Loyal Royal Vassals: Black Vecinos and the Castilian Crown in the Early Hispanic Atlantic

The active, yet under-explored, role that some black communities played in negotiating the inclusion of blackness in definitions of vecindad (subjecthood / citizenship) by seeking royal aid to shape localized ideas about blackness, provides important insights into the relationship between skin color, vecindad, royal vassalage, and religious lineage in the early Spanish empire. The paper explores how free black individuals and communities successfully petitioned royal courts in Castile – sometimes traversing the Atlantic - in order to guarantee their rights as Catholic loyal royal vassals. The paper focuses on two successful petitions to the Castilian crown, one from late sixteenth-century Panama and another from early seventeenth-century Mexico City. These royal petitions highlight that far from there existing a unanimous and ubiquitous understanding of blackness and its relationship to notions of vecindad and royal vassalage, that instead plural ideas about skin color and differing lived experiences coexisted across the early Hispanic empire. Ideas about the irredeemability of black blood circulated at the same time that free black men and women lived as Catholic vecinos and royal vassals across various sites of the empire. Monarchical intervention in both cases highlights how ideas about blackness, vecindad, and royal vassalage varied across different sites of power within the empire, especially between the crown and local colonial authorities. The paper demonstrates that black communities often recognized that parallel and overlapping structures of imperial justice held differing views of blackness, and appealed to the crown as loyal royal vassals when suffering injustices by local authorities. As such, while localized views on skin color differed across the early Hispanic empire, free black individuals often played an important role in shaping notions of blackness and community through their daily practices and, sometimes, by appealing to higher authorities in the empire, namely, the crown in Castile.