Writing the History of the New World into Universal History: Colonial Chronologies and Astral Knowledge in Late-Seventeenth Century Spanish America

Abstract

In this article, we study historical and astronomical works published between 1680 and 1690 by Diego Andrés Rocha, oidor of the Royal Audience of Lima, and the Creole intellectual Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, viceregal cosmographer of New Spain. We contend that for these Spanish American colonial authors, history writing and the knowledge of celestial phenomena were inextricably linked within a shared epistemic framework. Astronomy and astrology provided them with a foundation for reasoning, judging the weight of disparate evidence, and establishing the legitimacy of competing claims related to the chronology of the New World, especially regarding theories about the ancient origins of the Indians. We show how the mobilization of astral knowledge in the establishment of local chronologies offered an answer to politically charged questions about the place of the Americas in the universal history of empire and Christian redemption, as well as the authors’ own place in their respective colonial societies.