VESTIGES OF ONE AND THE SAME WORLD. LOCAL AND IMPERIAL POLITICAL PRACTICES FROM THE CITY IN THE TIMES OF THE IBERIAN MONARCHIES, 15TH-18TH CENTURIES
The city was a companion of Hispanic expansion in America from 1492 onward. Local and imperial spheres were linked together like pillars; in the everyday practices of government, urban centers displayed the advances and setbacks of the processes of conquest and settlement of new territories. Each center of power had its own particularities and, at the same time, demonstrated that this was a shared history of the Iberian monarchies. That is, the order of the city, its authorities, the mechanisms of government, and the sociocultural life woven into its streets are connected and have conditioned modernity since the sixteenth century. For this reason, their history across this broad period shows that the cities of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries are vestiges of one and the same world. The purpose of this panel is to connect the various political practices interwoven in the cities that constituted the presence of the Hispanic monarchy in America. In this sense, the themes of the urbs and the civitas, the government of royal officials and local elites, or the everyday aspects of rumor, war, or life under policía [urban order and governance], as well as the oft-proclaimed formula “It is obeyed, but not complied with,” reflecting certain institutional dynamics, will allow us to explore a complex, long-term history: the existence and projection of American cities across the centuries.
