Reinterpreting the economic and social history of Spanish South America

Haciendas and ‘Ayllus’: Rural Society in the Bolivian Andes in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. By Herbert S. Klein. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. Pp. xvi, 230.

Colombia before Independence: Economy, Society and Politics under Bourbon Rule. By Anthony McFarlane. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xiv, 399.

Encomienda y encomenderos en el Perú. Estudio social y político de una institución colonial. By Jose De La Puente Brunke. Seville: Excma. Diputación Provincial, 1992. Pp. 536.

Deudas olvidadas. Instrumentos de crédito en la economía colonial peruana 1750–1820. By Alfonso W. Quiroz. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1993. Pp. 233.

Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826. By Enrique Tandeter. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993. Pp. xiv, 332.     

Modeling social interaction: Marital miscegenation in colonial Spanish America

Abstract

In this article, the author constructs new life tables for the white population of the United States in each decade between 1790 and 1900. Drawing from several recent studies, he suggests best estimates of life expectancy at age 20 for each decade. These estimates are fitted to new standards derived from the 1900–1902 rural and 1900–1902 overall death registration area life tables using a two-parameter logit model with fixed slope. The resulting decennial life tables more accurately represent sex- and age-specific mortality rates while capturing known mortality trends.     

The First two Language Academies in Spanish America

Abstract

Jeffrey Mehlman. Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France. Cambridge University Press, 1995. 262 pp.

Lewis C. Seifert. Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias. (Cambridge Studies in French 55). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xii + 276 pp.

“Cher, très cher, admirable et charmant ami …” Correspondance Georges Perec &; Jacques Lederer. Jacques Lederer, preface. Paris: Flammarion, 1997. 617 pp.

Timothy Unwin, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel: From 1800 to the Present. Cambridge University Press, 1997. xxiii + 281 pp. $59.95.

Sarah Kay. The Chansons de geste in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. 273 pp. $65.

Carrol F. Coates, ed. Repression and Expression: Literary and Social Coding in Nineteenth-Century France. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. xv + 342 pp.

Charlotte Stern. The Medieval Theater in Castile. Binghamton, New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 156, 1996. 321 pp.

José Belmonte Serrano, Origen y proceso de la narrativa de José Luis Castillo-Puche. Murcia: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia, 1997. 247 pp.

Brad Epps. Significant Violence. Oppression and Resistance in the Narratives of Juan Goytisolo, 1970-1990. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xii + 513 pp. $82.00.

Francisco Javier, Díez de Revenga, and Mariano de Paco, eds. En círculos de lumbre. Estudios sobre Gerardo Diego. Murcia: CajaMurcia, Obra Cultural, 1997. 509 pp.

Charles F. Fraker. The Scope of History: Studies in the Historiography of Alfonso el Sabio. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. ix + 235 pp.

John A. Scott. Dante's Political Purgatory. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. 295 pp.

Amoldo Carlos Vento. La Generación Hijo Pródigo: Renovación y Modernidad. Lanham: University Press of America, 1996. 301 pp.     

Putin,national self-determination and political independence in the twenty-first century

This contribution focuses on the right of nations to self-determination after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It suggests that sovereignty and territorial integrity are not as secure as once thought. A number of articles and statements issued by Vladimir Putin are analysed to identify nationalist themes which he uses to reject Ukraine's right to exist outside the Russian state. Key themes include a primordial account of national origins, the conflation of state and nation, and a refusal to recognise a right to self-determination of territories that had once been part of Russia. Putin's nationalism draws on imperial nationalism, state nationalism, revanchism and majoritarianism to underwrite his claims. Such views are widespread among established states, contributing to the instability of the contemporary world. It is argued that a reconfiguration of the relationship between state and nation is long overdue, as is the inflexible nature of territorial integrity.     

Missions on the Frontiers of Spanish America

This article examines missions as a colonial institution on the fringes of Spanish America. The Spanish Crown employed the mission as a cost-effective form of converting to Catholicism native peoples living on the frontiers of Spanish America, and incorporating them into the new colonial social and economic order. The article compares missions in northern Mexico, the Río de la Plata region, and eastern Bolivia.     

Latino immigrants and the renegotiation of place and belonging in small town America

This article compares the politics of place and belonging within two non-metropolitan communities—Woodburn, Oregon, and Leadville, Colorado—that have witnessed a significant increase in Latino immigration during the last fifteen to twenty years. Today both communities are approximately 50 per cent Latino, a demographic change that has reworked understandings of place identity and social belonging in each. Through a comparison of the two towns we seek to chart the unique regional political economic dynamics driving these changes, examine their spatial imprint, and interrogate how local context shapes the extent to which new arrivals are able to make effective claims to a sense of place and belonging despite hierarchies of race, class and ‘illegality.’ Assessing the differences between these two immigrant destinations provides insights into how sociospatial relations are crucial to analyzing immigrant–receiving society interaction, and contributes to scholarship on the uneven geography of immigrant incorporation in the contemporary USA.     

In pursuit of independence: the political economy of Catalonia's secessionist movement

This article examines the fiscal dimensions of recent support for Catalan secession. Since the region is a cultural community distinct from the rest of Spain, much research has spotlighted national identity features in the calculus of Catalan political aspirations. This study supplements this work by contextualising support for Catalan independence in terms of the state's fiscal arrangements with the use of public opinion survey data. Even after controlling for self‐reported cultural identity and other relevant factors, it argues that support for independence is a function of grievances rooted in the desire for Catalonia to assume responsibility for taxation and spending policy. Meanwhile, it validates some observations about Catalonia's separatist movement, while bringing others into question, and offers support for the theoretical framework linking political economy to secessionism. The results suggest that Spain might be able to stave off Catalonia's separatist bid through some form of political and taxation policy reconfiguration, with the caveats that cultural identity factors and the existence of other separatist movements across the country complicate this strategy.