Chetumal Bay in the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxine Oland
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The West ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
Late Postclassic

Spanish documents imply that the Chetumal Bay region acted as a unified force to resist European colonization, yet archaeological data suggest that the experience of the Maya during the fifteenth to the seventeenth century (Late Postclassic through Colonial periods) was highly localized. Some communities, such as at Caye Coco on Progresso Lagoon, were in a state of unstable transition when the Spanish appeared. Their arrival elicited a variety of actions and reactions as local communities attempted to adapt to indirect colonial rule, and these settlements experienced differential rates of colonial control and conversion. In this chapter, the distinct experiences of three indigenous communities at Lamanai, Santa Rita Corozal, and the west shore of Progresso Lagoon are examined.

A Court in Decline? Examining the Regality Court Records of Melrose, Roxburghshire, 1657–84

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Vivienne Dunstan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Local Area ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Seminal Work

McIntyre, in his seminal work on Scottish franchise courts, argues that these courts were in decline in this period, and of little relevance to their local population. 1 But was that really the case? This paper explores that question, using a particularly rich set of local court records. By analysing the functions and significance of one particular court it assesses the role of this one court within its local area, and considers whether it really was in decline at this time, or if it continued to perform a vital role in its local community. The period studied is the mid to late seventeenth century, a period of considerable upheaval in Scottish life, that has attracted considerable attention from scholars, though often less on the experiences of local communities and people.

Creating the Wind

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-31
Author(s):  
Élodie Dupey García
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Natural Behavior ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Late Postclassic ◽  
Comparative Examination ◽  
Meteorological Phenomenon

This article explores how the Nahua of late Postclassic Mesoamerica (1200–1521 CE) created living and material embodiments of their wind god constructed on the basis of sensory experiences that shaped their conception of this divinized meteorological phenomenon. In this process, they employed chromatic and design devices, based on a wide range of natural elements, to add several layers of meaning to the human, painted, and sculpted supports dressed in the god’s insignia. Through a comparative examination of pre-Columbian visual production—especially codices and sculptures—historical sources mainly written in Nahuatl during the viceregal period, and ethnographic data on indigenous communities in modern Mexico, my analysis targets the body paint and shell jewelry of the anthropomorphic “images” of the wind god, along with the Feathered Serpent and the monkey-inspired embodiments of the deity. This study identifies the centrality of other human senses beyond sight in the conception of the wind god and the making of its earthly manifestations. Constructing these deity “images” was tantamount to creating the wind because they were intended to be visual replicas of the wind’s natural behavior. At the same time, they referred to the identity and agency of the wind god in myths and rituals.

The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Gender Relations ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Criminal Records ◽  
Native Women ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Important Position ◽  
The One

The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar examines gender relations in indigenous societies of central Mexico and Oaxaca from the 1520s to the 1750s, focusing mainly on the Nahua, Ñudzahui (Mixtec), Bènizàa (Zapotec), and Ayuk (Mixe) people. This study draws on an unusually rich and diverse corpus of original sources, including Ñudzahui- (Mixtec-), Tíchazàa- (Zapotec-), and mainly Nahuatl-language and Spanish civil and criminal records, published texts, and pictorial manuscripts. The sources come from more than 100 indigenous communities of highland Mexico. The book considers women’s lives in the broadest context possible by addressing a number of interrelated topics, including: the construction of gender; concepts of the body; women’s labor; marriage rituals and marital relations; sexual attitudes; family structure; the relationship between household and community; and women’s participation in riots and other acts of civil disobedience. The study highlights subtle transformations and overwhelming continuities in indigenous social attitudes and relationships. The book argues that profound changes following the Spanish conquest, such as catastrophic depopulation, economic pressures, and the imposition of Christian marriage, slowly eroded indigenous women’s status. Nevertheless, gender relations remained inherently complementary. The study shows how native women and men under colonial rule, on the one hand, pragmatically accepted, adopted, and adapted certain Spanish institutions, concepts, and practices, and, on the other, forcefully rejected other aspects of colonial impositions. Women asserted their influence and, in doing so, they managed to retain an important position within their households and communities across the first two centuries of colonial rule.

scholarly journals Colonial management as a social field: The Palestinian remaking of Israel’s system of spatial control

2021 ◽  
pp. 001139212110246
Author(s):  
Walid Habbas ◽  
Yael Berda
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Spatial Mobility ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Spatial Control ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Economic Elite ◽  
The Everyday

