Colonizing land, creating societies, making and remaking archival memories: family archives and social power in the Canary Islands from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries

Abstract

This paper analyzes the evolution of family archive practices in the Canary

Islands during the Early Modern Age. Since the colonization of the islands to the implemen- tation of liberalism, most of elite families needed the archive for several purposes in each

context: to manage the social reproduction of the family, to support the social promotion, to manage the family property or to create a noble family narrative. Through empirical examples this paper examines some events that involved new models of archival practices by the insular elites.