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Winner, Book Prize in Latin American Studies, Colonial Section of Latin American Studies Association (LASA), 2016 ALAA Book Award, Association for Latin American Art/Arvey Foundation, 2016 The capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, was, in its era, one of the largest cities in the world. Built on an island in the middle of a shallow lake, its population numbered perhaps 150,000, with another 350,000 people in the urban network clustered around the lake shores. In 1521, at the height of Tenochtitlan's power, which extended over much of Central Mexico, Hernando Cortés and his followers conquered the city. Cortés boasted to King Charles V of Spain that Tenochtitlan was "destroyed and raze...
This book presents a historical overview of colonial Mexico City and the important role it played in the creation of the early modern Hispanic world. Organized into five sections, an interdisciplinary and international team of twenty scholars scrutinize the nature and character of Mexico City through the study of its history and society, religious practices, institutions, arts, and scientific, cartographic, and environmental endeavors. The Companion ultimately shows how viceregal Mexico City had a deep sense of history, drawing from all that the ancient Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa offered but where history, culture, and identity twisted and turned in extraordinary fashion to forge a new society. Contributors are: Matthew Restall, Luis Fernando Granados, Joan C. Bristol, Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, Frances L. Ramos, Antonio Rubial García, Alejandro Cañeque, Cristina Cruz González, Iván Escamilla González, María del Pilar Martínez López-Cano, Enrique González González, Paula S. De Vos, Barbara E. Mundy, John F. López, Miruna Achim, Kelly Donahue-Wallace, Martha Lilia Tenorio, Jesús A. Ramos-Kitrell, Amy C. Hamman, and Stacie G. Widdifield. See inside the book.
To rule their vast new American territories, the Spanish monarchs appointed viceroys in an attempt to reproduce the monarchical system of government prevailing at the time in Europe. But despite the political significance of the figure of the viceroy, little is known about the mechanisms of viceregal power and its relation to ideas of kingship. Examining this figure, The King's LivingImage challenges long-held perspectives on the political nature of Spanish colonialism, recovering, at the same time, the complexity of the political discourses and practices of Spanish rule. It does so by studying the viceregal political culture that developed in New Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu...
This book examines the medieval legacy that influences life in Spanish-speaking North America to the present day. Focusing on the period from 1517?the expedition of Hernandez de Cordoba?to the middle of the seventeenth century, Weckmann describes how explorers, administrators, judges, and clergy introduced to the New World a culture that was essentially medieval. That the transplanted culture differentiated itself from that of Spain is due to the resistance of the indigenous cultures of Mexico.
Combining social, political, and economic history, Louisa Schell Hoberman examines a neglected period in Mexico's colonial past, providing the first book-length study of the period's merchant elite and its impact on the evolution of Mexico. Through extensive archival research, Hoberman brings to light new data that illuminate the formation, behavior, and power of the merchant class in New Spain. She documents sources and uses of merchant wealth, tracing the relative importance of mining, agriculture, trade, and public office. By delving into biographical information on prominent families, Hoberman also reveals much about the longevity of the first generation's social and economic achievements. The author's broad analysis situates her study in the overall environment in which the merchants thrived. Among the topics discussed are the mining and operation of the mint, Mexico's political position vis-a-vis Spain, and the question of an economic depression in the seventeenth century.
This captivating study tells Mexico’s best untold stories. The book takes the devastating 1833 cholera epidemic as its dramatic center and expands beyond this episode to explore love, lust, lies, and midwives. Parish archives and other sources tell us human stories about the intimate decisions, hopes, aspirations, and religious commitments of Mexican men and women as they made their way through the transition from the Viceroyalty of New Spain to an independent republic. In this volume Stevens shows how Mexico assumed a new place in Atlantic history as a nation coming to grips with modernization and colonial heritage, helping us to understand the paradox of a country with a reputation for fervent Catholicism that moved so quickly to disestablish the Church.
Viceroy Güemes’s Mexico: Rituals, Religion, and Revenue examines the career of Juan Francisco Güemes y Horcasitas, viceroy of New Spain from 1746 to 1755. It provides the best account yet of how the colonial reform process most commonly known as the Bourbon Reforms did not commence with the arrival of José de Gálvez, the visitador general to New Spain appointed in 1765. Rather, Güemes, ennobled as the conde de Revillagigedo in 1749, pushed through substantial reforms in the late 1740s and early 1750s, most notably the secularization of the doctrinas (turning parishes administering to Natives over to diocesan priests) and the state takeover of the administration of the alcabala tax in ...
Located between Mexico City and Veracruz, Puebla has been a political hub since its founding as Puebla de los Ángeles in 1531. Frances L. Ramos’s dynamic and meticulously researched study exposes and explains the many (and often surprising) ways that politics and political culture were forged, tested, and demonstrated through public ceremonies in eighteenth-century Puebla, colonial Mexico’s “second city.” With Ramos as a guide, we are not only dazzled by the trappings of power—the silk canopies, brocaded robes, and exploding fireworks—but are also witnesses to the public spectacles through which municipal councilmen consolidated local and imperial rule. By sponsoring a wide vari...
A premier volume in Oxford's Pivotal Moments in World History series, Americanos offers an engagingly written, compact history of the Latin American wars of independence. Proceeding almost cinematically, scene by vivid scene, John Charles Chasteen introduces the reader to lead players, basic concepts, key events, and dominant trends, braided together in a single, taut narrative. He vividly depicts the individuals and events of those tumultuous years, capturing the gathering forces for independence, the clashes of troops and decisions of leaders, and the rich, elaborate tapestry of Latin American societies as they embraced nationhood.