The New Kingdom of Granada: The Making and Unmaking of Spains Atlantic Empire [Hardcover]

The New Kingdom of Granada tells the history of the making and unmaking of empire in the diverse and decentralized Indigenous landscapes of the Northern Andes. Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez examines the intricate and disputed processes that reshaped the peoples and landscapes of present-day Colombia into a kingdom within the global Spanish monarchy. Drawing on correspondence, visitation reports, judicial records, maps, textiles, and accounting and legal documents created by Europeans and Indigenous peoples, Muñoz-Arbeláez outlines the painstaking century-long effort between 1530 and 1630 to consolidate the kingdom. A diverse group of people that included Indigenous interpreters, scribes, and intellectuals spearheaded these projects, which eventually expanded colonial control outward from its base in the highland Andean plateaus down to the lowland river valleys. Meanwhile, autonomous Indigenous political projects constantly threatened imperial rule, as rebels often encircled the kingdom and seized the corridors that linked it to Spain. By foregrounding the kingdom’s difficult establishment and tenuous hold on power, Muñoz-Arbeláez challenges traditional understandings of imperial politics and the myriad ways Indigenous peoples participated in, disputed, and negotiated the establishment of colonial rule.USSantiago Muñoz-Arbeláez tells the political history of the project to transform the diverse peoples and landscapes of present-day central Colombia into a kingdom that was part of the global Spanish monarchy.Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.“Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez takes the unusual step of using objects such as paper documents, textiles, maps and paintings as well as people or groups of people as focal points for telling a richly contextualized story of the building of the New Kingdom of Granada. ImpressilӞ