Description
According to conventional wisdom, in the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal served as a model to the English for how to go about establishing colonies in the New World and Africa. By the eighteenth century, however, it was Spain and Portugal that aspired to imitate the British. Editor Jorge Canizares-Esguerra and the contributors to Entangled Empires challenge these long-standing assumptions, exploring how Spain, Britain, and Portugal shaped one another throughout the entire period, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. They argue that these empires were interconnected from the very outset in their production and sharing of knowledge as well as in their economic activities. Willingly or unwillingly, African slaves, Amerindians, converso traders, smugglers, missionaries, diplomats, settlers, soldiers, and pirates crossed geographical, linguistic, and political boundaries and cocreated not only local but also imperial histories. Contributors reveal that entanglement was not merely a process that influenced events in the colonies after their founding; it was constitutive of European empire from the beginning.
The essays in Entangled Empires seek to clarify the processes that rendered the intertwined histories of these colonial worlds invisible, including practices of archival erasure as well as selective memorialization. Bringing together a large geography and chronology, Entangled Empires emphasizes the importance of understanding connections, both intellectual and practical, between the English and Iberian imperial projects. The colonial history of the United States ought to be considered part of the history of colonial Latino-America just as Latin-American history should be understood as fundamental to the formation of the United States.
Contributors: Ernesto Bassi, Benjamin Breen, Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Bradley Dixon, Kristie Flannery, Eliga Gould, Michael Guasco, April Hatfield, Christopher Heaney, Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Mark Sheaves, Holly Snyder, Cameron Strang.
Entangled Empires emphasizes the connections between the English and Iberian imperial projects. The colonial history of the United States ought to be considered part of the history of colonial Latino-America just as Latin American history should be understood as fundamental to the constitution of the United States.
About the Author
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra is the Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is coeditor of The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Reviews
"Unlike so many edited collections, this volume remains on topic and consistent in style and complexity, and it provides a genuinely interesting reading experience for both Anglo-Iberian experts and the lay public...This work reveals new intriguing perspectives regarding American history and should act as a starting point for explorations of English and Iberian relationships with the French and Dutch in the region. Indeed, any Early Modern historian - and all focused on Atlantic colonialism - would gain significant benefit from reading this book." * Cerae *
"
[T]he essays of Entangled Empires do much more than explore the connections between the Anglo and Luso-
Spanish Atlantics in new and interesting ways; the collection provides encouragement for more work in a similar vein. It seems obvious that this volume should be the first in a series to explore other 'entangled empires' across the Atlantic and Pacific worlds.
"This book sheds new light on imperial entanglements in the early modern age and makes the argument that historians must move beyond the confines of their respective nations' histories. This implicates scholars and their methods as well as archivists who maintain collections of materials too often oriented toward insular national narratives." * Journal of Colonialism and Colonial *
Book Information
ISBN 9780812249835
Author Jorge Canizares-Esguerra
Format Hardback
Page Count 344
Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press
Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press
