Approach to the social insertion of naval officers in Cádiz, 1725-1900

Abstract

The present work tries to offer an approach to Spanish naval officers’ social insertion through the study of the social relations with other social and professional groups; i.e., the article seeks to place the naval officers in the Spanish social structure of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by means of the most immediate circles of sociability that these individuals had. The Cádiz area ―the cities of Cadiz and Isla de León / San Fernando essentially― have been chosen because it was the place where the Spanish Navy had its main base and, therefore, where there was a greater concentration of naval officers. By using the network analysis, it was analyzed an extensive amount of notarial documentation of the Provincial Historical Archive of Cádiz that allowed to deal with the process of social transformation of this group, which emerged in the 18th century as part of the new Bourbon elites and eventually became an outstanding stratum of the middle classes of the 19th century.

Keywords

• relaciones sociales
• oficiales navales
• siglo xviii
• siglo xix