Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Robert Holden, ed., Oxford Handbook of Central American History, 2021
The Spanish conquest is a highly mythologized historical moment of profound consequence. For some, it represents the launching of a global Catholic empire-perhaps with lamentable violence, but ultimately as part of an inevitable, proud march of Euro-Christian progress. For Indigenous populations, the meaning of Spanish conquest is decidedly more somber: the invasion of their lands, the criminalization of their customs, the loss of sovereignty, and, indeed, the closest they have ever come to total extermination. In between these two poles of interpretation, scholars have sought not only new sources and information beyond published Spanish works but also new perspectives from less famous actors. Central America features prominently in this recent scholarship, which has ended up questioning all three parts of the phrase "the Spanish conquest." Indigenous Central America's sixteenth-century experience of military invasion and colonization-made worse by a brief but intense period of legalized Indigenous slavery-was brutal, and more complex than the mythology usually admits. It was not a single sweeping event, it was not militarily won only by Spaniards or even Europeans, and ultimately, it was incomplete.
Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History, 2021
The regime established in America from the end of the 15th century to the 19th century can be explained by this relationship between institutional construction and the practice of violence. Like any empire of its time, the Spanish monarchy founded its authority, part of its legitimacy, its fiscal and administrative organization, its bureaucracy, its control systems, and its trade opportunities on the ground of warfare, and with these characteristics informed the slow and problematic processes of conquest, colonization, and subjection of the New World. Approaching Spanish America through both warfare and the military offers two major advantages: on the one hand, learning the history of its institutional, social, political, economic, and cultural development, and on the other, identifying the prolific historiography that has studied it. This bibliographical selection expresses both fields: the history of warfare in Spanish America and its changing historiography. The characteristics, pretensions, contradictions, and flaws of the Spanish institutional framework that for three centuries expanded from the Caribbean and came to dominate immense regions of North, Central, and South America until it entered into crisis and collapsed, leading to the emergence of national states, can be understood from its capacity to mobilize economic and human resources for warfare. Likewise, these very diverse armed forces involved in such processes were historical expressions of the societies that produced them. The studies in this bibliography express the historical complexity of Spanish America from the perspective of organization and experience of warfare.
A History of Colonial Latin America from First Encounters to Independence
2021
A History of Colonial Latin America from First Encounters to Independence is a concise and accessible volume that presents the history of the Iberian presence in the Americas, from the era of exploration and conquest to the disruption and instability following independence. This history of the Iberian presence in the Americas contains stories of curiosity, vision, courage, missed communication, miscalculation, insatiability, prejudice, and native collaboration and resistance. Beginning in 1492, Ramírez establishes the context for the era of exploration and conquest that follows. The book then surveys the activities of Cortes and Pizarro and the impact on native peoples, Portuguese activity on the eastern coast of South America, the demographic collapse of the native population, the role of the Catholic Church, and new policy initiatives of the Bourbons who inherited the throne in 1700. The narrative involves Spaniards, Native Americans of innumerable ethnic groups, Moorish, native, and black slaves, and a whole new category of people of mixed blood, collectively known as the castas, acting in the steamy tropics of the lowlands, marching across parched deserts, trekking to oxygen-low mountain summits, and settling all the ecological niches in between. The book includes important primary documents and maps to provide students with even more context to this important part of Latin American history. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American history and culture. Susan Elizabeth Ramírez holds the Neville G. Penrose Endowed Chair of History and Latin American Studies at Texas Christian University, USA. Her research focuses on land tenure and Indigenous peoples during the colonial era.
Terrae Incognitae, 2019
Accounts of the Spanish colonial conquests circulated widely throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in their original forms, in translations, and in edited collections. Modern historians have justly criticized how this literature perpetuated a narrative of European exceptionalism and superiority, but even the most Eurocentric accounts contained within them traces of a counternarrative of Spanish dependence on Indigenous allies rather than dominance over them. Furthermore, the writings of French and English would-be colonizers show that despite their prejudices against Spain, as they scoured this literature for clues as to how to repeat Spanish successes, some recognized how political divisions amongst Native people had proven crucial for the Spaniards. This precedent convinced them to pursue a strategy of seeking out political divisions amongst Natives in the hopes of creating intercultural alliances, a dynamic that played an important role in each early French and English colony in North America.
Spanish and British Empires in America, 1492-1830 (UTA, 2011)
The Spanish and the British created large transatlantic domains in the New World. There were numerous similarities and differences between the two empires as they encountered similar conditions and situations. The class will examine exploration, Amerindians, African slavery, government, religion, and revolution in the Spanish and British realms. In addition, primary source documents related to these subjects will be read, discussed, and analyzed. Students will be expected to compare and contrast Spanish and British reactions to these issues in discussions, position papers, and examinations.