The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas

Olaf Kaltmeier, Josef Raab, Mike Foley, Alice Nash, Stefan Rinke, Mario Rufer, Olaf Kaltmeier, Josef Raab, Mike Foley, Alice Nash, Stefan Rinke, Mario Rufer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351138680
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

The colonial heritage and its renewed aftermaths – expressed in the inter-American experiences of slavery, indigeneity, dependence, and freedom movements, to mention only a few aspects – form a common ground of experience in the Western Hemisphere. The flow of peoples, goods, knowledge and finances have promoted interdependence and integration that cut across borders and link the countries of North and South America together. The nature of this transversally related and multiply interconnected region can only be captured through a transnational, multidisciplinary, and comprehensive approach.

The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas explores the history and society of the Americas, placing particular emphasis on collective and intertwined experiences. Forty-four chapters cover a range of concepts and dynamics in the Americas from the colonial period until the present century:

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• The shared histories and dynamics of Inter-American relationships are considered through pre-Hispanic empires, colonization, European hegemony, migration, multiculturalism, and political and economic interdependences.

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• Key concepts are selected and explored from different geopolitical, disciplinary, and epistemological perspectives.

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• Highlighting the contested character of key concepts that are usually defined in strict disciplinary terms, the Handbook provides the basis for a better and deeper understanding of inter-American entanglements.

This multidisciplinary approach will be of interest to a broad array of academic scholars and students in history, sociology, political science cultural, postcolonial, gender, literary, and globalization studies.

PART I

History and society in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century

1

Introduction

History and society in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century. The bigger picture

Josef Raab and Stefan Rinke

The histories of the Americas begin long before 1492. The space that was later to be called the “Western Hemisphere” was inhabited by innumerous people when Christopher Columbus arrived in Guanahani on October 12 of that year, and lands in the far West had been in the European imagination for centuries (→ America, I/2). But 1492 illustrates that the history of the Americas is a history of encounters – of individuals, societies, ideologies, worldviews, languages, and cultural practices. The first contacts between European explorers and Native Americans in the Bahamas had repercussions for the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca empires and eventually for indigenous communities anywhere, as the encounter at one site was followed by encounters throughout the Americas (→ Indigenous Peoples, I/11). The year 1492 also highlights the tendency to tell history from the vantage point of the victors, relegating the role of indigenous peoples and other oppressed sections of the population to a subordinate position (→ Conquest and Colonization, I/7). The first part of the Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas, by contrast, wants to look at the bigger picture, considering 1492 a rupture rather than the beginning of the history of a “New World,” examining the hemispheric consequences of the initial contacts between Europeans and the indigenous population, and complementing the history of the victorious powers with a focus on those who were acted upon.

The tremendous changes (→ Columbian Exchange, I/6) that were triggered by the events of 1492 and subsequent years have led to a prevailing approach to the histories of the New World subdivided along the lines of the colonial empires involved. Tulio Halperín Donghi reminded his readers at the time of the quincentennial in 1992 “that Spanish (as well as Portuguese and Anglo-) America was first conceived as an overseas replica of its mother country” (1992, 220). We are accustomed to speaking of “the Spanish conquest,” “Portuguese America,” and “the English and French colonies in North America.” For the time since the struggles for independence, we have come to think in terms of national(ist) histories and cultures, which promote concepts like “[U.S.] American exceptionalism” and “Brazilian exceptionalism.” But this concentration on the dominions of European colonial powers, on regions defined by geography or language (→ I/13), or on the specific development of particular nations may produce reductionist perspectives (Raab 2016). Halperín Donghi points out that national histories, while seemingly neat, tend to overlook international affairs and also run the risk of obscuring the heterogeneity within a nation (1993, xiii). While a focus on regional, national, or transnational entities (like “New Spain” or “the Caribbean”) is very appropriate for exploring many topics, it may run the risk of reducing some complexities and omitting some of the inter-American transfers and interconnections involved. As Herbert Eugene Bolton, the pioneer of inter-American historiography, pointed out in his presidential address delivered to the American Historical Association in Toronto in 1932:

