The Spanish Conquest?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura E. Matthew
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Central America ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Historical Moment

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.

Regaining Ground

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Herlihy ◽  
Matthew L. Fahrenbruch ◽  
Taylor A. Tappan
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
First Century ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Demographic Trends ◽  
New Strategies ◽  
Indigenous Land

This chapter describes the geographies of indigenous populations and their territories in Central America, past and present. A brief discussion of previous archaeological research provides a context for the region’s pre-Columbian populations and settlement distributions prior to an examination of the territorial and demographic collapse precipitated by European conquest. The chapter chronicles a twenty-first-century resurgence of indigenous populations and their territorial rights in Central America, including the emergence of geopolitical units that we call indigenous territorial jurisdictions (ITJs), the likes of which represent new strategies for accommodating indigenous land ownership and governance within the context of modern states. Archival and census research, in situ field experience, and geographic information system (GIS)-based land use and cadastral mapping inform the understanding of indigenous peoples’ past and contemporary demographic trends, settlement patterns, and territorial challenges.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda on the Nature of the American Indians

1975 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 434-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
José A. Fernández-Santamaria
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Composite Nature ◽  
Juan Gines De Sepulveda ◽  
Rule Out

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda epitomizes in many ways, both personally and intellectually, the cosmopolitanism of Spanish political thought in the sixteenth century. Educated in Italy, disciple of Pomponazzi, translator of Aristotle, chronicler of the Emperor and mentor of his son Philip, Sepúlveda is best known—and often misunderstood as the defender of the more unsavory aspects of the Spanish conquest and colonization in America—for his bitter controversy with Bartolomé de las Casas. To that debate Sepúlveda brought a humanist's training and outlook anchored in his devotion to Aristotle, but strongly tempered by his attachment to Saint Augustine. It is the purpose of this paper to examine Sepúlveda's ideas on the nature of the American natives, particularly the question of whether the Indians are natural slaves. Considerations of space, of course, rule out the possibility of undertaking here a detailed scrutiny of the foundations upon which those ideas rest. It can be said, however, that they are typically Renaissance views, a blend of traditions characteristic of the composite nature of the age's intellectual milieu.

Epilogue, as Prologue

2018 ◽  
pp. 174-182
Author(s):  
Matthew D. O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
The Past

This concluding chapter looks at the discovery of a perplexing set of documents created in New Spain. Referred to as títulos primordiales, or primordial titles, the sources described the founding of Indigenous communities in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. The títulos resonate strongly with other colonial documents of futuremaking and the shared ways of relating to time surveyed throughout this book. The Indigenous authors of the primordial titles engaged in a radical act of situating themselves in time: they marshaled the resources of the past, the resources of memory, and the resources of tradition to achieve goals in the present and craft diverse futures. Sometimes they presented their assembled resources as a narrative of the sixteenth-century present, at other times in the form of history or chronicle.

scholarly journals Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-108
Author(s):  
Robert H. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Educational Activities ◽  
Papal States ◽  
Urban Institutions

Abstract From the late sixteenth century until their expulsion in 1767, members of the Society of Jesus played an important role in the urban life of Spanish America and as administrators of frontier missions. This study examines the organization of the Society of Jesus in Spanish America in large provinces, as well as the different urban institutions such as colegios and frontier missions. It outlines the spiritual and educational activities in cities. The Jesuits supported the royal initiative to evangelize indigenous populations on the frontiers, and particularly the outcomes that did not always conform to expectations. One reason for this was the effects of diseases such as smallpox on the indigenous populations. Finally, it examines the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territories. Some died before leaving the Americas or at sea. The majority reached Spain and were later shipped to exile in the Papal States.

