New World Empires: Cultures of Power and Governance in the Americas

This book is a sweeping reexamination of the evolution of the state, covering the indigenous orders of pre-Columbian America, the Spanish, Portuguese, and British Empires in the Americas, and their major successor states of Mexico, Brazil, and the United States.

Exploring the mechanisms of colonial order construction and the way in which that process prepared the ground for the emergence of national empires after independence, Niaz contends that the destruction of indigenous demography and c...