THE RED ROAD OF THE IBERIAN EXPANSION: COCHINEAL AND THE GLOBAL DYE TRADE

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The Red Road of the Iberian Expansion: Cochineal and the Global Dye Trade

Publication . Serrano, Ana Filipa Albano; Hallett, Jessica; Bommel, Maarten van

Between the end of the 15th century and beginning of the 16th, the Portuguese and the Spanish expanded their empires to the Americas. While the Portuguese soon dedicated to the exploitation of brazilwood, the Spanish came to establish a monopoly in cochineal that would become one of the most important commercial products in the Atlantic until the 19th century. The interdisciplinary investigation presented here, combining Analytical Chemistry and Economic History, aims to explore the impact of the American insect as a commercial product in the global circulation of dyestuffs, and its importance as a red dye in the main centres of textile production in Europe and in Asia, in relation to other local insect dyes. The historical investigation comprised a comprehensive revision of historical publications and primary printed sources regarding the Iberian transatlantic trade in dyestuffs and their impact on European and Asian dyeing traditions during the Early Modern period. Special focus was given to the acceptance of American cochineal over local insect dye sources, namely kermes, lac and Armenian and Polish cochineal. This research reveals a gradual but clear adoption of the American dyestuff in Europe and in West Asia, although local insect dyes would still have a representative role in on-going practices, especially in East and Southeast Asia. Chemical research was pursued to evaluate the historical picture presented for the impact of the American dyestuff in Europe and, especially in Asia, to which insufficient historical information was available. Given that previous publications concerning the chemical characterization of insect dyes depicted limitations that compromised the differentiation of cochineal species in red-dyed historical textiles, an ultra high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) method was optimized to deliver more accurate results. Then, experiments with cochineal and kermes dyes were undertaken following several dyeing parameters. The resulting dyed fibres were characterized with UHPLC, leading to meaningful insights about the behaviour of the colorants’ dye compounds. Subsequent artificial ageing of the dyed fibres and their characterization with mass spectrometry (MS) permitted to characterize, for the first time, photo-degradation compounds in the insect’s colorant. These results were reported to be similar to those for historical fibres and, for this reason, it became possible to compare the experimentally-dyed and historical fibres through partial-least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), for the identification of the cochineal species used to colour the analysed historical fibres. By combining the results of this successful approach, along with the results for other coloured historical fibres and their contextualization with historical evidence, it was possible to ascribe assertive interpretations about the date and provenance of the investigated textiles. Moreover, successful historical interpretations could be obtained about the dynamics of American cochineal in European and Asian societies throughout the colonial period. Therefore, the interdisciplinary combination of chemical and statistical methods developed here, along with historical evidence, has proven to be an important approach that should be adopted in future projects for the characterization of insect dyes in cultural heritage objects.

2017-07-01Tese de doutoramento

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Entidade financiadora

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Número da atribuição

SFRH/BD/73409/2010