Making sense of each other: Indigenous People and Europeans in the American colonies of Spain

general courses

The course discusses the encounter between the Indigenous People of the Americas – with a focus on the Nahua people of Mesoamerica and the Quechua people of the Andean region – and the Europeans – particularly the Spanish empire – which started in the 16th century and whose outcomes continue to shape the world we live in. Although the first several lectures will be dedicated to presenting an overview of the precolonial history and culture of Mesoamerica and the Andean region, as well as the history of the onset of the Spanish colonization, the main focus of the course will be on the cultural impact of the encounter. In particular, the topic which will be explored during the classes is the conceptualization of the Other, and of oneself, in the circumstances brought about by the encounter, and in the framework of the European Christian, Mesoamerican and Andean religious, philosophical and political worldviews.

The course discusses the encounter between the Indigenous People of the Americas – with a focus on the Nahua people of Mesoamerica and the Quechua people of the Andean region – and the Europeans – particularly the Spanish empire – which started in the 16th century and whose outcomes continue to shape the world we live in. Although the first several lectures will be dedicated to presenting an overview of the precolonial history and culture of Mesoamerica and the Andean region, as well as the history of the onset of the Spanish colonization, the main focus of the course will be on the cultural impact of the encounter. In particular, the topic which will be explored during the classes is the conceptualization of the Other, and of oneself, in the circumstances brought about by the encounter, and in the framework of the European Christian, Mesoamerican and Andean religious, philosophical and political worldviews.

For the European side, the most pressing problems—at least intellectually—in the situation of the encounter were those connected to its religious and ethical dimensions. The “discovery” of previously unheard of lands, people and civilizations provoked Early Modern European thinkers to reconsider their convictions about the world, as well as the divine, human, and demonic forces in operation therein. On a more practical side, the challenges of Christianization caused a significant development in so different disciplines as catechetical theology on the one hand and linguistics on the other. The discussions about the legal and ethical aspects of the conquest and colonization, in turn, left a longstanding legacy still present not only in the polical discourse, but also in the popular culture.

For the Indigenous People of Mesoamerica and the Andes, the onset of Spanish colonization brought about an all-encompasing change in their way of life. After a relatively short but devastating period of warfare and arbitrary violence, they found themselves entangled in a system of colonial exploitation; they faced also a planned destruction of numerous aspects of their cultures, which the Europeans deemed “idolatrous”. On the demographic level, their population were decimated not only by violence, anomie, and exploitation, but also by epidemic diseases brought from Europe. Nevertheless, many of the Indigenous people and communities were able to use both the cultural resources inherited from their ancestors and those adopted from the newcomers in order to negotiate their status in the colonial reality, both on the immediate, social and political, and—through the work of Indigenous intellectuals—on the ideological levels.

The enslaved Black Africans in the Spanish Empire—who constituted the “other” Other of the colonial encounter in the Americas—due to the severity of the oppression which they suffered, were for the most part left voiceless in the historical sources; nevertheless the influence of their presence on the European and Indigenous cultures will also be discussed. The idea of human “races” and the “revival” of slavery in the Early Modern European world are intimately connected to the colonial enterprise and the discussion of those aspects will recur during the course.

Selected bibliography:

David Abulafia 2008. The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Rolena Adorno 2000. Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Sonia Alconini & R. Alan Covey (eds.) 2018. The Oxford Handbook of the Incas. Sonia Alconini & R. Alan Covey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frances F. Berdan et al. 1996. Aztec Imperial Strategies. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Galen Brokaw & Jongsoo Lee (eds.) 2016. Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl and His Legacy. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

Louise M. Burkhart 1989. The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogie in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

Sara Castro-Klarén & Christian Fernández (eds.) 2016. Inca Garcilaso & Contemporary World Making. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

R. Alan Covey 2020. Inca Apocalypse: The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stelia Cro 1990. The Noble Savage: Allegory of Freedom. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurir University Press.

Alan Durston 2007. Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation in Colonial Peru, 1550-1654. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Friedrich Edelmayer 2011. „The leyenda negra and the Circulation of Anti-Catholic and Anti-Spanish Prejudices”. Europäische Geschichte Online.

Ter Ellingson 2001. The Myth of the Noble Savage. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

James Robert Enterline 2002. Erikson, Eskimos & Columbus: Medieval European Knowledge of America. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press.