There is need of a broader treatment of American history, to supplement the purely nationalistic presentation to which we are accustomed. European history cannot be learned from books dealing alone with England, or France, or Germany, or Italy, or Russia; nor can American history be adequately presented if confined to Brazil, or Chile, or Mexico, or Canada, or the United States. In my own country the study of thirteen English colonies and the United States in isolation has obscured many of the larger factors in their development, and helped to raise up a nation of chauvinists. Similar distortion has resulted from the teaching and writing of national history in other American countries. It is time for a change.

(1993, 448)

More than eighty-five years later, Bolton’s complaints against national(ist) historiography and isolationist approaches have not lost any of their validity. While there are studies of “Latin American history,” Pan-Americanism (→ II/40), or U.S. interventions (→ Interventionism, II/36) in the Western Hemisphere, many approaches remain nation-centered. Usually, if the historiography on the Americas looks at a bigger picture, it is with regard to a specific topic, like slavery (→ I/18). David Eltis’s The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas, David Brion Davis’s Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World, and John Thornton’s Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 are among the successful examples of inter-American historiography (see also Joseph 1998). Prevailing approaches, however, are more likely to focus on a nation or they concentrate on a geographical/cultural entity like The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell. The “General Preface” to that publication states that here:

Latin America is taken to comprise the predominantly Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking areas of continental America south of the United States—Mexico, Central America and South America—together with the Spanish-speaking Caribbean—Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic—and, by convention, Haiti. (The vast territories in North America lost to the United States by treaty and by war, first by Spain, then by Mexico, during the first half of the nineteenth century are for the most part excluded. Neither the British, French and Dutch Caribbean islands nor the Guineas are included even though Jamaica and Trinidad, for example, have early Hispanic antecedents and are now members of the Organisation [sic!] of American States).

(2008, xiv)

In this formulation, the project already points to its own shortcomings: Spanish Florida, the Mexican territories that would become the Southwest of the United States in 1848, and regions in the Caribbean that have seen “Latin” or “Spanish” or “Hispanic” involvement are omitted. In view of the prevailing reductionist approaches to the histories and societies of the Americas, the Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas aims to look at the bigger picture, the hemispheric contexts of topics, issues, and developments which all have their local, regional, and national ramifications, but which also display an inter-American dimension that tends to be overlooked in traditional historiography.

The focus of this first section of the handbook is on the histories and societies of the Americas up until 1898. The year 1898 was chosen as the end point of this period because it marks the onset of new inter-American dynamics with the United States going to war against Spain for control of the remnants of that country’s colonial empire in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. That conflict initiated what Henry R. Luce in the 1940s would call “the [U.S.] American Century,” when the United States assumed the status of a world power and when inter-American relations – whether characterized as “Big Stick Policy,” “Good Neighbor Policy,” “Benign Neglect,” or overshadowed by plans for a border wall – started being dominated by the United States. For the period up until 1898, three turning points will be discussed:

1. 1492: the beginning of European interventions in the Americas,
2. 1760–1830: the end of colonial rule and the establishment of American nation-states, and
3. the 1860s: a period marked by commercial expansion and improved means of transportation, social and economic reforms, the abolition of slavery in the United States, mass immigration, urbanization and industrialization, the genocide of indigenous peoples, a growing chasm between the United States and Latin America.

These turning points all have their local and regional relevance, but they also affect the Western Hemisphere in general.

