The following is a guest post by Stephen Mayeaux, Legal Information Specialist in the Digital Resources Division at the Law Library of Congress, in collaboration with Dante Figueroa, Senior Legal Information Analyst at the Law Library of Congress.
If you have read our previous posts, you may recall that we divided the collection into six categories:
- Briefs
- Canon Law
- Notarial Instruments
- Opinions & Judgments
- Laws & Statutes
- Miscellaneous
Our third published subsection is Briefs, which includes 1,463 unique documents, representing nearly 60% of the total Spanish Legal Documents collection. “Briefs” includes writings mostly related to disputes of inheritance and titles of nobility as well as the sale of property, the collection of taxes and debts, and defense in criminal cases.
Although the majority of cases described in these documents concern ordinary disputes between individuals, others deal with serious topics ranging from murder and other criminal charges (such as arson and armed intimidation) to the trafficking of slaves and the election of government officials.
For all its emphasis on local quarrels in 17th and 18th century Spain, the Briefs subsection is not lacking in connections to broader historical events. Take, for instance, this brief describing the Siege of Havana by the British during the Seven Years’ War.
The British, for their part, held Havana for only a few months before trading it back to Spain in exchange for Florida as part of the 1763 Treaty of Paris.
From there, we can see how the events described in this brief played a role in American history as Florida continued to change hands over several decades on its eventual path to becoming part of the United States.
We look forward to bringing you more illuminating stories from this collection with every new release. Stay tuned for updates as we share the remaining three subsections in the coming months!