The decades since the 1980s have witnessed an unprecedented surge in research about Latin American history. This much-needed volume brings together original essays by renowned scholars to provide the first comprehensive assessment of this burgeoning literature. The seventeen original essays in The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History survey the recent historiography of the colonial era, independence movements, and postcolonial periods and span Mexico, Spanish South America, and Brazil. They begin by questioning the limitations and meaning of Latin America as a conceptual organization of space within the Americas and how the region became excluded from broader studies of the Western hemisphere. Subsequent essays address indigenous peoples of the region, rural and urban history, slavery and race, African, European and Asian immigration, labor, gender and sexuality, religion, family and childhood, economics, politics, and disease and medicine. In so doing, they bring together traditional approaches to politics and power, while examining the quotidian concerns of workers, women and children, peasants, and racial and ethnic minorities. This volume provides the most complete state of the field and is an indispensible resource for scholars and students of Latin America.

Jose C. Moya is Professor of History at Barnard College and the author of Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires.

Preface Introduction, Jose C. Moya 1. Historiography of New Spain, Kevin Terraciano and Lisa Sousa 2. Colonial Spanish South America, Lyman L. Johnson and Susan Migden Socolow 3. The Historiography of Early Modern Brazil, Stuart B. Schwartz 4. Sexuality in Colonial Spanish America, Asunción Lavrin 5. Independence in Latin America, Jeremy Adelman 6. Slavery in Brazil, João José Reis and Herbert Klein 7. Postcolonial Brazil, Barbara Weinstein 8. Race in Post-Abolition Afro-Latin America, Kim D. Butler and Aline Helg 9. Indigenous Peoples and Nation-States in Spanish America, 1780-2000, Florencia E. Mallon 10. Rural History, Eric Van Young 11. Latin American Labor History, James P. Brennan 12. Gender and Sexuality in Latin America, Donna J. Guy 13. Family Matters: The Historiography of Latin American Families, Nara Milanich 14. The New Economic History of Latin America: Evolution and Recent Contributions, John H. Coatsworth and William R. Summerhill 15. Disease, Medicine, and Health, 1500-1950, Diego Armus and Adrián López Denis 16. Popular Religion in Latin American Historiography, Reinaldo L. Román and Pamela Voekel Bibliography