The seventeenth century has been characterized as "Latin America's forgotten century." This landmark work, originally published in 1973, attempted to fill the vacuum in knowledge by providing an account of the first great colonial cycle in Spanish Central America. The colonial Spanish society of the sixteenth century was very different from that described in the eighteenth century. What happened in the Latin American colonies between the first conquests, the seizure of long-accumulated Indian wealth, the first silver booms, and the period of modern raw material supply? How did Latin America move from one stage to the other? What were these intermediate economic stages, and what effect did they have on the peoples living in Latin America? These questions continue to resonate in Latin American studies today, making this updated edition of Murdo J. MacLeod's original work more relevant than ever.

Colonial Central America was a large, populous, and always strategically significant stretch of land. With the Yucatán, it was home of the Maya, one of the great pre-Columbian cultures. MacLeod examines the long-term process it underwent of relative prosperity, depression, and then recovery, citing comparative sources on Europe to describe Central America's great economic, demographic, and social cycles. With an updated historiographical and bibliographical introduction, this fascinating study should appeal to historians, anthropologists, and all who are interested in the colonial experience of Latin America.

Murdo J. Macleod is Emeritus Professor of History of the University of Florida at Gainesville.

• A New Introduction: More than Three Decades of Writing on Spanish Central America, 1973–2006 By Murdo J. MacLeod
• Preface
• By Way of Introduction: The War of the Worlds
• Part One. The Society of Conquest and Encomienda, 1520–1576
  • 1. The Central American Background and Conquest
  • 2. Slaves and Silver: The First Exports
  • 3. Ephemeral Hopes
  • 4. Soconusco, A Hint of Things to Come
  • 5. The Cacao Boom
  • 6. From Conquest to the Emergence of Order and Pattern
  • 7. The Two Republics, Indians and Spaniards, in the Age of Encomienda
• Part Two. Years of Trial and Much Error: The Economics of Search and Diversification, c. 1576–1635
  • 8. Attempts to Revive Declining Industries
  • 9. The Search for New Industries and Trades
  • 10. Indigo, 1580–1720: Possibilities and Frustrations
  • 11. The Effects of the Crisis on Local Populations and Economy
• Part Three. The Seventeenth-Century Depression and the First Signs of Recovery, c. 1635–1720
  • 12. The Aftermath of a Boom: Seventeenth-Century Cacao
  • 13. Honduran Mining: The Emergence of a Local Industry and Culture
  • 14. External Trades in the Depth of the Depression
  • 15. The Currency Crisis
  • 16. Men and Land in Mid-Century: Contraction and Isolation
  • 17. The Two Republics in the Years of Depression
  • 18. Costa Rican Cacao
  • 19. Signs of Strain and Change (c. 1685–1720)
  • 20. The Growth of a New Solution: The Rise of Smuggling
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index