Latin American Multiculturalism and Early-Modern Globalisation: Revising Colonial Mythologies in Light of Postcolonial Critiques
Roberto González-Casanovas, University of Auckland
This paper considers recent developments in colonial and postcolonial studies that reinterpret the age of Iberian expansion and conquest in ways that relativise imperial and colonial identities. Current models of early-modern globalisation (Fernández-Armesto , Mignolo, Pagden, et al.) challenge older Hispanist and Americanist views of Spanish empire-building, Latin American national formations and Native American survivals. Following 1992 debates on Columbian exchange, key studies have appeared that reassess the growth of the Spanish empire and impact of Hispanic colonisation. They offer historical revisions of cultural or moral balances of European, Criollo, Mestizo, and indigenous interests. They recontextualise critical concepts of multiculturalism and globalisation as they have evolved over five centuries. Post-Quincentenary studies (Kamen, Restall, et al.) question traditional myths of epic histories or black legends, revise the very models of conquest and colonisation, and apply postcolonial critiques to the early-modern era. What emerges is that the so-called 'Spanish' empire in Europe and 'Spanish' enterprise of the Indies were in reality complex phenomena that combined multiple cultural resources from European crowns as well as from diverse adventurers, allies, and auxiliaries from five continents and countless frontier territories. In the process traditional myths about the Spanishness or Europeanness of the conquests as well as the Latin Americanness of various colonies and nations are being radically challenged. In their place, alternative models are developed that highlight pragmatic arrangements in frontier communities, fortuitous collaborations amongst hybrid peoples, and migratory processes of transculturation that accompany European and Neo-European expansions and interactions. Current models of early-modern globalisation within the field of Hispanism and Latin-Americanism ultimately serve to relativise and problematise the various new forms of hybrid cultural identity that result from shifting patterns of conquest and colonisation.