Dr. Christoph Rosenmuller 

Associate Professor

CONTACT
E-mail: christoph.rosenmueller@mtsu.edu
Phone: (615) 898-2638
Office Location and Mailing Address: Peck Hall, Room 277
MTSU Box 23
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
Link to Personal Website: www.mtsu.edu/~rosenmul

FIELDS: Latin American, U.S., World History

BIOGRAPHY: I am a historian of Latin America with an emphasis on colonial Mexico within the Atlantic World. I am currently conducting research in seven languages on colonial corruption. Corruption is clearly an important challenge for most of the world, and so it is for Latin America. Less is known about early modern practices. Much of what is now illegal was not considered immoral, while bribing judges to change a sentence was clearly immoral, just as today. In some ways early modern and current notions overlap. My research shows that in the period from 1675 to 1755, patronage changed in a meaningful way. Corruption was not only a top-down modernizing discourse of princes, but also a response "from below." I therefore intend to write an Atlantic history of corruption by pulling together various perspectives that are perhaps too often treated as discreet: the views of diverse ethnic communities and the elites, as well as the imperial agenda. My previous work focused on the court, patronage, and politics of a Mexican viceroy called the Duke of Alburquerque (1702–1710)–who lent his name to the city in New Mexico. He took bribes so liberally that he fell from grace. The duke paid just under 700,000 silver pesos, an unheard of indemnity for the time, to be absolved. This retribution portended larger changes in the imperial framework.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 1110, World Civilization I
• History 1120, World Civilization II
• History 2010, Survey U.S. History I
• History 4490, Mexico and the Caribbean
• History 4520, Modern Latin America
• History 4480, South America
• History 4510: Colonial Latin America

GRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 6304, Topics in Global History (Graduate Seminar on Latin America)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Rosenmüller, Christoph. Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues: The Court Society of Colonial Mexico, 1702-1710. Latin American and Caribbean Series, No. 6. Christon Archer, series editor. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2008.

Rosenmüller, Christoph. "The Power of Transatlantic Ties: A Game-Theoretical Analysis of Mexico's Social Networks, 1700-1755." Latin American Research Review, 44:2 (2009): 8-36."Friends, Followers, Countrymen: Viceregal Patronage in Mid-Eighteenth Century New Spain." Estudios de Historia Novohispana (Mexico City). 34 (2006): 47-72.

Rosenmüller, Christoph. "Assayers and Silver Merchants: The visita of 1729/1730 and the Reform of Mexican Coinage." The American Journal of Numismatics. Second Series 16-17 (2005): 179-193.

"Rosenmüller, Christoph. La Sociedad Cortesana y los Precursores de las Reformas Borbónicas, 1700-1755: Estudio Preliminar" (A Preliminary Study on the Court Society and the Precursors of the Bourbon Reforms, 1700-1755). XIV Congreso Internacional de AHILA, Castellón, Spain, 20-24 Septiembre 2006 (Proceedings of the XIV Congress of the Association of European Historians of Latin America). Simposio 1: Los Borbones en las rocas: la construcción y el naufragio de las reformas borbónicas. Manuel Chust and Ivana Frasquet Miguel, eds. Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2008. 1-8.

SELECTED AWARDS:

MTSU Faculty Research and Creative Activity Grants for archival research in Mexico City, Puebla, Guadalajara,
Oaxaca, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Madrid, Seville. Summers 2005–2009, 2011, 2013.

Selley Grant, for dissertation research and writing. 2002–2003.

EDUCATION:

Ph.D., Tulane University
M.A.,    Universität Hamburg, Germany
B.A.     Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

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