{
  "id": "ordenanzas-del-archivo-general-de-indias-1790",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Ordenanzas para el Archivo General de Indias (Madrid, 1790)",
  "summary": "Ninety-four chapters that turned a building full of transferred paper into an institution: salaried archivist and officials, a class called Historia for the relations, antiquities and customs that fitted no administrative heading, master copies of the oldest documents on large paper, and a library of geography and law beside the archivist's desk. The same code shuts the door - no one outside the named offices could be given a copy, or even told that a paper existed.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "archives",
    "colonial-institutions",
    "enlightenment",
    "eighteenth-century",
    "spanish-empire",
    "historiography",
    "books"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "munoz-historia-del-nuevo-mundo-1793"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "relaciones-geograficas-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "epidemic-records-of-spanish-america"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colonial-records-as-a-climate-archive"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "lopez-de-velasco-descripcion-de-las-indias-1574"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "navarrete-coleccion-de-los-viages-tomo-v-1837"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "consejo-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tribunales-de-cuentas-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "escribanos-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "herrera-historia-general-decada-octava"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "coronista-mayor-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cosmografo-y-catedratico-de-matematicas-del-consejo-de-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What are the 1790 ordinances of the Archivo General de Indias?",
    "Why did Spain create a single archive for the papers of the Americas?",
    "Who was allowed to consult the Archivo General de Indias in the eighteenth century?",
    "How were the papers of the Indies classified and preserved?",
    "What did it cost to obtain a document from the Archivo General de Indias?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The sheets read here are the first printing. The title page gives \"ORDENANZAS PARA EL ARCHIVO GENERAL DE INDIAS. MADRID M.DCC.XC. EN LA IMPRENTA DE LA VIUDA DE IBARRA\", under the royal arms; the copy carries the stamps of the Biblioteca Universitaria of Madrid and of the Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Economicas. The text runs to ninety-four numbered chapters over sixty-six printed pages.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The code opens with the crown's own account of why the archive exists, and the reason given is disorder rather than glory. Under the heading EL REY, the king recites that his father, \"considerando que los papeles de Indias se hallaban dispersos en muchos lugares sin la orden y distincion correspondiente á su importancia\", ordered a general archive of them made \"en la Real Casa-Lonja de la ciudad de Sevilla\", where properly kept and arranged in the charge of an archivist of its own and officials they would yield the greatest possible utility.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The building and the transfers came first and the rulebook last. The cedula states that the material works were finished in the previous reign, that most papers earlier than the year 1760 had been placed there and the persons thought necessary named \"para coordinarlos y reducirlos á índices claros y metódicos\", and that all that remained was to give a complete instruction prescribing the regime of the office and the obligations of its employees. Reports had been taken for that purpose from the archives of Simancas and of Barcelona, from the Via reservada de Indias, and from various persons knowledgeable in the matter.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Chapter I makes the archive a permanent salaried establishment and prints the numbers. The office is to consist of an archivist at fifteen thousand reales de vellon a year, a first official at eleven thousand, a second at eight thousand four hundred, a third at seven thousand two hundred and a fourth at six thousand, and besides these a porter at four thousand reales and a boy at three thousand.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The arrangement work itself was staffed as a temporary surge and said so. Chapter II records that supernumerary posts had been established provisionally to carry out as soon as possible \"las prolixas operaciones de poner en orden los papeles, y formar sus inventarios é índices\", that more might be added for the same purpose, and that all of them were to be suppressed as they fell vacant once the cause of their establishment ceased.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The classification has a residual class, and it is the one that matters most to anyone studying the American past. Chapter XXXIII provides that documents whose connection with the administrative heads is unclear, or which would give more light arranged separately, are to be gathered under further capital titles - and names among them \"las relaciones históricas, las noticias de qualesquiera sucesos, de antigüedades, usos y costumbres, las cartas sueltas é inconexâs con expedientes\", ordered under the title of Historia. Ethnography and narrative were given a shelf of their own by administrative rule.