Brief sketches of the lives of some 23 ordinary people who lived in
the colonial societies of North and South America between the early
16th and the late 18th centuries, reflecting both the strengths and
weaknesses of what is sometimes called "history from the bottom
up." On the plus side are the sketches themselves, assembled from
fragmentary sources by 20 different historians. The characters on
revealing display include runaway slaves, Moctezuma's daughter,
renegade priests, rebellious Indians, a Brazilian nun, urban
artisans, small-time entrepreneurs, government officials,
enterprising immigrants, fur-traders, black Loyalists from the
American Revolution, and the mulatta mistress of a priest attached
to the Holy Office of the Inquisition - men and women of all races,
conditions, and circumstances (none, oddly enough, from French
Canada). On the negative side, however, looms the problem of what,
finally, these lives have to tell us. Sweet and Nash, authorities
on the history of colonial North and South America, suggest that
they illustrate the different ways ordinary people struggled and
survived under oppressive, explorative colonial regimes in the New
World - some fighting alone, some fighting together, some merely
getting along, some trying to get ahead. This is surely true in a
general sense, and it is well to be warned against both
romanticizing the lives of the poor and exaggerating the degree to
which ruling classes anywhere are able to secure mass consent and
compliance. But readers of these capsule biographies may well
wonder if "struggle and survival," encompassing common people of
such diverse backgrounds (slaves and slaveowners, workers and
employers, servants and masters) and cultures (North, Central, and
South America) isn't in fact too broad a category, blurring the
points of real conflict between them until all we see is an
undifferentiated mass of victims. History "from the bottom up" has
vastly enlarged our understanding of the dispossessed and
overlooked; it also runs the risk, ironically, of making them all
look alike. (Kirkus Reviews)
Here are the fascinating stories of twenty-three little-known but
remarkable inhabitants of the Spanish, English, and Portuguese
colonies of the New World between the 16th and the 19th centuries.
Women and men of all the races and classes of colonial society may
be seen here dealing creatively and pragmatically (if often not
successfully) with the challenges of a harsh social
environment.
Such extraordinary "ordinary" people as the native priest Diego
Vasicuio; the millwright Thomas Peters; the rebellious slave
Gertrudis de Escobar; Squanto, the last of the Patuxets; and
Micaela Angela Carillo, the pulque dealer, are presented in
original essays. Works of serious scholarship, they are also
written to catch the fancy and stimulate the historical imagination
of readers. The stories should be of particular interest to
students of the history of women, of Native Americans, and of Black
people in the Americas.
The Editors' introduction points out the fundamental unities in the
histories of colonial societies in the Americas, and the usefulness
of examining ordinary individual human experiences as a means both
of testing generalizations and of raising new questions for
research.
General
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