Advertencias Abroad: The British & Foreign Bible Society
We know that the eighteenth and nineteenth century saw a general dispersal of early colonial Mexican books. But who acquired books abroad, and to what end? Here we consider the exemplar of the Advertencias held at the Biblioteca Francisco Xavier Clavigero at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. In the prior section, we saw from the marca de fuego that the book was originally held in a religious collection. However, according to a note on the first page, in 1810 the book found a new home:
Año de 1810
Compre este, y otro del mismo autor, q[u]e su titulo es, Advertencias pa Confesores de los Naturales, aquel con el sello o marca del Carmen, ambos pa papel viejo, o escrito, pa coetes pa la mina de Stã. Textr.
Caxxillo
On the opposite page, another note shows that the book did not remain long in Caxxillo's hands:
Presented __ Benj[ami]n Blinkhorn
____ the
British & [For]eign Bible Society
1833
The transition that we observe here is characteristic of the movement of Mexican religious artifacts during this period. In 1810, the same year that the Grito de Dolores set off the Mexican War of Independence, the book was purchased by what is probably a local collector or dealer. Did Caxxillo buy the book directly from a religious order? Perhaps, but we can also speculate that it may have been seized or stolen from the library as demand for rare books grew and as the power of the religious orders dwindled. The fact that the book was purchased stands out, alerting us to a new market for these artifacts.
By 1833, the book had found itself in the hands of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The British and Foreign Bible Society was established in 1804 to translate and distribute vernacular bibles to Christians around the world. We can imagine that a book like the Advertencias would have been of interest to this group because of its religious content, its evangelizing mission, and its emphasis on indigenous languages, all of which paralleled the Bible Society's mission. We know that at the Columbian Exposition in 1893, the Society published a pamphlet featuring passages from its biblical translations in dozens of languages, including Nahuatl. However, in this case the book was presented as a gift, perhaps to a wealthy donor in England. So it may not have been valued for its content at all. It may instead of served as a symbol of a certain history of missionary work which the British and Foreign Bible Society hoped to continue in the nineteenth century.
Many copies of the Advertencias left Mexico for the United States and elsewhere during this tumultuous period in Mexican history. The exemplar currently at the San Jacinto Monument, for example, was acquired was donated to the library by George A. Hill, Jr., nineteenth-century museum chairman and renowned book collector whose mission for the museum was, among other things, to "extend and diffuse knowledge of our history, and promote and perpetuate peace, friendship and sympathetic understanding between the people of Texas and the people of Mexico, Spain, France and the Latin-American Republics."
The Bible Society copy is particularly interesting, however, because it reflects historical continuity between the missionary work of the Spanish Franciscans in the sixteenth century and that of the British missionaries in the nineteenth century. Both groups emphasized philology as a means of providing access to religious texts, and both were dedicated to the global spread of Christianity.
Important differences can be identified between the two groups, however. The Spanish mendicant friars served and were financed by the Spanish crown and by the church. Their work justified Spanish colonialism and participated in the consolidation of Spanish political power. By the seventeenth century, however, their philological project was abandoned in favor of Spanish-language indoctrination as both church and state became increasingly anxious about the dissemination of heterodox texts in indigenous languages (see Mignolo, 1995).
In contrast, though the British and Foreign Bible Society was patronized by the British crown, it acted separately from (and in tandem with) British colonial rule. As a Protestant organization, its goal was not to indoctrinate new converts, but rather to provide Christians across the globe with the direct access to holy texts that was necessary for worship. Its global outreach marks a shift in power in the nineteenth century as Great Britain became, politically and economically, the center of colonial and industrial power across the globe.
Today, this copy of the Advertencias is part of the Biblioteca Manuel Arango Arias at the Universidad Iberoamericana. D.F. As the printed catalog for the collection explains,
"A lo largo de varios años, el empresario Manuel Arango logró reunir una importante colección de libros, folletos, manuscritos y fotografías sobre Mexico y su historia. Con el criterio de bibliófilo, pretendió obtener lo que se conoce como "tesoros bibliográficos", esto es, "inunables mexicanos", eiciones príncipe, ediciones limitadas, raras, obras dedicadas por sus autores; siempre buscando el ejemplar en el mejor estado de conservación posible. Este criterio, no obstante, estuvo condicionado por las complejas oportunidades del mercado que ha llegado a trascender nuestras fronteras, encarciendo las piezas y haciendo más difícil la competencia al participar en él instituciones y coleccionistas de otros horizontes, generalmente con mayores presupuestos. Sin embargo, dicha circunstancia llevó a localizar un buen número de impresos o manuscritos en el extranjero para ser traídos posteriormente a nuestro país."
The Colección Biblioteca Manuel Arango Arias was donated to the Acervos Históricos of the Biblioteca Francisco Xavier Clavigero at the Universidad Iberomaericana on April 18, 1996, and remains there today.
The return of the Advertencias to Mexican institutions in the twentieth century marks the broader return of cultural heritage artifacts to their places of origin, either voluntarily or with the support of philanthropists like Manuel Arango.
