Routledge Studies in the History of the Americas Transnational Perspectives on

the Conquest and Colonization

of Latin America
1 Memory of the Argentina Disappearances
The Political History of Nunca Más
Emilio Crenzel

2 Projections of Power in the Americas Edited by

Edited by Niels Bjerre-Poulsen, Helene Balsleu Clausen, and Jan Gustafsson
Jenny Mander, David Midgley and
3 Mexico, 1848-1853
Los Años Olvidados
Christine D. Beaule
Edited by Pedro Santoni and'WiLl Fopler

4 Tuberculosis in the Americas, 1870-1945

Beneath the Anguish in Philadelphia and Buenos Aires
Vera Blinn Reber

5 Negotiating Freedom in the Circum-Caribbean

The Jamaican Maroons and Creek Nation Compared
Helen M. McKee

6 The Missile Crisis from a Cuban Perspective

Historical, Archaeological and Anthropological Reflections
Håþ.an Karlsson and Tomas Diez Acosta

7 Science and Society in Latin America

Peripheral Modernities
Pablo Kreimer

8 Traces and Memories of Slavery in the Atlantic World

Edited by Lawrence Aje and Nicolas Gachon

9 Transnational Perspectives on the Conquest and Colonization of Latin

America
Edited by Jenny Mander, Dauid Midgley and Christine D. Beaule

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.rourledge.

com/Routledge-Studies-in-the-History-of-the-Americas/book-series/RSHAM l)\
fi
Routledge
Taylor &Francis Croup

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 _7-

First published 2020

by Routledge
Contents
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an inprint of the Taylor (s Francis Group, an informa business

@ 2020 Taylor Ea Francis

The right of Jenny Mander, David rMidgley and Christine D. Beaule ro be

identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance rvith sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now List of lllustrations vl11
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
AcÞnowledgments x
any information storâge or retrieval system, rvithout permission in rvriting
from the publishers. List of Contributors Xi
Trademarþ notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
rvithout intent to infringe. Introduction 1

Library of Congress Catalogirtg-in-Publication Data JENNY MANDER

Names: Mander, Jenny, editor. I Midgley, David R., 1948- editor. I

Beaule, Christine D., editor.

Title: Transnational perspectives on the conquest and colonization of Larin
America / edited by Jenny Mander, David Midgley and Christine D. Beaule. PART I
Description: Nerv York, NY : Routledge, 2020. I Series: Rourledge studies in Speculations 9
the history of the Americas I Includes bibliographical references and index. ai
Identifiers: LCCN 2019028099 (print) | LCCN 2019028100 (ebook)
ISBN 9780367353100 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429330612 (ebook) |
|
¡i 1 Putting Tierra del Fuego on the Map 11

ISBN 9781000639995 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 978100064497s (mobi) | n BAS GOOIJER

ISBN 9781000649956 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Latin America--Civilization--European influences. I
2 Sir Balthazar Gerbier's Utopian Dreams of the New Síorld,
Latin America--Colonial influence. I Latin America--Intellectual life. I 1649-1660 23
Latin America--Colonization.
Classification: LCC F1408.3 .-f73 2020 (prinr) | LCC F1408.3 (ebook) |
JANE MACREA CAMPBELL
DDC 980--dc23
LC record availa ble at https ://lccn. lo c. gov I 2079028099 3 The Impossible Dialogue between Plato and Epicurus: José
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.lo c.gov/2079028100 Manuel Peramás' Commentørirls on the Paraguayan Missions 35

ISBN: 978-0-367-35310-0 (hbk) FABRIZIO MELAI

ISBN: 978-0-429-33061-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
PART II
by Taylor & Francis Books
Constructions 47

4 Translating Franciscan Poverty in Colonial Latin America 49

JULIA MCCLURE

5 Italian Scientists in South America: Argentina as Constructed by

Paolo Mantegazzt. and Pellegrino Strobel 6t
DIEGO STEFANELLI
 --
vi Contents Contents vii
6 Imagined Indigeneity in Alfred Döblin's Novel Antazonas (1937-1938) 73 PART V
DAVID MIDGLEY Buried Histories 195

