PETER BAKEWELL is Edmund and Louise Kahn Professor of History at Southern Methodist University and has taught in the US since 1975. His major research and writing has centered on the history of silver mining and related topics in colonial Spanish America. His previous works include Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546–1700 (1971) and Silver and Entrepreneurship in Seventeenth-Century Potosi: The Life and Times of Antonio López de Quiroga (1988). JACQUELINE HOLLER is Associate Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, Canada. She is the author of Escogidas Plantas: Nuns and Beatas in Mexico City, 1531–1601 (2003), and of articles on colonial Mexico.

• List of Illustrations xList of Maps xiiiPhoto Essay xivSeries Editor’s Preface xvPreface to the Third Edition xviiiConventions Used in the Text xixMaps xxPART I BASES 11 Lands and Climates 52 American Peoples 22Ancient Peoples 26Formative Peoples 30Classic Peoples 35Aztecs and Incas 47Less Known Cultures 613 Iberia and Africa 68PART II APPROACHES 934 Columbus and Others 975 Experiment in the Caribbean 1096 Military Conquest 126PART III DOMINATION 1417 Administration: The Power of Paper 1458 Church: Friars, Bishops, and the State 1719 Society: Old Orders Changed 19510 Economy: Ships and Silver 225Photo Essay 259PART IV MATURE COLONIES 27511 The Seventeenth Century: A Slacker Grip 281Challenges to Spain 281Production, Taxes, and Trade in America 297Indians in the Heartlands: Making their own Space 307Indians on the Peripheries 316Africans 322Women 328Arts, Formal and Popular 338Varieties of Mestizaje 34612 Eighteenth-Century Spanish America: Reformed or Deformed? 349People, Production, and Commerce 351Bourbon Revisions of Rules and Principles 364Society: Change and Protest 374Creole Self-Awareness: Rejection and Reception of Europe 386The Eighteenth-Century Balance 395PART V PORTUGAL IN AMERICA 39713 Colonial Brazil: Slaves, Sugar, and Gold 401Explorers, Interlopers, and Settlers 401Indians and Jesuits 406Sugar 410People and Government 415Outsiders: The Dutch, and Others, in Brazil 419Movement Inland: Slavers, Prospectors, and Stockmen 424Seventeenth-Century Society 430The Indians and Father Vieira 433Government and Economy in the Seventeenth Century 436The Age of Gold 444Pombal and Reform 451Products of Mind and Sensibility 455PART VI INDEPENDENCE AND BEYOND 46314 Independence 46515 Epilogue 495Glossary 505Notes 510Bibliography 536Index 563Chronologies for each part appear after the part-title page.