Petitions, Rescript, and the Fictions of the “First Evangelization” of the New Kingdom of Granada

This paper revisits the early history of Christianization in the New Kingdom of Granada, which — in the absence of the kinds and volume of sources available in more central regions — has traditionally been characterized as having followed a similar pattern to imperial centres, if at a slower pace: first, a haphazard, mendicant evangelisation, followed by a painful but effective transition to a second stage characterised by the growing leadership of the secular church, which sought, with royal support, and in sync with Tridentine reforms, to centralise and homogenise the missionary enterprise – variously collaborating or clashing with the civil authorities on the ground. A careful rereading of extant sources, and a better understanding of the workings of petitions, rescript, and the participatory nature of imperial governance, however, reveals this long-standing understanding to be the product of misunderstanding, wishful thinking, and illusion. Reflecting on these contrasts, this paper considers the distorting influence of imperial paradigms both colonial knowledge production and on the modern historiography that has interpreted it, and calls for a reassessment of the local construction of Spanish colonialism on the ground across the diverse expanses of empire.