7 Challenging Colonial Discourses: the Spanish Imperial Borderland 15 Form and Decorations on Qeros and Unþu: The Impact of Inka
in Chile from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenrh Cenrury 8.5 and Spanish Conquest on Material Culture in Settler Colonial
BEATRIZ ì\4ARÍN-AGUTLERA wtrH LEoNoR,loÁls ¡l¡¡no ¿No States 1.97
SIMóN IIRBINA ARAYA CHRISTINE D. BEAULE

16 Black Space Production in Andean Societies: How Africans and

PART III Their Descendants Shaped Lima's San Lâzaro Neighborhood 210
Records of Appropriation 99 LEO J. GÀROFÀLO

8 Native Artists and the Defense of Territory in Sixteenth-Century 17 Fashioning the 'Other': The Foreign as Diplomatic Currency in
New Spain 101 the Sixteenth-Century Caribbean and in Europe 222
ANA PTJLIDO-RIJLL JOANNA OSTAPKOWICZ

9 A Thing of the Past: Representation, Material Culture, and 18 Imagining the Hispanic Past: The De-Mexicanization of
Indigeneity in Post-Conquest Meso- and Andean South America 114 California, 1880-1930 236
STEFANIE GANGER CARRIE GIBSON

10 The Nationalization of the Ecuadorian Amazon Region in the

Early Twentieth Century: The Salesian Outpost t26 PART VI
CHIARA PAGNOTTA Legacies of Coloniality 249

19 The Lure of the Andes: Peruvian Mountain Guides 'Made in

PART IV Switzerland' 251
Adaptations and Conflations 1,39 ANCELA SANDËRS

11 Aristotelian Politics among the Aztecs: A Nahuatl Adaptation of a 20 The Conquest in Cultural Memory: Peruvian Migrants in Europe 264
Treatise by Denys the Carthusian 141. LESLIE NANCY HERNÁNDEZ NOVA
olvlo -rlvÁnp.z
21 Our Grandmothers' Looms: Q'eqchi' 'Weavers, Museum Textiles
12 The Poetics of Emulation in a Latin American Contexr: Towards and the Repatriation of Lost Knowledge 277
a New Theoretical Framework 156 CALLIE VANDE\VIELE
JoÂo CEZAR DE cASTRo RocHA
22 Afro-Mexico: Images of the Indeterminate 289
13 The Graeco-Roman as an Arena for Conflict: Classical Reception, I-IÌCY FOSTER
Popular Poetry and Power in Northeast Brazil 168
CoNNIE BLooMFIELD-GADÊLHA
Index 304
1.4 The 'Indians of Europe' in Sierra Morena: Reputation, Emulation
and Colonization in the Spanish Enlightenment t82
EDVARD JONES CORREDERA
 T-
xvi List of Contributors
Callie Vandewiele is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Latin American Stu-
dies, a member of Newnham College and a Gates Scholar at the University Introduction
of Cambridge. FIer current research focuses on the role of museums in the
repatriation of heritage textile production in the Alta Yerapaz of Guate-
mala. Her past research interests include masculinities and Protestantism Jenny Mander
(MPhil, University of Cambridge 2014). Recent publications include 'llhat
Our Mothers 'Wove, We'!lear: Heritage Revival in Museum Collections of
Guatemalan Textiles', Journal of Musettm Ethnography 2018.

