The New Kingdom of Granada: The Making and Unmaking of Spain's Atlantic Empire

by Santiago Muïoz-Arbelïez

Overview

The New Kingdom of Granada tells the history of the making and unmaking of empire in the diverse and decentralized Indigenous landscapes of the Northern Andes. Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez examines the intricate and disputed processes that reshaped the peoples and landscapes of present-day Colombia into a kingdom within the global Spanish monarchy. Drawing on correspondence, visitation reports, judicial records, maps, textiles, and accounting and legal documents created by Europeans and Indigenous peoples, Muñoz-Arbeláez outlines the painstaking century-long effort between 1530 and 1630 to consolidate the kingdom. A diverse group of people that included Indigenous interpreters, scribes, and intellectuals spearheaded these projects, which eventually expanded colonial control outward from its base in the highland Andean plateaus down to the lowland river valleys. Meanwhile, autonomous Indigenous political projects constantly threatened imperial rule, as rebels often encircled the kingdom and seized the corridors that linked it to Spain. By foregrounding the kingdom’s difficult establishment and tenuous hold on power, Muñoz-Arbeláez challenges traditional understandings of imperial politics and the myriad ways Indigenous peoples participated in, disputed, and negotiated the establishment of colonial rule.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478031840
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	05/16/2025
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Table of Contents

A Note on Terminology  ix
Introduction. A Kingdom in the Mountains  1
Part I. Producing Indios  21
1. Labyrinths of Conquest  25
2. A Kingdom of Paper  47
3. The Fabric of Kingdom  77
Part II. Indigenous Freedom  107
4. Devouring the Empire  113
5. A Mestizo Cacique  143
6. An Indigenous Intellectual in King Philip’s Court  161
Part III. New Imperial Designs  191
7. Landscapes of Property  197
8. Imperial Alchemy  223
Epilogue  245
Acknowledgments  253
Notes  255
Bibliography  281
Index  307

Editorial Reviews

The New Kingdom of Granada introduces readers to colonial Colombia in an entirely new register. Ranging from highlands to lowlands and across social strata, Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez defines the stakes of this particular Spanish colonial endeavor—and the fight against it—from many points of view. It is a story of lurching incursions, the veneer of conquest, and institutions stranded in the seeming ‘middle of nowhere,’ linked to the metropolis by nothing but a stream of letters. It is also a story of Indigenous resistance, adaptation, and resilience. The ‘colony’ that emerges at the end of this book bears little resemblance to what came before, and yet continuities creep back in. This is a subtle history of an impossibly broken land.

Potosi: The Silver City That Changed the World - Kris Lane

The New Kingdom of Granada introduces readers to colonial Colombia in an entirely new register. Ranging from highlands to lowlands and across social strata, Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez defines the stakes of this particular Spanish colonial endeavor—and the fight against it—from many points of view. It is a story of lurching incursions, the veneer of conquest, and of institutions stranded in the seeming ‘middle of nowhere,’ linked to the metropolis by nothing but a stream of letters. It is also a story of Indigenous resistance, adaptation, and resilience. The ‘colony’ that emerges at the end of this book bears little resemblance to what came before, and yet continuities creep back in. This is a subtle history of an impossibly broken land.

Potosi: The Silver City that Changed the World - Kris Lane

Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez takes the unusual step of using objects such as paper documents, textiles, maps and paintings as well as people or groups of people as focal points for telling a richly contextualized story of the building of the New Kingdom of Granada. Impressively intertwining the multiplicity of ways to narrate and analyze the construction of the Spanish empire in the early modern period, Muñoz-Arbeláez makes a superb contribution to our understanding of colonial Latin America.”—Joanne Rappaport, author of, The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Granada

“The New Kingdom of Granada introduces readers to colonial Colombia in an entirely new register. Ranging from highlands to lowlands and across social strata, Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez defines the stakes of this particular Spanish colonial endeavor—and the fight against it—from many points of view. It is a story of lurching incursions, the veneer of conquest, and institutions stranded in the seeming ‘middle of nowhere,’ linked to the metropolis by nothing but a stream of letters. It is also a story of Indigenous resistance, adaptation, and resilience. The ‘colony’ that emerges at the end of this book bears little resemblance to what came before, and yet continuities creep back in. This is a subtle history of an impossibly broken land.”—Kris Lane, author of, Potosi: The Silver City That Changed the World

From the Publisher

Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez takes the unusual step of using objects such as paper documents, textiles, maps and paintings as well as people or groups of people as focal points for telling a richly contextualized story of the building of the New Kingdom of Granada. Impressively intertwining the multiplicity of ways to narrate and analyze the construction of the Spanish empire in the early modern period, Muñoz-Arbeláez makes a superb contribution to our understanding of colonial Latin America.

The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Granada - Joanne Rappaport