Article ID: CBB498534270

‘That They Will Be Capable of Governing Themselves’: Knowledge of Amerindian Difference and Early Modern Arts of Governance in the Spanish Colonial Antilles (2019)

unapi

Contrary to conventional accounts, critical knowledge of the cultural differences of Amerindian peoples was not absent in the early Conquest of the Americas. It was indeed a constitutive element of that process. The knowledge, strategies, and institutions of early Conquest relied on, and reproduced, Amerindian difference within the Spanish Empire as an essential element of that empire’s continued claims to legitimate authority. I demonstrate this through a focus on three parallel and sometimes overlapping texts: Ramón Pané’s Indian Antiquities; Peter Martyr d’Anghierra’s First Decade; and the first systematic attempt to govern colonized populations in the Americas, the Laws of Burgos. Not only did each text furnish the necessary material upon which the claims to intellectual, and so civilizational, superiority that were central to the justification of empire could be sustained. What is more, they transformed Amerindian difference from an object of knowledge into a subject of governance.

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Authors & Contributors
Gómez, Pablo F.
Bigelow, Allison Margaret
Heer, Esther Schmid
Hyun, Jaehwan
Steele, John C.
Giménez-Roldán, Santiago
Concepts
Colonialism
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Spain, colonies
Anthropology
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Race
Time Periods
Early modern
17th century
16th century
19th century
18th century
Modern
Places
South America
Americas
Spain
Caribbean
Central America
United States
Institutions
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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