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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Leaving Bluesky (and most social media) for a while. How long that will be without being tempted into it again I have no idea, but it's taking too much of my time and everything is becoming gradually more toxic so I need a break. If you want to get in touch do so via Instagram or institutional email

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

María heredarían todo. La reina murió sin descendencia en 1558, por lo que el proyecto de monarquía conjunta anglo-española no cuajó. Su experiencia como rey de Inglaterra e Irlanda, sin embargo, marcó profundamente la trayectoria de Felipe con respecto a ambos reinos.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Honrar a Felipe y los españoles que con él llegaron. Tras la boda en Winchester, los monarcas fueron triunfalmente recibidos en Londres, donde se celebró a Felipe como rey inglés por ser descendiente de Eduardo III por varias ramas. La unión de coronas se concibió como proyecto

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

El 25 de julio de 1554, día de Santiago, patrón de España, se celebró el enlace entre Felipe, príncipe de Asturias, rey de Nápoles y Jerusalén y duque de Milán y la reina María I de Inglaterra e Irlanda. La elección del día no fue casual, sino que se escogió a Santiago para

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Oh man. In 2018 there were still VCs who could say this. How quickly #UKHE 'leadership' has been captured.

Clive’s link to Stephen Toope the Cambridge VC’s piece is instructive, it clearly shows the distance between, broadly speaking, liberal values of academic freedom & the wider ‘positive externalities’ of higher education’s value and the pseudo-marketisation and narrow assetisation of universities and especially their students. In 2018 Toope observed:

for a generation now, politicians of all stripes have talked as if UK universities are broken, and hence in need of “market discipline”. They talk as if our students, smart and energetic people, are in need of protection. This is an own goal.

We are just beginning yet another review covering higher education that fails to get to the heart of concerns around the role of universities. The focus should be on what values our society expects to see reflected in our universities, not just value for money.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

the whole story of the Spanish conquest of the Maluku Islands, he reminds us of 'translatio imperii' eventually falling onto the British Empire. At the very end of the book: 'The Dutch soon drove the Spaniards out of the Moluccas & now 1800 the English have driven out the Dutch'.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

claim that, eventually, Drake's 'robberies' didn't enrich him nor bring him fame and that he was generally 'despised' in England. Our commentator denies this with a simple 'Error' on the margin. At the end of the book, however, our friend goes back to English. After reading

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

instance, in one of these examples Argensola claims that the Spanish made contact with 'a non-barbarous population, ingenious and haughty, like those of Europe, which Harford (?) thinks is 'All a lie'. In the other, and again far enough, the commentator criticises Argensola's

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

lies. The king of Scotland neither raised an army nor attacked', which is fair enough. There are several other passages that the commentator points out as being mistakes made by Argensola, which could be, or could also point to different national interpretations of events. For

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

executed in 1587, the king of Scotland, 'son of the martyr', 'raised an army, fortified his garrisons and attacked the provinces of the enemy who had caused him to become an orphan'. Harford (?) isn't happy about this. He marks the whole passage as an 'Error' and then adds 'All

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

writes, in Spanish, 'this isn't true, Drake left no one behind'. This isn't a Spanish native speaker, as the verbal number is wrong (should be 'Draque no dexó' rather than 'dexaron'). In another passage providing historical background, Argensola claims that when Mary Stuart was

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

My fave is how the commentator (Harford?) gets frustrated at what he sees as errors, especially when dealing with English and Scottish facts. When Argensola mentions an English girl and boy left behind by Drake near the Strait of Magellan who they found living among 'beasts', he

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

translations of Spanish terms and names into English. It is difficult to know whether this was all Harford or a previous or later owner, but interesting to see what was prioritised: monsoon, names such as Francis Drake, John Hawkins or Plymouth and corrections of typos and errors.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

only praise Argensola as 'a learned Clergyman' but also as someone 'so valuable he is extraordinary scarce, rare to be met with in Spain, and consequently much more so in England'. (Reminder: this is the 1700s talking about 1600s Spain and England!). The text is full of

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

England and Spain was not quite as widespread as some works would have it. The "New Collection" was printed in London by James Knapton, and the volume containing Argensola released in the middle of the Spanish War of Succession. The comments extracted from the New Collection not

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

of annotations. In the front page where he signed, we've got some comments on Argensola's work from the "New Collection of Voyages and Travels" published between the 1690s and 1710s, comments that prove that the alleged inevitable hatred

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Merchant Venturers and was a prominent abolitionist. Apparently he had a connection to South Carolina where his businesses were unsuccessful. This might explain why his books ended up in the Library of Congress. Whatever the case, he clearly used Argensola's book, which is full

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

and at some point this book, printed in Madrid in the early 17C, ended in the hands of Joseph Harford of Bristol. Harford was a prominent Bristolian, a Quaker converted to Anglicanism, a banker and brass manufacturer who was MP for Bristol in 1774. In 1796 he was Master of the

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I love quirky coincidences in research that can make one go down a rabbit hole, however distracting it might be. I've been using the @librarycongress.bsky.social copy of Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola's "Conqvista de las Islas Malvcas" (1609) for one of the pieces I'm currently writing

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Javier Traité @javiertraite.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Cuando en las fuentes medievales aparecen basureros infectos, calles intransitables de residuos, y demás ideas que dan pie a lo de "en la EM todo daba asco siempre, el 100% del tiempo, porque les gustaba retozar en mierda", pensad más bien en cosas así. Tira y afloja, consistorio útil o inútil, etc

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Juego de paleografía: “son manifiestamente grandes…?” 🙈

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Cuando te llama al despacho el director pero se te ocurre la excusa de que te han subido unos humos al “celebro” que te abstraen de tus sentidos. Dramas en el archivo.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Dear friends and colleagues I'm going to be in Seville doing research 30 June to 7 July. If you're around let me know and let's meet up. 🙂

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

September 1550: the Augustinian Sebastião Toscano is denounced to the Lisbon Inquisition by scandalized churchmen for claiming in a sermon preached in the presence of the king that “after Christ no soul was more perfect in grace and virtue than that of Saint Augustin.”

