Archivo General de Indias

Cathedral , Alcázar and Archivo General de Indias in Seville
UNESCO world heritage
	India Archives in Seville
National territory:	Spain
Type:	Culture
Criteria :	i, ii, iii, vi
Surface:	12 ha
Reference No .:	383
UNESCO region :	Europe and North America
	History of enrollment
Enrollment:	1987 (session 11)

Staircase

Corridor of the archive

Archive courtyard

The Archivo General de Indias (German for short "India Archive ") is a central archive of the Spanish state that collects documents relating to the Spanish colonial empire (i.e. Spanish America and the Philippines ). It is in the building of the former Stock Exchange of Sevilla - the Casa Lonja de Mercaderes housed and is considered the most comprehensive and most important - Archive for the Spanish colonial period. In 1987, both the building itself and the archives were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO .

Foundation of the archive

The Archivo General de Indias was founded in 1785 by royal decree of Charles III. which decreed that the archive of the Council of India ( Consejo de Indias ) should now be housed in the two-storey building of the Seville stock exchange, the Casa Lonja de Mercaderes , built in the Renaissance style by Philip II between 1584 and 1598 . The impetus for this establishment was provided by the then Minister for the Spanish Colonies, José de Gálvez y Gallardo , who in turn commissioned Juan Bautista Muñoz , a historian who was considered the most important Spanish cosmographer of the Spanish colonial empire of his time, to carry out the project. The aim of the undertaking was to gather all documents relating to the Spanish colonies under one roof - these had been spread over several archives until then, primarily those of Simancas , Cádiz and Seville . The lack of space in the existing archives played a role as well as the hope of initiating a reappraisal of Spanish colonial history in this way - in the spirit of the Enlightenment .

Duration

The year 1760 was set as the archiving date; H. all documents created after 1760 remained in their original institutions. The first documents were transferred from the Simancas archive to the newly established central archive in Seville in October 1785 .

The holdings of the following institutions were included in the Archvio General de Indias:

Consejo de Indias , documents from the 16th to 19th centuries century

Casa de Contratación , documents from the 16th to 18th centuries century

Consulados de Sevilla y Cádiz , documents from the 16th to 19th centuries century

Secretarías de Estado y Despacho Universal de Indias, de Estado, Gracia y Justicia, Hacienda y Guerra , documents from the 18th – 19th centuries century

Secretaría del Juzgado de Arribadas de Cádiz , documents from the 18th-19th centuries century

Comisaría Interventora de la Hacienda Pública de Cádiz, Dirección General de la Renta de Correos , documents from the 18th-19th centuries century

Sala de Ultramar del Tribunal de Cuentas , documents from the 19th century

Real Compañía de la Habana , documents from the 18th-19th centuries century

The archive collects countless documents on all aspects of the Spanish colonial empire, from the time of the first conquistadors to the 19th century. Extremely valuable original documents are kept here, such as B. the papal bull Inter caetera of Pope Alexander VI. , which divided the world between Spain and Portugal , or the copy of Christopher Columbus's logbook made by Bartolomé de Las Casas .

The collection also includes a collection of indigenous language vocabulary from the New World, which has been translated into Spanish. This collection was declared a World Document Heritage by UNESCO in 2015 .

today

In total, the inventory comprises around 43,000 volumes, stretching over 80 million pages and 8 kilometers of shelves . The archive is open to all persons who can demonstrate a legitimate research interest and who are in possession of a valid user card. The work rooms of the researchers and archivists have meanwhile been relocated from Casa Lonja and housed in a nearby building.

In the years 2002 to 2004 the building underwent extensive renovation and restoration. A digitization project was launched in 2005 with the aim of making the archive's holdings available on the Internet.