Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-181) and index.
Contents:
From Apalache to Appalachia: El Dorado in the early Latin/American colonial imagination -- Appalachian El Dorado: the Spanish Genesis, 1528-1561 -- Mines of copper, which I think to be golde: French Florida in the sixteenth century, 1562-1565 -- The mountain range that comes from Zacatecas... contains much silver: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Appalachian backbone of the Spanish Empire, 1565-1584 -- The end of Spanish exclusivism and the first exploration of the Apalataean Mountains from the Virginia Colony, 1611-1682 -- Appalachian mines and the closing of the Mississippian shatter zone, 1690-1715
Summary:
This monograph explores the European obsession with Appalachian mineral resources during the years between 1528 and 1715, reframing Appalachian history within the fields of Latin American, early American, and Atlantic history. While political activists have long decried the cultural and economic marginalization of Appalachia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Appalachia has similarly been excluded from the study of colonial expansion, transatlantic conflict, and slavery in the early modern Atlantic world. Drawing on sources in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Latin, and English, this book underscores the chaotically international, polyglot nature of early Appalachian history and foregrounds the region as a locus of imperial conflict during the early modern period. It likewise highlights the repercussions of the European obsession with Appalachian mineral resources. Ultimately, Appalachia as a Contested Borderland of the Early Modern Atlantic provides new perspectives for scholars and students and suggests new directions for research in Native American and Indigenous studies, environmental studies, and Appalachian studies.
Series:
Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies ; Volume 574
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.