Spectacular modern aerial photographs of twenty-three of the towns dramatically illustrate changes to the urban scene and demonstrate the lasting influence of the initial city patterns on subsequent growth.
This comprehensive survey of urban growth in America has become a standard work in the field. From the early colonial period to the First World War, John Reps explores to what extent city planning has been rooted in the nation's tradition, showing the extent of European influence on early communities. Illustrated by over three hundred reproductions of maps, plans, and panoramic views, this book presents hundreds of American cities and the unique factors affecting their development.
In this milestone work, William Fowler uses archaeology, history, and social theory to show that the establishment of cities was essential to Spanish colonialism. Fowler draws upon decades of archaeological research on the landscape, built environment, and architecture of Ciudad Vieja, a sixteenth-century site located in present-day El Salvador and the best-preserved Spanish colonial city in Latin America. Fowler compares Ciudad Vieja to other urban sites in the region and to the tradition of urbanism in early modern Spain to determine how the Spanish grid-plan layout was modified and implemented in the Americas. Using extensive archival material, Fowler describes how this layout reflected and perpetuated power structures that benefited the Spanish although the city’s Indigenous population was greater in number. Fowler analyzes recorded interactions between colonists, Indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans to demonstrate the ways the cityscape affected the relationships among individuals and cultural groups. Offering an unparalleled view into a critical moment in Latin American history, this book offers new ways of looking at urbanism and colonialism as intertwined forces in the emergence of the early modern world.
The complete Cambridge History of Latin America presents a large-scale, authoritative survey of Latin America's unique historical experience from the first contacts between the native American Indians and Europeans to the present day. Colonial Spanish America is a selection of chapters from volumes I and II brought together to provide a continuous history of the Spanish Empire in America from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. The first three chapters deal with conquest and settlement and relations between Spain and its American Empire; the final six with urban development, mining, rural economy and society, including the formation of the hacienda, the internal economy, and the impact of Spanish rule on Indian societies. Bibliographical essays are included for all chapters. The book will be a valuable text for both students and teachers of Latin American history.
The surprising history behind a ubiquitous facet of the United States: the gridded landscape. Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, all precisely measured and perfectly aligned, turn both urban and rural America into a checkerboard landscape that stretches from horizon to horizon. In evidence throughout the country, but especially the West, the pattern is a hallmark of American life. One might consider it an administrative convenience—an easy way to divide land and lay down streets—but it is not. The colossal grid carved into the North American continent, argues historian and writer Amir Alexander, is a plan redolent with philosophical and political meaning. In 1784 Thomas Jefferson presented Congress with an audacious scheme to reshape the territory of the young United States. All western lands, he proposed, would be inscribed with a single rectilinear grid, transforming the natural landscape into a mathematical one. Following Isaac Newton and John Locke, he viewed mathematical space as a blank slate on which anything is possible and where new Americans, acting freely, could find liberty. And if the real America, with its diverse landscapes and rich human history, did not match his vision, then it must be made to match it. From the halls of Congress to the open prairies, and from the fight against George III to the Trail of Tears, Liberty’s Grid tells the story of the battle between grid makers and their opponents. When Congress endorsed Jefferson’s plan, it set off a struggle over American space that has not subsided. Transcendentalists, urban reformers, and conservationists saw the grid not as a place of possibility but as an artificial imposition that crushed the human spirit. Today, the ideas Jefferson associated with the grid still echo through political rhetoric about the country’s founding, and competing visions for the nation are visible from Manhattan avenues and Kansan pastures to Yosemite’s cliffs and suburbia’s cul-de-sacs. An engrossing read, Liberty’s Grid offers a powerful look at the ideological conflict written on the landscape.
The updated and enhanced third edition of A History of Latin America to 1825 presents a comprehensive narrative survey of Latin American history from the region's first human presence until the majority of Iberian colonies in America emerged as sovereign states c. 1825. This edition features new content on the history of women, gender, Africans in the Iberian colonies, and pre-Columbian peoples Includes more illustrations to aid learning: over 50 figures and photographs, several accompanied by short essays Concentrates on the colonial period and earlier, expanding coverage of the period and incorporating more social and cultural history with the political narrative Part of The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.
