Migration in Colonial Spanish America

Description

In this collection of innovative essays an international team of contributors provides theoretical, methodological and substantive empirical analysis of migration in Latin America. Ranging in time from the sixteenth through the mid-nineteenth century, the studies will attract the attention of all Latin American specialists. They provide conclusive evidence of the ubiquity of migration in the early modern period, challenging views of immobile peasants held in the grip of static colonialism. They show that to migrate was one of the most important means of coping with Spanish colonialism. The essays are written from a multi-disciplinary perspective and thus provide data and interpretations that are novel and represent important contributions to colonial Latin American studies. They address the basic questions of who migrated, why did they migrate, how can one interpret migration fields, what role did economic opportunity or ecological conditions play, and not least, what was the impact of migrants on non-migrant communities in both rural and urban areas. The picture that emerges is one of colonial Spanish America in continual flux: spatial mobility was no less pronounced than social/racial change.

"This collection of 15 essays by geographers and historians offers a series of enlightening and insightful vignettes on the colonial period. It explores the movements of different groups of people throughout colonial Spanish America, the reasons for their mobility, and it enriches our understanding of the era." Martha A. Works, Journal of Cultural Geography "The collection is a font of information on migration in colonial Spanish America. The discussions of new directions for future empirical and theoretical studies of migration in colonial Spanish America are of special importance." Geographical Review "...represents a compendium of insightful and recent research on the subject...This book has many points that recommend it both to the specialist and the general reader...a real asset to students of colonial Spanish America." Susan E. Ramirez, Colonial Latin American Review "Migration in Colonial Spanish America is a recent addition to the distinguished series, Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography. The editor, David J. Robinson, is a leader in the field of Latin American demographic studies...The most common theme running through the essays, as Robinson points out in his excellent introduction, is the ubiquity of migration...Most of these well-crafted essays are based on detailed analyses of primary data...much can be learned from these essays about such aspects of migration as distance, direction, timing, types of destinations, reasons for migrating, and characteristics of migrants such as age, sex, social class, ethnicity, and occupation." Elinore M. Barrett, The Professional Geographer "...one of the most striking qualities of this volume is the extent to which the individual studies, while distinct and mostly relatively narrow in focus, reinforce and correlate with one another to a degree rarely achieved in anthologies. This is an important publication that every scholar and student of Spanish American colonial history should read." The Americas