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Preservation is written as a copying programme with a stated priority that is not disinterested. Chapter XLVIII orders that copies be made of all the older papers of greater importance, \"especialmente de los pertenecientes á los derechos de mi Patronato y patrimonio Real\", in clear hand on good marquilla paper with margins proportioned for binding in volumes of about a hundred sheets, checked by the archivist, who is to initial every leaf and certify the collation at the end, each book to carry a title declaring its contents in few words and an index of all documents with reference numbers.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Access is defined by naming the bodies that have it. Chapter LVII restricts the sending out of accounts, extracts and copies to papers requested ex officio by any of the Secretaries of State and of the universal Despacho, the Supreme Council and Camara de las Indias, and the Tribunal de la Contratacion de Cadiz. Chapter LVIII adds a channel for everyone else: bodies and private persons needing documents \"para afianzar sus derechos, ilustrar sus familias, ú otro fin honesto\" may apply in writing to the archivist stating their reasons, whereupon the papers are searched for and their existence simply confirmed, so that royal permission to obtain copies may then be sought through the Ministry of Gracia y Justicia de Indias.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The next chapter is the one that keeps this object from being a story about open scholarship. Chapter LIX: \"De otra suerte á nadie podrá darse copia ni razon de papel alguno, ni aun insinuarse su exîstencia.\" No person was to be allowed to handle the inventories and indices, or to be present at their consultation, and much less at the search for and extraction of documents of any kind. The finding aids the same code orders built were themselves closed.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "Consultation was also priced, and the fees went to the staff. Chapter LX fixes twenty-four reales de vellon for search, writing, collation and signature where the copy does not exceed one pliego of ordinary paper, and three reales for each additional foja, with each page to carry at least twenty-two lines of regular clear hand and no more than two inches of white distributed between the side margins. Of what these fees produced the archivist was to have a third, the rest being divided among the officials in equal parts.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The code also tries to build the expertise the papers need. Chapter LXXV requires all employees to instruct themselves as far as possible \"en la Geografia, en la Historia, en la legislacion, y en el sistema del gobierno de Indias\", and to that end orders the principal books on those subjects and a decent collection of maps placed in the room where the archivist's desk stands; the archivist keeps the index of them, notes in a manual notebook what each person takes out, and may allow officials of known application to carry a book or map home against a receipt, for which reason duplicates of the most used works are to be kept. Chapter LXXVI requires the archivist to excel all of them in that study.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "The closing chapters state the code's own provisional character. Chapter XCIV declares it the king's will that everything ordered in the preceding chapters be observed \"por ahora puntualmente\" and reserving to himself the power to alter or modify later whatever experience should teach to be necessary. The subscription reads \"Dada en Madrid á diez de Enero de mil setecientos y noventa. = YO EL REY. = Antonio Porlier\", followed on the same page by the line \"Es copia de la original.\"",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "What this document can and cannot support is worth saying plainly. It is a rulebook printed as a certified copy of the signed original, so it establishes what was ordered at Madrid in January 1790 and by whom. It does not establish what was done: it gives no count of the papers transferred, no list of the places in the Americas or in Spain they came from, no measure of how far the indices were ever made, and no case of a request granted or refused. Nothing here should be read as evidence of compliance.",
      "sources": [
        "ordenanzas-archivo-indias-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The Archivo General de Indias is usually met as a building, a founding date and a UNESCO listing, with its rules described from a distance. The rules are short, printed, and quotable, and they say things the summaries do not: that a residual class named Historia was created by ordinance for relations, antiquities and customs; that master copies were to be made first of the papers touching the royal patronage; that the archivist's room was to hold a working library and maps; that fees for a copy ran to twenty-four reales a pliego and a third of them went to the archivist; and that outside four named offices nobody could be given a copy, or told that a document existed. Each of those is transcribed here from the 1790 Madrid sheets, with the chapter number the compilers printed beside it, including the clause that closes the archive.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-11",
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    "name": "Ordenanzas para el Archivo General de Indias (Madrid, 1790)",
    "description": "Ninety-four chapters that turned a building full of transferred paper into an institution: salaried archivist and officials, a class called Historia for the relations, antiquities and customs that fitted no administrative heading, master copies of the oldest documents on large paper, and a library of geography and law beside the archivist's desk. The same code shuts the door - no one outside the named offices could be given a copy, or even told that a paper existed.",
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