Monarchy in motion: indigenous ambassadors in Spain during the 16th century

Abstract

In the last decades historiography has developed interesting reflections on the functioning of the political entities that during the Early Modern Period spread their power throughout overseas territories. Part of these reflexions have been based on the study of the circulation of people, objects and ideas. This has turned the attention to non-European territories, which, like America, have stopped being a receptacle of the European to be thought as a vector of mobility. On the other hand, it has made possible to diversify the profiles of those who moved or were able to move, and define their role in the first globalizing dynamics. In this article I expound the trips to Spain that the principals of the city and province of Tlaxcala made during the 16th century. My goals are to illustrate the particularities of this intercontinental mobility, and analyze how these multidirectional and temporally and spatially extended contacts articulated the government of the Hispanic Monarchy despite the distances.