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Emigrants and Society: An Approach to the Background of Colonial Spanish America

The movement of people from Spain to the Indies, starting with the voyages of Columbus in the late fifteenth century, is fundamental to the study of early Spanish America. While Spaniards played a pivotal role in the formation of New World society, their origins and background have received relatively little systematic attention. Why has this been true? Certainly the groundwork for a more detailed consideration of Spanish emigrants has been laid long since, l but despite some important beginnings, research has progressed little in the past two decades. The traditionally separate historiographical treatment of Spain and Spanish America has fostered neglect of topics not easily classified within one field or the other, including emigration and the relation of Spain to America.2 While in recent years the other two major building blocks of colonial society-the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Africans brought to the New World as slaves-have received an increasing amount of attention,3 a reaction to Eurocentrism has helped to create a situation in which a very superficial knowledge of early modem European or Spanish society is acceptable. Furthermore, the gaps in the historiography of early modem Spanish society, especially at the local level, may frustrate the scholar seeking greater enlightenment.4