A History of Architecture and Urbanism in the Americas is the first comprehensive survey to narrate the urbanization of the Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica, making it a vital resource to help you understand the built environment in this part of the world. The book combines the latest scholarship about the indigenous past with an environmental history approach covering issues of climate, geology, and biology, so that you'll see the relationship between urban and rural in a new, more inclusive way. Author Clare Cardinal-Pett tells the story chronologically, from the earliest-known human migrations into the Americas to the 1930s to reveal information and insights that weave across time and place so that you can develop a complex and nuanced understanding of human-made landscape forms, patterns of urbanization, and associated building typologies. Each chapter addresses developments throughout the hemisphere and includes information from various disciplines, original artwork, and historical photographs of everyday life, which - along with numerous maps, diagrams, and traditional building photographs - will train your eye to see the built environment as you read about it.
Splintering Towers of Babel focuses on and redefines soft infrastructures and critical infrastructure projects. It explores key issues in contemporary urban studies including town planning histories, architecture, heritage, colonialism and postcolonialism, philosophy, and ethics. The book combines transdisciplinary perspectives on the key historical, philosophical, and political issues associated with urban experiences, built forms, and infrastructure networks. It explores uneven dimensions in contemporary urbanisms and develops spatial phenomenological thinking with reference to the northern and southern hemispheres. This book connects the past and the present, in addition to Western and global South geographies, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Its main contribution is to broaden readers' understanding of infrastructure through the lens of the humanities and to engage with political, poetical, and ethical perspectives. This book is tailored to scholars working in the fields of urban planning, urban geography, architectural history, urban design, infrastructure studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, African studies, and philosophy.
Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History is a sourcebook of primary texts and images intended for students and teachers as well as for scholars and general readers. The book centers upon people-people from different parts of the world who came together to form societies by chance and by design in the years after 1492. This text is designed to encourage a detailed exploration of the cultural development of colonial Latin America through a wide variety of documents and visual materials, most of which have been translated and presented originally for this collection. Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History is a revision of SR Books' popular Colonial Spanish America. The new edition welcomes a third co-editor and, most significantly, embraces Portuguese and Brazilian materials. Other fundamental changes include new documents from Spanish South America, the addition of some key color images, plus six reference maps, and a decision to concentrate entirely upon primary sources. The book is meant to enrich, not repeat, the work of existing texts on this period, and its use of primary sources to focus upon people makes it stand out from other books that have concentrated on the political and economic aspects. The book's illustrations and documents are accompanied by introductions which provide context and invite discussion. These sources feature social changes, puzzling developments, and the experience of living in Spanish and Portuguese American colonial societies. Religion and society are the integral themes of Colonial Latin America. Religion becomes the nexus for much of what has been treated as political, social, economic, and cultural history during this period. Society is just as inclusive, allowing students to meet a variety of individuals-not faceless social groups. While some familiar names and voices are included-conquerors, chroniclers, sculptors, and preachers-other, far less familiar points of view complement and complicate the better-known narratives of this history. In treating Iberia and America, before as well as after their meeting, apparent contradictions emerge as opportunities for understanding; different perspectives become prompts for wider discussion. Other themes include exploration and contact; religious and cultural change; slavery and society, miscegenation, and the formation, consolidation, reform, and collapse of colonial institutions of government and the Church, as well as accompanying changes in economies and labor. This sourcebook allows students and teachers to consider the thoughts and actions of a wide range of people who were making choices and decisions, pursuing ideals, misperceiving each other, experiencing disenchantment, absorbing new pressures, breaking rules as well as following them, and employing strategies of survival which might involve both reconciliation and opposition. Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History has been assembled with teaching and class discussion in mind. The book will be an excellent tool for Latin American history survey courses and for seminars on the colonial period.