Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2019
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire," at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Colonized and post-colonial economies on the fringes of empires are often marked by intermittent exchanges between local populations, and colonial administrators and visitors traveling from settlement to settlement. These mobile functionaries include tax collectors, missionaries, venture capitalists, surveyors, naturalists, among others. One guiding question we have is the extent to which these brief moments of cultural exchange, conceptualized broadly, left enduring influence in local communities. The problem seems to be one of scale. How do we talk about these infrequent, and short, encounters with the colonial apparatus against a backdrop of deeper times and histories? And, if we direct our attention to certain moments at the expense of others, what do we miss the negotiated becoming and sedimentation of the "modern" colonial state apparatus? In this session, we discuss how the transient interactions between local communities and foreign administrators can clarify mechanisms of historical change in colonial and post-colonial contexts.
Other Keywords
andes •
Colonialism •
Textiles •
Religion •
Ivory •
Colonial •
heritage •
Andean south •
travelers
Temporal Keywords
19th Century •
Colonial •
Colonial/Historical •
Spanish Colonial Andes
Geographic Keywords
Coahuila (State / Territory) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Oklahoma (State / Territory) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
Texas (State / Territory) •
Sonora (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Chihuahua (State / Territory) •
Nuevo Leon (State / Territory) •
Delaware (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-4 of 4)
- Documents (4)
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Encounters in the East African Bush: Game Trophies, African Hunting and the (Neo)Colonial Appropriation of Heritage (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper traces growing colonial anxiety surrounding the management of East Africa’s natural heritage through sporadic encounters between white and indigenous hunters, distraught villagers, colonial officials, smugglers and safari tourists. Concerns about the availability of game for sport hunting, the supposed "cruelty" of indigenous hunting...
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Gallivanting Capitalism: Nineteenth-Century European Travelers in the Deserts of the Andean South (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The deserts of southern Peru had remained marginal to the Spanish colonial program and were poorly known and documented at the start of the Republic. Following independence (1821-1824), the southern coast thrived thanks to the increased commercial activity on its shores and the exploitation of fertilizers that could be found in Pacific islands and the...
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Itinerant Agents: Colonial Representatives at the Obraje de Chincheros (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Obraje (textile mill) de Chincheros, located in the Apurímac region of Peru, was established in the late Sixteenth Century and operated throughout the Spanish colonial period. At the Obraje men, women and children worked long, hard hours to pay the taxes demanded of them from the colonial Spanish government. As men had to serve a forced labor...
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Regionality and Relations to the State in the Andagua Valley, Southern Peruvian Andes (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the mid-18th century, spurred by recent Bourbon reforms and claiming years of unpaid tribute, Spanish colonial officials journeyed to the town of Andagua in the high Southern Peruvian Andes. Yet upon arriving they encountered firm resistance to their regional colonial authority that coalesced around the leaders of reputed ancestor cults, nearly...