The General Manuscripts Miscellaneous Collection contains thousands of items that are not part of provenance-based or topical collections. Featured below are nine recently acquired historic documents about topics as varied as indigenous insurrections against Spanish colonial authorities, plantations and slavery in the Caribbean, the education of girls in 17th century Cuba, and the expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay in the 18th century, among others.
Ruedas, Jerónimo de, and Others, Report to King Charles III of Spain on Indigenous Revolutionary Movements in South America, 1781 June 15
Ninety-six page unpublished, confidential report written by seven Spanish colonial judges (oidores) of the Real Audiencia of Río de La Plata y Charcas to King Charles III of Spain, offering their analysis of the independence movements of Quechua, Aymara, and other indigenous peoples against colonial rule in South America and connecting the indigenous uprisings of the 1770s and 1780s led by Túpac Amaru II and Tomás Katari to the American Revolution.
The report recounts events leading up to Indigenous liberation movements in the 1770s and 1780s, including the abusive administration of the Corregidor of Chayanta, which led Tomás Katari to travel to Buenos Aires in 1778 to air his people’s grievances to the Spanish authorities, as well as Katari’s arrest and execution and the rebellion that followed. The authors also discuss at length the rebellion led by Túpac Amaru II and the violent Spanish attempts to suppress it. They also write about the circulation of revolutionary pamphlets by Indigenous organizers in the city of La Paz, Bolivia, as a means of building support for a revolution against Spanish colonizers.
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Manuscript Concerning Túpac Amaru and the Early Independence Movements in Peru, 1781-1785
A manuscript concerning the early independence movements in Peru, documenting the grievances, goals, and fate of the indigenous Peruvian leader, Túpac Amaru. The manuscript begins with the text of two letters sent by Amaru to the municipal council of Cuzco and is followed by an apparently unpublished description of the events during the uprising. The last two pages contain the death sentences set down by Col. Andrés Mestre, dated from Tucumán, Argentina in 1781.
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Account Book of a Plantation in Saint Domingue, 1772-1774
Account book of a slave holding plantation in Saint Domingue, present-day Haiti, compiled during a legal dispute between owners of the plantation and a former manager. The initial pages outline the dispute and its settlement. The rest of the document delineates the accounts of the plantation between 1772 and 1774, providing a thorough summary of its operations.
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Letter to Madame Chaussée à Nantes with News of the Haitian Revolution, 1802
Incomplete 4-page manuscript letter from a Frenchman recently arrived in Saint-Domingue describing uprisings on the island to his sister Madame Chaussée à Nantes, dated 1 Brumaire 11 [i.e., 23 October, 1802] and written from Cap-Français. He begins by sharing the news of his safe arrival in Cap-Français and reporting that the island was fraught with unrest. He writes that the French colonials are trapped in the nearby coastal towns and that the army is helpless without reinforcements. The writer was evidently a plantation owner or investor, mostly with interests in coffee, and notes the need to get the family finances from local business in order.
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Manuscript documenting an early draft of the constitution for “El Colegio de Niñas Educandas de San Francisco de Sales”, 1685 January 28
Manuscript draft entitled Proyecto de Constituciones para Del Colegio de Niñas Educandas de San Franc[is]co de Sales, Presentado a S.E.Y. por el Autor del Espresado Colegio. It documents the constitution of El Colegio de Niñas Educandas de San Francisco de Sales, one of the first women’s schools in Cuba, established in Havana in 1689. This draft is dated on January 28, 1685, four years before the school opened.
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Trasobares Manuscript, “Memoria sobre las causas que se han opuesto á la abolicion de la esclavitud en nuestras Antilas y plan para conseguirla…”, 1869
Consists of a manuscript from José Francisco de Trasobares y de los Cobos entitled, Memoria sobre las causas que se han opuesto á la abolicion de la esclavitud en nuestras Antilas y plan para conseguirla en un periodo de diez años presentada al Gobierno Provisional y previnida por este con una Encomienda de Carlos 3º en fabor de José Fo. de Trasobares.
Apuntes sobre la ley de abolición de la esclavitud en Puerto Rico de 22 de marzo de 1873
Manuscript labeled, Apuntes sobre la ley de abolición de la esclavitud en Puerto Rico de 22 de marzo de 1873, describing the eight points of the law by which slavery in Puerto Rico was abolished, written by a resident of the island favorable to abolition.
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Letters from King Philip IV of Spain to his Viceroy in New Spain (present-day Mexico), Luis Enríquez de Guzmán, 1651-1653
26 manuscript letters signed by King Philip IV of Spain to the Viceroy of New Spain (present-day Mexico), Luis Enríquez de Guzmán, 9th Count of Alba de Liste, written from February 1651 to February 1653, with instructions for governing, with particular attention paid to reforming the colony’s treasury and tax collection.
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Manuscript detailing the attempted expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay in the 1750s, circa 1759
A contemporary account of the tensions between Spain, Portugal and Britain over the cessation of Spanish territories in Paraguay to Portuguese Brazil in exchange for Colonia del Sacramento. This description of the events which ensued from the signature of the 1750 Treaty of Madrid, also known as the Treaty of Limits, was compiled from accounts sent to Naples and circulated there to encourage Charles, King of Naples and future King of Spain, to intervene in favor of the Jesuits who as a result were set to be displaced from their reductions in Paraguay. The first page of the document reads “Recopilacion de noticias desde el año de 1754, hasta Abril de 1759 tanto en orden a los sucesos del Paraguay quanto a la persecucion de los Padres de la Compañía de IHS de Portugal enviadas por un Ministro de Estado, y esparcidas en Napoles por otro Ministro, traducidas del toscano.”
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