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Sometimes referred to as the first published manual of guerrilla warfare, Bernardo de Vargas Machuca’s Indian Militia and Description of the Indies is actually the first known manual of counterinsurgency, or anti-guerrilla warfare. Published in Madrid in 1599 by a Spanish-born soldier of fortune with long experience in the Americas, the book is a training manual for conquistadors. The Aztec and Inca Empires had long since fallen by 1599, but Vargas Machuca argued that many more Native American peoples remained to be conquered and converted to Roman Catholicism. What makes his often shrill and self-righteous treatise surprising is his consistent praise of indigenous resistance techniques an...
"An English translation and critical edition of a refutation, written about 1603 (revised in 1612) by the soldier Bernardo de Vargas Machuca, of Bartolome de las Casas's famous Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1558)"--Provided by publisher. First published in 1879 as Apologâias y discursos de las conquistas occidentales.
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From Al-Andalus to the Americas (13th-17th Centuries). Destruction and Construcion of Societies offers a multi-perspective view of the filiation of different colonial and settler colonial experiences, from the Medieval Iberian Peninsula to the early Modern Americas. All the articles in the volume refer the reader to colonial orders that extended over time, that substantially reduced indigenous populations, that imposed new productive strategies and created new social hierarchies. The ideological background and how conquests were organised; the treatment given to the conquered lands and people; the political organisations, and the old and new agricultural systems are issues discussed in this volume. Contributors are David Abulafia, Manuel Ardit, Antonio Espino, Adela Fábregas, Josep M. Fradera, Enric Guinot, Helena Kirchner, Antonio Malpica, Virgilio Martínez-Enamorado, Carmen Mena, António Mendes, Félix Retamero, Inge Schjellerup, Josep Torró, and Antoni Virgili.
The invasions of Guatemala -- Pedro de Alvarado's letters to Hernando Cortes, 1524 -- Other Spanish accounts -- Nahua accounts -- Maya accounts
Among the magnificent gems and jewels left behind by the great Islamic empires, emeralds stand out for their size and prominence. For the Mughals, Ottomans, and Safavids green was—as it remains for all Muslims—the color of Paradise, reserved for the Prophet Muhammad and his descendants. Tapping a wide range of sources, Kris Lane traces the complex web of global trading networks that funneled emeralds from backland South America to populous Asian capitals between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Lane reveals the bloody conquest wars and forced labor regimes that accompanied their production. It is a story of trade, but also of transformations—how members of profoundly different societies at opposite ends of the globe assigned value to a few thousand pounds of imperfectly shiny green rocks.
Could European bodies thrive in the Indies? Would Indians turn into Spaniards if they ate Spanish food? This fascinating history of food, colonisation and race shows that attitudes about food were fundamental to European colonialism and understandings of physical difference in the Age of Discovery.
Of great benefit for scholars and teachers, this is the first English translation and critical edition of a rare refutation of Bartolomé de las Casas’s famous 1552 Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, one of the most influential texts of the sixteenth century. The Defense and Discourse of the Western Conquests, written by the Spanish soldier Bernardo de Vargas Machuca about 1603, provides valuable insights into the other side of the debate over the morality of the Spanish conquest.
Based on extensive archival research in Peru, Spain, and Italy, Making Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru examines how apothecaries in Lima were trained, ran their businesses, traded medicinal products, prepared medicines, and found their place in society. In the book, Newson argues that apothecaries had the potential to be innovators in science, especially in the New World where they encountered new environments and diverse healing traditions. However, it shows that despite experimental tendencies among some apothecaries, they generally adhered to traditional humoral practices and imported materia medica from Spain rather than adopt native plants or exploit the region’s rich mineral resources. This adherence was not due to state regulation, but reflected the entrenchment of humoral beliefs in popular thought and their promotion by the Church and Inquisition.