Guatemala in the Spanish Colonial Period by Oakah L. Jones, Jr. (review)

340 BOOK REVIEWS came more concerned with pastoral work, the secular clergy grew. The state increased its control through the Council of the Indies, and in the seventeenth century, church-state relations were consolidated. By that time Hispanoamerican Christendom had found its identity. Thus, in this corner of the earth, where hurricanes and pirate raids took their toll, the four dioceses with which this book is concerned left a memorable mark on the history of the Church. Meier's richly detailed monograph is of substantial scholarly merit. It is extensively researched and packed with information. He relies on unpublished manuscripts in the Archives of the Indies in Seville and on published documents as well as on relevant secondary materials. This balanced study should be useful to students, teachers, and experts who are seeking information on the Church and its missionary efforts in Spain's overseas kingdoms. This book should be made available to as many scholars as possible by way ofboth English and Spanish translations. One negative aspect of the book from the point of view of some readers who do not command foreign languages might be Meier's liberal and repeated use ofthe custom ofmany European scholars to insert long Latin and Spanish quotations within the German text. Nevertheless, Meier's book is a valuable publication which merits attentive reading and rereading. Josephine H. Schulte St. Mary's University San Antonio, Texas Guatemala in the Spanish Colonial Period. By Oakah L. Jones, Jr. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1993. Pp. xxi, 344. $38.95.) This well-organized and readable survey of colonial Guatemala in ten chapters provides the reader with a much-needed important study of the Kingdom of Guatemala from conquest to independence. Based on more than eight years of archival research, the reading of published documents and primary sources, and the works of authors ranging from H. H. Bancroft to Murdo J. Macleod, this authoritative narrative history provides a useful chronology and index, good illustrations , maps, tables, a glossary of Spanish terms, and an appendix of Spanish governors, captains general, and presidents. After placing Guatemala's people in their natural setting and showing the interrelationship between habitat and occupants from pre-Columbian times to the present, the author discusses the pre-Columbian Indians and their achievements in a geographically diverse region of Mesoamerica. He then assesses the Spanish conquest, the beginnings of Spanish dominance, and the end of an era with Pedro de Alvarado's death and the destruction of CiudadVieja in 1541. Subsequent chapters examine a variety of themes chronologically and topically . Subjects covered include government and the Church under the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons; landholding in its various forms, town planning, and BOOK REVIEWS 341 the economic life of the colony; population, society, and culture; and the effects of calamities and disasters and the constant need to protect the colony against foreign interlopers. The book concludes with an analysis of the problems faced by Guatemalans on the eve of independence. In his balanced treatment of the negative and positive aspects of Spanish colonization in one area of America, Oakah L. Jones,Jr., convincingly corrects the view of various historians that continue to perpetuate the myth "that only the English came to America to settle and till the soil while Spaniards came solely to plunder" (p. l6l). Rather, Spain brought to America her language, religion, government , law, customs, schools, colleges, universities, and all those things subsumed under the term culture. Spain established true settlement colonies, and new multiethnic societies arose in the American kingdoms. "Spanish colonial Guatemala was both an encounter and an accommodation of two worlds, Europe and America" (p. 267). In conclusion, Jones has written another lively book that synthesizes a vast amount of information into a coherent general history useful both to the scholar and the general reader.While concentrating on what is today's republic, he places its history within the context of the larger region of Central America and colonial Mexico. This is an excellent book. University ofNebraska, Lincoln Ralph H.Vigil ...