Journal article
Writing Colonial Resource Landscapes: Ecologies of Work, War, and Race in A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596) and Milicia y descripción de las Indias (1599)
Renaissance quarterly, Vol.78(4), pp.1202-1230
Winter 2025
DOI: 10.1017/rqx.2025.10278
Appears in UI Libraries Support Open Access
Abstract
This article compares Edmund Spenser’s “A View of the Present State of Ireland” (1596) and Bernardo de Vargas Machuca’s “Milicia y descripción de las Indias” (1599) to show how writing colonial warfare informed the literary construction of human-natural relations in the early modern world. Each text imagines the transformation of ecological relationships between colonized peoples and their landscapes through military interventions that seek to interrupt Indigenous subsistence practices. These tracts exemplify the inseparability of colonialism, racialization, and the literary construction of nature in their visions of land and labor as perpetual sources of wealth for settlers and their sovereigns.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Writing Colonial Resource Landscapes: Ecologies of Work, War, and Race in A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596) and Milicia y descripción de las Indias (1599)
- Creators
- William Rhodes - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Renaissance quarterly, Vol.78(4), pp.1202-1230
- DOI
- 10.1017/rqx.2025.10278
- ISSN
- 0034-4338
- eISSN
- 1935-0236
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press; CAMBRIDGE
- Number of pages
- 29
- Language
- English
- Date published season
- Winter 2025
- Date published
- 12/2025
- Academic Unit
- English
- Record Identifier
- 9985113254502771
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