Latin America : Conquista, Colonization, Emancipation, many (hi)stories, different narratives
If, according to Enzo Traverso, History is a battlefield, it is even more so in the case of a territory which, from the moment it became part of the first ‘Global Modernity’, has been marked by conquest and depredation. The West Indies, from the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth, right up to what we now call Latin America, is a fragmented area with a rich and polarised history, structured around a number of emblematic memories that we will be analysing and de/re/constructing.
The aim of this seminar is to discuss, in Spanish, through several workshops, key moments in Latin American history, from the perspective of a global and connected history. From the Conquest to the beginning of the 19th century, we will go through the colonial period, in order to bring out the narratives and counter-narratives that structure History and that resonate with current events.
Using a variety of sources (primary sources and documents from the period, iconography and sound, extracts from historical and historiographical essays), students will be asked to organize oral presentations on the emblematic questions we will be tackling and on pivotal moments in American history, essential for understanding European history.
Program:
*The Conquest/Conquista and the fall into Modernity (late 15th, early 16th century)
*Relations between the West and East Indies and the metropolises
*Relations with the Other and the dehumanisation of the Other
*Colony, castes and social races (17th-18th centuries)
*Slavery in the Americas and the development of early capitalism on a European scale
*Revolts, revolutions, emancipation and the fiction of independence (late 18th-early 19th centuries)
- Teaching coordinator: Thomas Jean-Baptiste