ABSTRACT
Nowhere were the processes of cultural exchange and transformation in the Baroque era more evident than in the New World. The Americas encompassed a huge and diverse area with strong native traditions and complex cultural interactions. Its development brought new products into the world economy, such as sugar, tobacco and corn, and instituted a massive, multicultural emigration of Europeans to the New World—part of the vast program of overseas expansion undertaken by European powers in the early modern period referred to as colonialism.
