Spanish Hegemony Research Articles

“Against Muhammad’s Perfidy”: The Jesuit Francisco Combés and His Relación de las islas Filipinas (c.1654)

Abstract This article analyzes the centrality of the Jesuit missionaries as indispensable agents in re-establishing negotiations with the Muslims of Mindanao and Sulu. In doing so, I discuss an unpublished Jesuit report: the Relación de las islas Filipinas (Manila, 1654) by the Jesuit Juan Francisco Combés (1620–65), which willfully conflated religious conversion with military intervention and conquest in the interests of securing a permanent base of operations in the southern Philippines. Spanish hegemony in the region was always contested. Therefore, Jesuit superiors strove to convince the civil authorities of Manila, and particularly the governor of the Philippines, don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara (in office 1653–63), to leave definitively the military strongholds in the Moluccas and instead to reinforce the military presidios located in the southern islands of Mindanao as the best way to stop the Muslim raids. Finally, the postscript analyzes the martyrdom of the Jesuits Alejandro López (1604–55) and Juan de Montiel (1632–55) as a propagandistic tool to cement the Jesuit contribution to the Spanish conquest and identify it with Catholic evangelization.

Military Networks at the Extremes of Empire: The Che of Chile and the Puebloans of the United States

AbstractAt the northern and southern ends of the Spanish “Empire,” two cultures of similar sociopolitical complexity violently removed Spanish invaders from their ancestral territory. The Che of southern Chile militarily engaged the Spanish in the mid-sixteenth century and eventually forced the Spanish to abandon their colonization attempts. The Puebloans of the southwestern United States also forced the Spanish to flee from Puebloan territory in 1680, but by 1696, Puebloan territories returned to Spanish hegemony. This article compares some of the reasons why the Che maintained independence for more than 350 years while Puebloan independence lasted 16, examining the military power networks of the Che and Puebloans and the timing of resistance to Spanish incursion. These comparisons highlight some of the diverse reactions of foreign groups and how connections between peoples affect how individuals and communities react to outside influences.

How Does a Woman Get into a History Book?

How Does a Woman Get into a History Book? Stephen Murphy One of the characteristic forms of historiography in early modern Europe is universal history that is also contemporary or, to use the term commonly used as a title, Historia sui temporis. That is what Paolo Giovio's history is called, that is the title of the Latin translation of Francesco Guicciardini's Storia d'Italia and of Giambattista Adriani's continuation of Giovio in Italian (Istoria de' suoi tempi), and it is the title of the hugely influential life's work of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553–1617). This last Historiae sui temporis, first published in eighteen books in 1603 and ultimately comprising 138 books in a posthumous 1620 edition, also influenced de Thou's contemporaries, most notably Agrippa d'Aubigné, who admits his considerable debt to de Thou in his Histoire universelle, published from 1616–1619, then in a revised edition in 1626. In several important respects, de Thou and Aubigné follow the ancient example of Polybius. The Greek historian of the second century BCE was the contemporary of the events he narrates; he has been an actor in some of those events and has had access to other important actors for the documentation of his account; at the same time, he systematically embraces the known world as his stage, going far beyond national history. Polybius' practice combines koinē historia, or universal history, with autopsia, the ideal that the historian himself should have witnessed or experienced what he narrates.1 Among the heirs of Polybius, de Thou especially strives for totality: he has chosen for his subject everything judged to be important between the 1540s and 1607, and geographically he ranges from Florida to Persia, with several circumnavigations of the globe. Aubigné covers an only slightly shorter chronology, although with somewhat less detail than his Latin contemporary. With regard to autopsia, de Thou is occasionally present in his text as actor and witness, but he tries to make his gaze appear as a neutral one and advertises his freedom from passion. On the other hand, Aubigné makes his presence felt throughout the Histoire universelle, as a partisan (warrior and counselor) as well as an historian at work. What holds together the varied subject matter of this kind of historiography is a principle of comparability. Although its annalistic structure (the events of 1547, then of 1548, and so on) may tend to obscure a linear plot or quasi-plot (in Paul Ricœur's term),2 de Thou's larger concerns do become clear. The historical facts (faits historiques) that compose his text can be [End Page 113] divided into the five classes distinguished by Krzysztof Pomian: individuals, forms (such as institutions), relations, trajectories, and singularities (or events).3 So, for example, similar trajectories can be observed first towards greater fanaticism, intolerance, and violence but then towards peace through contrary values in France, the Low Countries, England, and the German world. Institutions like the Paris Parlement (with its Gallican tradition) and the government of Venice (with its tradition of republican autonomy) are comparable in their resistance to papal and Spanish hegemony. When it comes to individuals, a huge cast of characters exists but not an unlimited number of roles. One might ask: what kinds of women are included alongside the men who far outnumber them? Speaking schematically, for de Thou two classes of women deserve inclusion in his History: the important individuals possessing power, as one might expect, but also largely anonymous groups of women. These collectivities comprise women behaving heroically, especially at sieges. In his account of the Turkish siege of the Hungarian city of Eger (Agria) in 1552, de Thou moves from the collective force of women to one particular heroic woman and finally to her daughter who, after her mother is killed, finishes the task of hurling a large rock.4 All these heroic women, as a group and individually, remain nameless. De Thou's repetition of this motif, ranging across Europe and with many variations, but generally involving defense of a besieged town or city, is one of the more striking commonplaces of his History. At the siege of La Rochelle in 1573, women...

