The European discovery of the Americas in 1492 was one of the most important events of the Renaissance, and with it Christopher Columbus changed the course of world history. Now, five hundred years later, this 2-volume reference work will chart new courses in the study and understanding of Columbus and the Age of Discovery. Much more than an account of the man and his voyages, The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia is a complete A-Z look at the world during this momentous era. In two volumes, The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia contains more than 350 signed original articles ranging from 250 to more than 10,000 words, written by nearly 150 contributors from around the world. The work includes cross-references, bibliographies for each article, and a comprehensive index. The work is fully illustrated, with hundreds of maps, drawings and photographs.

From the moment King Fernando and Queen Isabel sponsored Christopher Columbus's voyage, they began issuing contracts, decrees, and privileges implementing the project. Previous editions of these collected documents, known as the Book of Privileges, have been published. Yet because such editions have ordered the material as Columbus left it, use of these books has proven problematic. The Repertorium Columbianum edition presents these documents in chronological order, providing a continuous historical narrative of the monarchs' and Columbus's enterprise. (The documents also appear, separately, in Columbus's arrangement.) Superbly translated, with historical and philological commentary, this edition of the Book of Privileges is a valuable historical resource.

The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias reinterprets Las Casas’s controversial treatise as a legal document, whose legal character is linked to civil and ecclesial genres of the Early Modern and late Renaissance juridical tradition. Bartolomé de las Casas proclaimed: "I have labored to inquire about, study, and discern the law; I have plumbed the depths and have reached the headwaters." The Unheard Voice also plumbs the depths of Las Casas’s voice of law in his widely read and highly controversial Brevísima relación—a legal document published and debated since the 16th century. This original reinterpretation of his Very Brief Account uncovers the juridical approach voiced in his defense of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Unheard Voice innovatively asserts that the Brevísima relación’s legal character is intimately linked to civil and ecclesial genres of the late Renaissance juridical tradition. This paradigm-shifting book contextualizes the formation of Las Casas’s juridical voice in canon law and theology—initially as a secular cleric, subsequently as a Dominican friar, and finally as a diocesan bishop—and demonstrates how his experienced juridical voice fought for justice in trans-Atlantic debates about Indigenous peoples’ level of humanity, religious freedom, enslavement, and conquest. Reaching the headwaters of Las Casas’s hitherto unheard juridical voice of law in the Brevísima relación provides readers with a previously unheard interpretation—an appealing voice for readers and students of this powerful Early Modern text that still resonates today. The Unheard Voice of Law is a valuable companion text for many in the disciplines of literature, history, theology, law, and philosophy who read Bartolomé de las Casas’s Very Brief Account and study his life, labor, and legacy.

In 1493 Christopher Columbus led a fleet of 17 ships and more than 1200 men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement, which he named La Isabela after the queen of Spain, but just five years later it was in ruins. It remains important, however, as the first site of European settlement in America and the first place of sustained interaction between Europeans and the indigenous Tainos. Kathleen Deagan and Jose Maria Cruxent tell the story of this historic enterprise. Drawing on their ten-year archaeological investigation of the site of La Isabela, along with research into Columbus-era documents, they contrast Spanish expectations of America with the actual events and living conditions at America's first European town. Deagan and Cruxent argue that La Isabela failed not because Columbus was a poor planner but because his vision of America was grounded in European experience and could not be sustained in the face of the realities of American life. Explaining that the original Spanish economic and social frameworks for colonization had to be altered in America in response to the American landscape and the non-elite Spanish and Taino people who occupied it, they shed light on larger questions of American colonialism and the development of Euro-American cultural identity.

The ten essays in this interdisciplinary collection explore the lives, places, and stories of women in the Iberian Atlantic between 1500 and 1800. Contributors utilize the complexities of gender to understand issues of race, class, family, health, and religious practices in the Atlantic basin. Unlike previous scholarship, which has focused primarily on upper-class and noble women, this book examines the lives of those on the periphery, including free and enslaved Africans, colonized indigenous mothers, and poor Spanish women.

Captives of Conquest is one of the first books to examine the earliest indigenous slave trade in the Spanish Caribbean. Erin Woodruff Stone shows that the indigenous population of the region did not simply collapse from disease or warfare. Rather, upwards of 250,000 people were removed through slavery, a lucrative business sustained over centuries that formed the foundation of economic, legal, and religious policies in the Spanish colonies. The enslavement of and trade in indigenous peoples was central to the processes of conquest, as the search for new sources of Indian slaves propelled much of the early Spanish exploration into Central and South America. Once captured, some indigenous slaves were shipped to various islands, or as far away as Spain, to be sold for immediate profit. Others became military auxiliaries, guides, miners, pearl divers, servants, or, in the case of women, unwilling sexual partners. In all these roles indigenous slaves helped mold the greater Spanish Caribbean. Even as the number of African slaves grew in the Americas, enslaved Indians did not disappear. On the contrary, African and Indian slaves worked side by side, the methods and practices of both types of slavery influencing one another throughout the centuries. Together the two forms of slavery helped create the greater Spanish Caribbean, a space and economy founded upon the bondage and coerced labor of both indigenous and African peoples.