Gendered Crossings

Women and Migration in the Spanish Empire

Allyson M. Poska

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780826356437
• eBook ISBN:
  9780826356444
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Winner of the Best Book Prize from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women

Between 1778 and 1784 the Spanish Crown transported more than 1,900 peasants, including 875 women and girls, from northern Spain to South America in an ill-fated scheme to colonize Patagonia. The story begins as the colonists trudge across northern Spain to volunteer for the project and follows them across the Atlantic to Montevideo. However, before the last ships reached the Americas, harsh weather, disease, and the prospect of mutiny on the Patagonian coast forced the Crown to abandon the project. Eventually, the peasant colonists were resettled in towns outside of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, where they raised families, bought slaves, and gradually integrated into colonial society. Gendered Crossings brings to life the diverse settings of the Iberian Atlantic and the transformations in the peasants’ gendered experiences as they moved around the Spanish Empire.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One Rethinking Empire: Gender, Enlightenment, and the Patagonia Project
• Chapter Two “It will be very advantageous to have some families”: Gender and the Recruitment of the Colonists
• Chapter Three Women and Children at Port
• Chapter Four Women, Children, and the Transatlantic Voyage
• Chapter Five “A Nursery of Vices”: Masculine Crisis in Patagonia
• Chapter Six Gendered Lives at the Edges of Empire
• Chapter Seven Far from Patagonia: Gender on the Spanish Frontier
• Chapter Eight From Peasants to Slave Owners, from Colonists to Vecinos
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index