This article delves into the everyday dynamics of colonial rule to outline a novel way of understanding colonized–colonizer interactions. It conceives colonial management as a social field in which both the colonized and colonizers negotiate and exchange resources, despite their decidedly unequal positions within a racial hierarchy. Drawing their example from the West Bank, the authors argue that a Palestinian economic elite has proactively participated in the co-production of the colonial management of spatial mobility, a central component of Israeli colonial rule. The study employs interviews and document analysis to investigate how the nexus between Palestine’s commercial-logistical needs and Israel’s security complex induced large-scale Palestinian producers to exert agency and reorder commercial mobility. The authors describe and explain the evolution of a ‘Door-to-Door’ logistical arrangement, in which large-scale Palestinian traders participate in extending Israeli’s system of spatial control in exchange for facilitating logistical mobility. This horizontal social encounter that entails pay-offs is conditioned, but not fully determined, by vertical relations of domination and subordination.

Baraza as method: Adapting a traditional conversational space for data collection and pathways for change

2021 ◽  
pp. 147332502110293
Author(s):  
Laura A. Chubb ◽  
Christa B. Fouché ◽  
Karen Sadeh Kengah
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Context Specific

The call to decolonise research processes and knowledge produced through them has spawned a powerful shift in working relationships between community researchers and members of local communities. Adaptation of a traditional conversational space in a community-based participatory research study offers a context-specific example of a decolonising method for data collection and as pathways for change. This article reports on learnings encountered while adapting the space and highlights the relevance for other cultural contexts. We present principles to adapt traditional conversational spaces both for collecting data and as a means of working in partnership with indigenous communities to enable different ways of knowing and action.

‘A Welsh Lancashire’? Monmouthshire Catholics in the Eighteenth Century

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Jesuit Mission ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Popish Plot

In the seventeenth century, one of the Catholic strongholds of Britain had lain on the southern Welsh borders, in those areas of north Monmouthshire and southern Herefordshire dependant on the Marquis of Worcester at Raglan, and looking to the Jesuit mission at Cwm. Abergavenny and Monmouth had been largely Catholic towns, while the north Monmouthshire countryside still merited the attention of fifteen priests in the 1670s—after the Civil Wars, and the damaging conversion to Protestantism of the heir of Raglan in 1667. Conspicuous Catholic strength caused fear, and the ‘Popish Plot’ was the excuse for a uniquely violent reaction, in which the Jesuit mission was all but destroyed. What happened after that is less clear. In 1780, Berington wrote that ‘In many [counties], particularly in the west, in south Wales, and some of the Midland counties, there is scarcely a Catholic to be found’. Modern histories tend to reflect this, perhaps because of available evidence. The archives of the Western Vicariate were destroyed in a riot in Bath in 1780, and a recent work like J. H. Aveling's The Handle and the Axe relies heavily on sources and examples from the north of England. This attitude is epitomised by Bossy's remark on the distribution of priests in 1773: ‘In Wales, the mission had collapsed’. However, the question of Catholic survival in eighteenth-century Wales is important. In earlier assessments of Catholic strength (by landholding, or number of recusants gaoled as a proportion of population) Monmouthshire had achieved the rare feat of exceeding the zeal of Lancashire, and Herefordshire was not far behind. If this simply ceased to exist, there was an almost incredible success for the ‘short, sharp’ persecution under Charles II. If, however, the area remained a Catholic fortress, then recent historians of recusancy have unjustifiably neglected it.

scholarly journals Traditional forest-related knowledge and agrobiodiversity preservation: the case of the chagras in the Indigenous Reserve of Monochoa (Colombia)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Alejandra Hernandez Marentes ◽  
Martina Venturi ◽  
Silvia Scaramuzzi ◽  
Marco Focacci ◽  
Antonio Santoro
Keyword(s):  
Biodiversity Conservation ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Agroforestry Systems ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Nature Protection ◽  
Wild Fruits ◽  
Deep Relationship

AbstractChagras are complex agroforestry systems developed by indigenous populations of the Amazon region based on shifting agriculture, as part of a system that includes harvesting of wild fruits and plants, hunting and fishing. During the centuries, thanks to their traditional knowledge, indigenous populations have developed a deep relationship with the surrounding environment, as, living in remote places, they must be self-sufficient. The result is the chagra, a system whose cycle is based on seven basic steps to establish a successful and sustainable system, starting from place selection and ending with the abandonment of the plot after harvesting of the products. After the abandonment, the forest starts to grow again to allow the agroecosystem to recover and to take advantage of the residual vegetal material to avoid erosion. The paper takes into consideration the Indigenous Reserve of Monochoa in Colombia as an example of how traditional knowledge can support a rich biodiversity conservation. Moreover, differently from other parts of the world where there is a growing contrast between indigenous communities and protected areas, in the Indigenous Reserve of Monochoa local communities have been recognized as the owners of the land. Results highlighted the crucial role of the indigenous communities for biodiversity conservation. The preservation and adaptation of traditional knowledge and practices, a decentralized autonomous governance system demonstrates that local communities not only can be part of ecosystems with unique biodiversity, but that they can represent the main actors for an active conservation of biodiversity. Agroforestry systems based on traditional forest-related knowledge can therefore be an effective alternative to biodiversity and ecosystem services conservation based on strict nature protection where humans are perceived as a negative factor.

