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This book deepens our understanding of race and the implications of racial mixture by examining the history of caste in colonial Mexico.
This study uses the participation of free colored men, whether mulatos, pardos, or morenos (i.e., Afro-Spaniards, Afro-Indians, or "pure blacks"), in New Spain's militias as a prism for examining race relations, racial identity, racial categorization, and issues of social mobility for racially stigmatized groups in colonial Mexico. By 1793, nearly 10 percent of New Spain's population was made up of people who could trace some African ancestrypeople subject to more legal disabilities and social discrimination than mestizos, who in turn fell below white creoles, who in turn fell below the Spanish-born, in the stratified and caste-like society of colonial Spanish America. The originality of t...
Virgil Richardson blazed his own unique trail through the twentieth century: a co-founder of Harlem's American Negro Theater, 1930s radio personality, World War II pilot, and expatriate for most of his life. In Flight, this remarkable man tells his story in his own vivid words. Educated in Texas, Richardson set out for New York City in 1938 to build a career on the stage. Just when he was on the brink of success as an actor, World War II broke out and he was drafted into the army. After overcoming numerous obstacles, Richardson became a Tuskegee cadet in 1943, and later saw action flying over the battlefields of Europe. Upon returning to the racially divided U.S., he decided to move to Mexico, where he encountered a society quite different from the one he had left behind. Compellingly told and historically fascinating, this is the story of a determined individual unwilling to accept the limited options of Jim Crow America.
The first study of the complex relationships among the races in Latin America after Spanish colonization.
Arming slaves as soldiers is a counterintuitive idea. Yet throughout history, in many varied societies, slaveholders have entrusted slaves with the use of deadly force. This book is the first to survey the practice broadly across space and time, encompassing the cultures of classical Greece, the early Islamic kingdoms of the Near East, West and East Africa, the British and French Caribbean, the United States, and Latin America. To facilitate cross-cultural comparisons, each chapter addresses four crucial issues: the social and cultural facts regarding the arming of slaves, the experience of slave soldiers, the ideological origins and consequences of equipping enslaved peoples for battle, and the impact of the practice on the status of slaves and slavery itself. What emerges from the book is a new historical understanding: the arming of slaves is neither uncommon nor paradoxical but is instead both predictable and explicable.
Eighteenth-century Spain drew on the Enlightenment to reconfigure its role in the European balance of power. As its force and its weight declined, Spanish thinkers discouraged war and zealotry and pursued peace and cooperation to reconfigure the international Spanish Empire.
This collection of essays by the historian and activist Aviva Chomsky includes work on topics ranging from immigration, to labor history, to popular culture. Chomsky’s incisive prose brings the perspective of a historian to bear on current events in a way that adds depth and nuance to topics that are of the utmost importance at this moment in world history. Unwanted People fits into Chomsky’s larger project to debunk the mythical history of the United States as a nation of immigrants or a melting pot. Her work uncovers centuries of racially motivated immigration policies that inform the current rhetoric surrounding immigration and displaced peoples. Her essays build on that foundation and expand into new territory. Exploring history as a discipline that works from the ground up rather than from the top down, Chomsky challenges the dominant narratives and gives voice to disenfranchised and unwanted people. Touching on topics from revolutionary violence and race to colonialism and its aftermath, this collection of lucid thoughts reveals the hidden histories of the people who shape our modern political and economic landscape.
2023 Best Book in the Humanities, Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section Challenging conventional narratives of Mexican history, this book establishes race-making as a central instrument for the repression of social upheaval in nineteenth-century Mexico rather than a relic of the colonial-era caste system. Many scholars assert that Mexico’s complex racial hierarchy, inherited from Spanish colonialism, became obsolete by the turn of the nineteenth century as class-based distinctions became more prominent and a largely mestizo population emerged. But the residues of the colonial caste system did not simply dissolve after Mexico gained independence. Rather, Ana Sabau argues, ever-p...
Beyond Slavery traces the enduring impact and legacy of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean in the modern era. In a rich set of essays, the volume explores the multiple ways that Africans have affected political, economic, and cultural life throughout the region. The contributors engage readers interested in the African diaspora in a series of vigorous debates ranging from agency and resistance to transculturation, displacement, cross-national dialogue, and popular culture. Documenting the array of diverse voices of Afro-Latin Americans throughout the region, this interdisciplinary book brings to life both their histories and contemporary experiences.
Las conexiones entre distintos procesos históricos desarrollados a uno y otro lado de las fronteras ibéricas nos invitan a insistir en dos cuestiones fundamentales. En primer lugar, la importancia de la mirada conjunta a la hora de estudiar este periodo crucial en dos monarquías que estuvieron unidas cuando se definían algunos de los rasgos más relevantes de sus imperios; y, en segundo lugar, la necesidad de descentralizar este análisis colocando en primer plano una diversidad de actores y paisajes que en toda América Latina —y con independencia de su pertenencia a una y otra monarquía— dieron diferentes respuestas a los proyectos reformistas y a la crisis imperial desatada con las invasiones napoleónicas a la Península Ibérica. El ocaso del antiguo régimen en los imperios ibéricos reúne dieciséis artículos que analizan aspectos de características similares en los imperios de España y Portugal, incluyendo sus territorios ultramarinos, durante el tránsito del siglo XVIII al XIX.