“The Grace of God and Virtue of Obedience”: The Archaeology of Slavery and the Jesuit Hacienda Systems of Nasca, Peru, 1619–1767

What is it about?

Multi-scalar archaeological exploration offers new insights for understanding Jesuit estate systems and the slavery they depended on for agroindustrial production. Since 2009, ethnohistorical and archaeological research on two haciendas, San Joseph and San Francisco Xavier de la Nasca, in south coastal Peru’s Ingenio Valley, has illuminated the Jesuit institutions of slavery and the hacienda in colonial Peru. Belonging to two distinct Jesuit institutions, the estates supported schools in Cuzco and Lima, respectively. Since acquiring their first properties in Nasca in 1619, both colleges grew their haciendas by absorbing neighboring fields and noncontiguous lands throughout the region, becoming the largest, most profitable vineyards in the viceroyalty by the time of the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from the Spanish empire in 1767. Both hacienda administrations took similar approaches to property management and the large enslaved population that worked them, negotiating the cosmopolitanism of the communities and balancing obligations for evangelization and Christian discipline with the demands for agroindustrial production.

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Photo by Henrique Jacob on Unsplash

Photo by Henrique Jacob on Unsplash