Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to RepublicDuke University Press, 2006 M01 18 - 456 pages Landscapes of Power and Identity is a groundbreaking comparative history of two colonies on the frontiers of the Spanish empire—the Sonora region of northwestern Mexico and the Chiquitos region of eastern Bolivia’s lowlands—from the late colonial period through the middle of the nineteenth century. An innovative combination of environmental and cultural history, this book reflects Cynthia Radding’s more than two decades of research on Mexico and Bolivia and her consideration of the relationships between human societies and the geographic landscapes they inhabit and create. At first glance, Sonora and Chiquitos are quite different: one a scrub-covered desert, the other a tropical rainforest of the greater Amazonian and Paraguayan river basins. Yet the regions are similar in many ways. Both were located far from the centers of colonial authority, organized into Jesuit missions and linked to the principal mining centers of New Spain and the Andes, and then absorbed into nation-states in the nineteenth century. In each area, the indigenous communities encountered European governors, missionaries, slave hunters, merchants, miners, and ranchers. Radding’s comparative approach illuminates what happened when similar institutions of imperial governance, commerce, and religion were planted in different physical and cultural environments. She draws on archival documents, published reports by missionaries and travelers, and previous histories as well as ecological studies and ethnographies. She also considers cultural artifacts, including archaeological remains, architecture, liturgical music, and religious dances. Radding demonstrates how colonial encounters were conditioned by both the local landscape and cultural expectations; how the colonizers and colonized understood notions of territory and property; how religion formed the cultural practices and historical memories of the Sonoran and Chiquitano peoples; and how the conflict between the indigenous communities and the surrounding creole societies developed in new directions well into the nineteenth century. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 93
... Jesuit mission province on the periphery of the principal mining centers of Spanish America . My first acquaintance with the Andean cordillera and the savannas and forests of Chiquitos proved as daunting as it did exhilarating , but I ...
... Jesuit missionaries , writing within a decade of each other , but thousands of miles apart , described the provinces of their calling in terms of the land and the peoples who inhabited them.2 Their geographies portrayed sculpted land ...
... correspond to the middle third of the sixteenth century , and while each of these frontiers was marked by the Jesuit TABLE 1 Comparative Chronology Historical Events and Processes Sonora Chiquitos Savannas and Deserts | 11.
... Jesuit mission enterprise 1560-1750 1650-1740 1591-1767 1691-1767 Bourbon administration following Jesuit expulsion Franciscans administer Sonoran missions Secular clergy and lay administrators in Chiquitos 1768-1842 1768-1860 1828-56 ...
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
Contents
1 | |
19 | |
Communities Missions and Colonial Markets | 55 |
Community and Conflicting Claims to Property | 89 |
Chapter 4 Ethnic Mosaics and Gendered Identities | 117 |
Political Culture Goverance and Mobilization | 162 |
Spiritual Power Ritual and Knowledge | 196 |
Transitions from Colony to Republic | 240 |
Chapter 8 Contested Landscapes in Continental Borderlands | 295 |
Notes | 327 |
Glossary | 375 |
Bibliography | 385 |
Index | 423 |