The identiry of Latin America is indelibly marked by the history of its conquest and
colonization, and this history has structured, and continues to structure, transna-
tional relations across Central and South America and between that continent and
the nations of Europe. As highlighted in the chapter in this volume by Leslie Nancy
Hernández Nova, there are many elements that link the histories of those who see
themselves as Latin Americans, but almost invariably these converge on Spanish
conquest and the 'discovery' of the New \lorld by Christopher Columbus. In the
words of the Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 'History is messy for
the people who must live it' (1995:110). This is particularly true for the children of
transnational migrants for whom the isolation of a single historical moment on
which to build a familiar historical narrative makes the past more manageable. Yet
the fact remains that when Columbus made landfall in the New World it was not
'Latin America' that he discovered and what happened after that landing is not a
simple or inevitable story. To quote Trouillot (1995:139) again:

Between us and Columbus stand the millions of men and women who
succeeded him in crossing the Atlantic by choice or by force, and the
millions of others who witnessed these crossings from either side of the
ocean. They, in turn, provided their own visions of what happened and
their successors continue to modify the script, with both their words and
their deeds. Narratives that straddle eras and continents continuously
replace the Bahamas landfall in the present of its own aftermath.

In this volume, through a combination of transnational perspectives on the

conquest and colonization of Latin America, we make this multiplicity of
narratives the focus of collective enquiry.
Emerging in Europe under French leadership in the middle of the nineteenth
century, the concept of a 'Latin' America - defined against another or other Amer-
icas - is a historical invention that postdates Columbus, Pizarro and Cortés by well
'Síalter
over three hundred years; and critics such as Mignolo (2005) have empha-
sized that the idea of Latin America is inextricably tied to the nation-building men-
talities of this period and their associated colonial epistemologies. Appropriated in
turn by the creole elites of South America and the Spanish Caribbean, the image of a
 7
2 Jenny Mander
homogeneous Latin America has been used to serve the political ideology of mesti-
zøje, concealing the diverse perspectives and historical narratives of the indigenous
peoples, the enormous population of African descent and the 40 million Latinxs in
the United States. From Mignolo's perspective, the term 'Latin' America carries the
full weight of Spanish, Portuguese and French imperial power just as 'British' India
carries that of the British Empire, and the only way to decolonize Latin America, he
argues, is to erase that name from the world map. However, as others have pointed
out (for example, Gobat 2013), the transnational concept of Latin America has also
been shaped from the outset by an anti-imperial and democratic ethos. It is a con-
cept that not only continues to inspire passionate leaders of the left such as the late
Hugo Chávez, but also commands fresh support from a number of Latinx activists
and artists seeking to remâp the US-Mexican borderlands, even the entire United
States, as 'Latin America.' If nothing else, the current debate about the future of
Latin America points up the extent to which its geographical contours are histori-
cally contingent and anything other than static (Gobat 2013:1375).
In the chapters that follow, the conquest and colonization of the region to which
we âre referring broadly - and, in certain senses, anachronistically - as 'Latin
America' are considered through a series of discrete case studies undertaken by
scholars working across a wide range of disciplines from sociology to archaeology,
and from cultural history to literary criticism. The case studies presented range
equally widely across history and geography. Seen thus from a multiplicity of van-
tage points, the territorial ambiguity and inherent diversity of what is often casually
referred to as 'Latin America' becomes apparent, and different and often unfamiliar
perspectives emerge into view. Rather than organize the chapters strictly according
to time, place or methodology, we have arranged them in such as way thar their
thematic concerns may resonate effectively with each other and encourage readers
to venture across disciplinary as well as geographical borders. Thus, we have
grouped the chapters under broad headings that are indicative of points of connec-
tion rather than denoting an analytical agenda: 'Speculations,' 'Constructions,'
'Records of Appropriation,' 'Adaptions and Conflations,' 'Buried Histories' and
'Legacies of Coloniality.'
One major objective of the collection is to expand the historiographical exam-
