This course offers students the opportunity to understand the forces that shaped modern history. The colonial period was a moment in history when two great civilizations violently confronted each other. This confrontation raises issues of how humans perceive alien cultures and how misperceptions warp encounters between different societies.
The region ruled by Spain from 1492 through 1826 gives us the opportunity to study one of the dominant themes of recent world history: European Colonialism. During this course, we will read and discuss European and Native accounts of the Spanish conquest as well as the views of modern historians. The readings aim to familiarize students with the difficulties of understanding world views that are radically different from each other and from our own.
Content
Topic One: The High Civilizations of the Americas
Topic Two: The Arrival of the Spanish
Topic Three: Perspectives on the Spanish Invasion of Mesoamerica
Topic Four: Spanish Society in Two Hemispheres and in Two Genders
Topic Five: Creating a Colonial Order
Topic Six: Religion, State and Society
Topic Seven: The Late Colonial Period
Topic Eight: The Collapse of the Colonial Order
Bibliography
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, J.M. Cohen, trans. (New York: 1964)
Miguel León-Portilla, ed., The Broken Spears. The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, expanded and updated edition (Boston: 1962)
Steve J. Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640, second edition, (Madison: 1993)
Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance: A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy, (Durham: 1991)
Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico, Sonya Lipsett Rivera and Sergio Rivera Ayala, trans. (Wilmington Del: 1999)
Evaluation
Class participation 30%
Presentation 20%
Mid-term exam 20%
Commentaries 30%
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