The knots of the arrow: crisis and uprising in the southern frontier of the Spanish Empire (Chile, 1655-1662)

Author(s)

Gustavo Velloso

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2022-11-16

Examining board members

Carlos Alberto de Moura Ribeiro Zeron; Manuel Francisco Fernández Chaves; Luiz Estevam de Oliveira Fernandes; Rafael de Bivar Marquese; María Eugenia Petit Breuilh Sepúlveda; Jose Carlos Vilardaga

• Advisor: Carlos Alberto de Moura Ribeiro Zeron

Abstract

In the mid-seventeenth century, a powerful indigenous uprising shook the Hispanic colonial zones of southern central Chile - then province of Vice-Kingdom of Peru - and unleashed the fury of the inhabitants of the city of Concepción against the established colonial authorities. At that time, the various Mapuche communities were in the crucial moment of a process of sociogenesis, expressed in an ever broader and more cohesive articulation of political alliances and cooperation in warfare. On the other hand, the Spanish Empire was collapsing due to the exhaustion of its old model of colonial exploitation and the rise of new maritime powers that began to overshadow it under an international revolutionary context. The simultaneity of these two movements produced a crisis of sociability at local level and generated serious impasses for the reproduction of social life in that colony. Amidst the turmoil, thousands of Mapuche individuals with different origins, micro-ethnicities, legal status, and labour occupations opted for a joint insurrection. The present work focuses on this event, unveiling its immanent complexities, as well as placing it in the intersection of a multiple and contradictorily structured complex of social crises. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 18/01316-5 - The Reche-Mapuche Rebellion in 1655: slavery, parlaments and the Spanish Empire crisis
• Grantee: Gustavo Velloso
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate