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Pescador, Juan Javier. The New World Inside a Basque Village: The Oiartzun Valley and Its Atlantic Emigrants, 1550-1800. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004. 216 pages, ISBN 0-87417-570, The Basque Book Series.

On one of my family's early visits to Irún, one of my father's uncles decided to take us for a ride in the countryside. The object was to familiarize us with Irún's surroundings while providing us with a dose of local history. As the highway snaked through lush and carefully manicured sloping farmlands on the way to Baztan, our guide, Uncle Marcelino, provided a running historical commentary; as we passed certain caseríos, he would point to them and, by way of explanation, would observe, "dinero de Venezuela," "dinero de Uruguay," and so on. Little did I know that eventually I would confront this reality when I made the Basque region in the early modern period the object of my research. As I delved into its social, political, cultural, and economic history, I encountered significant and vital colonial connections at every step. And yet, except for traditional mentions of the Basque presence in New World enterprises, there was no study that cast deeper light on the dynamic and dialectical interaction between the Basque homeland and the Indies. How might one account then for the extraordinary success colonial success of Basques, a success made all the more remarkable by the seemingly outsider status of the Basque populations in the peninsula and the ethnocultural conflicts that sometimes pitted Basques against other Spanish groups, notably Castilians. How did Basques overcome many of these obstacles and do so well in the New World, to the point of acquiring, ironically perhaps, the condition of being the Spanish empire's consummate insiders, indeed the royal administration's archi-gachupines Javier Pescador's compact but powerful monograph provides important keys for understanding the reasons for Basque progress in America during the old regime.
Focused on the Oiartzun Valley, Pescador's book examines local emigration to the Indies during a 250-year time-span. In the process he analyzes local society to explain the various activities in which Oiartzun's native sons ensconced themselves in the colonial world: shipbuilding, iron-making, sugar processing, silver mining, trade, and crown administration. Pescador successfully demonstrates that a broad range of relations concerning property, family, gender, local government, and religion facilitated the integration of the old world and the new. In particular, he does an excellent job of showing how farmsteads (baserriak) and local administrative and religious organizations helped shape the identity of Oiartzun's inhabitants.
Pescador then explores the manner in which the return to Oiartzun of successful emigrants (indianos) disrupted the valley's economy and social structure during the 1650-1740 era. As happened elsewhere in the Basque region, prominent emigrants, with their new ideas about wealth and hierarchy, profoundly transformed local society and longstanding customary practices, leading to readjustments between prominent families and the nouveaux riches and to changes in religious practices. Pescador also documents the travails of the "Basque Penelopes," the women left behind, whose hardships have not always been fully elucidated.
Pescador's work shows how the New World over time became the object of the valley's socioeconomic expectations, leading to Oiartzun's dependence upon colonial structures for its survival and betterment. (Extrapolating this important finding to the entire Basque region could well explain, as I have suggested elsewhere, how the loss of the American colonies led to a severe crisis in the Basque provinces in the early nineteenth century and the eventual rise of Carlism.) In a concluding chapter, Pescador details how New World experiences contributed to the formation of an "ethnic and imperial identity" among the Basques.
For all its substantial accomplishments - and there are many - Pescador's book is not without occasional problems. For example, there is little on smuggling, a perennial phenomenon in the region and a subject of much controversy between the central government and the Basques. It would indeed be unusual if, given Oiartzun's proximity to the sea and to the French border, the comercio de mala fé, as it was known, had not reared its head. Aided by extensive commercial franchises, foreign merchandise routinely came into the Basque provinces without payment of duties, while silver and specie continually left the area to the benefit of local and foreign speculators. Likewise, the political and administrative relationship of Oiartzun to Gipuzkoa is not satisfactorily addressed. It almost seems at times that Oiartzun was closer to the New World than to its immediate geographical setting and environment. Was this really the case?
Neither of these points, however, detracts from what is otherwise an extremely solid book and the standard by which all subsequent studies will be measured. At the work's start the author asserts that he aims "to underline the transformations that took place in the lives of women and men as a result of their contacts with the New World." On this score, as in so many others, Pescador's book fully delivers.

Renato Barahona

University of Illinois at Chicago