Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World)

When Europe introduced mechanisms to control New World territories, resources and populations, women-whether African, indigenous, mixed race, or European-responded and participated in multiple ways. By adopting a comprehensive view of female agency, the essays in this collection reveal the varied implications of women's experiences in colonialism in North and South America. Although the Spanish American context receives particular attention here, the volume contrasts the context of both colonial Mexico and Peru to every other major geographic region that became a focus of European imperialism in the early modern period: the Caribbean, Brazil, English America, and New France. The chapters provide a coherent perspective on the comparative history of European colonialism in the Americas through their united treatment of four central themes: the gendered implications of life on colonial frontiers; non-European women's relationships to Christian institutions; the implications of race-mixing; and social networks established by women of various ethnicities in the colonial context. This volume adds a new dimension to current scholarship in Atlantic history through its emphasis on culture, gender and race, and through its explicit effort to link religion to the broader imperial framework of economic extraction and political domination. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of Tables 8 List of Abbreviations 9 Acknowledgements 10 Contributor Notes 11 Introduction: Contextualizing Race, Gender and Religion in the New World 14 Part 1: Frontiers 26 2 Women as Go-Betweens? Patterns in Sixteenth-Century Brazil 28 3 Gender and Violence: Conquest, Conversion and Culture on New Spain’s Imperial Frontier 42 4 The Very Sinews of a New Colony: Demographic Determinism and the History of Early Georgia Women, 1732–1752 52 Part 2: Female Religious 68 5 The Convent as Missionary in Seventeenth-Century France 70 6 ‘Although I am black, I am beautiful’: Juana Esperanza de San Alberto, Black Carmelite of Puebla 80 7 Andean Women in Religion: Beatas, ‘Decency’ and the Defence of Honour in Colonial Cuzco 94 Part 3: Race Mixing 106 8 Incest, Sexual Virtue and Social Mobility in Late Colonial Mexico 108 9 ‘An Empire Founded on Libertinage’: The Mulâtresse and Colonial Anxiety in Saint Domingue 122 10 Mediating Mackinac: Métis Women’s Cultural Persistence in the Upper Great Lakes 138 Part 4: Networks 148 11 Circuits of Knowledge among Women in Early Seventeenth-Century Lima 150 12 Waters of Faith, Currents of Freedom: Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in Inter-Imperial Trade between Curaçao and Tierra Firme 164 Afterword Women in the Atlantic World 178 Bibliography 186 Index 216