Zwischen Authentizität und Fiktion

The main focus of this study is a methodological analysis of private letters written by Spanish emigrants from the Americas to their relatives and friends back in Europe, with an intensive discussion about the interaction and blurring between the public and the private spheres in private correspondences, kept and preserved in a public space (the archive). Questions of source criticism and a detailed assessment of the scientific production on the topics of letter writing and private correspondences in general, and emigrant-letters, specially, constitute the first part of the study. Emigrant letters from the colonial period can be found in a wide array of archival sources. Private archives of noble families, merchant houses and merchant institutions often hold large vaults of correspondence of some prominent member, but also public archives in Spain provides several types of documents containing private letters: notarial records and files from court cases do contain a good number of letters. A very important source for Spanish emigrant letters, because they were written by the greatest number of different letter writers, stem from solicitations for emigration licences, which were req