Jose de Veitia Linage, Norte de la contratacion de las Indias Occidentales (Seville, 1672)
The working manual of the Casa de la Contratacion, written by its treasurer and judge and printed at Seville in 1672: the offices, the courts, the fleets, the duties, the registers, the seamen's corporation. Thirty years later it was translated into English and sold in Cornhill, whose translator opened by denying that Spain kept the Indies trade a secret - his evidence being the book in his hands.
Why this wins its question: The question "did Spain keep the Indies trade secret" is normally answered from the outside, with the closed-port system and the licensing of foreigners as evidence, and the answer usually given is yes. There is a document that settles the interesting half of it directly, and it is almost never quoted: the treasurer of the Casa de la Contratacion published the whole apparatus in Seville in 1672 with a royal privilege, and an English sea captain translated it and sold it in Cornhill in 1702 with a preface saying, in as many words, that the general belief in Spanish secrecy is contradicted by the many large works the Spaniards have made public. This object puts both title pages, the Seville censura of 1671, the English preface's comparison of the Casa with the East-India-House, the 1647 schedule of officers' sureties and the enlistment register on the record together - and states in its own claims that the author was the institution's own treasurer and the translator worked for a London market in the first year of the Spanish Succession war, so that neither witness is mistaken for a disinterested one.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page reads NORTE DE LA CONTRATACION DE LAS INDIAS OCCIDENTALES, dedicated to Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzman, conde de Penaranda, formerly president of the Supreme Council of the Indies; "POR D. IOSEPH DE VEITIA LINAGE, Cavallero de la Orden de Santiago, Senor de la Casa de Veitia, del Consejo de su Magestad, su Tesorero, Juez Oficial de la Real Audiencia de la Casa de la Contratacion de las Indias"; con privilegio, Seville, from the press of Juan Francisco de Blas, chief printer of that city, 1672. The author is describing the tribunal he sat on and the treasury he kept.
The licence explains what the book was for. The censura of Fr. Juan de S. Agustin, given at the Colegio de S. Acacio in Seville on 25 September 1671, finds nothing in it against faith or good morals and describes instead "un zelo Christiano de dar noticias a todos, y a cada uno de por si de las obligaciones que corresponden a su puesto" - a Christian zeal to give notice to everyone, and to each one separately, of the obligations belonging to his post. The censor recommends not only that it be licensed but that all concerned thank the author, and quotes Saint Paul's omnibus factus sum omnia at him.
Its chapter on the Universidad de los Mareantes gives that body a genealogy and a membership. In Seville there had been a congregation or college of the Comitres, the owners and masters of vessels, attested by a royal cedula of 2 December 1573 inserted in another of 2 December 1598, and still remembered in a small square carrying the name. In imitation of it, some years after the discovery of the Indies, the owners of ships, pilots and masters formed a body that began as a confraternity, was made a foundation of house and hospital in 1569, drew up ordinances, and was confirmed under the name Universidad de los Mareantes - covering, for questions of precedence and exemption, "todos los duenos de Naos, Pilotos, Maestres, Contramaestres, Guardianes, Marineros, y Grumetes", down to the ship's boys, though only owners and examined pilots could elect or be elected to office.
In 1702 the book was made English and sold in London: THE SPANISH RULE OF TRADE TO THE WEST-INDIES, "Written in Spanish by D. Joseph de Veitia Linage, Knight of the Order of Santiago, and Treasurer and Commissioner of the India-House. Made English by Capt. JOHN STEVENS", printed for Samuel Crouch at the corner of Pope's-Head-Alley in Cornhil, 1702. The title page advertises an account of the Casa de Contratacion, its government, laws, ordinances, officers and jurisdiction, the sending out of armadas and flotas, the duties paid to the king, who may go over to the Indies and who not, the sea officers, the corporation of sailors, the building, gauging and insuring of ships and the ports of the Indies, with two lists of the goods carried each way.
The English preface opens by disposing of the commonplace it expected its readers to hold. It is strange, Stevens writes, that among so many volumes published on the discovery, conquest and travels of the West Indies, nothing has been written of its trade; and "This can no way be attributed to the Secrecy of the Spaniards, who make a Mystery of their Affairs and Endeavour, as is generally believ'd, to keep the World in Ignorance, as to all that relates to the West-Indies. The contrary has been sufficiently evinc'd, by the many large Works they have made Publick." An English translator in 1702 states that the belief in Spanish secrecy is general, and refuses it, on the evidence of the Spanish books he could buy.
The same preface makes the comparison an English reader would want. Veitia delivers all the laws, ordinances, customs and practices of the trade of the Indies, and the subject "does not only extend to that Practical Part of Buying and Selling known to all Merchants"; the India-House "has this Prerogative beyond the English East-India-House, That it is a Sovereign Court of Judicature, from which there lies no Appeal, either in Civil or Criminal Causes, but only to the Councel of the Indies, and that only in some Cases." The English chartered company is the yardstick, and the Spanish institution is said to exceed it in jurisdiction.
The book's grain is administrative, and a single page shows the texture. The security demanded of officers, varied for many years, was fixed in 1647 by rank: five thousand ducats of plate for the general or admiral of the galleons, four thousand for the vice-admiral and for the general of the flota, two thousand each for captains, veedor and contador, one thousand for chief pilots and for the king's escrivano and alguacil, five hundred for ensigns, other pilots, stewards and pursers, three hundred for physicians and surgeons. Nobody in that list went to sea in the king's Indies service without a surety bond scaled to what he could steal.
The manning rules on the same page are a personnel register and an anti-patronage rule at once. Soldiers and sailors are to be neither under twenty nor above fifty years of age, and no servants of the judges or commissioners of the India-House may be listed, nor men recommended by them. All sailors give security to serve before the escrivano attending the dispatch of the ships, and when a man is listed the clerk writes down not only his name but his father's name, his birthplace, his age, the quality he is to serve in and the day; the proclamation for listing must state the pay and allowances in advance.
What the book is evidence of has to be stated carefully, because its author is not a neutral witness. Veitia Linage was the treasurer and juez oficial of the Casa, and the volume is a serving officer's account of his own tribunal, licensed by the authorities of the monarchy it serves; it records the rules, the offices and the procedure with an insider's accuracy, and it is worth nothing at all as testimony that the rules were kept. The corpus uses it for what the system was designed to be, and looks elsewhere for what the system was.
The English edition carries its own interest, and its own motive. Stevens dedicates the translation to Sir William Hodges, Bart, in the ordinary terms of patronage - books have in all ages come forth under the protection of some worthy patron - and the volume appeared in London in 1702, the year the War of the Spanish Succession opened, published for a readership with commercial and military reasons to want the Spanish system laid open. A translation is not neutral because its original was administrative.
One detail is recorded here as an observation and not as an identification. The digitised Seville copy of 1672 carries an ink inscription reading Hodges beside the title, in an early hand; the London translation of 1702 is dedicated to Sir William Hodges, Bart. Nothing read in either volume establishes that the two are connected, and the note is kept only because the coincidence sits on the two title pages this object is built from.