1492

There is hardly any event in world history that equals the discovery of America in terms of the status it held in Europe for centuries as an undisputed historical turning point (Fernández-Armesto 2009, 14; Rinke 2013, 7). “America” (→ I/2) was a concept that did not yet existed in 1492. It assumes a spatial unit that Columbus did not recognize in his lifetime and which his contemporaries only started to understand through the publication of Amerigo Vespucci’s Mundus Novus [The New World] in 1502/03. What counts as a historical caesura or as the beginning of a new era lies in the eyes of the beholder. People define certain events as shifts or turning points in order to establish a periodization of their lives or of the history of their community. These temporal divisions make sense and create an image of the world based on the necessities and values of those who construct it. Since the beginning of professional historiography in the 19th century, such constructions have mostly been undertaken by historians steeped in European conventions and thinking in terms of nation-states. The periodizations they established stem from specific causes. Their motives must not simply be accepted as given but must be questioned again and again, for what is a turning point for one individual need not be one for others, even though Europeans have tended – especially since 1492 – to connect their will to dominate the world with the drive to dominate the images of the world.

Columbus did not leave the slightest doubt that he thought of his discoveries as extraordinary. Already in a letter which he wrote on his return voyage in 1493 to his patron, the royal treasurer Luis de Santángel, he presented his accomplishment as a divine blessing that meant a victory for all of Christendom and that would also furnish riches and wealth. But he was still eager to situate the foreign that he had seen with his own eyes in his horizon of expectations shaped by the biblical history of salvation.

Several years later, once the dimension of Columbus’ discoveries became apparent, contemporaries like the well-known Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas spoke of “a time so new and incomparable to any other.” This notion of living in a new era that had started with the discovery of a New World solidified over the following centuries (→ Memorial Culture, I/14). In European historical thought of the late 17th century, it initiated the division into periods that are common today: Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Modernity. In the European version of history, 1492 could thus be interpreted as a turning point par excellence, a caesura that separated the – supposedly – “dark” Middle Ages from the new spirit which marked the beginning of the Renaissance.

However, we also know that Columbus was not the first European who came to America. That feat had probably been accomplished by Leif Eriksson around 500 years earlier. But Eriksson’s discovery had not produced any knowledge that survived the course of time. Eriksson’s knowledge was lost, while Columbus used the communication revolution unfolding in his times in order to market his accomplishments (→ Language, I/13). He consciously put his success in the context of the conclusion of the Reconquista and of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. That way, the discovery did not stand alone, but was linked to other important developments of the year 1492. If one thinks beyond the limits of Spain, one has to include numerous events taking place around 1500 and originating in Europe: the creation of the Behaim globe in Nuremberg, the spread of book printing, other voyages of discovery and especially the Indian voyage of Vasco da Gama via the eastern sea route. The densification of change and the experience of the new created the impression of a temporal caesura.

This understanding of a shift in the temporal dimension corresponded to the caesura in the spatial imagination which the Day of Guanahani triggered for Europeans (→ Geopolitics, II/34). As mentioned earlier, Columbus had no idea of this spatial dimension since he assumed that he had discovered the islands off the coast of Cathay, i.e. China. Those who followed him in the subsequent decade realized fast that Columbus had erred. At the latest when Vespucci’s Novo Mundus was published in 1502/03, the continental character of the discovered areas was established, even if it was still to take a long time until this knowledge became influential on a larger scale. These developments marked a decisive change in the European worldview.

The discovery opened up completely new spaces (→ Atlantic, I/3). Soon, it was even proved that one could sail around the earth, which provided the basis for a new consciousness of the world. In 1492, the newly discovered territories, as a new continent, started an exchange with what had suddenly become the “Old World,” which, in turn, established increasingly more networks. There were transatlantic processes of exchange that assumed global dimensions. Europe rose from being an appendix of the Eurasian land mass that had been insignificant in terms of world history to becoming “the West,” which could subsequently set standards (Abellán 2009, 13).

European empires became the colonial masters of alien and far remote peoples (→ Conquest and Colonization, I/7), whom they oppressed and exploited in a bloody manner (→ Colonial Rule, I/5, Unfree Labor, I/19). Economic ties (→ Colonial Economies, I/4) made possible trade with alien goods, some of which fundamentally changed ways of living. The migration (→ I/15) of people from different continents – some voluntary, much of it forced – gave rise to a new kind of population (→ Hybridity, I/30). Women were generally kept in subservient roles (→ Gender, I/9). With the people came animals, plants, and germs (→ Columbian Exchange, I/6). As Europe was seizing America, Christianity spread as a world religion and made some advances in the competition with Islam (→ Religion and Missionizing, I/17). The interactions changed not only those directly involved in them. It is beyond doubt that from a European perspective, the Day of Guanahani was a turning point in history.

