Columbus's outpost among the Taínos
Subtitle: Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493-1498
By: Kathleen Deagan and José María Cruxent.
Contributors: Cruxent, José María.
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New Haven, Conn
Language: eng
Number of pages: 294
Subjects: Columbus, Christopher -- Homes and haunts -- Dominican Republic -- La Isabela; Indians -- First contact with Europeans; La Isabela (Dominican Republic) -- Colonization
Description: "In 1493 Christopher Columbus led a fleet of seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement, which he named La Isabela after the queen of Spain, but just five years later it was in ruins. It remains important, however, as the first site of European settlement in America and the first place of sustained interaction between Europeans and the indigenous Tainos.".

"Kathleen Deagan and Jose Maria Cruxent now tell the story of this historic enterprise. Drawing on their ten-year archaeological investigation of the site of La Isabela, along with research into Columbus-era documents, they contrast Spanish expectations of America with the actual events and living conditions at America's first European town.

Deagan and Cruxent argue that La Isabela failed not because Columbus was a poor planner but because his vision of America was grounded in European experience and could not be sustained in the face of the realities of American life.

Explaining that the original Spanish economic and social frameworks for colonization had to be altered in America in response to the American landscape and the nonelite Spanish and Taino people who occupied it, they shed light on larger questions of American colonialism and the development of Euro-American cultural identity."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-282) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Columbus and La Isabela i; title: 2 The Historical Setting 7; title: 3 Reluctant Hosts:; title: The Tainos of Hispaniola 23; title: 4 "Hell in Hispaniola":; title: La Isabela, I493-1498 47; title: 5 The Hand of Vandals and the; title: Tooth of Time: La Isabela,; title: I500-1987 7I; title: 6 The Medieval Enclave:; title: Landscape, Town, and Buildings 95; title: 7 A Spartan Domesticity:; title: Household Life in La Isabela's; title: Bohios 13I; title: 8 God and Glory i63; title: 9 Commerce and Craft I79; title: I0 Aftermath 2zo; title: Ii Destinies Converged 213; title: Appendix 229; title: Note on Historical Sources 233; title: Notes 237; title: References 259; title: Acknowledgments 283; title: Index 287.