History of Colonial Latin America

You don’t know which ones, but I’ll pick one or more of these and ask you to turn in a test essay with your open-book response. What I suggest is that you look for answers to all these questions as you do the reading. We’ll look at these and discuss them in class over the next several weeks, so bring your thoughts and notes with you! A good answer for most of these will not be found only in a single place in the book.

1. Mann coins the phrase “Holmburg’s Mistake” to describe the conclusions of a US researcher in the Beni province of Bolivia in the 1940s. Describe the “mistake” and give 2 other examples [not from Bolivia] of this “mistake” in the history of research on pre-Columbian people.
2. What does Mann cite as evidence of Indian “technology”? According to him, how did it differ from the technology of the Europeans?
3. According to Mann, what is the idea of the “Noble Savage”? When and why did it develop? How has it been maintained to the present day? How does the idea of Indian “technology” challenge this idea?
4. How would Mann compare and contrast the pre-Columbian populations of what we consider today to be “Latin America” and the pre-Columbian populations of what is today the United States? What similarities and differences does he expose?
5. Compare and contrast the old (1940s) and new (1990s) theories of Native American origins, as Mann explains them.
6. Most people in the Americas today have heard of the Aztec empire in modern day Mexico and the Inca Empire in modern day Peru. Given Mann’s view of when Native American civilization began, how would he describe these empires of the 1400s?
7. According to Mann, what were the common characteristics of all the agricultural systems of pre-Columbian peoples in the Americas?
8. According to the traditional view, how was pre-Columbian Brazil different from pre-Columbian Mexico? Mann presents the ideas of researchers that challenge this view. According to the new research, in what ways was Brazil similar to Mexico?