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This article explores the widespread phenomenon of anti-colonial movements that relied on magical rituals for protection against European weapons. It examines both the beliefs of the magical practitioners themselves, and those of colonizing observers whose fascination with stories of "primitive magic" contributed to their contrasting self-representations as superior beings in possession of technological wonders. North America's Ghost Dance movement, China's Boxer Rebellion, and East Africa's Maji Maji uprising took place on three different continents but occurred almost simultaneously. The cases come from a narrow period of time, roughly 1890 to 1910, during a peak of colonial violence all over the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most outsized versions of the Güera Rodríguez myth remember her as a republican revolutionary, a powerful conspirator, and one of the architects of Mexican independence. In La Güera Rodríguez, Silvia Arrom (herself a highly accomplished social historian) gives us a critical biography of a celebrated and mythologized figure. Nineteenth -- century Mexicanists have been among the most competent and meticulous social historians, often spurning studies of the famous and powerful in favor of ground -- level experience. [Extracted from the article]

This article describes warfare and diplomacy between colonial and non-colonial peoples on the northeastern frontier of New Spain in the eighteenth century. It considers the relationship of Spanish and Nahua colonists to indigenous populations in the north. It argues that shared assumptions about military hierarchy transcended cultural boundaries, permitting diplomatic exchange and political integration. Drawing on archival military and missionary records, the article illustrates the process by which European and indigenous political units were first rendered mutually intelligible, later connected by alliance, and finally integrated through joint settlement and corporate governance. Fundamental to these processes were the communication and synthesis of cultural schemata expressing the correspondence of military commands to each party's historical memory and social geography. This article offers a partial explanation for the development of Tlaxcalan-Chichimec pueblos and a general set of principles for understanding intercultural diplomacy in frontier environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]