ination of the European conquest and colonization of Latin America beyond Span-
ish and Portuguese perspectives that are more familiar to those working in the field
of Latin American studies. The myth of the exceptional brutality of the Spanish and
Portuguese conquistadors - the 'Spanish Black Legend' - very much defined the
image of Spain in early modern Europe (as Edward Jones Corredera notes in this
volume). For the other nations of Europe, this provided an expedient and effective
foil in the past for their own incursions and colonial projects in South America and
has, arguably, continued to this day to divert attention from their own imperial
designs. Diego Stefanelli's chapter, for example, brings an Italian perspective,
examining the contribution made by scientific thought to the process of colonizarion
in the nineteenth century based on the representation of Argentina in books by the
Italian scientists Paolo Mantegazza and Pellegrino Strobel. Stefanelli's analysis of
their writings shows how these were conceived to appeal to Italian entrepreneurs
lntroduction 3
and potential migrants from lower socio-economic strata as well as to â scientific
readership, combining images of a reassuringly familiar urban culture in Argenti-
nian cities with those of an as-yet untamed landscape ripe for capitalistic exploita-
tion. The chapter by Angela Sanders suggests how the colonizing impulse remained
active after the Second World \üar by examining the ways in which Switzerland,
ostensibly a neutral figure in the history ofEuropean overseas colonization, shaped
the mountaineering industry in the Andes to the extent that the mountain range of
the Cordillera Blanca became known as'La Suiza Peruana.' Sanders shows us how
the development practices that enabled the Swiss to present themselves as pioneers,
conquerors of previously unclimbed mountains and trainers of Peruvian mountain
guides amounted to a symbolic appropriation of the Andes in the cause of
'alpinism.'
Jane MacRea Campbell and Bas Gooijer bring wider European perspectives
from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - that is, before the consolida-
tion of the system of sovereign nation states on the basis of the Peace of !íestphalia
(\648) - foregrounding the movement of people and ideas across Europe that
shaped colonial knowledge and investment in colonial schemes. Campbell dis-
cusses the case of the Anglo-Dutch courtier and would-be colonist, Sir Balthazar
Gerbier who sought investment in his 'Project for establishing a new state in
America' (1649) from the Prince of Orange, the Prince Elector Palatine and the
King of Sweden, amongst others. Gerbier's envisaged state was never realized but
Campbell argues that this extravagant fantasy shaped by a reformist imagination
points to the role played by this and other utopian schemes in shaping the form and
vision of colonialism in the Americas, and therefore also the need for their inclu-
sion in the historiographies of Latin America. \florking from the history of carto-
graphy, Gooijer examines the conjectures that Europeans brought to bear on the
region they called Tierra del Fuego, focusing in particular on the part played by
Flemish migrants in translating wider European stereotypes and misunderstandings
of the region and its population, in the absence of meaningful contact, into osten-
sibly scientific maps that represented the land as empty and devoid of civilization.
As both these chapters suggest, it is not only historians who have constructed,
communicated or contested the history of conquest and colonialism of Latin
America. Bringing a German perspective to the volume, David Midgley presents
Alfred Doblin's epic novel Amazonas (193718) as an example of the critical work
that can be undertaken by narrative fiction, not least through its freedom to reima-
gine the past from indigenous perspectives that are not to be found in history books.
Although Döblin was writing in Europe for Europeans, he succeeded, Midgley
argues, in rising above stereotypical European images of native South Americans by
paying close attention to the most reliable ethnographic information available to
him, conveying a strong as well as sympathetic sense of the lived culture and beliefs
of the indigenous peoples, and turning theft gaze back on twentieth-century Europe,
which Döblin objectifies as'the new jungle.'
The chapter by Edward Jones Corredera brings to light another German dimen-
sion in his discussion of a Spanish project, under the leadership of Pablo de Olavide,
to colonize the depopulated peninsular region of Sierra Morena with six thousand
 Y_
4 Jenny Mander
Catholic German settlers. Corredera establishes how this proiect was conceived by
Charles III's leading reformers in the late t760sto redress the protracted impact of
Spanish imperial conquests on Spain itself by emulating Enlightenment population
policies. Yet, as Corredera shows, far from laying to rest the narrative of the Black
