Corpus and datasets
Historical Corpus
The project is currently compiling a repository of two large sets of historical documents related to the New Spain Fleets:
- Registros de navío (Ship’s registers)
- Licencias de Pasajeros (Passengers’ licenses)
These documents contain details of all the people, ships and merchandise that embarked on the fleets bound for New Spain from 1520 to 1790. Most of these documents are currently located in two major archives: Archivo General de Indias in Spain and Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico.
Archivo General de Indias
Spain
Most documents are freely available online through the Portal de Archivos Españoles (PARES) website. The project will work with two documentary collections:
Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade). This was the governmental office in charge of the Fleets' administration in Spain, extending permits to each ship joining a fleet after composing a detailed inventory of its nautical characteristics, crew, and cargo. We have located over one thousand documents of interest, each containing from several dozens to hundreds of pages.
Pasajeros a Indias (Passengers to Indies). This collection comprises two document series (Informaciones y licencias de pasajeros, and Libros de asientos de pasajeros), which include information about passengers that travelled to New Spain, including biographical and genealogical data. We have located over one thousand documents of interest in this collection.
Archivo General de la Nación
Mexico
This archive holds documents issued by Spanish officials in New Spain related to ships’ return voyages to Spain. The Marina (Naval) section alone contains over six hundred documents of interest, while other documents are held in different sections of the archive, such as Archivo Histórico de Hacienda, Consulado or Inquisicion.
Although the identified records will be sufficient for our planned activities, the project will aim to locate further records related to return voyages and other aspects of the NSF trade in other archives.