Foreshadowing Failure: Mulatto and Black Oral Discourse and the Upending of The Western Design in Thomas Gage’s A New Survey (1648)

Thomas Gage wrote A New Survey of the West Indies or, The English American his Travel by Sea and Land (1648) with the aim to convince Oliver Cromwell that the English could successfully invade Spanish held American territories. The English attempt to invade the Spanish colonies in 1655 would not garner non-Whites’ unwavering aid, which is a decisive factor in the Western Design’s failure. Although subalterns in the region rebelled against Spanish hegemony, they were by no means in constant revolt as Gage suggested. They had also carved out an integral place within Spanish American society and culture. Mulattos are subaltern agents whose defining role in the Western Design’s collapse has not been considered sufficiently. Though they were Afro-descendants, Mulattos were racially ambiguous tricksters who disturbed hierarchies. Mulattos sought autonomy by forming alliances with Europeans—be they Spanish, English, French or Dutch—as well as with Amerindian communities, to the extent that these relationships afforded them relative autonomy within hierarchical colonial power structures. Mulattos’ oral and embodied discourses within Gage’s text exemplify their agency and shifting alliances.

Creating a shared past: The representation of Medici–Habsburg relations in the wedding celebrations for Eleonora de Toledo and Cosimo I de’ Medici

AbstractIn the summer of 1539, an elaborate, ephemeral programme of decoration was constructed in Florence to celebrate the wedding of Cosimo I de' Medici and Eleonora Álvarez de Toledo. Through an interplay of painting, sculpture, heraldry, and classical allusions, the programme constructed a narrative of the marriage as the culmination of a history of mutual support between the Medici family and the Spanish monarchy. In so doing, this article argues, it revealed the dynamic by which the network of political alliances and exchanges that made Spanish hegemony on the Italian peninsula possible operated. The narrative re‐presented the distant and recent history of Medici–Spanish relations and re‐created Florence as a middle ground between Spanish imperialism and Italian resistance and autonomy. It revealed the way in which Spanish Habsburg hegemony in Italy relied on dialogue, accommodation, mutual reciprocity, and a creative interpretation of the past and present.

The reshaping of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in the beginning of the XXI century: the declining of the Spanish historical hegemony?

ABSTRACT Francoist cultural policy in Latin America – itself based on Hispanist philosophy – and the Spanish activity in the Organization of Ibero-American States (1949) promoted the emergence of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy. The return of democracy to Spain in 1978 turned these projects into more horizontal instruments of cultural cooperation. After a process of institutionalization that led to the creation of SEGIB and the establishment of the Ibero-American Cultural Letter in 2006, this multilateral diplomatic system was called into question due to its economic asymmetries and its ideological basis. However, the relative influence of this process in reformulating the system and in creating a shared identitarian discourse within Ibero-America has never been properly weighted, nor has the importance of each actor within this process. This article analyses the multilateral Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in order to understand its recent transformations in terms of the importance of both national power and symbolic hegemony.

