Andalucía - History Lab

The plague in the Kingdom of Cordoba in the 17th century

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:18 +0000

The Kingdom of Cordoba was one of the territories involved in the great plague epidemics that devastated the Iberian Peninsula during the 17th century. The resource lists the localities affected, using the 1761 map drawn up by Tomás López. In red are the epidemic outbreaks that occurred in the two-year period 1649-1650. Originating in the ports of Cadiz and the cities of Seville, Malaga, Antequera and Murcia, the epidemic reached the city of Cordoba with virulence and affected the municipalities located in the north of the kingdom and some areas in the south. Years later, and represented in blue dots, another plague epidemic broke out, which had a greater incidence in the south and, once again, in the city of Cordoba itself. How did the kingdom’s authorities deal with the epidemics? Isolation and the closure of communications were the best way to prevent the plague from spreading further; however, the absence of a centralised entity to control and delimit the vast territories resulted in the permeability of municipal borders. At the local level, the Board of Health decreed the measures to be implemented: food stockpiling, closure of trade, limitation of foreign trade and promotion of hygiene were the most widespread formulas.

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Íñigo López de Mendoza, 2nd Count of Tendilla and 1st Marquis of Mondejar

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:18 +0000

Íñigo López de Mendoza stood out as a great ally of King Ferdinand the Catholic, being captain general of the Kingdom of Granada and participating directly in the War of Granada at the end of the 15th century. After the victory, he was appointed the first governor of Granada, a post he held until the end of his life, combining the coexistence of victors and vanquished with the affairs of running the city, such as administrative and economic matters.
The original work was kept in the former collection of the Duke of Osuna, although its track has been lost, but it appears constantly in the documentation. The copy made by Francisco Díaz Carreño between 1877 and 1878, which is in the collections of the Museo del Prado, is better known today.
Both the portrait itself and the meticulousness with which it complements the setting are outstanding pictorially. It shows the main figure in front of a window, with a grenade emphasising the importance of the conflict in Granada and with significant elements of military command such as the staff in his hand and the helmet resting on the window. Stylistically, Juan Bautista de Espinosa shows the strong portrait painting tradition of the late 16th century, marking out isolated figures and very precise lines in the drawing.

The post Íñigo López de Mendoza, 2nd Count of Tendilla and 1st Marquis of Mondejar first appeared on History Lab.

The plague of 1649 in Seville

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:12 +0000

During the Modern Age, numerous epidemics struck Spanish and European populations. The painting shown here, by an anonymous artist, depicts the plague in Seville in 1649. The work focuses on the Hospital de la Sangre and the Macarena Gate, a perspective of the area outside the city walls that shows the tragedy. The Junta de Salud (Board of Health) established this area as a place of transfer for care or a burial site, as was the Prado de San Sebastián or Triana. The painting also shows a procession on the left, while the central area is dominated by the transport of the sick. On the right is a greater concentration of corpses. Due to the high number of contagions and the high mortality rate, it is estimated that this outbreak of plague, the last and most virulent, claimed the lives of 60,000 people in Seville, almost 45% of the city’s population.

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The plague of 1679 in Antequera, Málaga

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:12 +0000

The plague, one of the greatest threats to public health, struck Antequera in 1679. After the strong impact it had on the city of Seville, reflected in an anonymous painting dated 1649, the city of Malaga followed the same fate. The painting, an anonymous oil painting dated 1723, depicts the religious nature of these episodes: the Virgin of the Rosary appears in the upper left-hand band as part of the religious programme. On the right is a rainbow, symbol of God’s mercy, above a pious procession. Below, the city, under a rain of arrows representing the plague, the action unfolds. The dead are piled into mass graves while objects and personal belongings are burnt. The living are assisted by doctors and surgeons, who perform precarious medicinal work for healing (bloodletting, draining buboes, gauzing with ointments or cauterising wounds with hot irons). In short, the author depicted the tragedy of the plague, its social implications and its connection with the religious mentality.

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Epidemics of plague in Spain: 16th and 17th centuries

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:12 +0000

The plague epidemic had an early manifestation in Spain. There is evidence of outbreaks of plague along the Mediterranean strip of the peninsula as early as the 6th-8th centuries. During the 14th century, the Black Death appeared in Europe, an epidemic which, interspersed with others such as influenza and typhus, reappeared in the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1596 the plague reached the peninsula via Santander, a port area. It spread virulently through the territories of Extremadura and the two Castiles, especially the area around Madrid. The Cantabrian coast and Andalusia were also affected, as well as the area between Alicante and Valencia. It was in the latter city that another plague epidemic broke out years later, in 1647. From Valencia it spread to the northern part of the Crown of Aragon: Catalonia and the Aragonese territories themselves were affected. Andalusia was also hit again, with the city of Seville suffering significant human losses, where it is estimated that 45% of the population died. It was in Seville that another epidemic appeared in 1676. With no time to recover, cities such as Seville, Cordoba, Malaga, Cadiz and Jaen were the protagonists of the horror. They were joined by Cartagena, in the Kingdom of Murcia. These were the last large-scale epidemics to occur in the peninsular territories of the Hispanic Monarchy. Once the epidemic, demographic and food crises of the 17th century were overcome, the 18th century ushered in a period of generalised growth.