Legend, the new settlements embodied the dilemmas of empire that would dom-
inate the debates on the Cadiz Constitution and the subsequent wave of Latin
American independence movements. Corredera's chapter provides an illustration
of how the narratives of conquest and colonization have played a formative role in
shaping politics within and between the nations of Europe. Fabrizio Melai offers a
connected example of how the historiography of colonial activity in Latin America
was used âs a site for contesting power and place within Europe in the Age of
Revolution. With particular reference to the 1793 commentary of the former Jesuit
José Manuel Peramás, he considers how the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay, fol-
lowing their dissoluti on in 1767 and the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773,
became the focus of mythologizing histories. As Melai demonstrates, by presenting
the Reductions as a realization of the classic political ideal of Plato, in opposition
to the Epicurean ideal associated with the French Revolution, Peramás's commen-
tary constituted an attempt to rehabilitate the Jesuits as leaders of a spiritual re-
conquest of Europe.
In a similar vein, Stefanie Gänger considers the historical processes by which
'antiquities'- especially those associated with the Inka and Mexica empires - were
used in post-conquest Meso- and Andean South America to construct an image of
the pre-Columbian past with which to fashion a new political American identity
for creole society, while bypassing the continued existence of the indigenous
population. Her chapter argues that these objects, which accrued associations with
mythical autochthony and political legitimacy, paradoxically owed their'aura' and
iconic status in the global imaginary to the processes of commodification that
transformed them into monetized collectables. Chiara Pagnotta points to
the financial support given by Catholic congregations elsewhere in the world to the
work undertaken by the Salesian Missions towards the nationalization of the
Ecuadorian Amazon region in the early twentieth century, detailing how they used
photography as a propagandistic tool to document the history of their 'civilizing'
impact. And Carrie Gibson's chapter examines the reconstruction of the past in the
context of California and its de-Mexicanization between 1880 and 1930 as it pro-
gressively adapted to being a state of the USA, considering in particular the role
played by popular novels such as Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona in that process.
Against that background, Gibson also considers the re-Mexicanization that occur-
red in the 1920s, exemplified by the recreation of Olvera Street in Los Angeles as a
Mexican street of the past, showing how the invention of a fantasy heritage offered
a means to control space and define people at a time of significant immigration.
The historical dynamics explored in this volume are, however, characterized as
much by processes of negotiation, interaction and mutual reflection as by con-
frontation and hegemonic imposition, and they reveal evidence of the historical
agency of colonial subjects whose role in colonial society has tended to be obliter-
ated by the dominant narratives of political and cultural history. Two chapters
L
Introduction 5
consider black space production in colonial society, challenging official national
discourses that have whitened history, often in the name of a mestizaje ideology
that blends Europeans with indigeneity. Leo J. Garofalo uses archival records to
reconstruct the ways in which Afro-Peruvians were actively forging and occupying
a distinctive place in Andean u¡ban colonial society, with particular reference to
the multi-ethnic San Lázaro parish of Lima, where Afro-descendants constituted
the largest section of the population between the 1530s and 1700. Drawing on very
different sources, Lucy Foster considers the communities that were formed on the
coast of Mexico, around the ports of Veracruz and Acapulco, by the descendants
of Africans who had been imported as slaves by the Spanish. Exploring these ways
the communities are represented in three collections of photographs published
since the Second !Øorld !lar, Foster teases out the delicate interplay of cultural
resonances and identities that characterize the ways in which Afro-descendants are
seen and how they see themselves.
Foregrounding the historical agency of indigenous colonial subjects, Ana Pulido-
Rull, aided by infrared reflectography, shows how the maps created by Nahua
artists in sixteenth-century New Spain constituted sophisticated means by which
they were able to translate indigenous arguments about contested spaces into visual
form for local and European audiences and, in some cases, thereby to preserve
community lands. The chapters by Beatriz Marín-Aguilera (in collaboration with