Servicio y deservicio a Felipe IV. Los Príncipes de Carignano, entre Francia y la Monarquía Hispánica (1634-1644)

El propósito de este trabajo consiste en analizar la interesante figura de los príncipes de Carignano, Tomás de Saboya y María de Borbón. Naturales y vasallos de Saboya y Francia respectivamente, el matrimonio estableció un tratado de protección con la monarquía de Felipe IV que la princesa se encargó de gestionar. No obstante, durante los años en los que María de Borbón residió en Madrid, mantuvo una tensa relación con el conde duque de Olivares, al mismo tiempo que Tomás inició conversaciones con la Francia enemiga. La abundante documentación derivada de este suceso nos ha permitido reflexionar sobre el poder de los príncipes italianos en un contexto adverso para la Monarquía, permitiéndoles forzar los límites tradicionales establecidos a la hora de fijar posibles recompensas por el servicio prestado al rey católico. La Corona se resintió por el daño que la defección del príncipe significó para las armas españolas, pues el abandono del servicio a Felipe IV fue seguido del abrazo a la cau sa del rey cristianísimo Luis XIII. Y todo ello en un momento muy delicado para la Monarquía española, que ya daba muestras de la futura pérdida de hegemonía europea.

Autos-da-fé: The Roles of a Saint in Spanish Sicily

Autos-da-fé: The Roles of a Saint in Spanish Sicily

Families in War And Peace: Chile from colony to nation by Sarah C. Chambers

Reviewed by: Families in War And Peace: Chile from colony to nation by Sarah C. Chambers Sandra Collins Families in War And Peace: Chile from colony to nation. By Sarah C. Chambers. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. Since the 1980s familial networks and gender have been growing as a way of interpreting history in Latin America. Numerous studies have demonstrated how family bonds among elite Creole were later exploited in the struggle to separate from Spain. This was particularly visible in Chile, where the colonial economy had been held up by a kinship pattern of marriages between Chilean-born daughters and Spanish immigrants. Mary Lowenthal Felstiner's work on kinship politics and family metaphors was the first to show how family and politics were entwined during the shift to Independence in Chile, and how language connected to family and politics became a tool to unify elite families in their desire to break away from the crown. In Families in War and Peace: Chile from colony to nation, Sarah Chambers extends this analysis to the use of familial rhetoric in nation formation, arguing that it was equally instrumental in re-forging links devastated by the ongoing wars of the early nineteenth century. While studies on Chilean nation building have tended to date issues of family regeneration to the Conservative era beginning in 1830, Chambers demonstrates that it was a central consideration in the establishment of a stable government and society even during the tumultuous years directly following the wars of Independence. The objective of a "greater Chilean family" underpinned the formation of policies consciously designed to gain support and legitimacy for the fledgling nation. Paternal governance, so often cited as key to the endurance of Spanish hegemony in the Americas, was carried over to the ad hoc judicial systems of the Patria Vieja, and was later consolidated through courts that resolved property disputes, provided military pensions and dealt with legal disputes over family maintenance and custody. Chambers shows how Republican rhetoric was related to the family, and that this was increasingly utilised by non-elite members of society. Interesting examples of this are given in Chapter Six, when appeals from lower class women looking for child support for children out of wedlock or military pensions are shown to allude to paternal responsibility and even the legacy of slavery. With the onset of Liberalism in the second half of the nineteenth century, appeals to the mercy of a father figure began to fall on deaf ears. Legal reforms initiated by the Civil Code of 1855 saw a shift to the perception of poor women and children without access to family networks as "a potential labour force who should better earn their keep by working, often in the households of their social betters" (212). Such insights are profound when attempting to understand the patriarchal authority that continues to be the subject of speculation today. One of the book's greatest strengths is the way in which the structure allows for the multi-levelled discourses, negotiations and disputes to weave in and out of the discussion. The chronology that dictates events in Chile is the life of Javiera Carrera, sister of the Liberators Juan José, José Miguel and Luis. While her brothers had all died by 1821, Javiera lived until 1862 and bore witness to the multiple governments, wars and constitutions that shaped the lives of so many families. An analysis of her letters and correspondence offers a window to contemporary readers on the intricacies of relationships, the way events and decision-making could manipulate and be manipulated, and the way power was maintained through kinship relations though generations. Returning to Javiera's story throughout the book demonstrates the complex routes that negotiations of gender and one's role in the family could take, and demonstrates the complex engagements between individuals and government. The overarching structure is divided into two parts. The first part, "Families and War," shows how families mobilised politically and activism was carried out based on gender roles and place in the family during the years of Independence; while "Reconciling the National Family" traces state formation from 1823 to the 1850s. The traditional linear presentation of time helps the reader contextualise...

