Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Brazil Initiative

Fernanda Sposito ─ The Role of Indigenous Leadership in the Construction of American Colonization between the 16th and 17th Centuries

event poster

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

12:00pm – 1:30pm

Watch on Watson's YouTube Channel. Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer Street

This talk will discuss the process of the construction of colonial politics of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns during the first two centuries of colonization. The focus is to analyze negotiations between Indigenous societies, settlers, colonial authorities and the Crowns. Wars, disputes and alliances between Indigenous people and Europeans are an important aspect of the Modern Age that cannot be ignored. If on one hand the settlers minimized Indigenous leadership, on the other hand Europeans could not ignore the power of cohesion of these authorities, with whom they had to negotiate.

Fernanda Sposito is a Post-Doc in History at the Federal University of São Paulo, and is currently a visiting fellow at the John Carter Brown Library.