Marco Dorta prepares his readers with the admonition that Cartagena de Indias is primarily a narrative of the rise and growth of a city as viewed through its architecture. Principal events and leading figures in Cartagena’s colonial history are not within the scope of the work, according to Dorta. Despite these limitations the author believes that his work holds interest for a broader audience than the specialist in colonial urban Hispanic American architecture and city planning.
Descriptions of Cartagena’s colonial architecture are impressive. Principal buildings are shown in detail and accompained by working sketches, photographs, and maps. Dorta’s exhaustive studies of Cartagena’s fortifications are certain to delight military engineers and naval strategists. However, students of Hispanic American history will reap a meager harvest in Dorta’s narrative of Cartagena’s colonial era.
Dorta encounters difficulties when he attempts to apply historical narrative to a discussion of Cartagena’s monuments, buildings, and fortifications. The effort negates what might have been an effective treatment of colonial art forms and results in poor history as well. The author might easily have achieved the excellence of Pál Kelemen’s Medieval American Art had he been content to eschew historical narrative and confine himself to a discussion of Cartagena’s colonial art forms within the limits of his competency as art historian.
Founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia, Cartagena became “one of the most beautiful cities of Spain on the other side of the Atlantic.” Its commercial success was assured when it served as the first market place for Spanish goods in South America and as principal terminal for the Tierra Firme flota. Despite the devastating effects of fire, storm, and invasion, Cartagena played a key role in the defense of the Spanish Empire in America.
With exacting detail Dorta utilizes a wealth of material from the Archivo General de Indias in Seville to describe Cartagena as it grew from a few cane and straw huts to a city of magnificent structures. Laboriously, Dorta illustrates his descriptions of convents, hospitals, public buildings and fortifications with floor plans, sketches and photographs. Rather than treat each major structure as it developed throughout the centuries, Dorta is captured by the chronological structure of his work. Consequently it is frequently necessary to read all eight chapters to follow the evolution of a single structure.
Dorta devotes a major portion of his work to Cartagena’s great fortresses. Only ten years after its founding, a French pirate, Robert Baal, attacked and sacked Cartagena. Francis Drake’s capture of Cartagena in 1586 climaxed a number of assaults on the city during the century, and finally induced Philip II to commission Bautista Antonelli, a famous military engineer, to undertake the construction of the city’s fortifications. Dorta supplies ample details of Antonelli’s walls, forts, and ramparts.
Although experts continued to point out the inadequacy of Cartagena’s defenses, apathy on the part of its citizenry and official misappropriation of funds allocated for the construction of fortresses made the city easy prey for a major invasion at the end of the 17th century. In 1697 a joint assault by French forces and buccaneers from Santo Domingo under the command of Jean Bernard Desjeans, Baron de Pointis, met little resistance. Dorta utilizes contemporary French and Spanish accounts for vivid descriptions of the many weeks of terror in Cartagena that netted the invaders more than nine million pesos in loot.
Cartagena’s finest hour came when it defeated Admiral Vernon’s forces in 1741. The British commanded more than 23,000 men while Cartagena could muster no more than three thousand defenders. Veteran naval leader Blas de Lezo (“Peg Leg”) led the charge in repelling Vernon. After thirty-five days of constant bombardment and attack the British withdrew in defeat giving Cartagena and Spain their most glorious military victory.
The reader is left to ponder the miracle of time that transformed Cartagena’s inadequate defenses to an impressive stronghold. Too narrow a focus leads Dorta to a serious omission when he fails to examine the possibility that the creation of the viceroyalty of New Granada during the critical years from 1717 until 1739 might have been related to Cartagena’s defense. Spain’s desire to strengthen northern South America led to impressive administrative reforms that had its effects on Cartagena. Failure to acknowledge the pioneer efforts of Pedrosa de Guerrero in establishing the new viceroyalty and ignorance of Viceroy Eslava’s efforts result in a distorted perspective. Granted that Cartagena was the arena for this major struggle, other factors were equally decisive in defending this vital Spanish outpost against the British.
More than 200 rare maps and charts present a dramatic panorama of Cartagena’s growth and represent Dorta’s major contribution. The bibliography is impressive and includes contemporary as well as more recent accounts. It is regrettable that Dorta did not utilize his materials more effectively.
