Overview
This book tells the story of colonial Latin America through the lives of common people, helping students comprehend the triumphs and tragedies of daily life and its impact on the region’s history. Stretching from Mexico to Buenos Aires, from the Pacific coast across the Atlantic, from the first colonial invasions to independence, these stories knit together common themes. The narratives include a Mayan noblemen turned translator for a Spanish torturer, a Eurafrican woman healer accused of witchcraft, a missionary caught between native rebels and corrupt administrators, an Afro-Brazilian maroon leader trying to hold on to freedom, and a mestizo crown loyalist weary of independence under the new Creole elite. This new edition provides vital updates and tackles new topics: - Expanded scope to consider more trans-Atlantic and trans-regional individuals who gave colonial Latin America its uniquely wide-reaching cultural and geographic scope - Spaces between different empires - The complex role of religion and religious figures as cultural and political intermediaries - An additional chapter bridging the pre-Columbian period to post-invasion colonial rule - Updated terminology and historiography reflective of the changes in the field since the previous edition While most texts for use in the classroom approach political, social, religious, and economic trends through top-down narratives, this volume demonstrates how the ordinary lives of Latin Americans shaped the region. These engaging, easy-to-read chapters help students understand the complex interaction of race, gender, ethnicity, and religiosity in the colonial setting.
Full Product Details
Author: Kenneth J. Andrien ,
Cameron D. Jones
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Edition: 3rd edition
ISBN: 9798881803179
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 19 March 2026
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
This volume is essential for professors and students exploring people’s lives in courses on colonial Latin America, while also allowing them to practice the historian’s craft using the region’s rich primary sources. While maintaining the classic essays, this new edition delves even further before Europeans arrived in the Americas, examines the limits of empire through frontier missions, and highlights the trans-imperial and trans-Atlantic aspects of colonial Latin American life. -- Alex Borucki * Professor of History, University of California, Irvine, USA * The contributions to this volume all illuminate dramatic lives of individuals while coaxing the reader toward big historical questions around the nuances of conquest, slavery, race, religion, sexuality, and rebellion. Offering essential historical information, fascinating biographies, and open-ended questions, this volume is perfectly suited for today’s college classrooms. -- Robert Weis * Professor of History, University of Northern Colorado, USA; author of For Christ & Country: Militant Catholic Youth in Post-Revolutionary Mexico and The Mexican Revolution * This valuable collection of stories based on hard to access primary sources resonates with instructors and students alike by offering a variety of perspectives from a wide range of actors in colonial Latin American history. -- Jamie Lee Andreson * Assistant Professor of History, Simmons University, USA *
This volume is essential for professors and students exploring people’s lives in courses on colonial Latin America, while also allowing them to practice the historian’s craft using the region’s rich primary sources. While maintaining the classic essays, this new edition delves even further before Europeans arrived in the Americas, examines the limits of empire through frontier missions, and highlights the trans-imperial and trans-Atlantic aspects of colonial Latin American life. -- Alex Borucki * Professor of History, University of California, Irvine, USA *
This volume is essential for professors and students exploring people’s lives in courses on colonial Latin America, while also allowing them to practice the historian’s craft using the region’s rich primary sources. While maintaining the classic essays, this new edition delves even further before Europeans arrived in the Americas, examines the limits of empire through frontier missions, and highlights the trans-imperial and trans-Atlantic aspects of colonial Latin American life. -- Alex Borucki * Professor of History, University of California, Irvine, USA * The contributions to this volume all illuminate dramatic lives of individuals while coaxing the reader toward big historical questions around the nuances of conquest, slavery, race, religion, sexuality, and rebellion. Offering essential historical information, fascinating biographies, and open-ended questions, this volume is perfectly suited for today’s college classrooms. -- Robert Weis * Professor of History, University of Northern Colorado, USA; author of For Christ & Country: Militant Catholic Youth in Post-Revolutionary Mexico and The Mexican Revolution *
Kenneth Andrien proves himself a skillful editor who knows what works in the classroom. This is an excellent supplementary reading. -- William Taylor, University of California, Berkeley This wonderful book brings to life the complex history of colonial Latin America in ways that traditional textbooks cannot. Students will better identify with everyday life in the colonies through the rich accounts of the experiences of both the ordinary and extraordinary individuals presented in this work. It will undoubtedly enhance lectures and spark lively discussions. A welcome addition!> -- Jeremy Baskes, Ohio Wesleyan University Aimed at student readers, these biographical vignettes bring colonial Latin American history to life. Each makes a superb starting point for analyzing and discussing how colonialism affected the lives of real people. -- Kendall W. Brown, Brigham Young University The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America is full of fascinating stories. It is a celebration of historians' ability to research the lives of the common folk whose portraits never reach the walls of museums. These vivid narratives about real people make the great themes of colonial Latin American history more immediate and accessible to students. -- Peter Guardino, Indiana University This is a wonderful book, rich with the personal histories of everyday colonial people masterfully set within the context of time and place. These engrossing portraits invite the reader to examine how men and women?indigenous people, Europeans and those of African descent, slave and free, merchants, officers, soldiers, writers, chieftains (kurakas) and mystics?challenged their assigned roles within the colonial social hierarchy. -- Susan M. Socolow, Emory University Recommended for classroom use. This textbook gets away from the dominant presentation of topics and, instead, focuses on biographical profiles of people and their times. * Colonial Latin American Historical Review * This wonderful book brings to life the complex history of colonial Latin America in ways that traditional textbooks cannot. Students will better identify with everyday life in the colonies through the rich accounts of the experiences of both the ordinary and extraordinary individuals presented in this work. It will undoubtedly enhance lectures and spark lively discussions. A welcome addition! -- Jeremy Baskes, Ohio Wesleyan University The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America is full of fascinating stories. It is a celebration of historians' ability to research the lives of the common folk whose portraits never reach the walls of museums. These vivid narratives about real people make the great themes of colonial Latin American history more immediate and accessible to students. -- Peter Guardino, Indiana University This is a wonderful book, rich with the personal histories of everyday colonial people masterfully set within the context of time and place. These engrossing portraits invite the reader to examine how men and women—indigenous people, Europeans and those of African descent, slave and free, merchants, officers, soldiers, writers, chieftains (kurakas) and mystics—challenged their assigned roles within the colonial social hierarchy. -- Susan M. Socolow, Emory University The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America . . . will enrich the understanding of Latin American culture of a student at just about any level. * The Latin Americanist *
Author Information
Kenneth J. Andrien is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Chair Emeritus in the History Department at Southern Methodist University, USA. He is the author and editor of numerous articles and nine books. Cameron D. Jones is a Lecturer at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, USA. He is an award-winning author who has published numerous books, chapters, and articles on various regions of Latin America. He is working on a digital humanities project, AfricanCalifornios.org, a repository for the lives and family connections of people of African descent in Spanish and Mexican California, which received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
