Colonial Latin America provides a concise study of the history of the Iberian colonies in the New World and their preconquest background to the wars of independence in the early nineteenth century. Now thoroughly updated in this seventh edition, Colonial Latin America is indispensable for students who wish to gain a deeper understanding of the fascinating and often colorful history of the cultures, the people, and the struggles that have played a part in shaping Latin America. Distinctive Features * Provides a comprehensive and well-balanced account, covering all aspects of life--political, social, religious, economic, military, and cultural * Offers an inclusive discussion of all groups and strata of society--including slaves and women--and a nuanced discussion of race, class, and gender * Superbly written, making it readable for any audience * Presents solid scholarship--this is the most current and authoritative book on the market New to this Edition * Reorganized coverage of the imperial crisis and Independence Era is spread out over three chapters and incorporates all of the major new scholarship in these areas * New discussion of the Haitian revolution and its regional significance * Expanded discussion of the African influence on early colonial development

In this theoretical tour-de-force, renowned scholar Ariella Aïsha Azoulay calls on us to recognize the imperial foundations of knowledge and to refuse its strictures and its many violences. Azoulay argues that the institutions that make our world, from archives and museums to ideas of sovereignty and human rights to history itself, are all dependent on imperial modes of thinking. Imperialism has segmented populations into differentially governed groups, continually emphasized the possibility of progress while it tries to destroy what came before, and voraciously seeks out the new by sealing the past away in dusty archival boxes and the glass vitrines of museums. By practicing what she calls potential history, Azoulay argues that we can still refuse the original imperial violence that shattered communities, lives, and worlds, from native peoples in the Americas at the moment of conquest to the Congo ruled by Belgium's brutal King Léopold II, from dispossessed Palestinians in 1948 to displaced refugees in our own day. In Potential History, Azoulay travels alongside historical companions--an old Palestinian man who refused to leave his village in 1948, an anonymous woman in war-ravaged Berlin, looted objects and documents torn from their worlds and now housed in archives and museums--to chart the ways imperialism has sought to order time, space, and politics. Rather than looking for a new future, Azoulay calls upon us to rewind history and unlearn our imperial rights, to continue to refuse imperial violence by making present what was invented as "past" and making the repair of torn worlds the substance of politics.