Through the lens of Latin America, this course explains how colonization worked in Early Modernity and what were its consequences. We study how the Aztec and Inca empires subdued other peoples before Columbus, and how Muslim Iberia fell to the Christians. Then, we learn about European conquests and the economic, political, social and cultural trajectory of the continent over more than 300 years, shaped by a deepening connection to an evolving Atlantic capitalist system, by Indigenous and slave resistance, adaptation, and racial mixing, and by insurrectionary movements. This is a comprehensive view of how Latin America became what it is now.
In this course you will discover how what is happening in Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Central America, and pretty much anywhere you’ve read about in the media in recent times, very frequently has its roots in the colonial period. That’s when the devastation of the Amazon began; when voluntary and forced migrations and of Africans, Europeans and the Indigenous shaped societies; when the region’s economies and extractivism facilitated and were embedded in the nascent capitalist order; when human rights as they are currently defined began taking shape; when the color red became bright and durable in painting; when chocolate, cigarettes, corn flakes, and potato chips were made possible. When the American baroque burst forth in architecture, music, and painting. When Castilian and Portuguese became global languages. We will unpack the connections among all this and more, studying fifteenth century Indigenous as well as Iberian societies before they met, clashed, and meshed on American shores, and ending the course with the revolutions that ushered in the modern nation states in the early nineteenth century. You will emerge from this course with a solid understanding of the process of early modern European colonization and what sort of economic, political, social, and cultural legacies it left in the continent. As we discover how Latin America became what it is we will also dispel the many myths that have obscured an accurate understanding of the region and its people.