Who Died and Made Them Kings? People, Politics, and Power in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800

3 units

Who were the few, and who were the many, in the early-modern Atlantic World? The discovery of the Americas and the coalescing of an Atlantic World would do much to transform profoundly, the common understanding of the body politics in the early-modern world. The Americas provided new models of kingship and empire; Aztecs and Incas ruled in way which both seemed familiar and strange to Spaniards' eyes. In the Caribbean, the North, and the Amazon, nomadic and semi-nomadic nations presented even more puzzling situations, where no one seemed to rule. And yet other nations, such as the Iroquois, were experimenting with new political forms. This course is thus focused on tracking this multitude of experiences from a socio-political and anthropological perspective, rather through intellectual history.