HIST 1950 - Colonial Latin America

(crosslisted)
(also LATA 1950)(GHB) (HA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

E. Bassi.

This course is a general introduction to, and overview of, the history of Latin America from the initial “encounters” of peoples from Africa and Iberia with the “New World,” through the movements for independence in most of mainland Latin America in the early 19th century, to the collapse of Spanish colonial rule in the Pacific and Caribbean later that century. Through lectures, discussions and the reading of primary sources and secondary texts, the course examines the economic and social organization of the colonies, intellectual currents and colonial science, native accommodation and resistance to colonial rule, trade networks and imperial expansion, labor regimes and forms of economic production, and migration and movement. No prior knowledge of Latin American history is required.