Useful Books on Colonial Latin America
(revised 8/20/2003)

This list includes a variety of books on Colonial Latin American history, with special emphasis on the sixteenth century.  You are encouraged to use this list as a starting point for your book review and other assignments.  However, this list is only a starting point—one objective of this class is for you to learn to identify other books of interest and importance in this field.  You are encouraged to add books to this list, and to notify Prof. Carlsmith when you find one that is particularly good so that he can consider it for future classes.   The symbol (*) indicates that the book is a primary source.

 Additional bibliography is available on pp. 265-271 of Keen & Haynes, A History of Latin America, and in standard reference works or surveys, such as Leslie Bethell, The Cambridge History of Latin America (8 vols);  James Lockhart and Stuart Schwartz, Early Latin America; or Mark Burkholder and Lyman Johnson, Colonial Latin America.

 Pre-Columbian

Clendinnen, Inga.  The Aztecs:  An Interpretation (Cambridge UP, 1991).

 Schele, Linda and David Freidel, A Foreste of Kings:  The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya  (New York: Morrow, 1990).

 Silverblatt, Irene.  Moon, Sun, and Witches:  Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru  (Princeton UP, 1987).

 Soustelle, Jacques.  The Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Conquest, trans. Patrick O’Brian (Stanford UP, 1962).

 Wachtel, Nathan.  Gods and Vampires: return to Chipaya [Indians in Bolivia] (Chicago UP, 1994).

Conquest of America

* Cieza de Leon, Pedro.  The Discovery and Conquest of Peru: Chronicles of the New World Encounters.  Ed. Alexandra P. Cook and David N. Cook (Duke UP, 1998).

 * Cortes, Hernan.  Letters from Mexico. Ed. Anthony Pagden.  (Yale UP 1986).

 * Diaz del Castillo, Bernal.  The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-1521.  (New York:  1956 and subsequent editions).

 * Sahagun, Bernardino.  We People Here: Nahuatl accounts of the conquest of Mexico. Ed. James Lockhart.  (U. of California Press, 1993).

 Clendinnen, Inga.  Ambivalent Conquests:  Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570.  (Cambridge UP, 1987).

 Phillips, W. D., Jr. and C. R. Phillips.  The Worlds of Christopher Columbus  (Cambridge UP, 1992).

 Schwartz, Stuart.  Victors and Vanquished  (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000).

 Wachtel, Nathan.  The Vision of the Vanquished:  The Spanish Conquest of Peru Through Indian Eyes, 1530-1570  (1977).

State, Church, and Society

* Las Casas, Bartolome.  A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies  (New York: Penguin Books).

 * Manzano, Juan Francisco.  Autobiography of a Slave.  Trans. Evelyn Picon Garfield (Wayne State UP, 1996).

 Andrews, Kenneth R.  The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder, 1530-1630  (Yale UP, 1978).

 Bakewell, Peter.  Silver mining and society in colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700  (Cambridge UP, 1971).

 Cope, Richard D.  The Limits of Racial Domination: plebian society in colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Wisconsin UP, 1994).

Curtin, Philip.  The Tropical Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade. (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1991).

Greenleaf, Richard.  The Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century (U. of New Mexico Press, 1969).

MacCormack, Sabine.  Religion in the Andes:  Vision and Imagination in early colonial Peru.  (Princeton UP, 1991).

Palmer, Colin A.  Slaves of the White God:  Blacks in Colonial Mexico, 1570-1650  (Harvard UP, 1976).

Phelan, John L.  The Millenial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (U. of California Press, 1970).

Salvucci, R.J.  Textiles and Capitalism in Mexico:  An Economic History of the Obrajes, 1539-1840 (Princeton UP, 1987)

 Seed, Patricia.  To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico:  Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821  (Stanford UP, 1988).

 Taylor, William.  Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford UP, 1979).

Women & Men in Colonial Latin America

De Erauso, Catalina.  Lieutenant Nun:  Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World (Beacon Press, 1997). 

 Martin, Luis.  Daughters of the Conquistadores:  Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru  (U. of New Mexico Press, 1983).

 Sigal, Peter H.  Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America (U. of Chicago Press, 2003).

 Socolow, Susan M.  The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge UP, 2000)

 Twinam, Ann.  Public Lives, Private Secrets: gender, honor, sexuality, and illegitimacy in colonial Spanish America  (Stanford UP, 1999).

Colonial Brazil

 * Mattoso, Katia M. de Queiros.  To Be a Slave in Brazil, 1550-1888  (Rutgers UP, 1986).

 Schwartz, Stuart.  Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (Cambridge UP, 1985).

 ^^^  See pp. 268-269 of Keen & Haynes.  ^^^

Independence

 ^^^  See pp. 269-270 of Keen & Haynes.   ^^^

Miscellaneous (incl. environmental history)

Cook, Noble David and W. G. Lovell, eds.  “Secret Judgements of God”:  Old World Disease in Colonial Spanish America (1991).

 Crosby, Alfred W.  The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492  (Westport, CT.: Greenwood, 1972).

 Hoberman, Louisa S. and Susan M. Socolow, eds.  The countryside in colonial Latin America (U. of New Mexico Press, 1996).

 Melville, Eleanor.  A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge UP, 1994).

 Pagden, Anthony.  The Fall of Natural Man:  The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge UP, 1982).

 Stein, Barbara H. and Stanley J.  The Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic Dependence in Perspective (Oxford UP, 1970).

 Super, John C.  Food, Conquest, and Colonization in Sixteenth-century Spanish America (U. of New Mexico Press, 1988).