At the same time, Basques were persecuted and seen as “other” by most groups. For example, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a group of wealthy Basques were violently driven out of the mining town of Potosí by a band of Castilians, Extremadurans, and mestizos. I maintain that far from losing their distinct culture and community, Basque migration to the New World and increased contact with other groups heightened Basques’ sense of difference and led to an ethnic understanding of Basqueness that had previously not existed. Even as Basques came to occupy a central role in the Spanish Atlantic, they developed a minority mentality.
Reconciling these two extremes, of Basques being at once central and marginalized, presents a unique opportunity to understand the transregional, transoceanic, and multi-ethnic connections that constituted the Spanish Empire. This study moves beyond an area or national study of Basques and instead places Basques at the center of a web of simultaneous difference and integration that I argue was characteristic and necessary to the Empire.
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