Chapter 2: Colonial Foundations
For a superb synthesis of the drama that was the Spanish conquest, see Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993). Two pioneering studies of the impact of the conquest on the environment are Warren Dean, With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) and Elinor G. K. Melville, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Missionary activity in New Spain is the focus of Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1517–1570 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). An analysis of the impact of epidemic disease on the indigenous population can be found in Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). In Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979), William B. Taylor examines the survival of distinctive indigenous cultural traditions after the conquest.
Outstanding treatments of the colonial Iberian world include Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 8th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) and James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). The resilience of colonial influences is analyzed in Jeremy Adelman, ed., Colonial Legacies: The Problem of Persistence in Latin American History (New York: Routledge, 1999). For colonial Brazil, see a classic collection of essays edited by Leslie Bethell, Colonial Brazil (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Two excellent monographs outline the complexities of colonial life in Brazil beyond the coastal areas: Alida Metcalf, Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–1822 (Austin: University of Texas, 2005) and Hal Langfur, The Forbidden Lands: Colonial Identity, Frontier Violence, and the Persistence of Brazil’s Eastern Indians, 1750–1830 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006). An exceptional economic and social history of the sugar industry is Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, 1550–1835 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Race relations receive penetrating monographic treatment in Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994). The development of creole identities in Spanish Latin America is described in copious detail in D. A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991). A solid, wide-ranging survey about women can be found in Susan Migden Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). See also Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012).
The origins and travail of independence in Spanish America are described in David Bushnell and Neill Macaulay, The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) and in John Charles Chasteen, Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). The Andean insurrections and the transition to nationhood are presented in Charles F. Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1840 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999). To understand demands for greater autonomy in late eighteenth- century Brazil, see Kenneth Maxwell, Conflicts & Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal, 1750–1808 (New York, Routledge, 2004). How the Portuguese monarchy’s move to Brazil in 1808 affected its most important colony is artfully presented in Kirsten Schultz, Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821 (New York: Routledge, 2001). An extremely useful anthology of primary sources on Brazilian slavery is Robert E. Conrad, Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). An outstanding source of documents on Brazilian history can be found in James N. Green, Victoria Langland, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, The Brazil Reader: History, Politics, and Culture, 2nd ed. (Durham: Duke, 2014).