Colonial Latin America

Catalog description

The year 1492 marked a major watershed in global history, as Europeans began a process of colonial expansion in the Americas that would continue for several centuries. This course explores the long and complex colonial history of Latin America that began in 1492 and ended in most of the region in the 1810s and 1820s. Main themes include the long processes of material and spiritual conquest; indigenous resistance and accommodation; the Columbian Exchange of plants, animals, and diseases; the creation of colonial economies of extraction and regional articulation; the rise of mixed-race societies; and the development of colonial institutions of church and state. The course also treats the expansion of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, along with the rise of resistance movements and frontier challenges to colonial rule. We end with the responses to new crown demands in the eighteenth century and the collective struggle for independence that began in 1808.