El Imperio Otomano y la política de alianzas: las relaciones francootomanas en el tránsito del siglo XVI al XVII

Although Western historiography considered the Ottoman Empire as a marginal and antagonist factor, the Ottomans were an integral component of the history of Early Modern age. The conscientious policy of balance of power towards the Christian powers made Ottomans a crucial element in the struggle for hegemony. The Franco-Turkish alliance that was established in the reigns of Francis I and Suleiman the Magnificent mainly depended on mutual enmity against Spanish hegemony in Europe. In the late sixteenth century, after the death of Henry III the French Wars of Religion gave rise to a chaotic situation in which the Catholic King sought the opportunity to place France under its control. This could have caused an irreversible change in the balance of power in the Mediterranean, an unacceptable situation for the geostrategic interests of the Ottoman sultans. The Ottoman Empire played a major role in the French foreign policy against Spanish claims during the different phases of the reign of Henry IV. Even Clement VIII implicitly instrumentalized Ottoman- French friendship to strengthen both its own position as well as that of France with respect to the Spanish Monarchy. This article aims to demonstrate the limits and efficiencies of politics of alliance in the transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century considering the role of England and the Republic of Venice.

The Twilight of the Mission Frontier: Shifting Interethnic Alliances and Social Organization in Sonora, 1768–1855. By José Refugio de la Torre Curiel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. xxx + 323 pp. $65.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Twilight of the Mission Frontier: Shifting Interethnic Alliances and Social Organization in Sonora, 1768-1855 . By Jose Refugio de la Torre Curiel . Stanford : Stanford University Press , 2012. xxx + 323 pp. $65.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesThis latest book on late colonial and early national Sonora is masterful. Piece by piece, de la Torre provides narrative, analysis, and perspective that lends one to classify his effort as synthesis, and yet, given his mastery of the archival sources, it is not a synthesis of secondary literature but rather of archived documents, geographical evidence, demography, and deep knowledge of greater New Spain and its development, all coupled with an eye to integrative thinking regarding the changes undergone in the region within a critical period. In short, it is the new book on later missions in the Opateria and Baja and Alta Pimeria during the end of Spanish hegemony and the beginning of developments in the early Mexican northwest.One must prepare to withstand a methodical approach if one is to digest de la Torre's way of proceeding. Short but thorough chapters begin the book, the first treating the physical and human geographies of what became Sonora, and the second analyzing demographics of Native peoples, Hispanic peoples, and those in between in towns, missions, and refuges in the hinterlands. While this is the dry stuff of social history, investment at this point begets a payoff in the following chapters. De la Torre next engages the myriad influences and changes to local life ways in the Pimerias and the Opateria, and as he does so he raises questions as to meaning of being religious versus living among the religious, indigenous or Hispanic, in greater Sonora. Life ways also include the material culture, or cultures, of localities; merchants, their clienteles, and prices receive attention, as do mobile populations. Within and outside the missions, the author claims to see increased contact between peoples in late colonial Sonora--thus the multiethnic argument he offers. On reaching the fourth chapter, method becomes even clearer as de la Torre immerses the reader in evidence of the changing nature of the Sonoran frontier economy to a developed, captive trade network (145) that precedes the economics of independence in the region. That economy was largely cashless and merchant-led, and enabled leading merchants and governmental allies to use commerce as coercion over the local peoples.The deeper analyses of the preceding elements of life in Sonora all point to the two ending chapters. At the heart of this study is that which occurred following the Jesuits' expulsion from the region in their former missions as those came under the leadership of the Franciscan friars. Here is the crux of the book, in a step-wise look at the crises these missions underwent, for what reasons, and how change happened in each sub region. Following the Jesuit expulsion, interim local administrators attempted to manage the mission assets, with mixed results. When the Franciscans arrived, many missions were in disrepair or had been stripped to support Spanish colonial troops in regional conflicts. This much of the story is familiar. …

