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The Cost of Empire
A uniquely broad, comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of an early modern fiscal system.
The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy
The sixteenth century was a critical period both for Spain’s formation and for the imperial dominance of her Crown. Spanish monarchs ruled far and wide, spreading agents and culture across Europe and the wider world. Yet in Italy they encountered another culture whose achievements were even prouder and whose aspirations often even grander than their own. Italians, the nominally subaltern group, did not readily accept Spanish dominance and exercised considerable agency over how imperial Spanish identity developed within their borders. In the end Italians’ views sometimes even shaped how their Spanish colonizers eventually came to see themselves. The essays collected here evaluate the broa...
Raj Rhapsodies: Tourism, Heritage and the Seduction of History
Heritage is a prized cultural commodity in the marketing of tourism destinations. Particular aspects of heritage are often more actively promoted, with others played down. The representation of heritage in tourism as static and timeless, derived since time immemorial from a distant past, is seductive. In Asia, a major part of the tourism market lies in the sale and consumption of highly orientalized images and versions of culture and history. In India’s marketing discourse, the state of Rajasthan symbolizes the nation in its heritage-laden, traditional and most authentic form. These images draw heavily on the British period in India - the Raj. In one sense, this vision of Rajasthan is enno...
Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1648-1812
A study of the development of human society in Yucatan during the colonial period, this book poses a challenge to a variety of accepted views, including the notion that Yucatan was largely isolated from the main part of Spain's New World empire and thus from international markets and the world economy - an isolation often cited as the principal reason for the extended survival of indigenous culture in the region. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Yucatan society was composed of both Maya and Spanish commonwealths, each with its own economic, social, and political organization. This book represents several new departures, both for what is known about colonial Yucatan and for colonial Latin American history in general. It forces the reader to rethink much of the received knowledge about acculturation, the hacienda, and inter-regional relations.
The New Christians of Spanish Naples 1528-1671
This study reveals the more complex reality of Early Modern Naples than what has commonly been represented, in which royal representatives in the city came to depend on the assistance of a series of merchants, financiers, and bureaucrats who shared a common identity as conversos, descendants of converted Jews.
Church and State in Spanish Italy
Examines the relation between imperialism and religion through the practice of good government in Spanish Naples. Ideal for courses on the Renaissance, imperialism, the Spanish world, European history, diplomatic-international relations and the general reader interested in cultural history, Renaissance Italy, social minorities, and religious rituals.
Myth and Authority
Living in a province dominated by powerful oligarchs, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) concluded that political philosophy should work to undermine aristocratic authority and prevent political devolution into feudalism. Rejecting the possibility that the free market could successfully instill civil behavior, he advocated for a strong central judicial system to work closely with citizens to promote stability and justice. This study puts Vico in conversation with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau, and Mandeville to show how his alternative warrants serious consideration. In contrast to scholars who read Vico's New Science as a defense of the imagination, this study casts his account of poetic wisdom politically as an epistemological critique of the aristocratic mentality. Myth and Authority argues that Vico's depiction of pagan religion is a refined attempt to explain how oligarchy maintains its stranglehold on power. While Western civilization did not follow the path Vico suggested, it may now be more relevant as concerns grow about the increasing influence of the wealthy on civil institutions.
Twilight of the Renaissance
Diplomat, courtier, and heretic, Juan de Valdés (c.1500-1541) was one of the most famous humanist writers in Renaissance Spain. In this biography, Daniel A. Crews paints a lively portrait of a complex and fascinating figure by focusing on Valdés's service as an imperial courtier and how his employments in Italy - after brushes with the Spanish Inquisition - influenced both Spanish diplomacy and his own religious thought. Twilight of the Renaissance focuses on Valdés's political activities in Charles V's Italian alliance system and negotiations with the papacy, while painting a lively portrait of an intriguing and complex Renaissance figure. Crews examines how Valdés, who was praised by two popes and, the emperor, was also branded a heretic almost immediately after his death. By considering Valdés's spirituality, as well as egotism, this incisive work reveals how the libertine atmosphere of the late Renaissance challenges the saintly Socratic image Valdés fashioned for himself in his writings.
Maya Revolt and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century
Records of revolts, rebellions, and revolutions provide insight into the nature of the Maya in the colonial period. This book presents five case studies - four in Guatemala and one in Yucatan, Mexico - of eighteenth-century Maya acts of violent resistance to colonialism, and, in the process, reveals a great deal about indigenous culture, social structure, politics, economics, lineage, and gender. The author carefully analyzes the causes of, participation in, and resolution of each uprising, explaining the different political, economic, and cultural catalysts, and the scope and outcome of each conflict. Through such detailed narratives, the reader not only learns about the reality of colonialism but also encounters the flesh-and-blood, real-life individuals and groups who resisted, counteracted, circumvented, and defied the Spaniards. These stories reveal the drama, tragedy, and even comedy of the history of ordinary people and everyday life at the time.
Patrons and Adversaries
The early modern Roman countryside was a site of contestation between great aristocratic families and an expanding papal political regime. Rarely has the role of the inhabitants of this landscape--the villagers--been considered as part of that power struggle. As Caroline Castiglione shows in this compelling revisionist work, one Roman aristocratic family, the Barberini, was not squeezed out of governing by the extension of the papal bureaucracy, but rather became increasingly engaged with it during the long eighteenth century. Through their participation in the rural commune, villagers in an extensive territory belonging to the Barberini became active participants in the governing of the cou...
