New Books Network Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez, "The New Kingdom of Granada: The Making and Unmaking of Spain's Atlantic Empire" (Duke UP, 2025)
Mar 21, 2026
Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez, a historian of colonial Latin America and UT Austin professor, discusses the century-long making and unmaking of the New Kingdom of Granada. Short takes cover contested imperial formation, Indigenous political projects and voices, archival sleuthing across maps and textiles, highland-lowland dynamics, resistance movements, and the economic role of indigenous textiles.
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Indigenous Agency Evident In Paper Technology
- Indigenous people appear in the archive through targeted engagements with Spanish institutions rather than large indigenous-language corpora.
- Santiago treats lawsuits, petitions, and population lists as 'paper technology' that Indigenous actors used to shape the kingdom.
Highlands Became Headquarters While Lowlands Resisted
- Geography structured colonial power: the Andean highland (tierra fría) became the administrative center while lowland (tierra caliente) resisted Spanish institutions.
- The Magdalena River served as the kingdom's commercial artery linking hot and cold zones.
Political Differences Coexisted With Integrated Trade
- Highland Muisca chiefdoms had stable kingship while lowland groups organized fluidly through wartime coalitions.
- Despite political differences, pre-Hispanic economies linked them via salt, shells, cotton, gold exchange networks.
