Jurisdictional Battlefields: Political Culture, Theatricality, and Spanish Expeditions in Charcas in the second half of the sixteenth century(Liverpool Latin American Studies)

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library as part of the Opening the Future project with COPIM.

This book examines three expeditions by the Spanish to the borders of Charcas, a district that covers present-day Bolivia and the northwest of Argentina, in the second half of the sixteenth century, using an approach that has not been attempted until now. Scholarship on these events has framed them as part of a gradual top-down process of centralisation driven by the Crown to extend its power and build a colonial ‘state’ in the Americas. This book challenges that view, approaching the expeditions through an analysis of the political culture that underpinned them. It explores the events within the process of installation and consolidation of royal jurisdiction, understood here as the authority to establish law and deliver justice, in a remote area. This was a process achieved through coercion and violence, as well as negotiation and consensus, that involved both the Spanish and indigenous peoples, and that frequently created overlapping jurisdictions, via downscaling of politics and dispersal of power. Jurisdictional politics were decided and settled in battlefields and courts and involved the theatricalization of power, to make a distant monarch present, which, paradoxically, made such absence the more evident. The book is an invitation to re-dimension the scope of Spain’s empire

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. A background to the expeditions: The southeast Charcas borders between the Inca and the Spanish

2. Jurisdictional entanglements: The expeditions of Martín de Almendras

3. La Flor del Perú: Viceroy Toledo’s journey to the borders

4. Downscaling politics: A royal official travels to the borders

Final but not definitive comments

Glossary of terms

Bibliography and sources

"(The book) is effectively presented, written in a clear manner, and exceptionally well-researched. It will be a welcome addition to the scholarship on colonialism, empire, and local rule vs. global pretensions." Professor Martin Nesvig, University of Miami

"Though both the geographical and chronological frame for this study are very narrow, this particular approach allows the author to return to well-trodden historiographical territory with fresh eyes and the potential to deliver new insights. The research and analysis within the monograph are very compelling." Assistant Professor Max Deardorff, University of Florida

‘Jurisdictional Battlefields is a highly valuable contribution. The book includes useful appendixes, in particular a selection of primary sources in Spanish and in translation. It is clearly written and organized, draws on a rich and unexploited document base, illuminates a little-studied region, and enriches the debate on early modern state building with the case study of an imperial frontier.’ Jeremy Ravi Mumford, Hispanic American Historical Review