Leonor Adán and Simón Urbina) and by Ch¡istine D. Beaule illustrate further the
contribution of archaeological research to a more nuanced and differentiated
understanding of colonial-indigenous relations. Assessing the implications of
archaeological discoveries in the southern imperial borderlands in Chile from the
sixteenth century to the end of Spanish colonial rule in 1826, Maún-Aguilera
challenges the established narratives of intense cultural mixing and acculturation of
natives that characterize Chilean historiography of colonial Latin America. The
archeological evidence shows that, notwithstanding colonial violence, local ways
of inhabiting the domestic space and traditional consumption practices prevailed
throughout this period and that the Spanish accommodated more indigenous
customs than vice-versa, especially regarding food habits, cooking and tableware,
which points to the strategic adoption of alien materiality on both sides. Reach-
ing back over a period of two thousand years, Beaule focuses on the history of
ceremonial drinking vessels and male tunics as symbols of indigenous ethnic
identity in the Andean highlands. From this evidence she concludes that Inka
settler colonization exercised greater control over indigenous forms of material
culture than both the non-militaristic Tiwanaku and the Spanish conquistadors,
suggesting that the common ignorance and disdain of Spanish administrators for
indigenous cultures and languages and their concentration in urban areas led
them to overlook the socially disruptive significance of new motifs, colors and
patterns in ritual artifacts.
In the chapter by João Cezar de Castro Rocha the principle of cultural exchange
is developed further in relation to the creative arts within the cultures of Latin
Ame¡ica with particular reference to the religious paintings by seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century artists from New Spain - Antonio Rodríguez, Nicolás Enríquez
 7
6 Jenny Mander
and Cristóbal de Villalpando. De Castro Rocha argues that such works need to be
viewed as 'inventions' in the original Latin sense of the term, that is, as discoveries
of new meanings within traditional themes through the exercise of craftsmanship
and technical mastery. To recognize such art as the emulation of Europeân mas-
ters frees them from the disparaging implications of slavish imitation. Invenrion,
he argues, is always the art of recycling: it is by introducing new meanings to
familiar themes that artists and cultures exercise their originality. A similar prin-
ciple of invention lies at the heart of Connie Bloomfield's chapter. She discusses
the use of themes and motifs from ancient Greek and Roman mythology rhat
remain part of the live heritage of twentieth-century popular poerry in north-
eastern Brazil. Often performed in a competitive context, such poems develop
classical allusions as a vehicle for challenging oppressive ideologies and giving
voice to conflicts that the social elites would prefer to conceal.
\lhile de Castro Rocha, considering the artist as colonial subject, makes a
compelling case for the centrality of translation in the development of tradition
within non-hegemonic cultures, Julia McClure and David Tavârez consider the
more ambiguous relations of power at work in the translation activities under-
taken by the Franciscans when they arrived in Central Mexico in the early six-
teenth century. McClure examines the way the Order brought its particular
doctrine of poverty to the Americas and projected its categories of humility, suf-
fering and obedience onto the indigenous populations it sought ro convert ro
Christianity, giving particular attention to the multi-layered and highly differ-
entiated conceptions of poverty translated into Nahuatl and other Amerindian
languages by the mendicants in post-conquest Mexico. Tavarez examines how
sixteenth-century Nahua scholars participared in theological and humanistic
debates, focusing in particular on a previously unknown Nahuatl adaptation of
the political treâtise 'On the government of a polity' by the Dutch theologian
Denys the Carthusian that was produced by the Franciscan Alonso de Molina in
collaboration with one or more Nahua authors. He is inclined ro see this rrans-
lation that merges early modern European political theory with Nahua cultural
referents as an inventive strategy that placed Franciscans and Nahua scholars at
the forefront of intellectual production in the sixteenth-century Atlantic world.
The complexities of the historical interpretation of texts and artifacts that
emerge from cultural interactions are vividly illustrated in the case presented by
Joanna Ostapkowicz. Her subject is a composite sculpture from the Caribbean (a
cemfi, dating from around 1500 and held in the Pigorini Museum in Rome, which
consists of a figural headdress and a belt, and integrates rhinoceros horn as well
as glass beads and mirrors. Focusing on the stylistic and material hybridity of this
