The Cultural Dimensions of Political Transfers: An Aspect of the European Occupation of the Americas

Looking broadly at the cultural dimensions of political transfers from one European power to another in the early modern Americas from the 1640s to the 1850s, this article attempts to categorize those transfers and to tease out a framework for examining why some established cultures were more resistant to change than others, why some were more open to reformulation or hybridization, and why some superimposed cultures were more or less invasive than others.