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Drawing map of the New Towns of Sierra Morena

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:03 +0000

The Nuevas Poblaciones de Andalucía y Sierra Morena project began around 1767, during the reign of Charles III. It was an Enlightenment project drawn up by Campomanes and entrusted to Pablo de Olavide, which sought to populate certain fairly extensive areas that had been depopulated. These lands were located along the Royal Road of Andalusia that connected these lands with the plateau (central peninsular), and included the desert of Sierra Morena or La Peñuela (Jaén); the desert of La Parrilla, between Córdoba and Écija; and the desert of La Monclova, between Écija and Carmona. The idea of populating these lands had the intention of improving the safety of the people and goods that moved through them, which were mainly threatened by banditry. To bring the project to life, Catholic settlers from central Europe, mainly Germans, Flemish and Swiss, were attracted and provided with land to promote agriculture and industry. These new settlements were known collectively as the “Nuevas Poblaciones” (New Towns), and had their capital at La Carolina and La Carlota.

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Choleric Mortality in Andalusia, 1833-35

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:41 +0000

The first Asian cholera pandemic entered the Iberian Peninsula in 1833 via Portugal. In Andalusia, cholera persisted for 16 months, between August 1833 and January 1835. The traditional account of the epidemic, which limited the presence of cholera to western Andalusia in 1833, blamed the exacerbation in the summer of 1834 on the march of an army corps from Portugal. The epidemic spread during the autumn of 1833 from the western provinces to the eastern provinces by means of maritime traffic. The prolonged presence of the disease occurred in the midst of a complicated political situation: the reform of the absolutist regime after the death of Ferdinand VII and the beginning of the first Carlist war. In Andalusia, the first barriers – sea and land – were applied between 18 and 24 August 1831 in response to the news that Gibraltar was suffering from a suspicious disease, leading to the closure of the border with the Portuguese country in February 1833. The upsurge of the pandemic led to the second “cordon sanitaire” formed by troops, until it was lifted in August. Preventive policy, however, moved away from quarantines and cordons to focus on urban sanitation measures and aid for the sick. The majority of the series of sick and dead cases, with modifications, meet the typical conditions of Holomantic outbreaks: a rapid rise in the number of cases, a more prolonged maintenance of an uneven pattern, and a somewhat slower decline. The persistence of the disease in parts of eastern Andalusia during the winter and spring of 1834 gave the presentation of this choleric epidemic its peculiar west-east-west development. In western points, such as Cadiz and Seville, the epidemic occurred on two occasions, but sufficiently separated in time and with no evidence of this insidious interregnum.

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Female widowhood in the Kingdom of Granada in 1787 according to the Floridablanca Census. Data in %

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:36 +0000

This map shows the percentages of female widowhood in the kingdom of Granada at the end of the 18th century using as a basis the information from the Floridablanca Census (1787). This census is considered to be one of the most complete of the Enlightenment, as the information it collects is structured on the basis of knowledge of the population by means of the following questions: according to type of accommodation and sex; classification by marital status, age and sex; classification by occupation; number of charitable and health centres; and religious communities. As can be seen from the map, the differences between the different regions stand out, where the figure barely exceeds 8% in towns belonging to Almeria, while values close to 15% are reached in areas of Malaga. Thus, the data shown indicate the greater weight of widowed women in the Malaga region. Undoubtedly, there are several factors that influence this issue, among them the greater or lesser access to remarriage, as well as the incidence of high male immigration caused mainly by the enrolment at sea.

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The post Female widowhood in the Kingdom of Granada in 1787 according to the Floridablanca Census. Data in % first appeared on History Lab.

Andalusian heritage privatised between 1750 and 1852

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:25 +0000

When analysing the process of appropriation and privatisation of Andalusian lands – centred in this case on Antequera, Archidona and Malaga – attention must be paid to the different ways in which public lands were alienated, such as the Carolinian distributions, usurpations, the fragmentation of boundaries and finally the liberal disentailments.
The documentation records the highest proportion of usurpations during the first half of the 19th century, especially during the War of Independence and the Liberal Triennium. The method followed by the usurpers was to extend private plots with some municipal lands -under an average of 3.7 hectares per plot-. Among the causes of this land-grabbing fever may have been the demographic increase and the deficit in cereal production, which made it impossible for the most disadvantaged social groups to have access to foodstuffs.
In addition to encroachment, the neighbours adjacent to each area caused the deforestation of many areas due to the felling of trees and the introduction of livestock in these hitherto forbidden places, leading to a drastic reduction in the communal area to the benefit of privatised agricultural uses. The resource shows the process of alienation of territorial patrimony through five distinct phases, with the one corresponding to 1835-1852 as the maximum exponent of the trends that had been observed almost a century earlier.

The post Andalusian heritage privatised between 1750 and 1852 first appeared on History Lab.

Evolution of the population of Siles between 1480 and 1646

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:07 +0000

When analysing the population and society of Siles, which belonged to the Encomienda de Segura (formerly the Kingdom of Murcia and now Jaén), from the end of the 15th century to the mid-17th century, it is a good idea to use unpublished documentary sources in addition to the always useful Relaciones Topográficas de Felipe II, as the author of this article does. Adding those already mentioned above to the books of visits of the Order of Santiago, the Census of Dairy Farmers, the neighbourhood for the service of the Cortes and the list of neighbours of 1649, gives as a sample this table which can be used at the Baccalaureate and University levels, also introducing several of the primary sources available in this territory.
The resulting computation shows that the well-known demographic crisis at the end of the 15th century is quickly overcome, causing a regular growth until the plague epidemic in the middle of the 16th century, which causes an almost constant fall in the population until 1646, culminating in five decades of attraction towards the kingdom of Granada, the strength of the Council of Segura and the pressure on these lands to have more exploitable and less exploited areas in their vicinity.

The post Evolution of the population of Siles between 1480 and 1646 first appeared on History Lab.