Dr. Karen Graubart (Notre Dame, History) will be presenting at the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Symposium, "The Americas before 1620: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Indigenous Cultures, Colonialism, and Slavery".
Dr. Graubart's presentation, "Republics of Difference: Self-Governance, Colonialism, and Early Lima", will explore Spanish colonialism and how it leaned heavily on the political concept of the republic, a self-governing unit with elected representation (like a guild) that reported to levels of hierarchy up to the crown. On the Iberian peninsula during the medieval conflicts between Christians and Muslims, frontier settlers in Christian-conquered areas were recognized as self-governing municipalities subject to their own as well as the sovereign's law. Muslims and Jews who lived under Christian law were also recognized in this form as "aljamas" (in Castile) that paid special taxes in exchange for self governance under their religious law. In the New World, monarchs extended the model, granting township to groups of Spanish settlers (cabildos) and recognizing polities of indigenous peoples under their own leadership but also subject to the Catholic church, royal law, and other legal entities. This presentation examines the formation of a particular republic on the outskirts of Lima, Peru in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth centuries to see how self-governance might have contribute to the formulation of racial stereotypes about indigenous peoples. It closes with a gesture to the large number of peoples left out of the republic model in the Americas -- men and women of African heritage, products of the Atlantic slave trade -- and how that refusal contribution to their racialization in the early colonial period as well.
This event is free and open to the public! For more information about this symposium, please view the flyer below.
