COLOMBIA

The SSDA Colombia Collection consists of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonial church records, notarial records, photographs, and maps from the First Notary of Quibdó, the Notary of Buenaventura, and the First Notary of Riohacha (on the Caribbean coast of Colombia). The Quibdó and Riohacha projects, which were directed by Dr. Pablo Gómez and Dr. Jane Landers, were made possible through the support of British Library Endangered Archives Grants (EAP 255 and EAP 503, respectively). ​

 

In addition to the documents themselves, this section of the archive contains information on the development of the projects as well as a small selection of volume descriptions. The collection is organized in a geographical hierarchy, beginning with a modern department and descending to a modern city and finally the institution where the document in question was originally produced.

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The notarial records digitized by these projects reveal Colombia's rich commercial and social history. They include documents for the purchase and sale of public and private properties from both urban and rural settings; land petitions and adjudication of disputes over public and private lands; documents pertaining to the formation of merchant societies and commercial exchange between Spaniards, foreigners, and indigenous Guajiros; slave sales and purchases as well as manumission documents; and wills and testaments of the most important families in the region that detail social and political alliances and the formation of wealth.

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