John Dee's 'Brytish Impire': 'A Laborious Treatise' on Ophir of 1577

Previous articleNext article No AccessJohn Dee's 'Brytish Impire': 'A Laborious Treatise' on Ophir of 1577Graham YewbreyGraham Yewbrey Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Volume 78, Number 12015 Published for the Warburg Institute and the Courtauld Institute Views: 6Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/JWCI26321956 Views: 6Total views on this site Copyright © 2015 by The Warburg Institute. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

American Race and Charismatic License: Finding Martín de Porres in Obama

Abstract Problematizing the saintly reputation of seventeenth-century Dominican servant Martín de Porres, this article explores a little-known, late medieval Spanish form of agency, or licencia, with which a mulato colonial monastic could influence his Spanish Creole superiors, perform miracles, and gain a widespread reputation for superhuman piety. I ask: under what specific conditions could licencia have been wielded by nonwhite Christian subjects to manipulate the shifting moral orders of early modern Spanish Creole hegemony? I also explore how the politicization of racialized charisma continues to depend on a logic of licencia. Tracking resonances between the Spanish Creole veneration of a mulato figure in seventeenth-century Peru with the recent election of a “mixed race” president in the United States, this article reads together theology and politics to demonstrate the fraught beauty, or legal “beatification,” of racialized charisma.

French and underdevelopment, Haitian Creole and development

This article argues that Haiti’s French-dominant school system is an impediment to the nation’s development, whereas Haitian Creole-dominant education will lay the foundation for long-term development. In that Caribbean country, 95% of the population is monolingual in Haitian Creole while the portion that additionally speaks French does not exceed 5% with an additional 5–10% having some receptive competence (Valdman 1984: 78; Dejean 2006). Even though French is the language of the school system, as many as 80% of Haiti’s teachers control it inadequately and only a minority of students completes school (Dejean 2006). Economic, historical, sociolinguistic, and demographic factors are a part of the explanation for Haiti’s low educational achievement. Another important but often ignored factor is educational language policy. Data on educational language policy compared internationally show that the use of a second language in schools correlates with high illiteracy rates and poverty (Coulmas 1992). I reject arguments in favor of maintaining French-dominant education in Haiti (Lawless 1992; Youssef 2002; Francis 2005; Ferguson 2006, etc.) because the resources for it are woefully lacking. I argue that the progressive promotion of Haitian Creole throughout Haitian education will lead to improved learning, graduation, and Creole literacy, in addition to a more streamlined and coherent State, economy, and society (Efron 1954; De Regt 1984; DeGraff 2003; Dejean 2006). As Haiti rebuilds after the earthquake of January 12th, 2010, aid workers, government employees, and researchers who get involved in the recovery also unsuspectingly perpetuate French, English, and Spanish hegemony in development work (DeGraff 2010). The long history of suppressing Haitian Creole and promoting French in education and administration — and French, English, or Spanish in development work — form underlying obstacles in the nation’s struggle to produce an adequate class of educated citizens, to achieve universal literacy, and to make socioeconomic progress.

The Caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples

Stephan Palmie and Francisco A. Scarano (editors), Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, xv + 660 pp.The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples edited by anthropologist Stephan Palmie, and historian Francisco A. Scarano, offers an overview of Caribbean history in forty chapters written by an impressive array of experts including historians, sociologists, political scientists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and geographers. Attempting to compile comprehensive overview of region as diverse as the Caribbean risks becoming mired in the backwaters, eddies and obstacles along the way (p. 1). Yet the editors of this volume have successfully assembled survey of historical and contemporary issues which serves as an excellent introductory text for newcomers to the region, as well as resource for more experienced researchers searching for concise reference to any historical period.The volume's editors have divided the chapters into seven parts. Each of these parts is united thematically and chronologically. This thematic approach is admirable and the contributors have indeed delivered works that are very thorough in details, and adequately discussed without losing sight of the big picture. In addition the writing style is accessible, as the editors restrict the contributors to a minimum of scholarly clutter (p. 3). To further acquaint the reader with the region, there are five pages of maps preceding the chapters and an introductory chapter by the co-authors.Part 1 of the work, The Caribbean Stage, depicts the physical and cultural background in four chapters written by specialists in geography, ecology, prehistoric archaeology, and history. Much of this material is descriptive, as necessary preamble to the subsequent parts. Only Antonio Curet's chapter on the region's prehistory considers future archaeological findings and analyses. five chapters in part 2, The Making of Sphere, cover the Old World and Atlantic antecedents which shaped the encounter during the Columbus voyages and the Spanish colonial project that followed. authors in this part have attempted restoration of the agency of indigenous peoples, which can be obscured in the chronicles and secondary sources. Notable in this section is Jalil Sued Badillo's critique of the misuse of the chronicles and early histories which have characterized previous interpretations, as he reminds readers that the documents cannot always be taken at face value. six chapters that make up part 3, Colonial Designs in Flux, cover the entry of competing European nation-states (England, France and the Netherlands) to the region as colonial powers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the resultant decline of Spanish hegemony. myriad and multiscalar transitions with the development of the slave/sugar plantation system as the region's dominant socioeconomic institution are well explored in these chapters.Part 4, Capitalism, Slavery, and Revolution, which I think includes some of the book's strongest and best contributions, comprises six entries. This section focuses on the crumbling and final collapse of the slave system. …

American Artifice: Ideology and Ekphrasis in the Poema heroico a San Ignacio de Loyola