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Neil Younger @neilayounger.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

24 June 1583: In London, a man called Ananias Dare, apparently a tiler and bricklayer, marries Eleanor White, daughter of John White. White is a painter and has accompanied a voyage to North America with Martin Frobisher (where he probably produced this image) ... 1/ #earlymodern

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

(Historical) choices to beat the heat! 🥵🍎

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

la Parte yncógnita del sur' en 'la Parte austral' (1605-1607), Ternate e Islas Molucas (1607-1614), Manila e Islas Filipinas (1614 en adelante).

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

a la isla de Chipre con Pedro de Toledo (1600), dos expediciones a Argel con Giovanni Andrea Doria (1601) y Juan de Cardona (1602), Lombardía (1604), guardia de la carrera de Indias (1604), Lima (1605), armada de Pedro Fernández de Queirós para 'el nueuo descubrimiento de la

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Estoy escribiendo un texto sobre cómo la frontera de la Monarquía de España se percibe y negocia en los papeles de méritos y servicios de Filipinas y he encontrado a uno de los soldados más globales del XVII. Servicios en: Nápoles y reinos de Italia (1596-1604), Levante y jornada

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Of medieval origin, they were plagued by difficulties (distance, untimely deaths, lack of cooperation, political issues) and sometimes they became more corrupt than the corrupted practices they were designed to stop, but they were a staple of Spanish governance in America after Cortés's own juicio.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

In inquisitorial records enslaved witnesses are fairly common too in processes against all kinds of people.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Testimonies of domestic slaves are fairly common in 'juicios de residencia', the audits performed on royal officials' tenure, as they had first-hand and intimate experience of the goings-on in the household. Testimony alone not always accepted unless free persons testified the same thing.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Could this have to do with personhood status? The Catholic Church said that slaves were full persons born or integrated into a wretched state and that slavery could make them better and help them achieve salvation through suffering and penance.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

That’s a stark difference with the Spanish legal system then. Not that they’d always be able to go to court or successful if they did but the option was there and was used.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

They couldn’t stop indigenous enslavement in the Philippines because it was practised by Indigenous elites without whom the Spanish had no chance of retaining the islands. Global entanglements!

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

The influx of Asian slaves into Mexico via Manila galleon really shows global connections. Upon arrival chinos as they were called generically went to court to claim they’d been born free. Courts wrote to Philippine authorities to demand they stop the arrival of slaves but the latter wrote back that

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Documentary evidence was v important in Spanish courts but so was oral testimony. The absence of deeds could be replaced by favorable witnesses, especially if they were free and ‘respectable’ members of society. Other slaves could be presented as witnesses too but were seen as being of worse quality

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

For instance claiming that they came from an old Christian and/or noble lineage in Africa. In the case of Asian slaves in Mexico many claimed that they had been born free in Asia and enslaved there illegally and claimed the status of Indios and thus vassals to the king.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Interesting. Obviously the former wasn’t prevalent but there are numerous examples. The unlawfulness of enslavement was much more frequent in Mexican courts in the 17th century. By law indigenous peoples could only be enslaved under particular circumstances so many slaves used this argument.

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I’m not familiar with the Anglo side of things. Could enslaved people not take owners to court for mistreatment or to allege that they had been unlawfully enslaved?

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Given the horrendous condition of slavery, which is undeniable and constant in the history of Spanish America, it is true that there were avenues of complaint and redress open to enslaved persons, which often utilised them. They didn't always get justice, of course. Seijas' work is greata on this.

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Lou Roper @roperlou.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

that's (not 😁) shocking! (ed. after all, 'absolutism', as w/'feudalism' and other 'isms' didn't exist until 19C authors invented them)

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Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer @gvb1554.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Absolutely horrid situation. Sending solidarity from Bristol!

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

January 1537: an enslaved African named Francisco Fernandes came to the Lisbon Inquisition and accused a 15-year-old boy named Braz Caldeira of having said that he did not know whether God was present in the consecrated host. Interestingly, Francisco signed his name in his own hand.

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Derbyshire Record Office @derbyshiredro.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Our latest #NewAccession is this beautiful manuscript of arms and pedigrees, all written in the hand of Mr Thinne in 1569. It’s packed with exquisite penmanship and finely drawn coats of arms. A real treat for anyone who loves heraldry and early modern manuscripts!

Coat of arms, drawn in pen and ink. Two quarters of the design feature a lion, the other two quarters portraits of three people. A four-legged mammal is standing on top of the shield.

A double page of the manuscript, filled with names of people and notes on the relationship between them. All written in very beautiful but not easy to read handwriting.

In amongst notes on family relationships are two portraits of women and a coat of arms, all drawn in pen and ink.

A hand drawn coat of arms, with two quarters showing a rampant lion and the other two quarters showing a phoenix. The head of a unicorn is sticking out on from the top of the shiels.

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