artifact, Ostapkowicz uses it to explore the interconnectivity between the New
'llorld
and the Old across time, presenting the survival of the cemí over five rur-
bulent centuries as testimony to the desire that linked the arremprs of irs creators,
its original owners and subsequent collectors to understand difference and the
nature of foreign worlds. That such understanding and appreciation is needed
more urgently than ever in today's world is the message that emerges in the
chapters by Leslie Nancy Hernández Nova and Callie Vandewiele. Hernández
Introductìon 7
Nova's chapter reports on a comparative study of Peruvian migrants who have
followed members of their family to Europe or who were born in Europe,
examining how their struggle to reconcile the divergent historical and cultural
elements of their transnational identity is exacerbated by the paucity of their
historical education, whether at school or at home. Vandewiele reflects on the
potential of museums to use the colonial acquisitions in their Latin American
collections to engage more actively in the sort of cross-cultural dialogue that
might facilitate the relearning and rebuilding of lost heritages. She illustrates this
with reference to a project that used digital technology to take images of artifacts
held in European and North American museums (in this instance textiles
collected from the Alta Verapaz regíon of Guatemala) back to where they
had been produced and inviting present-day members of indigenous com-
munities to share their reflections upon their cultural significance. By pro-
moting radical and wide-ranging cross-cultural exchange beyond their
institutional walls, she argues, museums could assume a powerful and
meaningful role in the decolonization of Latin American history.
.When
the abbé Raynal - possibly acting at the instigation of the Duke de
Choiseul, who dominated the government of King Louis XV of France from
1758 to 1770 - compiled his monumental Philosophical and Political History
of the Settlements and Commerce of the Europeøns in the Eøst and'West
Indies, he was aiming to provide a global history conceived in accordance with
the ideals of the European Enlightenment. The paragraph with which he con-
cluded the work in 1780 reads as follows:
May writers, on whom nature has bestowed gteatü abilities, complete by
their masterpieces what my Under the auspices of philo-
essays have begunl
sophy, may there be one day extended, from one extremity of the world to the
other, that chain of union and benevolence which ought to connect all civi-
lized people! May they never more carry among savage nâtions the example of
vice and oppression! I do not flatter myself that, at the period of that happy
revolution, my name will be still in remembrance. This feeble work, which
will have only the merit of having brought forth others better than itself, will
doubtless be forgotten. But I shall, at least, be able to say, that I have con-
tributed as much as was in my power to the happiness of my fellow-creatures,
and pointed out the way, though perhaps at a distance, to improve their des-
tiny. This agreeable thought will stand me in the stead of glory. It will be the
delight of my old age, and the consolation of my latest moments.
(Raynal 1798:492)
Raynal continued to correct and extend his history of conquest and coloniza-
tion until his death in 1796 in the light of new information and more recent
events. Notwithstanding the enormous influence of his historical narrative,
which circulated extensively across Europe and the colonial world, Raynal
knew that, despite his best efforts and those of the anonymous team who
assisted him, his perspective on history would be incomplete. Whatever might
8 Jenny Mander
be said about Raynal's own perspective - and much indeed has been written
on that subject - it will be evident from the introduction to this volume that Part I
its contributors do not believe that past histories of conquest and colonization
should be consigned to oblivion. 1Jíe have sought instead to uncover some of
the multiple ways in which the conquest and coionization of Latin America Speculations
have been understood from different points of view, in order to bring the
process of constructing that history to the fore and to better explore the
'work' that historical knorvledge performs - for good or ill. It is by frag-
menting the narrative of history and making more space in which to reveal yet
other stories that we, like Raynal, may cherish the hope that intellectual col-
laboration might constitute a helpful step towards a more united globe.

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Paz, O., L999, ltìnerary, Menard Press, London.
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Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, translated by J.O. .Justamond,
vol. 6, printed fol A. Strahan and T. Cadell, in the Strand, London.
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