Andrés González de Barcia and the Creation of the Colonial Spanish American Library (review)

Long the object of derision by Continental European scholars, Spain has often been maligned by phrases such as "Europe ends at the Pyrenees" and "Africa begins at the Pyrenees." Above all, because of its rich multicultural past — declared by Américo Castro as a wonderful "convivencia," or "living together" — Spain was often rejected by its more homogeneously Christian neighbors as barbarous, crude, and backward. This thinly-veiled prejudice was often cloaked in the facetious garb of objective scholarship, which over the centuries has developed into the ugliest form of anti-Hispanic condescension. Fortunately, as scholars the world over educate themselves regarding the countless intellectual contributions Spain has made to the global commonweal, the more the baseless myths about Hispanic ignorance and sloth are being relegated to the dustbin of antiquated, Eurocentric history. Jonathan Earl Carlyon's timely, and carefully researched, study makes a significant contribution to this positive process of desengaño (awakening) to the vibrant intellectual life of Spain during its period of Enlightenment (1680–1760, according to Carlyon, who follows Pedro Alvarez de Miranda). Noting that this is the period of the founding of the Royal Library (today's Biblioteca Nacional in 1711 and the Royal Academy of the Language (Real Academia de la Lengua) in 1713, the publishing of the Dictionary of Authorities (Diccionario de autoridades) between 1726 and 1739, and the founding of the Royal Academy of History (Real Academia de la Historia) in 1738, Carlyon focuses his study on the life and work of Andrés González de Barcia Carballido y Zúñiga (1673–1743), an eminent intellectual who produced some of the finest work of the Spain of the period.

Holding a variety of administrative posts in the government of Philip V, such as Superintendent of the Royal Manor, High Judge of Royal Rents and Goods, Governor of the Hall of Mayors of Court and Country, and a member of the ruling Council of Castile, González de Barcia is best known today for his scholarly work. One of the principal participants in the tertulia organized by Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco, the Marquis of Villena, González de Barcia was instrumental in the founding of the Royal Academy of the Language and the publication of the Dictionary of Authorities, and had amassed one of the greatest personal libraries of anyone in his generation. Yet he would be known best for the grand project he undertook in the 1720s, that of editing the Chronicles of the Indies. Carlyon quickly maps his own project: "My book is an effort to write an intellectual history of these developments. I show how Andrés González de Barcia created what we might call the first comprehensive 'colonial Spanish American library'" (7). As Carlyon further shows, González de Barcia did this by a twofold process: first, by editing rare and out-of-print texts and manuscripts from Columbus's voyages through all of the conquests of Mexico, Peru, and Río de la Plata; and, second, by editing and greatly expanding the celebrated catalogue of the Indies, the Epítome de la Biblioteca Oriental i Occidental, nautica i Geografica, which had first been published by Antonio de León Pinelo in 1629.

Yet, as Carlyon also shows, there was much more to González de Barcia's project than simply writing bibliographies: it also involved correcting false data and guiding readers to reliable sources. And here lies the significance of González de Barcia's seemingly isolated, scholarly work. His was a political campaign as well as an intellectual crusade: that of rehabilitating the image of Spain, which had been so tarnished through the years by European enemies who were eager to prove the truth of the Black Legend, even at the cost of falsifying data. Carlyon shows, concisely...