The New Kingdom of Granada is a landmark work in the field of colonial Latin American history. Until relatively recently, there was scant literature in English on the early colonial history of what is now the nation of Colombia. A new generation of scholars has changed that while pushing the historiography emanating from Colombia in exciting new directions. Among this innovative body of scholarship, Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez’s book stands out for its sharp, multifaceted analysis—cultural, economic, political, ecological, and spatial—of the dynamic early period of Spanish rule.
Dr. Muñoz-Arbeláez keys in on a defining element of the region’s Indigenous history to reveal the challenges that Spanish colonizers faced. The Muisca chiefdoms of the Andean highlands and the Panches, Muzos, Sutagaos, and Pijaos (among others) of the lowlands maintained complex long-distance systems of exchange while avoiding the centralized rule that characterized the Mexica of Mesoamerica and the Inca of the central and southern Andes. Dr. Muñoz-Aberláez argues convincingly that Indigenous decentralization made the colonial experience of the New Kingdom distinctive from the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, which dominate the historiography.
The New Kingdom broadens our understanding of Spanish empire-building by unfurling a narrative in three parts over the first century of Spanish rule, from the 1530s following the Spanish invasion until 1630, which marked the end of a period of imperial expansion. Part I (Chapters 1 and 2) charts the era of Spanish conquest and implantation of imperial institutions, with a special focus on encomienda (extraction of Indigenous labor and production) and reducciones (Spanish-style agricultural communities with urban cores). The author demonstrates the contingency of this process, which was riddled with trial and error and unanticipated consequences. Spanish failure to come to terms with the Native economies and inter-ethnic relations that crosscut the highlands and lowlands helps to explain the fits and starts of this early phase. Chapter 3, which centers textile production in Indigenous economies, culture, and politics, overturns long-held assumptions about the dominance of gold in the region’s economy. Muñoz-Arbeláez masterfully reconstructs the inner workings of the encomienda of textiles, arguing that Spaniards had to adapt to Native systems of value and exchange and that production remained largely in the hands of Native people through much of the sixteenth century.
By highlighting Indigenous political projects forged in response to Spanish colonialism from the 1550s to 1580s, Part II (Chapters 3, 4, and 5) provides a counterpoint to Part I. Chapter 4 reconstructs the radical anti-colonial project of the Indigenous Pijao of the lowlands who sought to destroy Spanish settlements and sabotage nascent imperial infrastructure, including roads, systems of communication, and institutions. Their goal was to annihilate Spanish colonialism, plain and simple. Their campaign of violence succeeded in putting a temporary halt to Spanish expansion. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on a different mode of Indigenous politics: using Spanish justice—its laws, protocols, and tropes—to appeal to the Spanish King for reform of the New Kingdom’s oppressive and faltering institutions. The protagonist of this story was don Diego de la Torre, a Muisca cacique, mestizo, and intellectual who traveled to Madrid to advocate on behalf of Indigenous interests. He successfully persuaded the king of the need to replace the officials of the Audiencia of Bogotá, among other transformations. In contrast to the Pijaos, he sought to reform Spanish institutions from within and remake the role of Native peoples in the empire as free vassals. By exploring this broad spectrum of Indigenous politics, Muñoz-Arbeláez expands our understanding of Indigenous sovereignties and responses to colonialism.
Part III shows how Spanish imperial authorities ultimately remade the political economy of the New Kingdom in their image from 1590 to 1630. Chapter 7 chronicles Indigenous dispossession through the Crown’s titling program known as the composiciones de tierras. By transforming land into property and confining Indigenous people to resguardos—reserves with just enough land to provide for subsistence—Spanish authorities produced Native laborers who could be moved from the highlands to the lowland silver mines to work in the empire’s extractive economy. Muñoz-Arbeláez compellingly situates this story as an early modern chapter in the transatlantic process of enclosure. Chapter 8 follows the colonizing process downhill—another distinctive feature of Spanish empire in the region—as the lowland mines were opened up through the genocide of the Pijaos. This two-pronged dismemberment of Indigenous political and economic authority gave the kingdom the solidity, if partial and uneven, that its architects had sought over the last century.
The New Kingdom of Granada is an original and revelatory piece of scholarship. One of its signal virtues is how it seamlessly weaves together ethnohistory and imperial history. The diverse methods that Dr. Muñoz-Arbeláez brings to bear on a fragmentary archive, assembled from repositories in Colombia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, lend the book theoretical and empirical richness. Through well-rendered stories and vignettes, the book brings the diverse peoples of the region to life. It is a must-read for students and scholars interested in Spanish colonialism, Indigenous history, and the history of the northern Andes.
