Subverting colonial authority : challenges to Spanish rule in eighteenth-century southern Andes
"Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes" by Sergio Serulnikov offers a comprehensive political history of indigenous resistance in the Northern Potosí region of present-day Bolivia during the 1740s to early 1780s. Drawing on extensive archival research, including court records, government documents, personal letters, and census data from Bolivian and Argentine archives, Serulnikov examines the evolution of routine political conflicts into large-scale insurrections that challenged Spanish colonial rule. The book analyzes long-term patterns of social conflict rooted in local political cultures and regionally based power relations, highlighting the emergence of radical modes of anticolonial thought and ethnic cooperation among Andean peasants. Serulnikov argues that these communities overcame internal divisions by mobilizing both legal and forceful means to assert their rights and hold colonial authorities accountable, thereby contradicting colonial perceptions of indigenous societies as isolated or submissive. This work provides valuable insights into indigenous rebellion, European colonialism, and Andean cultural history
Print Book, English, 2003
Duke University Press, Durham, 2003