On Colonial Latin America

I’m sorry, but this book is really bad. That’s not to say it isn’t informative—it is. In fact, the book is jam-packed with information. The problem is that it never really comes together in a cohesive way. This is exacerbated by Burkholder and Johnson’s use of “textbook-speak.” I’m not sure what about their writing style makes this so apparent, but I was able to identify it nearly from the moment I began the book. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming use of the passive voice, I’m not certain.

Perhaps the most miserable chapters were the middle section. While the first third of the book was relatively chronological, the second third is broken down into thematic topics: “Population and Labor,” “Production, Exchange, and Defense,” “The Social Economy,” “Family and Society,” “Living in an Empire.” These are really badly written chapters. I’m sure that the authors did a lot of heavy lifting with their research. But, as important as that it, it doesn’t make for a very good text. All of these thematic topics have interlocking subjects, and it might have been better to present them in a way that shows how interconnected they are. As it is, seeing each of these topics individually, it’s really difficult to draw larger conclusions or get a sense of the big picture. I wonder if it may have been more useful to present these topics in a way organized that’s organized by geography. “Peru” could be one chapter, “New Spain” another, “Brazil,” “Cuba, Santo Domingo, and the Caribbean,” “New Grenada,” “Rio de la Plata,” etc. By doing this, the authors could cover each of the topics for each region (when they differed) while comparing and contrasting them in order to present a full picture of the continuities and contrasts that existed within both the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires. I’m not sure if other readers would agree, but that sort of presentation would be fascinating to me.

The last third of the book picks up again—the authors discuss imperial expansion after the War for Spanish Succession, the Caroline Reforms, and the collapse of the Latin American empires. As these sections are more temporally organized, they tend to read a bit better, but they still end to be a slog. Exhausted with the middle portions, I skimmed through the ending.

I’m not really sure who this book is written for. I imagine that it is assigned in undergraduate-level courses on colonial Latin America, but I would be surprised if many instructors assign the text as-is. It seems more likely that they would re-arrange the book by assigning non-contiguous parts of the text on different days. I’d be curious if anyone can weigh in on this.

Anyways, next week I’ll move onto Imperial Spain, 1469 - 1716, followed by Bourbon Spain, 1700-1808 and Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825. Hopefully by reading those texts, I’ll get a much better sense of the period than I do here.

Do not recommend.