Description
Book SynopsisThis fascinating study traces sixteenth-century German colonialism in Venezuela through the lens of racialized capitalism and the subsequent memorialization of the period through to the twentieth century.
Giovanna Montenegro investigates one of the strangest and often-ignored episodes in the conquest and colonization of the Americasthe governance of the Province of Venezuela by the Welsers, a German banking family from Augsburg, in the sixteenth century. Using a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book chronicles the Welsers' business expansion beyond banking to colonization and the slave trade in the Spanish Indies and the eventual failure of the colony. Montenegro follows the money that financed the Habsburg empire, tackling a multifaceted, multilingual corpus of primary documents. She examines numerous legal documents, from contracts granting colonization and slave trade rights (capitulaciones, asientos) to complex financial tr
Trade Review
“German Conquistadors in Venezuela offers a new and exciting comparative approach and a long chronological sweep, which permits a nuanced consideration of how the story of the Welsers resonates in historical narratives on both sides of the Atlantic.” —Karen Stolley, author of Domesticating Empire
“A well-written, multidisciplinary addition to transatlantic history by asking not how the Welser experiment failed but how this failure shaped and reshaped cultural and national identities for centuries.” —Hispanic American Historical Review
"A fine portrayal of the Welser era in Venezuela and a convincing interpretation of its many uses in very different contexts." —Colonial Latin American Review
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Introduction
PART I: The Welsers: A History of their Merchant and Racialized Capitalism
1. The Merchant Capitalism of the Welsers: Colonization, Commerce, Commodities, and Imperial Credit
2. The Welsers’ Racialized Merchant Capitalism in Venezuela: Early Modern Slavery
PART II: Narrative and Cartographic Representations of the Welsers in Venezuela (16th-18th centuries)
3. Nikolaus Federmann’s Indianische Historia: Failed Gifts and Translation as Strategies of the Welser Conquest of Venezuela
4. Blood and Soil:Welser Venezuela Between Cartography and Genealogy
5. “Foreign Governance:” The Welser Colony Remembered in Latin-American Colonial Literature (16th-18th Centuries)
PART III: Cultural Memory of the Welser Colony in Germany and Latin America (19th-21st Centuries)
6. The Ghost of Welser Venezuela in German Cultural Memory
7. The Venezuelan View of German Conquest: Post-Independence Literature and History
Conclusion
Epilogue: Restitution and Commemoration-Debates in Germany Today
Works Cited
