BY WILLIAM B. TAYLOR

Latin America is difficult to master intellectually, not only because
of its size and the great diversity of its land and people, but also
because its history since 1500 seems so familiar on the surface. His-
torians have long studied the expansion of Europe and its many
forms--military conquest, emigration, languages, religion, domesti-
cated animals, technology, urban centers, African slavery, law, politi-
cal institutions, certain habits of conception--and other patterns that
resulted from European intrusion, such as devastating epidemics
and organization of new economic activities through the exploitation

My thanks to Nancy Mann for many helpful suggestions on form and content;
to Herbert Braun, Charles Gibson, and Stephen Innes for showing me where I
should have made myself better understood; to David William Cohen, William T.
Rowe, Charles Tilly, and Olivier Zunz for discussions and advice along the way; to
Charles W. Bergquist for sending me his essays on the dependency literature as I
began to organize this essay; to Paul Shankman for advice about current issues in
anthropology; and to David Carrasco for his encouragement and his views on
center and periphery. Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation and the Social Science Research Council made possible the research
and thinking that went into the section on the state.

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