The Matter of Empire examines the philosophical principles invoked by apologists of the Spanish empire that laid the foundations for the material exploitation of the Andean region between 1520 and 1640. Centered on Potosi, Bolivia, Orlando Bentancor's original study ties the colonizers' attempts to justify the abuses wrought upon the environment and the indigenous population to their larger ideology concerning mining, science, and the empire's rightful place in the global sphere. Bentancor points to the underlying principles of Scholasticism, particularly in the work off Thomas Aquinas, as the basis of the instrumentalist conception of matter and enslavement, despite the inherent contradictions to moral principles. Bentancor grounds this metaphysical framework in a close reading of sixteenth-century debates on Spanish sovereignty in the Americas and treatises on natural history and mining by theologians, humanists, missionaries, mine owners, jurists, and colonial officials. To Bentancor, their presuppositions were a major turning point for colonial expansion and paved the way to global mercantilism.

About the Author
Orlando Bentancor is assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American cultures at Barnard College.

Reviews
"Original, impressive, and important. Bentancor has written, broadly speaking, an intellectual history that brings together a number of fields-among them, economics, history of science and technology, and philosophy-as well as a number of interrelated subjects, such as the histories of metallurgy, racism, imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. This is serious scholarship." -Nicolas Wey-Gomez, California Institute of Technology



Book Information
ISBN 9780822944607
Author Orlando Bentancor
Format Hardback
Page Count 448
Imprint University of Pittsburgh Press
Publisher University of Pittsburgh Press