GLC@Lunch: Max Flomen, “Beyond Mountains: Marronage and Revolution in the Borderlands”

Max Flomen is an Assistant Professor of History, West Virginia University; GLC Visiting Scholar, May 2023

“Beyond Mountains” is a history of Indigenous and working-class countercultures in western North America between the 1500s and 1800s. Knitted together by Native communication and trade networks, a vast region stretching from the Sierra Madre to the Mississippi sheltered diverse maroon communities who opposed Euro-American empires. Rebel groups drew their membership from people displaced and exploited by frontier conditions – captives, fugitives, traders, and other so-called “renegades.” The characteristics of rebel insurgencies ranged from cosmic wars to general strikes, social banditry to survivalism. This talk explores the important roles of spies and other saboteurs in the rebellions that cascaded across northern New Spain during the seventeenth century.