But was this also true for the “discovered,” who, in contrast to Columbus, did not leave any written records of the events? It is not only because of the issue of missing written sources that the indigenous peoples were regarded for centuries merely as passive objects of European action and did not have their own voice. In a way, they were taken to be part of the wilderness which was to be pushed back. It was a crucial component of their new view of the world promoted by the discovery that Europeans now saw themselves as the center and masters of the world (→ Memorial Culture, I/14).

Thanks to archeological and ethnohistorical research, we have a more differentiated sense of the perspective of the indigenous today (→ Indigenous Peoples, I/11). For a long time, it had been assumed that the indigenous considered the arrival of Europeans to be the return of the gods, therefore integrating them into their messianic prophecies. This view was based on the assumption that indigenous communities were “traditional” and therefore unable to give a rational explanation for the foreign. There was usually no awareness that this kind of reasoning relied on a certain European understanding of rational action, nor was there a realization that Columbus himself did not adhere to that standard.

The reinterpretation of sources revealed that things were probably quite different for many “discovered” peoples. The various indigenous ethnic groups reacted rather pragmatically to the new and they were certainly able to put the arrival of Europeans in a larger context since they had historical knowledge, even if they passed on this historical knowledge in a different manner – usually orally – from one generation to the next (→ Language, I/13). The arrival of Europeans was surely a surprising experience for most of them but the unexpected encounter with strangers who were culturally different and superior in terms of armament was nothing new, especially in the Caribbean region. The Lucayan people of Guanahani probably saw the strangers as messengers from the realm of the dead, but they were not helpless vis-à-vis the newcomers.

The indigenous communities and empires on the mainland were to react differently again and in very diverse ways to the European invaders (→ Interethnic Relations, I/12). The reason for this range of reactions is that this was a process that was started in 1492 but that extended over many decades, even centuries. From an indigenous perspective, there was a big difference between encountering the first discoverers at the end of the 15th century and seeing the conquest of the Inca Empire forty years later, since knowledge about the newly arrived from Europe had changed considerably. Even by 1570, when the Iberian empires had consolidated, the vast expanses of America had by no means been conquered in their totality. Depending on the historical context and on the cultural background of the very diverse communities whom Columbus had subsumed under the term “indio,” the experiences made in the encounter of Europeans varied immensely (→ Indigeneity, I/31).

Nonetheless, we can also speak of October 12, 1492 as a turning point for the indigenous population, without succumbing to Eurocentrism. After all, this date doubtlessly marked the beginning of one of the biggest demographic catastrophes in human history. To be sure, invasions, the reign of foreigners, and the superimposition of cultures and empires by new arrivals had already characterized pre-Columbian history. The ancestors of the Lucayan and Taíno people whom Columbus encountered in the Caribbean had once themselves pushed out communities living there (Robiou Lamarche 2003, 166). But the European conquerors and soon also the African slaves (→ Slavery, I/18) meant completely new challenges for people in America. Their lives were to change more fundamentally than ever. This is why the Day of Guanahani also constitutes an irreversible turning point for the American indigenous peoples.

1760–1830

The discovery and conquest of what was for the Europeans a New World was followed by the establishment of a new colonial rule (→ I/5) practiced not only by Spain but soon also by other European powers like England and France. The next period that was significant for world history and for inter-American relations was marked toward the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century by the revolutions of independence in the Americas ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Academic advisory board
• Acknowledgments
• General introduction to the Routledge Handbook to the history and society of the Americas
• Part I History and society in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century
• Part II History and society in the Americas in the 20th and 21st centuries
• Index