JCB Lunch Chat on Sept. 23 by Juan Ponce Vazquez

                   
        
     The John Carter Brown Library FELLOWS LUNCHEON CHAT A weekly series uninterrupted since 1984
    
   
    
      
    
        
    
      
    

    'The Most Disruptive Man in this Republic':
 Rodrigo Pimentel, Local Elites, and the Politics of Power in Santo Domingo, 1630s-1680s   Juan Ponce Vázquez
University of Pennsylvania

José Amor y Vázquez Fellow WEDNESDAY, September 23, 2009 12:30 p.m.
        
    

    Detail of Santo Domingo from Arnoldus Montanus, De Nieuwe en onbekende Weereld , Amsterdam, 1671.

Original in the John Carter Brown Library.
    
   
   
     Revered and loathed in almost equal measure throughout his life, by his death in 1683, Rodrigo Pimentel was unarguably the richest and most powerful man in Hispaniola. This presentation will look at a few episodes of Pimentel’s  life that highlight different aspects of his rise to preeminence, namely, his relation with other local elites in the island, his association with the members of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, and his active participation in contraband trade with domestic and for­eign merchants. The life of Rodrigo Pimentel shows that in order to understand the complexity of the Spanish Caribbean (and the Carib­bean World as a whole) in the seventeenth century, we need to look at regions such as Santo Domingo, traditionally regarded as mere periph­eries of empire.
    
   
     ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ Chancellor’s Dining Room, Sharpe Refectory This lecture will follow our weekly JCB Fellows luncheon, held every Wednesday of the calendar year, summer and winter, without interruption. Lunch begins at 12 noon, the chat at 12:30 p.m. (Buy lunch for $10 or bring your own.) Call 401-863-2725 for more information or email: JCBL_Information@Brown.edu <mailto:%20JCBL_Information@Brown.edu>