Fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, at the height of Spain's conquest of the West Indies, Spanish bishop and colonist Bartolom de Las Casas dedicated his Brev sima Relaci n de la Destruici n de las Indias to Philip II of Spain. An impassioned plea on behalf of the native peoples of the West Indies, the Brev sima Relaci n catalogues in horrific detail atrocities it attributes to the king's colonists in the New World. The result is a withering indictment of the conquerors that has cast a 500-year shadow over the subsequent history of that world and the European colonization of it.
Dunbar-Oritz recounts on-the-ground memories of the contra war in Nicaragua, chronicling the US-sponsored terror inflicted on the people of Nicaragua following their 1981 election of the socialist Sandinistas, ousting Reagan darling and vicious dictator Samoza. View More...
The internationally acclaimed last work by the legendary Latin American writer Master storyteller Eduardo Galeano was unique among his contemporaries (Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa among them) for his commitment to retelling our many histories, including the stories of those who were disenfranchised. A philosopher poet, his nonfiction is infused with such passion and imagination that it matches the intensity and the appeal of Latin America's very best fiction. Comprised of all new material, published here for the first time in a wonderful English translation by longtime colla... View More...
Focusing on the period from 1840 to 1889, the author explores the specific ways in which granting protection, official positions, and other favors in exchange for political and personal loyalty worked to benefit the interests of wealthy Brazilians. The book is based principally on both the official and private correspondence of politicians, judges and bureaucrats, using these materials to look in depth at political practice. "Whatever the outcome of the current crisis of Latin American scholarship, here is one book that will not be swept into the dustbin of historiography ... This is a masterf... View More...
Winner of the 2021 Wolfson History PrizeShortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize Finalist for the PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyNamed a best book of the year by the The Economist Times Literary Supplement New Statesman "Black Spartacus is a tour de force: by far the most complete, authoritative and persuasive biography of Toussaint that we are likely to have for a long time . . . An extraordinarily gripping read." --David A. Bell, The GuardianA new interpretation of the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolut... View More...
A Jurisprudence of Power concerns the brutal suppression under martial law of the Jamaica uprising of 1865, and the explosive debate and litigation these events spawned in England. The book explores the centrality of legal ideas and institutions in English politics, and of political ideas that give rise to great questions of English law. It documents how the world's most powerful and articulate political elite struggled to define its soul, and poses penetrating questions such as can an imperial nation remain committed to laws and legality? Can it contend with the violent resistance of subjuga... View More...
This major interpretive history of the making of modern Mexico, from the Insurgent priests of the early nineteenth century to the presidency of Zedillo, provides an incisive portrait of Mexican culture, society, and politics and key elements of Mexico's past.aThe legacy of the Aztec emperors, Cort s, the Spanish Crown, the mother Church, and the mixing of the Spanish and Indian population into a mestizo culture are key elements of Mexican history, as is the concentration of power in the person of the caudillo, or leader. History becomes biography, and the lives of the different caudillos are t... View More...
This book explains the history of US/Central American relations, explaining why these countries have remained so overpopulated, illiterate and violent; and why US government notions of economic and military security combine to keep in place a system of Central American dependency. This second edition is updated to include new material covering the Reagan and Bush years, and the Iran/Contra affair. View More...
A strange episode that is at once a central part of American history and a tragic tale of human ambition and cultural misunderstanding. In an ill-starred undertaking, Napoleon III attempted to install Archduke Maximilian of Austria as the Emperor of Mexico. The move pitted liberals against conservatives, and the New World against the Old--and ended with Maximilian's execution, the insanity of his wife, Charlotte, and the emergence of the United States as a world power. "Jasper Ridley has written a riveting account of an episode which is exciting throughout and tragic at the end; it is also ess... View More...
Written over a 25-year span, these essays explore the ways in which the rural, regional, political, and cultural history of colonial and nineteenth-century Mexico has been approached by scholars. View More...
Winner of the 2010 James M. Blaut Award in recognition of innovative scholarship in cultural and political ecology (Honors of the CAPE specialty group (Cultural and Political Ecology)) Decolonizing Development investigates the ways colonialism shaped the modern world by analyzing the relationship between colonialism and development as forms of power. Based on novel interpretations of postcolonial and Marxist theory and applied to original research data Amply supplemented with maps and illustrations An intriguing and invaluable resource for scholars of postcolonialism, development, geography,... View More...
