Resources

The project proposes two key interconnected dissemination activities articulated around the project website and linked with stakeholders in various parts of the Hispanic world.

We are working on a free, bilingual, online exhibition comprising a collection of documents and objects connected with the lives, networks and places studied in the project. This will include examples of correspondence produced by our subjects, historical maps and images of the places where they lived, and visualisations of the networks they built. Drawn from a range of museums, archives and cultural institutions in Spain and Latin America, the items will illustrate the conceptualisation of various sites of empire, officials’ self-perceptions and career aspirations, the development of early Bourbon reforms, and the ways in which the personal and professional networks and experiences of royal officials contributed to binding the empire together. By emphasising experiences and developments shared across the region, the exhibition aims to challenge prevailing national narratives and encourage the visitor to reconsider what they know about Spanish America’s early modern past.

We are also developing a history lesson plan and selection of primary sources, drawn from the project’s results, aimed at high school students in the Spanish-speaking world. These materials will be freely available and will link with the content of the online exhibition. Our aim is to help high school history teachers in Spain and Latin America expand their knowledge of how imperial reality was created at the local level, on an every-day basis by individuals in early modern Spanish America. Our materials will help teachers and pupils better understand the connections, exchanges and circulation between different parts of the Spanish world and revaluate their pre-independence histories.