Fall 2003

HIS 346K • Latin America Before 1810

Course Description

This course is designed to provide students with an overview of the social, cultural, economic, and political development of colonial Spanish America between 1492 and 1821. Spanish imperial control over its American colonies lasted for three hundred years. How do we explain the longevity of Spanish control and when the Spanish American colonists fought for their independence why did the insurgent movements occur in the early nineteenth century and not before? Between Spanish invasion, conquest, and eventual loss of empire, what kind of societies were created in Spanish America? Topics to be addressed include the Spanish and Pre-Colombian traditions of conquest and imperialism, the consolidation of Spanish imperial government in the so-called "New World", Church-State relations, the development of the colonial economies in the emerging world system, race, class, and gender in colonial society, the movements of political independence from Spain and the problems faced by the new republics as emergent nation-states in the nineteenth century. Special emphasis will be placed on indigenous and Afro-American responses to Spanish colonialism during three centuries of imperial rule.

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