable American items: silver, salt, tobacco, cocoa, indigo, and grana, and other commodities. The asentistas were the tip of the iceberg in the development of vast mercantile networks that connected markets, ports and institutions through variegated client networks of reciprocal collaboration that extended across the Atlantic. As a result, the asientos de esclavos were much more than the subcontracting of a specific service in exchange for certain tax revenues. The asentistas concentrated and channeled numerous interests and services in their hands: transport, loans, shipbuilding, supplies and military protection, among others. These services involved a plethora of agents of all provenances, conditions and professions. Thus, the "Asiento" offered the asentistas a way to insert themselves into extensive transnational networks that were Atlantic or even global in scope, but had strong local roots. This method of inserting themselves and operating on the local level of urban, port, mercantile, diplomatic and financial networks gave them a privileged role in terms of access and circulation of information as well as connecting different urban contexts the slave trade linked to other interests.
Despite their relevance for operating the Spanish Monarchy at the local and international level, the "asientos de negros" have not been the subject of many global studies. They are almost always considered a secondary matter in works about the Atlantic commercial system, the development of the Iberian empires, or the participation of foreigners in the Spanish commercial system.
In the current historiography, though, works on imperial transnational networks and the study of slavery have gained remarkable momentum. The issues they consider are linked to some of the central axes of our project REXPUBLICA, specifically those relating to the role of urban polynuclear networks in the operation of a polycentric imperial structure of urban republics such as the Hispanic monarchy. Indeed, the urban centers acted as the nodes around which a complex structure of overlapping networks of different nature was built, capable of operating within the framework of a great variety of diverse jurisdictional, fiscal and institutional spaces. These were networks on the move and specialized in the provision of a varied range of services, in permanent competition and collaboration, attracted by the promotional possibilities their agents not only had to manage, but also integrate into the heart of a variety of local spaces jealously defending their autonomy and privileges.
Approaching the complex system of agents, networks, corporations and institutions associated with the slave trade from a variety of angles will allow us to question Philip Curtin's description of mercantile diasporas operating on a global scale and between different cultural spaces as socially integrated communities and closed groups characterized by a high level of social and cultural cohesion. Instead, following Francesca Trivellato, we are more inclined to emphasize the role of intercultural cooperation and, especially, of the cosmopolitan communitarianism that characterized this kind of mercantile networks with a strong transnational component. However, we will be interested in looking not only at the high degree of cosmopolitanism evident in these transnational agents, but also the processes by which they were rooted in or excluded from the cities of the monarchy. We will observe how these networks were settled within the mercantile frameworks of the different cities and their hinterlands, and how they were configured for collaboration and competition with other networks, companies or agents at the same time. This will enable us to trace the loyalties, identities, friendships and, of course, clientele that gave cohesion and shape to these networks through trust and mutual interest. Moreover, studying these networks across long periods of time will also allow us to see how these networks adapted to different contexts both within the Spanish imperial system and outside, and highlight their capacity for resistance and adaptability to changing circumstances.
We suggest that the most pertinent way to approach the complexity associated with the processes of interconnection and with the mutual influences operated within an imperial structure of global dimensions is the analysis of the leading role of the great variety of agents that circulated within it, examining their multiple interactions as well as the strategies and forms of rationality that guided their actions. It is precisely these interactions between the local and the global and the dynamics that they were able to generate in decision making or in the channeling of information that make us rather focus on a jeux d’échelles capable of offering a more complex and attentive approach to a greater variety of documentary sources.
Based on these postulates, the colloquium will offer a multi-angled vision of the "Asiento" system, addressing it as a space of innovation, adaptation and creation of formal and informal institutions linked to the development of a fragmented but interconnected Atlantic space in which the Hispanic Monarchy was a fundamental political aggregate. The "Asiento" was a permanent subject of European diplomacy and was articulated by transnational mercantile networks made up of private traders whose political, social, cultural or religious affiliations were extremely varied. In addition, the slave trade allowed to connect distant territories under different jurisdictions and political entities, constituting a fundamental element in the international scene and an extremely attractive object of study.