Studies in Spanish American Population History
About the Book and Editor
Studies in Spanish American Population History edited by David J. Robinson
Each of the contributions in this book sheds new light on key elements in the changing size, structure, and distribution of the Spanish American population during the colonial period. Several authors provide new source materials, while others manipulate well-known data in innovative ways to provide new insights into the past. In several of the essays the authors give information on regions and localities that hitherto have lain beyond the frontier of historical knowledge. Particularly important is their search for the broadest significance of their findings, whether investigating an entire region or a specific city, parish, or even family.
David J. Robinson, associate professor of geography at Syracuse University, is the author of several books on Latin America. He has served on the advisory board of the Journal of Latin American Studies and is currently general editor of the Dellplain Latin American Studies series.
DELLPLAIN LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
EDITOR
David J. Robinson
Syracuse University
EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
David A. Brading
University of Cambridge
Daniel Raposo Cordeiro
Syracuse University
William M. Denevan
University of Wisconsin
John H. Galloway
University of Toronto
John Lynch
University of London
William Mangin
Syracuse University
Studies in Spanish American Population History
edited by David J. Robinson
Dellplain Latin American Studies, No. 8
First published 1981 by Westview Press, Inc.
Published 2019 by Routledge
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Copyright 1981 Taylor & Francis
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-68379
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28905-8 (hbk)
For WOODROW BORAH who for so long has pointed the way
Contents
--DAVID J. ROBINSON
JOHN V. LOMBARDI
BRIAN M. EVANS
JUAN VILLAMARIN
and
JUDITH VILLAMARIN
JOHN K. CHANCE
LINDA L. GREENOW
DAVID J. ROBINSON
CHRISTOPHER LUTZ
W. GEORGE LOVELL
LINDA A. NEWSON
N. DAVID COOK
Six of the ten essays in this collection (Lombardi, Villamarin, Chance, Greenow, Robinson, and Cook) were originally presented at a Special Session during the 43rd International Congress of Americanists, held in Vancouver during August, 1979. Jointly organized by David J. Robinson and Juan Villamarin, the session was designed to bring together a group of individuals who had been working on the changing population of colonial Spanish America from various disciplinary perspectives, to facilitate an exchange of information and ideas, and to promote the further investigation of significant research questions. The paper of Brian Evans was presented at the same Congress, in another session, but given its purpose and content it was thought to provide an ideal complement to several papers in the present collection.
Two other papers (Lovell and Lutz) were initially presented in a "Seminar in the Historical Demography of Highland Guatemala," part of the 27th Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, held in Albany, N.Y., during October, 1979; Linda Newson's essay has been specially prepared for this volume, and is part of a larger forthcoming study of Central American population history. She also participated in the discussions following the presentation of most of the Americanistas papers. It will be clear from a reading of these three papers that the authors are addressing topics that could equally have found a place in the Americanists discussions, and they thus here provide an important Central American dimension to the debate on population change. One of the benefits of hindsight is the possibility of re-assembling a group of persons who should have been together in the first place!
Only those who have ventured beyond the oral presentation stage of conference papers will understand the full significance of my sincere thanks to all of the contributors to this volume for their patience and kind assistance in revising various drafts of their papers. Multidisciplinary research sounds exciting, but it can too easily founder on a few unanswered letters and missed deadlines.
I owe a personal debt to Juan Villamarin, whose energies and contacts made the task of organizing a special session at the Americanistas much easier than it might otherwise have been.
Almost all of the maps and diagrams were prepared by Valmor Philp of the Syracuse University Cartographic Laboratory, and to him we extend our special thanks. Jane McGraw typed the entire manuscript in its many drafts, as well as all of the inevitable correspondence that such an enterprise involves, with her inimitable speed and good humor, and I am thus even deeper in her debt. Both the typing and cartographies were funded from the Dellplain Latin American Geography Program at Syracuse University, and I would like to thank Robert G. Jensen, Chairman of the Geography Department, for his unfailing support in that regard.
David J. Robinson
Syracuse, New York
John . Chance Department of Anthropology, University of Denver, Colorado
. David Cook Department of History, University of Bridgeport, Connecticut
Brian M. Evans Department of Geography, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Linda L. Greenow Department of Geography, Syracuse University, New York
John V. Lombardi Department of History, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
Christopher H. Lutz Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamrica, Antigua, Guatemala
W. George Lovell Department of Geography, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Linda A. Newson Department of Geography, King's College, University of London
David J. Robinson Department of Geography, Syracuse University, New York
Juan and Judith Villamarin Department of Anthropology, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware
David J. Robinson
This brief introduction will serve to place each of the essays within the wider context of Spanish American population history. Limitations of space preclude a detailed bibliographical and historiographical treatment, and in any event, the reader will find in the notes that accompany each of the essays a large number of citations that provide ample evidence of the advancing state of the art. Each of the contributions sheds new light on key elements in the changing size, structure, and distribution of Spanish American population during the colonial period. While some range over centuries to monitor temporal sequences, others adopt a cross-sectional approach to specify the precise conditions at a convenient historical viewpoint. Several authors provide new source materials, while others manipulate well-known data in an innovative manner to provide new insights into the past. In several of the essays information is provided for regions and localities which have hitherto lain beyond the frontier of historical knowledge.
