Resumen

ACOSTA FRANCO, YIRLA MARISOL. Cities and Towns. Construction and Representations of the Community in the New Kingdom of Granada, 16th and 17th Centuries. Anu. colomb. hist. soc. cult. [online]. 2020, vol.47, n.1, pp.31-56.  Epub 15-Mar-2020. ISSN 0120-2456.  https://doi.org/10.15446/achsc.v47n1.83144.

The idea of city in the context of Spanish American settlement appears in political and urban treatises of the 16th century. However, this discourse should not be analyzed unilaterally as something imposed from above by the Crown or its royal officers. Rather, one might inquire into the fact that those treatises reflected the widespread thought of the population, or into how ideas and knowledge about the city circulated in different spheres of society. The objective of this article is not to define the city, but to call attention to an aspect that has not been addressed by historiography: the social and political appropriation of the concept of city on the basis of its conception as civitas, or political community. To this effect, it focuses on urban centers that went through crises or moments in which the idea of city was especially entrenched and made use of by the Spanish inhabitants. Thus, it seeks to analyze the city from the bottom up, from the perspective of the inhabitants of the urban centers, soldiers, and council and government officials who were building cities or towns on American territory, in order to observe how political reality was shaped. These groups of people had a particular view of the essence of the city, which they put into practice in their diverse manifestations and negotiations with the Crown.

Palabras clave : city; civitas; Colonial period; New Kingdom of Granada; political community; political culture; settlement; Spanish Empire.

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