Epics Of Empire And Frontier

First published in 1569, La Araucana, an epic poem written by the Spanish nobleman Alonso de Ercilla, valorizes the Spanish conquest of Chile in the sixteenth century. Nearly a half-century later in 1610, Gaspar de Villagrá, Mexican-born captain under Juan de Oñate in New Mexico, published Historia de la Nueva México, a historical epic about the Spanish subjugation of the indigenous peoples of New Mexico. In Epics of Empire and Frontier—a deft cultural, ethnohistorical reading of these two colonial epics, both of which loom large in the canon of Spanish literature—Celia López-Chávez reveals new ways of thinking about the themes of empire and frontier. Employing historical and literary analysis that goes from the global to the regional, and from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, López-Chávez considers Ercilla and Villagrá not only as writers but as citizens and subjects of the powerful Spanish empire. Although frontiers of conquest have always been central to the regional histories of the Americas, this is the first work to approach the subject through epic poetry and the main events in the poets’ lives. López-Chávez also investigates the geographical spaces and landmarks where the conquests of Chile and New Mexico took place, the natural landscape of each area as both the Spanish and the natives saw it, and the characteristics of the expeditions in both regions, with special attention to the violence of the invasions. In her discussion of law, geography, and frontier, López-Chávez carries the poems’ firsthand testimony on the political, cultural, and social resistance of indigenous people into present-day debates about regional and national identity. An interdisciplinary, comparative postcolonial interpretation of the history found in two poetic narratives of conquest, Epics of Empire and Frontier brings fresh understanding to the role that poetry plays in regional and national memory and culture.

How did Spanish-American writers and veterans in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century use epic poetry to search for ethical solutions to the violent conflicts of their age?Winner of the 2017-18 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize The Epic Mirror studies how Spanish-American writers and veterans in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century used epic poetry to search for ethical solutions to the violent conflicts of their age. The wars about which they wrote took place at the frontiers of the Spanish empire, where new political communities were emerging: fiercely independent Amerindian republics, rebellious Spanish settlers, maroon kingdoms of fugitive African slaves. This colonial reality generated a distinctive vision of just warfare and political community. Working across the fields of Hispanic literature, the history of political thought, and studies of empire, colonialism and globalisation, Choi reinterprets three major works of colonial Latin American literature: Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana (1569-90), Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596), and Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). She argues that these works provide a rare insight into the development of political thought in Viceregal Peru. Through the imaginative mirrors of epic, the reader is forced to ask the same questions of the unfinished conquests of the Americas as of those in Africa, Asia or Europe: when conflicting forces are divided by irreconcilable world views, even if the war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?'s La Araucana (1569-90), Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596), and Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). She argues that these works provide a rare insight into the development of political thought in Viceregal Peru. Through the imaginative mirrors of epic, the reader is forced to ask the same questions of the unfinished conquests of the Americas as of those in Africa, Asia or Europe: when conflicting forces are divided by irreconcilable world views, even if the war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?'s La Araucana (1569-90), Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596), and Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). She argues that these works provide a rare insight into the development of political thought in Viceregal Peru. Through the imaginative mirrors of epic, the reader is forced to ask the same questions of the unfinished conquests of the Americas as of those in Africa, Asia or Europe: when conflicting forces are divided by irreconcilable world views, even if the war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?'s La Araucana (1569-90), Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596), and Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). She argues that these works provide a rare insight into the development of political thought in Viceregal Peru. Through the imaginative mirrors of epic, the reader is forced to ask the same questions of the unfinished conquests of the Americas as of those in Africa, Asia or Europe: when conflicting forces are divided by irreconcilable world views, even if the war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?

This collaborative multi-authored volume integrates interdisciplinary approaches to ethnic, imperial, and national borderlands in the Iberian World (16th to early 19th centuries). It illustrates the historical processes that produced borderlands in the Americas and connected them to global circuits of exchange and migration in the early modern world. The book offers a balanced state-of-the-art educational tool representing innovative research for teaching and scholarship. Its geographical scope encompasses imperial borderlands in what today is northern Mexico and southern United States; the greater Caribbean basin, including cross-imperial borderlands among the island archipelagos and Central America; the greater Paraguayan river basin, including the Gran Chaco, lowland Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia; the Amazonian borderlands; the grasslands and steppes of southern Argentina and Chile; and Iberian trade and religious networks connecting the Americas to Africa and Asia. The volume is structured around the following broad themes: environmental change and humanly crafted landscapes; the role of indigenous allies in the Spanish and Portuguese military expeditions; negotiations of power across imperial lines and indigenous chiefdoms; the parallel development of subsistence and commercial economies across terrestrial and maritime trade routes; labor and the corridors of forced and free migration that led to changing social and ethnic identities; histories of science and cartography; Christian missions, music, and visual arts; gender and sexuality, emphasizing distinct roles and experiences documented for men and women in the borderlands. While centered in the colonial era, it is framed by pre-contact Mesoamerican borderlands and nineteenth-century national developments for those regions where the continuity of inter-ethnic relations and economic networks between the colonial and national periods is particularly salient, like the central Andes, lowland Bolivia, central Brazil, and the Mapuche/Pehuenche captaincies in South America. All the contributors are highly recognized scholars, representing different disciplines and academic traditions in North America, Latin America and Europe.

New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Book (Nonfiction) Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Foreign Policy A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection “Destined to be the classic account of what may be the oldest... hardest form of war.” —John Nagl, Wall Street Journal Invisible Armies presents an entirely original narrative of warfare, which demonstrates that, far from the exception, loosely organized partisan or guerrilla warfare has been the dominant form of military conflict throughout history. New York Times best-selling author and military historian Max Boot traces guerrilla warfare and terrorism from antiquity to the present, narrating nearly thirty centuries of unconventional military conflicts. Filled with dramatic analysis of strategy and tactics, as well as many memorable characters—from Italian nationalist Guiseppe Garibaldi to the “Quiet American,” Edward Lansdale—Invisible Armies is “as readable as a novel” (Michael Korda, Daily Beast) and “a timely reminder to politicians and generals of the hard-earned lessons of history” (Economist).

Imperial policy on the western frontier of the Roman Empire was the means by which the government controlled the frontier residents. This book takes a topical approach to this study of the frontier: subjects covered include the army, farming, commerce, manufacturing, religion and Romanization.

Paul explores the relationship between films set in the ancient world and the classical epic tradition, arguing that there is a connection between the genres. Through this careful consideration of how epic manifests itself through different periods and cultures, we learn how cinema makes a claim to be a modern vehicle for a very ancient tradition.

Discusses Rome's challenges in governing over different cultures, organizing an army made of non-Romans, inculcating Roman values and religion, feeding the army, trading, urbanizing, and industrializing. To make this work accessible to readers who lack an extensive background in Roman history, all Latin expressions are defined in the course of the discussion, a glossary is included, and modern as well as contemporary Latin names of places are used. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR