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7 - Colonial Expansion and the Making of Nations: The Spanish Case

from Part ii - Paradigm Shifts and Turning Points in the Era of Globalization, 1500 to the Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2023

By
Tamar Herzog
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

It is habitual among scholars to suggest that European nations were formed during, and to some degree because of, the colonial expansion.1 Many argue that this expansion, which placed colonizers in opposition to the natives they sought to control, to other Europeans with whom they competed, and to the large African population that they enslaved, led to the emergence of new identities. In the Spanish case, it enabled the move from multiple local distinctions to a unitary national designation, allowing individuals originating from the different Iberian kingdoms (Castile, Navarre, Aragón, and so forth) to assume a single identity as Spaniards. While some scholars pointed to the formation of nations (or proto-nations), others concluded that the colonial experience led Europeans to think of themselves as participants in a community, members of which belonged to a particular race. Imagining themselves to be distinct from both natives and Africans, these Europeans refashioned themselves as “white.”2

Keywords

SpainSpanish AmericaindigenousAfro-Latin Americanswhitenesscitizenshipmembershipkingdoms
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 145 - 162
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Herzog, Tamar, “Beyond Race: Exclusion in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America,” in Herring Torres, M. S., Martínez, María Elena, and Nirenberg, D. (eds.), Race and Blood in the Iberian World (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012).Google Scholar
Herzog, Tamar, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzog, Tamar, “How Did Early-Modern Slaves in Spain Disappear? The Antecedents,” Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics and the Arts, 3/1 (2012), https://arcade.stanford.edu/rofl/how-did-early-modern-slaves-spain-disappear-antecedents.Google Scholar
Herzog, Tamar, “Merchants and Citizens: On the Making and Un-making of Merchants in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America,” Journal of European Economic History, 52 (2014), 137–163.Google Scholar
Herzog, Tamar, Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Hill, Ruth, “Teaching the Pre-History of Race along the Hispanic Transatlantic,” Dieciocho, 30 (2007), 105–118.Google Scholar
Loza, Carmen Beatriz, “‘Tyrannie’ des Incas et ‘naturalisation’ des Indiens: la politique de Francisco Toledo, vice-roi du Pérou (1571–1628),” trans. Cécile d’Albys, Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2 (2002), 375–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martínez, María Elena, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthew, Laura E., Memories of Conquest: Becoming Mexicano in Colonial Guatemala (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Toole, Rachel Sarah, Bounded Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Villella, Peter B., Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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