| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

David J. Weber. Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2005. Pp. xviii, 466. $35.00.

David J. Weber's book joins a growing body of scholarship that places the history of Spain's northern frontier into perspective with other peripheral regions in its New World empire. While this volume concentrates on a relatively short time period, the late Bourbon era of Carlos III (one of Voltaire's "Enlightened Despots") to the beginning of the independence period, the scope is still staggering. Drawing on a copious array of secondary sources and a significant amount of primary research, Weber traces Bourbon policies toward Amerindians who had resisted Spanish dominion into the 1700s. Working topically, he focuses on missionary efforts, military strategy and tactics, trade and commerce, and the Bourbons' last resort, diplomacy. Weber ranges across Spain's colonial landscape from Alta California, through the northeast coast of Venezuela, down to the isolated Chaco region, and into Patagonia. Along the way, he examines Spain's policies toward the more familiar native peoples, such as the Choctaw, Comanche, and Araucanians, as well as including lesser-known groups like the Chiriguanos of the Chaco region or the Guajiras in Venezuela. All of these native people had escaped Spanish dominion for two centuries and were, to the Spanish, the bárbaros or gentiles—"Amerindians who lived beyond the pale of Christendom" (p. 15). Consequently, to Bourbon officials striving to restore Spain's might, these were people who should be brought under imperial control and contribute to the well-being of the empire.

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