Decolonizing Palestine

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Somdeep Sen
Keyword(s):  
West Bank ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The West ◽  
Governing Body ◽  
Legislative Council ◽  
Armed Resistance ◽  
Liberation Movements ◽  
The Gaza Strip

This book rejects the notion that liberation from colonialization exists as a singular moment in history when the colonizer is ousted by the colonized. Instead, it considers the case of the Palestinian struggle for liberation from its settler colonial condition as a complex psychological and empirical mix of the colonial and the postcolonial. Specifically, the book examines the two seemingly contradictory, yet coexistent, anticolonial and postcolonial modes of politics adopted by Hamas following the organization's unexpected victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election. Despite the expectations of experts, Hamas has persisted as both an armed resistance to Israeli settler colonial rule and as a governing body. Based on ethnographic material collected in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Israel, and Egypt, the book argues that the puzzle Hamas presents is not rooted in predicting the timing or process of its abandonment of either role. The challenge instead lies in explaining how and why it maintains both, and what this implies for the study of liberation movements and postcolonial studies more generally.

scholarly journals The Timeless African and the Versatile Indian in Seventeenth-Century Travelogues

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Michel Duquet
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
American Indian ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Tropical Environment ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
French And English ◽  
North American Indian

Abstract The seventeenth century saw the early stages of significant trading on the west coast of Africa as well as the establishment of permanent settlements in North America by Dutch, French and English explorers, merchants, colonists and missionaries in a period marked by the imperial contest that had been set in motion on the heels of the discovery of America in 1492. The travelers who wrote about their voyages overseas described at length the natives they encountered on the two continents. The images of the North American Indian and of the African that emerged from these travel accounts were essentially the same whether they be of Dutch, French or English origin. The main characteristic in the descriptions of African native populations was its permanent condemnation while representations of the Indian were imbued with sentiments ranging from compassion, censure and admiration. The root causes for this dichotomy were the inhospitable and deadly (to Europeans) tropical environment of Africa’s West Coast and the growing knowledge of local societies that Europeans acquired in North America. The analysis of the contrasting images of natives on both sides of the Atlantic and the context within which they were produced are the focus of the paper.

The Garvey Movement in British West Africa

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. L. Okonkwo
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
The West ◽  
Universal Negro Improvement Association ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Blacks ◽  
Garvey Movement ◽  
African Nationalism

The paper seeks to present new information concerning the activities of the West African branches of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. The author has included biographical profiles of the British West African Garveyites to integrate the Garvey movement into the history of West African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.It is argued that Garveyism was welcomed in British West Africa by the older cultural nationalists who saw Garveyism as an extension of Blyden's ideas. Pan-African sentiments of racial unity and solidarity of African and American blacks, pride in the history of the race, and self-help projects had wide circulation in West Africa from the latter part of the nineteenth century, as a result of Blyden's influence. Joining the branches of the U.N.I.A. was a practical demonstration of a long-standing commitment to cultural and racial nationalism among the West African elite.The Garvey movement also marked the beginning of a new era in West African nationalism. Garvey's radical pronouncements on freeing Africa from colonial rule were unacceptable to the older cultural nationalists who dominated the Garvey groups. They disavowed any interest in organizing a central nation for the race. However, Garvey's ideas may have had long-term effects. By the 1930s the idea of independence from colonial rule seemed more attractive to the West African nationalists. Garvey was one of the first to speak out boldly for freedom from colonialism.The concrete achievements of the West African branches of the U.N.I.A. were small indeed. Nigeria had the most Garveyite activity in British West Africa. There was an agent for the Black Star Line in Lagos and a branch of the U.N.I.A. and A.C.L. The Gold Coast had the least Garveyite activity, probably because of their involvement in the National Congress of British West Africa and also because of their more critical attitude towards co-operation with American blacks. They believed that Africans were best qualified to lead any joint efforts for intra-racial co-operation.

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