An accessible reader of both popular and largely unavailable writings of Bartolomé de las Casas
 
With the exception of Christopher Columbus, Bartolomé de las Casas is arguably the most notable figure of the Encounter Age. He is remembered principally as the creator of the Black Legend, as well as the protector of American Indians. He was one of the pioneers of the human rights movement, and a Christian activist who invoked law and Biblical scripture to challenge European colonialism in the great age of the Encounter. He was also one of the first and most thorough chroniclers of the conquest, and a biographer who saved the diary of Columbus’s first voyage for posterity by transcribing it in his History of the Indies before the diary was lost.
 
Bartolomé de las Casas and the Defense of Amerindian Rights: A Brief History with Documents provides the most wide-ranging and concise anthology of Las Casas’s writings, in translation, ever made available. It contains not only excerpts from his most well-known texts, but also his largely unavailable writings on political philosophy and law, and addresses the underappreciated aspects of his thought. Fifteen of the twenty-six documents are entirely new translations of Las Casas’s writings, a number of them appearing in English for the first time.
 
This volume focuses on his historical, political, and legal writings that address the deeply conflicted and violent sixteenth-century encounter between Europeans and indigenous peoples of the Americas. It also presents Las Casas as a more comprehensive and systematic philosophical and legal thinker than he is typically given credit for. The introduction by Lawrence A. Clayton and David M. Lantigua places these writings into a synthetic whole, tracing his advocacy for indigenous peoples throughout his career. By considering Las Casas’s ideas, actions, and even regrets in tandem, readers will understand the historical dynamics of Spanish imperialism more acutely within the social-political context of the times.
 

A fascinating account of a Spanish conquistador who attempted to rule in South America with respect for justice and law for indigenous peoples but was returned to Spain in chains
 
Unlike many Spanish conquistadores who brought to the Americas a wave of disease, destruction, and oppression, Cabeza de Vaca’s stated intention was to pursue a different kind of conquest—one that would be just and humane, true to Spanish religion and law, and one that safeguarded liberty and justice for the indigenous peoples of the New World.

Bringing to South America skills and experiences earned with native peoples in North America, however, Cabeza de Vaca both failed to understand the indigenous peoples in the south and alienated many Spanish settlers in the Rio de la Plata Province, whose economic interests he threatened. Eventually the Spanish colonists formed a conspiracy to remove him from power and return him to Spain in chains.

That Cabeza de Vaca was overthrown is not surprising. His ideas and policies opposed the self-interest of most of the first Spaniards who had come to America, although he inspired the support of many even after his humiliating return to Spain. In Conquistador in Spain, historian David Howard provides a fascinating account of the rise and fall of this colonial idealist.

Examining maps and placemaking during negotiations between Indigenous people and colonial settlers
 
Between 1500 and 1700, Indigenous and English mapmakers across the North Atlantic depicted present-day New England in markedly distinct ways, highlighting how differently their communities understood the landscape. While English cartographers relied on new mathematics and other developing scientific knowledge from Europe, as well as an overhead perspective of the world, Algonquian mapmakers drew on deep knowledge of the landscape, derived from their communities’ long history upon it. Nathan Braccio refers to this phenomenon as “parallel landscapes.”

Creating New England, Defending the Northeast asserts that Algonquian knowledge of the landscape represented a powerful and persistent alternative to English surveying and mapmaking in the Northeast. When English colonists and explorers recognized the unsuitability of their techniques for understanding New England’s unfamiliar landscape, they attempted to appropriate Indigenous knowledge and maps. Algonquian sachems used this as an opportunity to control and benefit from their new English neighbors. Later, as the English became insecure in their dependence on Indigenous people, they began to remake and mark the landscape. Algonquians adapted, maintaining control of important spatial knowledge, even in a place no longer entirely of their making. This story complicates narratives of conquest and highlights the Indigenous spatial knowledge too often overlooked.
 

“For those interested in De Soto and his expedition, these volumes are an absolute necessity.” —The Hispanic American Historical Review

The De Soto expedition was the first major encounter of Europeans with indigenous North Americans in the eastern half of the United States. De Soto and his army of over 600 men, including 200 cavalry, spent four years traveling through what is now Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. The De Soto Chronicles Volume 1 and Volume 2 present for the first time all four primary accounts of the De Soto expedition together in English translation.

The four primary accounts are generally referred to as Elvas, Rangel, Biedma (in Volume 1), and Garcilaso, or the Inca (in Volume 2). In this landmark 1993 publication, Clayton’s team presents the four accounts with literary and historical introductions. They further add brief essays about De Soto and the expedition, translations of De Soto documents from the Spanish Archivo General de Indias, two short biographies of De Soto, and bibliographical studies.

For anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, The De Soto Chronicles are valued for the unique ethnological information they contain. They form the only detailed eyewitness records of the most advanced native civilization in North America—the Mississippian culture—a culture largely lost in the wake of European contact. 

At the turn of the eighteenth century, Indigenous nations designated Detroit as a “common bowl” and a crucial nexus where they shared resources, made compromises, and coexisted. As the century unfolded, Detroit continued as a polyglot community in the face of expanding Euro-American settlement. The region became a highly charged space where the rituals of political negotiation grew in importance alongside a constant threat of violence. British political and economic systems continued to operate long after the end of the American Revolution, creating a shared cultural border at the end of the eighteenth century that would endure even as the American Empire reestablished rule on the north side of the river. Both Anishinaabe and Wyandot people set aside land for future occupation of their people, re-creating another transnational space in the region. A hundred years later, issues of race, economic development, political partisanship, and overlapping national claims continued to resonate as the city commemorated and mythologized its origins. This book considers how larger watershed occasions impacted the Detroit region and how, in turn, the unique particularities of local custom impacted regional and national trade and politics and the very nature of how the city continues to view its past.

A groundbreaking history of political struggle in the Spanish New World, where commoners and elites alike challenged the social order through the remarkable power of paperwork.

As Spanish conquistadors swept through the New World, the Crown envisioned that a rigidly hierarchical aristocratic order would flourish in their wake. At first, this vision seemed to be within reach: the great conquistadors ruled as noblemen over millions. Yet contrary to all expectations, the Spanish empire in the New World quickly became a hotbed of radical efforts to overturn the emerging order. With the conquistadors in retreat, new enclaves controlled by powerful friars and native lords arose. But they too collapsed, again to the surprise of many.

As Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters show, these social orders broke down thanks to the challenges mounted by countless individuals across the Spanish Americas—including non-elite Spanish and Indigenous people, women, and the enslaved. To achieve their goals, they turned not only to outright violence but also to massive amounts of paperwork: petitions, complaints, lawsuits, and secret testimonies. Through this grassroots “lawfare,” vassals undercut the emerging seigneurial dynasties of the conquistadors, stripped the friars of theocratic authority, and curtailed the might of native lords. Collectively, they spearheaded movements against tyranny and slavery, proposed and challenged laws, produced new types of knowledge, created archives and historical accounts, and questioned the nature of truth itself. In the process, however, these actors also gradually co-created a lasting new society of orders—one that would solidify in the 1570s with viceroys, bishops, and inquisitors at its apex.

Dramatically recasting a pivotal era in colonial history, The Radical Spanish Empire illuminates how the power of paperwork forever transformed the New World.