Interpreting Spanish Colonialism: Empires, Nations, and Legends

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara , Editor
John M. Nieto-Phillips , Editor

Interpreting Spanish Colonialism offers a compelling examination of how historians in Spain and the Americas have come to understand and write about the Spanish colonial past and its meanings for national presents. Working from a transnational perspective, the book brings together scholars of Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The eight essays situate historians' writings within the context of their day, suggesting how "history" has--perhaps more often than not--responded to present-day needs, agendas, and expectations.

This collection retraces the link between historiography and nation-building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also explores how and why Spain and its colonies came to be depicted as "backward" and "marginal" to other European and U.S. "modern" regimes. Finally, it questions the contours of contemporary discussions of colonial and postcolonial histories that have remained largely silent about the legacies of centuries of Spanish rule.

Contributors:

Jeremy Adelman is the Walter S. Carpenter III Professor of Spanish Civilization and Culture and chair of the history department, Princeton University.
Astrid Cubano-Iguina is professor of history at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.
José del Valle is associate professor of Hispanic linguistics, Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Antonio Feros is associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Javier Morillo-Alicea has taught history and anthropology at Carleton College, Northfield, MN, and Macalester College, St. Paul.
Dale Tomich is professor of sociology and history at Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY.
Samuel Truett is assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Samuel Truett won the Western History Association's 2006 Bolton-Kinnaird Award for best article on Spanish borderlands history for the chapter "Epics of a Greater America: Herbert Eugene Bolton's Quest for a Transnational American History" in Interpreting Spanish Colonialism.

". . . excellent collection of essays."--The Santa Fe New Mexican

"[An] excellent and eclectic collection of essays...this is a book that should find its way in to many a graduate seminar."--The Americas

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara is associate professor of history and director of Latin American and Latino Studies at Fordham University, New York.

John M. Nieto-Phillips is associate professor of history and Latino studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

6 x 9 279 pages 7 halftones, 2 maps