German Conquistadors in Venezuela

Giovanna Montenegro is an associate professor of comparative literature and director of the Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies program at Binghamton University.

List 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

"A well-written, multidisciplinary addition to transatlantic history ... asking not how the Welser experiment failed but how this failure shaped and reshaped cultural and national identities for centuries." -Hispanic American Historical 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 fine portrayal of the Welser era in Venezuela and a convincing interpretation of its many uses in very different contexts." -Colonial Latin American Review "Giovanna Montenegro's book, divided into three parts and seven chapters, is a timely and welcome contribution ot the early history of German involvement in colonialism and the reception of this effort in later centuries, both in Spanish-language and German contexts." -Sixteenth Century Journal "German Conquistadors in Venezuela is the only book...that takes a cultural studies approach to conquest. Montenegro's work is a reminder of the varying levels of historical memory that one needs to sift through to interpret the European invasion of the Americas. -Latin American Research Review