Khipu Transcription Typologies: A Corpus-Based Study of theTextos Andinos

Ethnohistory ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-341
Author(s):  
Manuel Medrano
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Multivariate Statistical Analysis ◽  
Statistical Evaluation ◽  
Multivariate Statistical ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Textual Interpretation ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
And Diffusion

AbstractDespite ongoing efforts to compile both Andean khipus and their written colonial references, initiatives in this domain have emphasized the benefits of aggregation vis-à-vis preservation and diffusion, largely forgoing opportunities to analyze khipu data in aggregate. This article introduces multivariate statistical analysis to colonial khipu texts, enlisting the aid of a heretofore little-studied source: the Textos Andinos, a compilation of sixteenth-century Spanish transcriptions of Indigenous khipu “readings.” The largest syntactically annotated corpus of khipu transcriptions to date is compiled. Textual interpretation informs an exegetical typology of “paper khipus”—a division of the texts into distinguishable categories. The initial typology is expanded using the outcome of its statistical evaluation. Pre- versus postconquest content and the incorporation of currency emerge as the primary distinguishing attributes of khipu transcriptions. The expanded typology in turn enables the assessment of previous hypotheses in the study of paper khipus, responding to criticisms of their generalizability; suggestions of a diminishment in khipu complexity following the Spanish conquest are revisited and corroborated to this effect. A corpus-based study of khipu transcriptions offers a promising inroad to negotiating the highly mediated conditions of their original creation while expanding the study of khipus in the early colonial Andes. The aggregative methodology is proposed to ethnohistorians as an additional strategy for complementing and enriching historical interpretation.

Jean Paulmier, Gonneville and Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of a Myth

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-23
Author(s):  
MARGARET SANKEY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of

The first mention of Gonneville’s land occurs in Abbé Jean Paulmier’s Mémoires of 1664 petitioning the Pope to approve a Christian mission to the as yet undiscovered Terres australes. Central to Paulmier’s argument was the extract from a document purporting to be the travel account of a sixteenth-century navigator, Gonneville. The extract details how the unknown land was discovered after the navigator’s ship L’Espoir had lost its way and landed in the fabled Terres australes, south-east of the Cape of Good Hope. His utopian account of the unknown land played an important role in French voyages of discovery during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After Cook’s refutation of the existence of a Great South Land, Gonneville’s land was identified in the nineteenth century as being in Brazil. Recent scholarship, however, has revealed that Gonneville and his story were probably invented by Paulmier. This article examines how and why the Gonneville story became part of the history of French exploration, then details the elements which led to its being discredited.

Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Legal History in Calvin’s Mosaic Harmony

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-195
Author(s):  
Barbara Pitkin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Relationship

The chapter examines John Calvin’s commentary on Exodus through Deuteronomy (1563) through the lens of sixteenth-century historical jurisprudence, exemplified in the works of Calvin’s contemporaries François de Connan and François Baudouin. Recent scholarship has demonstrated how Calvin’s historicizing exegesis is in continuity with broader contemporary trends in premodern Christian biblical interpretation; this chapter explores another essential context for Calvin’s approach to the Bible. The intermingling of narrative and legal material in these four biblical books inspired Calvin to break with his customary practice of lectio continua and apply his historical hermeneutic more broadly and creatively to explain the Mosaic histories and legislation. Calvin’s unusual and unprecedented arrangement of the material in this commentary and his attention to the relationship between law and history reveal his engagement with his generation’s quest for historical method.

A Revival of Labor and Social Protest Research in France: Recent Scholarship on May 1968

2011 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-214
Author(s):  
Keith Mann
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
May 1968 ◽  
May 68 ◽  
Historical Moment

May 1968 in France was one of those events that became instantly a distinct historical moment. Nearly contemporaneously with the events themselves, “May '68” became an object of conscious—and contentious—reflection, research, and analysis. By October 1968, the Bibliothèque nationale had already listed 124 books on the May–June events. The leading scholarly labor and social history journal in France, le mouvement social, immediately prepared a special issue on May 1968. Successive anniversaries have been marked with waves of scholarly and popular articles, books, films, interviews, colloquia, and other commemorative events and gatherings. The graphic depictions of May '68—photographic and other—have become enduring iconographic images that reappear with each anniversary.

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