AMERICAN ARTIFICE: IDEOLOGY AND EKPHRASIS IN THE POEMA HEROICO A SAN IGNACIO DE LOYOLA by Kathryn Mayers Wake Forest University OVER the past several decades, studies of the verbal description of visual art – the literary device known as ekphrasis – have increasingly demonstrated the ways encounters between the “sister arts” bring up issues of power, gender, and alterity.1 For the highly pictorial literature of the Barroco de Indias, this new work on ekphrasis can contribute to the critical reexamination of canonical texts that is currently underway. During the latter half of the twentieth century, many scholarly studies began to associate texts from the Barroco de Indias with the articulation of a specifically American point of view and with a foundational role in the rupture with Spanish hegemony. Current scholarship, however , is questioning the inclusiveness of this americanismo and is exploring the far more complex role of many works from the Barroco de Indias in forging alternative models of social synthesis. The present essay contributes to recent discussion of criollismo2 in American Baroque writing by exploring the workings of ekphrasis in a pillar of the Colombian national canon – the Poema heroico a San Ignacio de Loyola by the Creole Jesuit, Hernando Domínguez Camargo.3 The epic-hagiographic Poema draws strongly on the tradition of arte por el arte. However, it borrows and re-frames a series of lyric ekphrases from the peninsular poet Luis de Góngora in a way that historicizes this extreme aestheticism . By exploring the ways Camargo’s ekphrases both evoke and elide Amerindian and Afro-American others, I demonstrate how the Poema’s refiguration of Gongoran ekphrases creates an ideological “space” that visualizes an American model of cultural synthesis. However, as I will suggest, this model simply replaces an imperial disregard for American political legitimacy and 1 suffering with an elite, Creole denial of Amerindian property claims and capabilities for resistance. The Poema heroico emerges during an era that some have called a rising “empire of the gaze” (Shapiro 31). Counter Reformation and Cartesian theories of the power of images brought about an intense proliferation in the production of visual artifacts including a flowering of art and architecture as well as, in literature , a burst of “writing for the eyes.”4 The numerous ekphrases that embellish the Poema heroico register some of these devotional and scientific shifts in viewing. Along with reflecting changes in visuality, they also evoke certain social changes occurring in seventeenth-century society. In the Poema, Domínguez Camargo borrows and redescribes a number of Gongoran ekphrases in a way that alters both the relationship between the word pictures and their narrative frame and the relationship between the objects within the word picture. By exploring first how Camargo intensifies Góngora’s proliferation of descriptive parentheses within a narrative and then how he modifies Góngora’s elaboration of imaginative fantasies within these parentheses, I suggest that Camargo depicts imaginary works of art in a way that counters Spanish imperialist attitudes toward America yet simultaneously undermines the rights and rationality of nonCreole peoples who shared the colonial experience. The colonial situation of seventeenth-century New Granada required negotiation between diverse and conflicting social groups. Contrary to the idyllic scenario some have painted, New Granada was not simply a peaceful counterpoint to Mexico’s wars and Peru’s knives and gunpowder.5 Along with major epidemics of smallpox and typhus in 1566, 1587-90, 1633 and 1688, the kingdom suffered conflicts over political and economic issues that divided people along national, racial, and social lines. Peninsular- and American-born whites struggled over imperial economic policy, as the former sought to enforce monopolies on labor and trade in the colonies.6 Whites and non-whites clashed over colonial labor policy, as the latter resisted the devastation of the encomienda , the alquiler general, the mita minera and the agricultural concierto. The hunt for gold created friction even between peoples of identical race and origin, as wealthy Creole bourgeoisie in the mining West vied for power with landowning Creole aristocracy in the East. Beyond monks’ chats, mystical reflections , and Baroque verses, New Granada witnessed collisions between geographic , ethnic, and regional groups with highly disparate values and uneven...

Labor, Population Movement, and Food in Sixteenth-Century Ek Balam, Yucatán

Spanish colonization of the Yucatán Peninsula altered traditional patterns of subsistence after Spaniards imposed labor demands and controlled the movement of indigenous Maya. Spaniards established an encomienda and Franciscan visita at Ek Balam in the northern lowlands of the peninsula during the mid-sixteenth century. Complementary forces of doctrina and encomienda fostered the religious, political, and economic subjugation of the Maya. An analysis of zooarchaeological material from an Early Hispanic period feature at the archaeological site of Ek Balam indicates that Spanish restrictions of population movement and restructuring of indigenous labor altered pre-Hispanic patterns of faunal use. Under Spanish hegemony, Maya residents raised small-sized animals of Eurasian origin, especially pigs and chickens, while maintaining the indigenous dog as a primary food source. The animals used at Ek Balam could have been either raised or hunted locally; there is no indication that animals were obtained through either trade or exchange. The pattern of faunal use by indigenous people at Ek Balam differs from Early Hispanic sites in the southern Maya lowlands and elsewhere in the circum-Caribbean. This contrast demonstrates that tropical environmental variability, population density, and Spanish control tactics affected subsistence behavior and the incorporation of introduced fauna in the indigenous diet.

Paths to a Middle Ground: The Diplomacy of Natchez, Boukfouka, Nogales, and San Fernando de las Barrancas, 1791–1795 , and: Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast , and: Creole America: The West Indies and the Formation of Literature and Culture in the New Republic (review)

