Ensenada - History Lab

Cadastre of the Ensenada

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:42 +0000

Between 1750 and 1754 all the towns in “las Castillas” were subjected to an interrogation consisting of the following 40 questions: Name of the town (question 1); jurisdiction (2); extension and limits (3); types of land (4, 5); trees (6, 7, 8 and 13); measures of surface and capacity used (9, 10); species, quantity and value of fruits (11, 12, 14 and 16); tithes and first fruits (15); mines, salt mines, mills and other “artefacts” (17); livestock (18, 19 and 20); census of population, with neighbours, labourers, solemnly poor (21, 35 and 36), census of clerics (38) and convents (39); houses and other buildings (22); goods belonging to the commons (23), sisas and arbitrios (24), expenses of the commons, such as salaries, festivals, paving, fountains (25), taxes (26 and 27); industrial and commercial activities, with the utility of the goods or services produced: taverns, inns, shops, bakeries, butchers, bridges, boats on rivers, markets and fairs (29), hospitals (30), money changers and merchants (31), shopkeepers, doctors, surgeons, apothecaries, notaries, muleteers etc. (32); masons, stonemasons, masons, stonemasons, blacksmiths, cobblers etc. (33, 34); ships (37); alienated goods (28) and the King’s own revenues (40); the answers to these questions are obtained following a previously regulated process. This panoramic view of the Kingdom is a small part of a larger survey, the so-called Cadastre of the Marquis de la Ensenada, set in motion by Royal Decree of Ferdinand VI on 10 October 1749, as a preliminary step to fiscal reform, replacing the complicated and unjust provincial revenues with a single tax, the so-called Contribution. The Single Tax was never implemented, but it has left an important volume of documentation in our archives, the General Answers are kept in various State Archives. The General Archive of Simancas holds the complete certified copy of the replies of the 13,000 localities of the Crown of Castile. Preservation reasons led to the initiation of the microfilming process. In the 1980s, the 545 books of General Answers kept in Simancas were microfilmed. The frequent consultation of these collections and the need to facilitate access made digitisation advisable, which was carried out by the Document Reproduction Service (SRDAE) from microfilm during 2004 and 2005. The result is 350,000 images of documents with very neat calligraphic handwriting, easy to read and with hardly any abbreviations; very few pages have legibility problems, such as faded inks or ink transfer from the back. These images are now available on this page.

The post Cadastre of the Ensenada first appeared on History Lab.

File on the award of the Order of the Golden Fleece to Somodevilla, Zenón de, Marquis de la Ensenada

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:37 +0000

File on the award of the Order of the Golden Fleece to Somodevilla, Zenón de, Marquis de la Ensenada

The post File on the award of the Order of the Golden Fleece to Somodevilla, Zenón de, Marquis de la Ensenada first appeared on History Lab.

Jubrique (Malaga. Cadastre of Ensenada)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:25 +0000

It is important to mention some aspects in relation to this illustration. Firstly, the importance of the church as a building that articulates the space both in the city and in rural areas should be emphasised. The ascription of society to a particular religion, in this case Christianity, decides that this type of building is the soul of the inhabited space. This is why we can see the importance of the church when it is represented with a larger size than the rest of the buildings. Originally, cities and towns were built around the religious building, which used to be the foundational infrastructure of the population. Secondly, the importance of the church as a centre of fiscal perception and at the same time as a generator of documentation relating to the resident population should be emphasised. Throughout the 18th century, projects to account for the resources that kings had, as well as the capacity of their states, expressed in terms of wealth and population, began to take shape. The fact that the population was fixed around the churches where they had to pay the tithe made it easier for the king’s officials to have access to this information. With the documentation generated in these churches relating to censuses, baptisms, marriages, etc., a large part of the censuses and cadastres of 18th century Spain could be drawn up.

The post Jubrique (Malaga. Cadastre of Ensenada) first appeared on History Lab.