Directory of Research and Expertise

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Research Summary and Profile

Research interests:

Early Modern

Summary of research interests and expertise:

Latin America and the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period; the impact of colonial rule on indigenous societies; the Portuguese slave trade to Spanish America; and the history of medicine in early colonial Spanish America.

Languages:

	Spoken	Written
Spanish	Good	Good

Publication Details

Related publications/articles:

Date	Details
12-Mar-2021	Supervivencia indígena en la Nicaragua colonial Monographs London: University of London Press
14-Apr-2020	Alchemy and Chemical Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru Journal articles Ambix 67(2) (2020): 107-134
07-Apr-2020	Preparando medicinas en Lima durante el temprano periodo colonial (Lima: IEP) Monographs Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
06-Apr-2020	Cultural Worlds of the Jesuits in Colonial Latin America Edited Book
02-Apr-2018	Piety, beeswax and the Portuguese African slave trade to Lima, Peru, in the early colonial period Journal articles Atlantic Studies
05-Sep-2017	Review of García Loaeza, Pablo and Victoria L. Garrett eds. (2015) The Improbable Conquest: Sixteenth-Century Letters from the Río de la Plata. Review Bulletin of Latin American Research Volume 36, Issue 4 Pages 546-547
01-Sep-2017	Making Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru: Apothecaries, Science and Society Monographs Leiden, Brill
01-Nov-2016	The Black Doctors of Colonial Lima: Science, Race, and Writing in Colonial and Early Republican Peru. By José R. Jouve Martín Review Hispanic American Historical Review
01-Nov-2016	Review of Before the Middle Passage: Translated Portuguese Manuscripts of Atlantic Slave Trading from West Africa to Iberian Territories Review Renaissance Quarterly 69, no. 4 (Winter 2016): 1496-1498.
01-Oct-2016	Matthew James Crawford. The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630–1800. Review From: Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences - Volume 71, Number 4, October 2016 pp. 471-473
01-Apr-2016	Review of John Slater, Mar?´aluz Lopez-Terrada and Jose´ Pardo-Tomas, eds, Medical Cultures of the Early Modern Spanish Empire, Ashgate: Farnham, 2014 Review in European History Quarterly 2016, Vol. 46(2)
01-Aug-2015	Review of Celia Cussen, Black Saint of the Americas: the Life and Afterlife of Martin de Porres Review Journal of Latin American Studies 47 (595-96)
27-Apr-2015	The Longue Durée in Filipino Demographic History: The Role of Fertility prior to 1800 Chapters In Environment, Trade and Society in Southeast Asia: A Longue Durée Perspective, edited by David Henley and Henk Schulte Nordholt, pp. 78-95. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
10-Oct-2014	Report on the State of UK-based research on Latin America and the Caribbean. London: Institute of Latin American Studies Edited Book edited with Antoni Kapcia
01-Jan-2014	Review of Laura E. Matthew, Memories of Conquest: Becoming Mexicano in Colonial Guatemala. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012 Review  Journal of Historical Geography vol 43 (2014): 184-185
01-Nov-2013	Review of City Indians in Spain’s American Empire: Urban Indigenous Society in Colonial Mesoamerica and Andean South America, 1530-1810 (Brighton, Sussex Academic Press, 2012) Review Journal of Latin American Studies 45(4): 821-22
01-Sep-2013	La travesía final. El tráfico esclavista desde Cartagena de indias al Perú a inicios del siglo XVII Articles  Nueva corónica 2 (July 2013): 641-78
01-Aug-2013	The slave trading accounts of Manoel Batista Peres, 1613-1619: double-entry bookkeeping in cloth money, Articles Accounting History 18(3): 343-365.
01-Aug-2012	Bartering for Slaves on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Early Seventeenth Century Chapters  Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-Colonial Western Africa. Toby Green ed., pp.257-282. London: British Academy/OUP
01-Mar-2012	Africans and Luso-Africans in the Portuguese Slave Trade on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Early Seventeenth Century Articles  Journal of African History 53(1): 1-24
01-Jan-2011	Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines. 2009 Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. 420 pp. (Philippine edition, Ateneo University Press, 2011)
01-Jan-2009	Mexico City through History and Culture. 2009 (edited with John P. King) London: British Academy/OUP.
01-Jan-2007	From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century 2007 (with Susie Minchin) Brill, Leiden. 372 pp.
01-Jan-1995	Patterns of Life and Death in Early Colonial Ecuador 1995 Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press. 505 pp.
01-Jan-1987	Indian Survival in Colonial Nicaragua 1987 University of Oklahoma Press. 466pp. Published in Spanish as Supervivencia indígena en la Nicaragua colonial. Managua: LeaGrupo Editorial, in press.
01-Jan-1986	The Cost of Conquest: Indian Societies in Honduras under Spanish Rule Boulder 1986 Westview Press. 375 pp. Published in Spanish as El costo de la conquista. Tegucigalpa: Guaymuras Press, 1992.
01-Jan-1976	Aboriginal and Spanish Colonial Trinidad: A Study in Culture Contact 1976 London and New York: Academic Press. 354 pp.
	Beyond the Pathogen: Cultural Influences on the Impact of Epidemics Viewed from History Journal articles Philippine Studies September 2020