Paths to a Middle Ground: The Diplomacy of Natchez, Boukfouka, Nogales, and San Fernando de las Barrancas, 1 791-1 795. By Charles Weeks. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005. Pp. 304. Cloth, $45.00.)Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast. By Rafe Blaufarb. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005. Pp. 372. Cloth, $50.00.)Creole America: The West Indies and the Formation of Literature and Culture in the New Republic. By Sean Goudie. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Pp. 272. Cloth, $55.00.)Reviewed by Timothy M. RobertsTaken together, these three books emphasize the paradoxical conditions of the early American republic. American policymakers and writers were acutely aware of American vulnerability to British, French, and Spanish colonial power. French and Spanish hegemony were in decline by the early nineteenth century, but harassing European navies and colonial officials' close relationships with Native American peoples were a threat to American interests and self-confidence. On the other hand, such American vulnerability stemmed, ironically, from the national appetite and capacity to expand commerce, borders, and influence, whetted by the prevailing attitude of seizing the opportunity of the moment.Actually, in the books by Charles Weeks and Rafe Blaufarb, Ameri- cans play only a peripheral, though significant, role. Weeks draws on English- and especially Spanish-language documents from archival sources, seventeen of which are included in his book with annotations. He acknowledges that these documents represent . . . the perspective of their authors, but he attempts to recover them, the voices of Native Americans, filtered additionally through interpreters and recorders (279). The book focuses on diplomacy between the Spanish and the Indians of the lower Mississippi Valley, prompted by these parties' mutual realization that they should try to deter American settlers' insatiable appetite for land after the American Revolution (6).The first part of Weeks's book reviews a century of the diplomatic relationships between Spain and Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee Indians, emphasizing the sophistication, not only of the rituals of European-Indian diplomacy, but also of the relationships those rituals facilitated. As Daniel Richter has also emphasized in his Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA, 2001), Indians were neither pawns nor predators in their dealings with Europeans, but rather they shared the Spanish capacity for bluff, pragmatism, and realpolitik. In the early 1790s, the governor of the Spanish colonies of Louisiana and West Florida, Francisco Luis Hector, baron de Carondelet, sent Lieutenant Governor Manuel Gayoso de Lemos to secure the Chickasaws' consent to erect two forts, the first at Nogales (later Vicksburg) and the second at Chickasaw Bluffs (later Memphis).Evident in the negotiations over these two forts, as discussed in the second part oi Paths to a Middle Ground, is the extent of Indians' control over the protocol of these negotiations and influence on the outcome. To a degree, the Spanish, like the French and the British who preceded them in Louisiana and Florida, recognized the need to accommodate the Indians' understanding of political terms and gestures. For example, both Europeans and Indians used the terms father and children to characterize the different European and Indian roles. Initially Europeans tended to assume that the shared use of these terms meant the Indians accepted European authority. But according to Weeks, in matrilineal Indian cul- ture, a father's main role was not leadership but generosity. Thus Indians and Europeans understood the European practice of gift-giving differ- ently: For Indians, Europeans' gifts were crucial to maintain the cross- cultural relationship shaped by the diplomatic language in use. …

Princely Auctoritas or the Freedom of Europe: Justus Lipsius on a Netherlands Political Dilemma

AbstractLike not a few of his compatriots, Justus Lipsius changed his allegiance more than once during the long civil war between the Spanish crown and the Dutch rebels. What makes him unusual is that this noted classical scholar was also a voracious and critical consumer of reports about events of his own time and place; Lipsius' voluminous correspondence thus opens a rare window into what the Dutch Revot looked like to an anxious and well-informed citizen of the Low Countries. Unable to live under the tyranny of the duke of Alba, he accepted a post at the University of Leiden; from here he viewed the rebel provinces of the north as a bulwark against a Spanish hegemony that threatened to engulf Europe. Yet, as a devoted adherent of the monarchical principle of government, he found that he also could not live under a "polyarchy" of provicial parliaments, in which, as Lipsius saw things, wealthy burghers governed in their own interest. Hence he took a new position at the University of Louvain, in his native Brabant. It was not at first a fortunate choice, for just as Lipsius moved the military fortunes of the Dutch government changed for the better, while Philip II was distracted by plans to put a Spanish princess on the French throne. Only when Spain's ambitions in France were thwarted by the successes of Henry IV did Lipsius's hopes revive: in Albert and Isabella, 'natural' princes who intended to focus on the southern Netherlands, he seems to have found at last a government he could accept.

“His Majesty’s Most Loyal Vassals”: The Indian Nobility and Tuúpac Amaru

“His Majesty’s Most Loyal Vassals”: The Indian Nobility and Tuúpac Amaru