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Spring 2010


Unique Days Time Location Instructor


Course Description

This course will survey Latin American history from 1492 to the independence era of the 1810s/20s. It will consider four central questions: (i) How did Spain & Portugal subjugate territories so vast and so distant, and how were they able to do so for 300 years without a large standing army? (ii) What motivated the maintenance of these empires, how were the colonial economies characterized, and how did they change over time? (iii) What did colonial societies look like, in terms of class, race and gender, and how did social relations change over time? (iv) What are the colonial roots of the differences between British North America and Spanish/Portuguese America? The people we will encounter include conquistadors & indigenous nobility, crusading priests, feminist nuns, democratic pirates, and the visionaries who took up arms in the wars of independence. The course will consist of two lectures per week, regular assigned readings, a weekly seminar in which the readings will be discussed, and the screening of several films.

Grading Policy

Grading Policy: Attendance and participation 10% Three 1-2 page response papers 15% One 4-page essay (20%) Mid-term exam (25%) Final exam (30%)


Texts: Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests, 2nd ed. Mark Burkholder and Lyman Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 6th ed. Keneth Mills, William Taylor, Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History


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