Contested Ground

Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire

Donna J. Guy, Thomas E. Sheridan

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9780816518609, 9780816518593
• eBook ISBN: 9780816544585
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: History

The Spanish empire in the Americas spanned two continents and a vast diversity of peoples and landscapes. Yet intriguing parallels characterized conquest, colonization, and indigenous resistance along its northern and southern frontiers, from the role played by Jesuit missions in the subjugation of native peoples to the emergence of livestock industries, with their attendant cowboys and gauchos and threats of Indian raids. In this book, nine historians, three anthropologists, and one sociologist compare and contrast these fringes of New Spain between 1500 and 1880, showing that in each region the frontier represented contested ground where different cultures and polities clashed in ways heretofore little understood. The contributors reveal similarities in Indian-white relations, military policy, economic development, and social structure; and they show differences in instances such as the emergence of a major urban center in the south and the activities of rival powers. The authors also show how ecological and historical differences between the northern and southern frontiers produced intellectual differences as well. In North America, the frontier came to be viewed as a land of opportunity and a crucible of democracy; in the south, it was considered a spawning ground of barbarism and despotism. By exploring issues of ethnicity and gender as well as the different facets of indigenous resistance, both violent and nonviolent, these essays point up both the vitality and the volatility of the frontier as a place where power was constantly being contested and negotiated.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. On Frontiers: The Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire in the Americas - Donna J. Guy and Thomas E. Sheridan
• 2. The Jesuit Mission Frontier in Comparative Perspective: The Reductions of the Río de la Plata and the Missions of Northwestern Mexico, 1588-1700 - Daniel T. Reff
• 3. Indigenous Rebellions on the Northern Mexican Mission Frontier: From First-Generation to Later Colonial Responses - Susan M. Deeds
• 4. The Colonial Pact and Changing Ethnic Frontiers in Highland Sonora, 1740-1840 - Cynthia Radding
• 5. Women of the Buenos Aires Frontier, 1740-1810 (or the Gaucho Turned Upside Down) - Susan Migden Socolow
• 6. Spanish Colonial Military Strategy and Ideology - Richard W. Slatta
• 7. Comparative Raiding Economies: North and South - Kristine L. Jones
• 8. Interethnic Conflict and Resistance on the Brazilian Frontier of Goiás, 1750-1890 - Mary Karasch
• 9. North to the Yerbales: The Exploitation of the Paraguayan Frontier, 1776-1810 - Jerry W. Cooney
• 10. The Río de la Plata and the Greater Southwest: A View from World-System Theory - Thomas D. Hall
• 11. The Frontier as an Arena of Social and Economic Change: Wealth Distribution in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires Province - Lyman L. Johnson
• 12. Two, Three, Many Barbarisms?: The Chihuahuan Frontier in Transition from Society to Politics - Daniel Nugent
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Contributors
• About the Editors
• Index