While many scholars have been interested in the size of the Indian population of the Americas at the time of first contact with Europeans, this book, first published in 1982, was the first to make a thorough examination of the question. Focusing on Peru, Professor Cook estimates population size on the basis of archaeology, carrying capacity of the agricultural systems, disease mortality, depopulation ratios, and census projection. He also analyses the catastrophic population decline that resulted from contact with Europeans, and compares this experience with that of the coastal region and the...

This study of relations between Latin America and the Third (Communist) International or Comintern examines the rather patchy start the organisation made in the region and analyses the definitely and, for some Latin American Communists, rather humiliatingly, peripheral position occupied by Latin America in the organisation's doctrinal formulations. It demonstrates that Latin America was restricted to a supporting role in the world revolution espoused by Moscow, indeed Latin American Communists were expected to pay attention to the insignificant Communist Party of the United States....

Buenos Aires is Argentina's wealthiest, largest, and most populous province, and has long been the key prize in all major electoral struggles, has received little scholarly attention. This first account of its political history between 1912 and 1943 underscores its role as a vital factor in national political life. Particular attention is given to the part the province has played in national presidential elections, the relationship between provincial administrations and the national government, and the struggle between the two principal political parties, the Partido Conservador and the Union...

The Atlantic slave trade brought to Cuba the African slaves who created the dramatic transformation of the island from a relative backwater of Spain's colonial empire in the mid-eighteenth century to the world's richest plantation colony one hundred years later. Britain played a vital role in this transformation. British slave traders were the chief suppliers of Cuba's slaves in the eighteenth century; in the nineteenth century Britain became the greatest threat to Cuba's prosperity when she attempted to make Spain follow her example and abolish the slave trade. Dr Murray's study, based on a...

Widespread violence, legal chicanery and ruthless profiteering have come to characterise the expansion of the agricultural frontier in Brazil. With the advance of this frontier, the pioneering peasants, on the one hand, and large landowners and large economic enterprise, on the other, have become locked in an increasingly bitter struggle for land. In his book, Joe Foweraker draws on extensive empirical research to demonstrate the dimensions and dynamics of the struggle. It is his contention that the process can only be understood in relation to the patterns of economic accumulation in the...

The collapse of this economy in August 1914 and its subsequent restructuring, therefore, created extremely testing conditions for peripheral countries. These conditions and the way in which they were dealt with help to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the variants of the primary-export-based capitalist development which had taken root here. Also, as had happened in Europe, the war witnessed far-reaching political and social changes in the region, associated in the main with the emergence of a more vocal urban middle class and a more combative working class. By considering within a...

Almost invariably, late-colonial Caracas has been described as a society full of tensions and a colony at odds with the imperial order. This study, in contrast, portrays a colony, which grew, prospered and matured within the confines of Empire. It depicts the late 1700s as the golden age of caraqueno colonial society and suggests that it was no accident that this late renaissance created an environment which bred the self-confident men who led much of Spanish America to independence. The causes of the independence struggle, and the violence, which accompanied it, are considered in the context...

The kings of Spain forbade foreigners and other 'undesirables' to immigrate to Spanish America. They saw aliens as threatening imperial, religious and mercantile security, and it might therefore be assumed that the Spaniards were xenophobic and intolerant. Dr Nunn's study shows that statutes tell only part of the story. In the years 1700 60 some 3 per cent of the foreign-born in Mexico were non-Spaniards who had entered the colony illegally. Who were these people, where did they come from, and what were their motives? In answering these questions, Dr Nunn demonstrates how illegal immigrants...

The parish was the fundamental ecclesiastical institution brought by Spain to the New World, and perhaps even the principal instrument of empire. This pioneering study traces the origins and development of the parishes of a single Central American diocese from conquest to independence. Drawing widely on Guatemalan archive sources, it presents a detailed picture of the colonial church at parish level. During the eighteenth century almost all regular parishes were secularized. This brought to an end the ecclesiastical state within a state: a republic of priests and Indians. Although the Crown...

In this book, Marco Palacios explores the history of Colombia as a coffee-producer, and the implications that coffee has had for its economy, society, and politics since the middle of the nineteenth century. He provides a history of the commercialization of the crop, and relates it to the general evolution of Colombian society, an evolution often determined by coffee even in areas remote from the crop itself. The book also covers the development of the specific institutions that have been set up to manage coffee affairs, and their role in the Colombian state. Since the last quarter of the...