Encyclopaedia Britannica - Ancient civilizations-2

Gustavo Noboa Bejerano ascend to the presidency, which effectively ended the coup. This agreement emerged partly from military opposition of a junta-ruled government and also from the adamant refusal of the United States to accept a new government imposed by unconstitutional means. The last has not been heard from the indigenous movement in Ecuador—or elsewhere in Latin America. David Bushnell

Citation Information

Article Title: History of Latin America

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 23 January 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/Latin-America

Access Date: August 19, 2019

Additional Reading

General works

Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America (1984– ), is a general reference work with essays by recognized specialists on many aspects of the region’s development. Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America (1992); and Simon Collier, Harold Blakemore, and Thomas E. Skidmore (eds.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2nd ed. (1992), offer introductory material. Tulio Halperín Donghi, The Contemporary History of Latin America (1993; originally published in Spanish, 1970), focuses on the region’s colonial and neocolonial relations with North Atlantic nations.

Early Latin America

General

Overviews are presented in James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (1983); and Mark Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 2nd ed. (1994), both emphasizing analysis over narrative detail and treating all of Latin America as a unit.

Spanish America

C.H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (1947, reprinted 1985), is an institutionalist classic. Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History, 3 vol. (1971–79), is by the field’s most illustrious demographers.

A number of works treat 16th-century Spanish American history. Carl Ortwin Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (1966, reissued 1992), is a thoroughly outdated treatment of early Spanish activity in the Caribbean but has yet to be replaced. William Hickling Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 3 vol. (1843), and History of the Conquest of Peru, 2 vol. (1847), both available in many later printings, contain archaic, invalid interpretations but, as literary classics, are famous almost in the manner of historical novels. Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (1949, reprinted 1965), concentrates on the ideological crusades of fray Bartolomé de las Casas. James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532–1560: A Social History, 2nd ed. (1994), surveys Hispanic conquest society in a central area. Ida Altman, Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and America in the Sixteenth Century (1989), follows people across the Atlantic. Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and the Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523–1572 (1966; originally published in French, 1933), is a masterpiece of institutionalist historiography but ignores the roles of the indigenous people and the Spanish civil population. George Kubler, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century, 2 vol. (1948, reissued 1972), attempts to combine mainline history and the history of art. Philip Wayne Powell, Soldiers, Indians & Silver: The Northward Advance of New Spain, 1550–1600 (1952, reprinted 1975), shows how Spaniards operated in areas of nonsedentary Indians. Nobel David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (1998), thoroughly treats the postconquest decline of the Indian population.

The mature period in Spanish colonial history is addressed in the following works. Studies of indigenous society include Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1880 (1964), a large work based mainly on Spanish sources; William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide & Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (1979), showing the relative normality of indigenous behaviour in central areas after the arrival of the Spaniards; Nancy M. Farriss, Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (1984, reissued with corrections, 1992), a broad treatment combining historical and anthropological techniques; James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (1992), based largely on sources in Nahuatl; and Karen Spalding, Huarochirí: An Andean Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule (1984), which begins to bring the level of Peruvian ethnohistory up to that of its counterpart for Mexico. Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (1974), thoroughly investigates the role of Africans in a Spanish American area. P.J. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546–1700 (1971), broadly treats a major silver mining centre. Louisa Schell Hoberman, Mexico’s Merchant Elite, 1590–1660 (1991), describes changes in the commercial world after the conquest period. Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (1991), analyzes intellectual developments with a strong awareness of the European background. Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720 (1973, reprinted 1984), is the cornerstone of early Guatemalan historiography. Robert J. Ferry, The Colonial Elite of Early Caracas: Formation & Crisis, 1567–1767 (1989), investigates society in a fringe area. Asunción Lavrin (ed.), Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (1989); and Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera (eds.), The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America (1998), are anthologies.

The following are among the more notable works on Spanish American history during the late period. Christon I. Archer, The Army in Bourbon Mexico, 1760–1810 (1977), is a social-institutional study. D.A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763–1810 (1971), is a massive social and economic study of Mexico’s late-colonial international economy and government, and Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajío: León, 1700–1860 (1978), shows the rationality and market orientation of the agricultural sector. John K. Chance, Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca (1978), studies urban demography. John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (1983– ), broadly surveys urban society. Enrique Tandeter, Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826 (1993; originally published in Spanish, 1992), facilitates comparison between the Mexican and Peruvian silver industries. Eric Van Young, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675–1820 (1981), links the growth of agrarian estates to the size and nature of urban populations. Jacques A. Barbier, Reform and Politics in Bourbon Chile, 1755–1796 (1980), views all the governmental institutions of a single region as an interlocking unit, including their socioeconomic dimension. Susan Migden Socolow, The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778–1810: Family and Commerce (1978), is a prosopographical study.

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