Nancy Farris 2018. Tongues of Fire. Language and Evangelization in Colonial Mexico. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto 1987. Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 1229-1492. London: Macmillan Education.

Valerie I. J. Flint 1992. The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Andrew B. Fisher and Matthew D. O’Hara (eds.) 2009. Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America. Durham: Duke Univeristy Press

James W. Fuerst 2018. New World Postcolonial: The Political Thought of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Richard H. Godden & Asa Simon Mittman (eds.) 2019. Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, & Maureen Quilligan (eds.) 2007. Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jonathan Hart 2003. Columbus, Shakespeare, and the Interpretation of the New World. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Paul J. Hauben 1977. „White Legend against Black: Nationalism and Enlightenment in a Spanish Context”. The Americas 34 (1): 1-19.

Benjamin Keen 1969. „The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities”. The Hispanic American Historical Review 49 (4): 703-719.

Benjamin Keen 1971. „The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke’s »Modest Proposal«”. The Hispanic American Historical Review 51 (2): 336-355.

Susanne Klaus 1999. Uprooted Christianity. The Preaching of the Christian Doctrine in Mexico Based on Franciscan Sermons of the 16th Century Written in Nahuatl. Bonn: Saurwein.

Gonzalo Lamana 2008. Domination without Dominance: Inca-Spanish Encounters in Early Colonial Peru. Durham: Duke University Press.

Jongso Lee 2008. The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl. Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

David L. Livingstone 2008. Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion & the Politics of Human Origins. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

James Lockhart 1992. The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Walter D. Mignolo 1995. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Elizabeth Moore Willingham 2015. The Mythical Indies and Columbus’s Apocalyptic Letter: Imagining the Americas in the Late Middle Ages. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press.

William D. Phillips, Jr. & Carla Rahn Phillips 1992. The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sofia Reding Blase 2009. El buen salvaje y el canibal. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Matthew Restall 2003. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Matthew Restall 2018. When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

Duane W. Roller 2015. Ancient Geography. The Discovery of the World in Classical Greece and Rome. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

John Frederick Schwaller 2011. The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America: From Conquest to Revolution and Beyond. New York: New York University Press.

Colin Kidd 2006. The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Argelia Segovia Liga 2017. „The Rupture Generation”: Nineteenth Century Nahua Intellectuals in Mexico City, 1774-1882. Universiteit Leiden.

Asa Simon Mittman & Peter J. Dendle (eds.) 2017. The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. London and New York: Routledge.

Lisa Sousa, Stafford Poole, James Lockhart (ed. & transl.) 1998. The Story of Guadalupe. Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuiçoltica of 1649. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Guy Stresser-Péan 2009. The Sun God and the Savior. The Christianization of the Nahua and Totonac in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Ryszard Tomicki 1990. Ludzie i bogowie: Indianie meksykańscy wobec Hiszpanów we wczesnej fazie konkwisty. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.

Camilla Townsend 2003. „Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico.” The American Historical Review 108 (3): 659-687.

Camilla Townsend 2006. Malintzin’s Choices. And Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Camilla Townsend 2017. Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Camilla Townsend 2019. Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Knowledge: the student

Understands the cultural and social processes taking place in the Spanish colonies in the Americas and their relevance for the Indigenous and European cultures (K_W01).

Understands the relationships between the various dimensions of social change in the context of colonialism and knows the approaches to this process related to many scientific fields and disciplines (K_W02).

Understands the historical and cultural ties between Europe and Latin America (K_W03).

Knows the advanced methods of analysis and interpretation of cultural texts created from European and Indigenous perspectives (K_W07).

Abilities: the student

Is able to approach critically both historical sources and modern cultural narrations concerning the Spanish colonization of the Americas (K_U01).

Is able to interpret social processes taking place in the Spanish colonies in the Americas and their influence on the modern world (K_U04).

Social competences: the student

Is ready to question their preconceptions about the historical processes that shaped the modern world (K_K01).

Is ready to show respect for partners in the discussion and uses substantive arguments; understands the principles of tolerance and cultural differences, particularly the value of historically colonized and minoritized cultures (K_K05).

The course ends with a written exam. 2 unexcused absences per semester are permitted without consequences, further 2 absences can be made up after consultation. 5 or more absences are grounds for failing the course.