Publications available on SAS-space:

Date	Details
	Report on the state of UK-based research on Latin America and the Caribbean PeerReviewed This report looks at how the UK is responding to and engaging with new developments in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It addresses in detail the importance of carrying out research on the LAC area, new developments affecting Latin American and Caribbean studies in the UK and the scope and patterns of the research being carried out. The size and composition of the research community are profiled, along with institutional affiliations and research concentrations. Findings are presented on the shifting institutional commitments to research into Latin America and the Caribbean and the challenges faced by the LAC research community, including trends in funding for LAC research, the impact of research assessment exercises and constraints on dissemination and publication.
Mar-2016	Review of Gregory T Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History, (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013) PeerReviewed
Apr-2016	Review of John Slater, Marı´aluz Lopez-Terrada and Jose´ Pardo-Tomas, eds, Medical Cultures of the Early Modern Spanish Empire, Ashgate: Farnham, 2014; 326 pp., 9 figures, 1 table; 9781472428134, £70.00 (hbk) NonPeerReviewed
Nov-2018	Review of Before the Middle Passage: Translated Portuguese Manuscripts of Atlantic Slave Trading from West Africa to Iberian Territories, 1513–26, Ed. by Trevor P. Hall. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. PeerReviewed
Oct-2016	Review of Crawford, The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800, for the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences PeerReviewed
Nov-2016	Review of The Black Doctors of Colonial Lima: Science, Race, and Writing in Colonial and Early Republican Peru. By José R. Jouve Martín. NonPeerReviewed
Sep-2017	Review of García Loaeza, Pablo and Victoria L. Garrett eds. (2015) The Improbable Conquest: Sixteenth-Century Letters from the Río de la Plata. The Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA). NonPeerReviewed
Apr-2018	Piety, beeswax and the Portuguese African slave trade to Lima, Peru, in the early colonial period PeerReviewed The demand for beeswax for liturgical and medicinal purposes in the Americas vastly increased with the arrival of the Spanish. However, the absence of bees in early colonial Peru meant that this demand could not be met locally so that beeswax and candles had to be imported. While some beeswax was imported from Spain and from other American regions, an alternative source emerged with the Portuguese slave trade from Senegambia where the product was abundant. Using the account books of one of the main slave traders to Peru, Manuel Bautista Pérez, this paper follows the trajectory of the beeswax from Senegambia to Lima, via Cartagena de Indias and the Panamanian isthmus. It reveals how the trade in an everyday product might link producers and consumers in distant regions and how it was dependent on social relationships, cultural values and ecological conditions that were geographically and historically contingent. It shows how the beeswax trade was inextricably linked to the operation of the Portuguese slave trade so that when Portugal lost the monopoly contract for the introduction of slaves to Spanish America in 1640, the beeswax trade from Africa evaporated despite ongoing demand and profitability. Subsequently Lima imported most of its beeswax from Europe or other American regions, but the operation and profitability of the trade continued to be influenced by the same factors that characterised the trade from Africa. Due the centrality of bees to the story, it reveals how animals may play an important role in history even if they are not regarded as active agents and their significance is circumscribed by humans.
Jan-2019	Newson (2019) Review of Secret Cures of Slaves by Londa Schiebinger PeerReviewed
Apr-2020	Alchemy and Chemical Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru PeerReviewed The article explores the use of minerals and the nature of chemical methods employed in Lima in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It does so through examining the availability of mineral resources, including pre-European knowledge of their use, through surveying the books and equipment used by physicians and apothecaries, and finally by examining prescriptions for medicines that were used to treat patients. It concludes that minerals were probably more commonly employed inmedicines in Lima than in Spain but suggests that their preparation and use at this time drew on Spain’s alchemical tradition rather than on writings by Paracelsus and his followers. It argues that this did not reflect the effectiveness of censorship by the Inquisition.
Jun-2020	Beyond the Pathogen: Cultural Influences on the Impact of Epidemics Viewed from History PeerReviewed The paper reflects on the current Covid-19 pandemic from the perspective of the cultural history of epidemics, primarily in Latin America and the Philippines.

