New World Orders

by Smolenski, John; Humphrey, Thomas J.

• ISBN13: 9780812219227
• ISBN10: 0812219228
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-20
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

As the geographic boundaries of early American history have expanded, so too have historians' attempts to explore the comparative dimensions of this history. At the same time, historians have struggled to find a conceptual framework flexible enough to incorporate the sweeping narratives of imperial history and the hidden narratives of social history into a broader, synthetic whole. No such paradigm that captures the two perspectives has yet emerged. New World Orders addresses these broad conceptual issues by reexamining the relationships among violence, sanction, and authority in the early modern Americas. More specifically, the essays in this volume explore the wide variety of legal and extralegal means--from state-sponsored executions to unsanctioned crowd actions--by which social order was maintained, with a particular emphasis on how extralegal sanctions were defined and used; how extralegal sanctions related to legal forms of maintaining order; and how these patterns of sanction, embedded within other forms of colonialism and culture, created cultural, legal, social, or imperial spaces in the early Americas. With essays written by senior and junior scholars on the British, Spanish, Dutch, and French colonies, New World Orders presents one of the most comprehensive looks at the sweep of colonization in the Atlantic world. By juxtaposing case studies from Brazil, Venezuela, New York, California, Saint Domingue, and Louisiana with treatments of broader trends in Anglo-America or Spanish America more generally, the volume demonstrates the need to examine the questions of violence, sanction, and authority in hemispheric perspective.

Author Biography

John Smolenski teaches history at the University of California, Davis. Thomas J. Humphrey is Associate Professor of History at Cleveland State University and author of Land and Liberty: Hudson Valley Riots in the Age of Revolution.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Ordering of Authority in the Colonial Americas	p. 1
Narrating Violence and Legality
Introduction to Part I	p. 19
Law's Wilderness: The Discourse of English Colonizing, the Violence of Intrusion, and the Failures of American History	p. 21
Dialogical Encounters in a Space of Death	p. 47
Authority and Intimate Violence
Introduction to Part II	p. 69
The Authority of Gender: Marital Discord and Social Order in Colonial Quito	p. 71
Private and State Violence Against African Slaves in Lower Louisiana During the French Period, 1699-1769	p. 92
Violence or Sex? Constructions of Rape and Race in Early America	p. 111
Colonial Space and Power
Introduction to Part III	p. 131
The Murder of Jacob Rabe: Contesting Dutch Colonial Authority in the Borderlands of Northeastern Brazil	p. 133
Forging Cultures of Resistance on Two Colonial Frontiers: Northwestern Mexico and Eastern Bolivia	p. 157
Sorcery and Sovereignty: Senecas, Citizens, and the Contest for Power and Authority on the Frontiers of the Early American Republic	p. 179
Race, Citizenship, and Colonial Identity
Introduction to Part IV	p. 203
Early Modern Spanish Citizenship: Inclusion and Exclusion in the Old and the New World	p. 205
Natural Movements and Dangerous Spectacles: Beatings, Duels, and "Play" in Saint Domingue	p. 226
Racial Passing: Informal and Official "Whiteness" in Colonial Spanish America	p. 249
Afterword	p. 273
Notes	p. 281
List of Contributors	p. 355
Index	p. 359
Acknowledgments	p. 363
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