Abstract
The “Bourbon Reforms” of the eighteenth century arguably aimed at a more “rational” governance in Spanish America, including the reorganization of the postal system as a state enterprise in 1767, designed to meet the demands of a transoceanic administration and economic progress. The new, tighter administrative conception thereby ironically helped to consolidate a proto-national public sphere, accelerating the circulation of political ideas. Despite the widely acknowledged importance of the postal system, very little has been published about how the network between post stations was organized and how it evolved. This chapter is based on the analysis of a late colonial manuscript which is structured in an unusual way: it presents the geography of the mail not as itineraries but as a function of time, frequency, and distance to the capital. While it thus presents a radial topology, close analysis reveals a much more polycentric network of regional nodes, forming an interconnected and well-integrated proto-national communication space.
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Notes
- 1.
The original is kept in the Mapoteca Orozco y Berra in Mexico City.
- 2.
New York Public Library, Rich 45.
- 3.
Edwin Blake Brownrigg, “Introduction: Colonial Latin American Manuscripts and Transcripts in the Obadiah Rich Collection: An Inventory and Index”: Gale Primary Sources—Media Guide (https://www.galesupport.com/psm/3011000).
- 4.
A German-speaking person is reminded the proverb “net gschimpft isch globt gnug” (to not be reprimanded is enough praise in and of itself).
- 5.
Final separate indices give 185 places in Venezuela, 133 on Cuba, 604 for Guatemala, and no internal differentiation for Puerto Rico and Louisiana.
- 6.
The five Californian post offices (Loreto, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco) are unnumbered.
- 7.
In fact, one place’s distance, Cocula (128), really cannot be explained by any means, as it is too small to be achieved by direct itinerary or by calculating via regional relays. It must be considered one of the very few identifiable factual errors of the document. The nearby distances of Ameca and Tecolutla suggest that 128 should rather be 168 leagues.
- 8.
Archivo General de la Nación, Real Hacienda, Correos, vol. 11, exp. 17.
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Stangl, W. (2023). All Roads Lead to Mexico? The Postal Network of Late Colonial New Spain as an Integrated Communication Space. In: Hyden-Hanscho, V., Stangl, W. (eds) Formative Modernities in the Early Modern Atlantic and Beyond. Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8417-4_9
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