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11 June 2025

BOOK: Santiago MUÑOZ-ARBELÁEZ, The New Kingdom of Granada. The Making and Unmaking of Spain’s Atlantic Empire (Durham (N.C.): Duke university Press, 2025), 328 p., USD 29,95

 

(image source: Duke)

Abstract:

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.

On the author:

Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Table of contents:

A Note on Terminology  ix
Introduction. A Kingdom in the Mountains  1
Part I. Producing Indios  21
1. Labyrinths of Conquest  25
2. A Kingdom of Paper  47
3. The Fabric of Kingdom  77
Part II. Indigenous Freedom  107
4. Devouring the Empire  113
5. A Mestizo Cacique  143
6. An Indigenous Intellectual in King Philip’s Court  161
Part III. New Imperial Designs  191
7. Landscapes of Property  197
8. Imperial Alchemy  223
Epilogue  245
Acknowledgments  253
Notes  255
Bibliography  281

Index  307

 DOI 10.1215/9781478060802.

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