Colonial Latin America: Birth of the Modern World
Most of the current United States was Spanish territory for 300 years. The dollar was originally backed by Bolivian silver. The Philippines could technically be considered “Latin America.” This course reveals how colonial Latin America created the modern world system—from global capitalism to racial categories.
Using Latin America in Colonial Times (2nd edition) by Matthew Restall and Kris Lane, we explore how Spain and Portugal—”minor European powers”—built empires that fundamentally reshaped human history.
2024 Course Videos
Course Modules
Pre-Conquest Foundations
- Latin America as Birth of the Modern World – Why this matters for global history
- Were Native Americans Cannibals? – European obsessions and myth-making
- Native America Before Columbus – Sophisticated societies before 1492
- Castile and Portugal – The Reconquista blueprint for conquest
- Atlantic Africa Before Slavery – African kingdoms before European contact
Conquest and Its Myths
- The Iberian Imperial Dawn – How minor powers became global empires
- Native American Empires – Why the Aztec and Inca fell
- The Chain of Conquest – Standard procedures, not individual genius
- The Incomplete Conquest – Indigenous resistance continues for centuries
Colonial Society
- Native Communities in the Colonial Middle – 200 years of adaptation and survival
- Black Communities in Colonial Latin America – The African presence that shaped everything
- Colonial Catholicism – Hundreds of local forms of Christianity
Race, Rebellion, and Independence
- Colonialism Invented Race – How the Americas created racial categories
- The Great Andean Rebellion – Túpac Amaru and late colonial unrest
- Haitian Revolution and Latin American Independence – The most revolutionary revolution
Previous Course Iterations
For the 2023 Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean, we used Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall and Potosí: The Silver City That Changed the World by Kris Lane:
The 2021 course used The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean by Harry Sanabria:
Complete Teaching Archive
This course is part of an ongoing exploration of teaching Latin American and Caribbean anthropology, documented since 2012. For more, explore The Americas Hub for broader perspectives.