Empire & Society Latin Amer

Catalog description

HIST 573 gives students an overview of key literatures, methodologies, and debates in the historiography of empire and society in Latin American history, fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. The course comprises five sections, each based on an historical sub-field and its historiography: (1) the empires and societies of the Americas in the pre-Contact and Contact periods, primarily that of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas; (2) the culture and society of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism in Iberia and the Americas (3) the culture and society of the Spanish conquistadors, including roles played by indigenous and black conquistadors; (4) the impact on the Americas of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism in East Asia, and the cultural and social ramifications of trans-Pacific exchanges during the colonial centuries; and (5) the comparative history of imperialism in the Americas by other European powers, most notably the British, Dutch, and French, including the differing experiences of indigenous and African-descended peoples. The seminar will end at a nineteenth-century point determined by the instructor.