After Spanish Rule

Insisting on the critical value of Latin American histories for recasting theories of postcolonialism, "After Spanish Rule" is the first collection of essays by Latin Americanist historians and anthropologists to engage postcolonial debates from the perspective of the Americas. These essays extend and revise the insights of postcolonial studies in diverse Latin American contexts, ranging from the narratives of eighteenth-century travelers and clerics in the region to the status of indigenous intellectuals in present-day Colombia. The editors contend that the construction of an array of singular histories at the intersection of particular colonialisms and nationalisms must become the critical project of postcolonial history-writing.Challenging the universalizing tendencies of some postcolonial theorists, the contributors are attentive to the crucial ways in which the histories of Latin American countries - with their creole elites, subjugated ethnic groups, and complicated relationships with their neighbor to the north - are different from those of other former colonies in the southern hemisphere. Yet, while acknowledging such differences, the volume shows that valuable insights can still be gained by exploring, for example, how Spanish approaches to colonialism influenced later French and British colonialisms or how nationalist movements in Asia drew upon Latin American models for inspiration. The contributors include: Thomas Abercrombie, Shahid Amin, Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Peter Guardino, Andres Guerrero, Marixa Lasso, Javier Morillo-Alicea, Joanne Rappaport, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, and Mark Thurner.