Los donativos voluntarios: Un aspecto poco estudiado de la política Americana de los Habsburgo de España (siglos XVI-XVII)

In the last decades, many studies were focused on voluntary gifts requested by Hapsburg of Spain, during XVI and XVII centuries. However, these studies share a common limitation: they are all bound to a single territory, the Iberian Peninsula. In this paper we outline a general framework of the voluntary gifts requested by the crown from its American territories, during the XVI and XVII centuries. This work does not focus on the quantification of the revenue-although some numbers will be provided-but it shows a set of data useful to underline the importance of voluntary gifts in American politics of Hapsburgs of Spain, as well as the key features of this financial instrument still extensively ignored in Americanist historians' researches.