The Coming of the Kingdom
The Coming of the Kingdom explores the experiences of the Indigenous Muisca peoples of the New Kingdom of Granada (Colombia) during the first century of Spanish colonial rule. Focusing on colonialism, religious reform, law, language, and historical writing, Juan F. Cobo Betancourt examines the introduction and development of Christianity among the Muisca, who from the 1530s found themselves at the centre of the invaders’ efforts to transform them into tribute-paying Catholic subjects of the Spanish crown. The book illustrates how successive generations of missionaries and administrators approached the task of drawing the Muisca peoples to Catholicism at a time when it was undergoing profound changes, and how successive generations of the Muisca interacted with the practices and ideas that the invaders attempted to impose, variously rejecting or adopting them, transforming and translating them, and ultimately making them their own. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Juan F. Cobo Betancourt is Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Mestizos heraldos de Dios and co-editor (with Natalie Cobo) of La legislación de la arquidiócesis de Santafé. He co-founded Neogranadina, a Colombian non-profit devoted to digitising endangered archives and promoting digital history in Latin America.
Open access