The Rio De La Plata

This edited volume brings together essays that examine recent scholarship on the history of the Rio de la Plata region (present-day Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil) from the colonial period to the nineteenth century. It illustrates new themes and historical methods that have transformed the historiography of Rio de la Plata, including the use of new sources, digital methodologies and techniques, and innovative approaches to the already well-studied themes of gender, race, commerce, the slave trade, indigenous history, and economic, political, and military history. Contributions privilege trans-national and Atlantic approaches to the Rio de la Plata, emphasizing the inter-connections of processes beyond imperial and national lines, and aiming at uncovering the history of Africans and Amerindians, popular classes, women, urban groups, as well as the partnerships created across the Spanish and Portuguese imperial borders, which also involved other agents from Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States. Furthermore, each chapter offers historiographical introductions covering scholarship produced in the twenty-first century. This book will be an indispensable and unique tool for English speaking students of colonial and nineteenth-century Rio de la Plata and for those with a broader interest in Latin American and Atlantic History.

This ethnographic study is a revisionist view of the most significant and widely known mission system in Latin America—that of the Jesuit missions to the Guaraní Indians, who inhabited the border regions of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. It traces in detail the process of Indian adaptation to Spanish colonialism from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. The book demonstrates conclusively that the Guaraní were as instrumental in determining their destinies as were the Catholic Church and Spanish bureaucrats. They were neither passive victims of Spanish colonialism nor innocent “children” of the jungle, but important actors who shaped fundamentally the history of the Río de la Plata region. The Guaraní responded to European contact according to the dynamics of their own culture, their individual interests and experiences, and the changing political, economic, and social realities of the late Bourbon period.

In a thorough study of this international River and its adjacent maritime zone, the book explores both in the Treaty and in its subsequent practice, the regime and practice of jurisdiction, navigation, fisheries, works, and pollution prevention among other issues.

The book is a product of the Ecoplata Project, a joint Canada-Uruguay project initiated by and coordinated through the Ocean Studies Program of Dalhousie University. This book is the most recent attempt to summarize the oceanography of the Rio de la Plata, the condition of its environment and the status of the white croaker fishery. The book contains current knowledge of its geologym hydrology and climate, oceanography, environmental quality, plankton and bentho, fish and fisheries biology, the artisanal croaker fishery, and prospects for its future integrated coastal management. The chapters are based and information provided by a team of 30 expert contributors from Uruguay and Canada. There a extensive bibliographies and and index. The book will be valuable reference source for the Uruguay-Canada Ecoplata Project and for the many public, governmental, educational, scientific and private sector groups interested in integrated coastal management for Uruguay and its coastal neighbours . It should also be of interest to many persons working globally in coastal oceanography and integrated coastal management.

In a thorough study of this international River and its adjacent maritime zone, the book explores both in the Treaty and in its subsequent practice, the regime and practice of jurisdiction, navigation, fisheries, works, and pollution prevention among other issues.

In the first decades of the 1800s, after almost three centuries of Iberian rule, former Spanish territories fragmented into more than a dozen new polities. Edge of Empire analyzes the emergence of Montevideo as a hot spot of Atlantic trade and regional center of power, often opposing Buenos Aires. By focusing on commercial and social networks in the Rio de la Plata region, the book examines how Montevideo merchant elites used transimperial connections to expand their influence and how their trade offered crucial support to Montevideo’s autonomist projects. These transimperial networks offered different political, social, and economic options to local societies and shaped the politics that emerged in the region, including the formation of Uruguay. Connecting South America to the broader Atlantic World, this book provides an excellent case study for examining the significance of cross-border interactions in shaping independence processes and political identities.

Illuminates Dutch participation in Latin-American colonial trade while revising the standard historical argument of illegal 'contraband' trading and 'corrupt' officials.