Research Projects & Supervisions

Current PhD topics supervised:

Dates	Details
From: 01-Jan-2015 Until: 31-Dec-2018	Materiality and Production of Hispanic American Books Jose Luis Guevara Salamanca
From: Until:	Antoine René Larcher, his ‘Project of expedition to Salvador (Brazil) 1797’ and the global competition for the South Atlantic Marilia Arantes Silva Moreira
From: Until:	Beyond the Bulls: The Life and Afterlives of St. Francisco Solano. Unravelling the First Canonisation Process in the New World and its Unpredictable Fade into Oblivion Carlos Piccone Camere
From: Until:	Astrological medicine in early modern colonial Americas, particularly Peru. Virginia Ghelarducci

Professional Affiliations

Professional affiliations:

Name	Activity
Latin America Bureau
Canning House
Latin American and Caribbean Panel at the British Academy	Chair

Collaborations:

Name	Type	Activity	Start date	End date
Journal of Latin American Studies	Editorial Board		2012
Journal of Historical Geography	Editorial Board		2006

Relevant Events

Related events:

Date	Details
23-Jul-2019	Practising medicine in early colonial Lima, Peru History of Science Conference, Utrecht
24-May-2018	Latin American Studies in the UK LASA conference in Barcelona
09-May-2018	Apothecaries and Native Materia Medica in Early Colonial Lima, Peru University of Cambridge
17-Nov-2017	The Cultural Legacy of the Jesuits in Colonial Latin America ILAS conference
01-Aug-2017	Apothecaries and Native Materia Medica in Early Colonial Lima, Peru Nature and medicine conference at FIOCRUZ, Rio de Janiero
07-Apr-2017	Pierty, beeswax and the African slave trade to Peru in the early colonial period Society of Latin American Studies annual conference, Glasgow
01-Mar-2014	Experimentation and innovation in early modern Peruvian medicine.  American Society for Environmental History, San Francisco
01-Nov-2013	Experimentation and innovation in early modern Peruvian medicine.  Queens University, Belfast
01-Oct-2013	Variaciones geográficas en la dieta de los esclavos africanos: la herencia del Viejo Mundo y los destinos del Nuevo Mundo en el periodo colonial temprano.  University of Oviedo, Spain
01-Jan-2012	Materia medica, boticarios and the medicine trade in Lima in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries 54th International Congress of Americanists, Vienna
01-Jan-2011	Fertility: A neglected dimension of demographic change in the pre- and early Spanish Philippines KILTV, Leiden
01-Jan-2011	Medical Practice in Spain and Early Spanish America: the role of apothecaries Queen’s University, Belfast.
01-Jan-2010	Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines International Economic History Conference, Amsterdam

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