Paper short abstract:

This paper examines strategies of governance involving taxation and the commons on Terceira island as they interfaced with Atlantic socioeconomic vectors in the mid sixteenth century, yielding key insights into the intersection of local politics, overseas economic networks, and imperial expansion.

Paper long abstract:

When Manuel Corte Real, captain-general of the Azorean port city of Angra, wrote to Portugal in 1537, he noted that a Castilian expedition led by Pedro de Alvarado had arrived on Terceira island from the "very rich lands" of Guatemala and Honduras. Despite its glowing tone, the report carried a mundane quality. From the early sixteenth century, European expeditions with sights set on the Americas, West Africa, and the Indian Ocean regularly touched on the Azores during the course of their journeys. Routinely, mariners purchased provisions from Azorean vendors, ordered new caravels from local carpenters, and traded for basic and luxury items. A cosmopolitan plurality of interests made Terceira both a point of convergence and a site of diffusion for wealth and political power. Island dynamics could potentially alter the cohesion of maritime networks, and the balance of European imperial claims, across and beyond the Atlantic.

Using rarely consulted Azorean municipal and notarial records alongside documentation from continental Iberia, this paper assesses the place of Terceira in international socio-political and economic vectors in the mid sixteenth century. A focus on the municipal administration of public infrastructure (roads, communal lands, urban provisioning, and taxation) brings into relief key themes at the intersection of local politics, overseas economic networks, and imperial expansion. How did tax collectors seek to capitalize on interactions between island agriculturalists, artisans, and itinerants? During a period of imperial escalation, what changes can be discerned in spaces of Terceira that served as nodes of wealth accumulation and dispersal?