Conflicto y violencia cotidiana entre los aforados castrensesEl departamento de Ferrol en el siglo xviii

Abstract

Ferrol experienced rapid urban expansion in the middle of the 1700’s, when, as partof the Crown’s policy of naval regeneration, it was promoted to the status of capitalof one of the three maritime provinces on the peninsular coast. From that time to theend of the century, the town grew with unprecedented speed to become the principalurban centre in the Kingdom of Galicia in terms of number of inhabitants. This largepopulation was divided between two jurisdictions, a minority group that came underthe authority of the ordinary courts and a second, more numerous group, linked tothe military sphere.This work concerns a study of the everyday conflict and violence dealt withunder the overwhelmingly male-dominated Naval jurisdiction. Our objective is toanalyse the role of persons subject to court-martial (so-called aforados castrenses) inthe criminal cases coming before Naval tribunals with an emphasis on cases relatedto “ill-treatment” since these constitute a particularly interesting reflection on thecommon-place nature of violence in this Spanish Ancien Régime society as a safetyrelease valve for social, family, and community tensions.To this end we have relied principally on the rich source of informationcomprising the Navy’s notarial registers, especially through study of the powers ofattorney preserved in Ferrol’s Naval Archive. This source greatly facilitated thequantitative analysis of the types of conflict in Ferrol in the second half of theEighteenth century. These powers of attorney provide data concerning the sex, civilstatus, and socio-economic background of plaintiffs and defendants and even givedetails of the events leading up to the conflict. In this way we have been able tocombine a quantitative analysis with our qualitative analysis thus creating a richerand more insightful picture of the complex reality of the time.