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Combining traditional documentary research with new analytical strategies, Robert J. Ferry creates a rich, three-dimensional picture of early Caracas. His reconstitution and interpretation of important genealogical histories provide a model for historical studies of Latin American and other societies. Ferry’s work partially eclipses previously accepted ideas about colonial Caracas. He shows how the society was dominated by a commercial-agricultural elite and demonstrates that women were responsible for arranging marriages and maintaining family lineages, that marriages among first cousins were very common, and that elite residence was matrifocal. The Colonial Elite of Early Caracas focuses...
Originally published as a collection in 2006, this volume discusses the development of the Atlantic slave trade in the seventeenth century, looking at issues such as how African societies reacted to the trade; the economic origins of black slavery in the British West Indies; and the growth of plantations responding to changes in European diet – particularly the rise of the sugar economy. The volume also has an introduction by the editor commenting on the contribution each essay makes.
Drawing on a number of disciplines, nine scholars examine the major issues addressed by rural history.
The aim of this study is to define that distinctive blend of enlightened despotism and entrepreneurial talent which created Bourbon Mexico. The period 1763-1810 was a crucial and distinctive stage in the colonial history of Mexico. Jose de Gálvez, the dynamic minister of the Indies, transformed the system of government and restructured the economy. The ensuing 'golden age', far from being the culmination of two hundred years of steady development, sprang rather from a profound regeneration of the New World's Hispanic society. The chief success of Gálvez's policy was the unprecedented mining boom which made Mexico the world's chief silver producer. It was this silver boom which largely financed the revival of the political and economic power of the Spanish monarchy and, in Mexico itself, created a new aristocracy of merchant capitalists and silver millionaires.
Dreams of Development explores the relationship between higher education and Colombian national development by tracing the history of one of Colombia's most important institutions of higher education, the National School of Mines (Escuela Nacional de Minas) of Medellin. Murray addresses three questions: How did the Escuela form national elites, including politicians, businesspeople, and technocrats destined to play prominent roles in industry and government after 1900? To what extent have such elites shaped the development process? And finally, how has the Escuela's evolution reflected such changes in Colombian society as the rise of an urban middle sector and more active roles for women seeking the opportunities associated with an engineering degree? Murray's analysis of a single institution makes this book valuable both to Colombianists and to other scholars interested in the development of modern Latin American higher education. It also provides unique insight into the positivistic ideals and values that have shaped Colombian and other Latin American elites and dictated the destiny of their countries.
"Stimulating, incisive, insightful, sometimes revisionist, this volume is required reading for historians of comparative colonialism in an age of revolution." —Choice "[An] eminently original and intellectually exciting book." —William and Mary Quarterly This volume examines several slave societies in the Greater Caribbean to illustrate the pervasive and multi-layered impact of the revolutionary age on the region. Built precariously on the exploitation of slave labor, organized according to the doctrine of racial discrimination, the plantation colonies were particularly vulnerable to the message of the French Revolution, which proved all the more potent because it coincided with the emergence of the antislavery movement in the Atlantic world and interacted with local traditions of resistance among the region's slaves, free coloreds, and white colonists.
Includes "Bibliographical section".
A fascinating revisionist history, Sustaining Empire challenges long-standing assertions that this commerce served primarily as a vector for the one-way transmission of revolutionary, liberal ideas from the North to South Atlantic.