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Republics of Difference is a groundbreaking study of Spanish imperial recognition of the jurisdictions of many self-governing corporate groups, including communities of Jews and Muslims, indigenous peoples, and enslaved and free peoples of African descent, that shows how religiously- and racially-based self-governance functioned in a society with many kinds of law and how this enabled communities in late medieval Spain and colonial Latin America to protect their practices and cultures over time.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Glossary
- Introduction
- Part I: Space
- 1 Religious Republics in Seville, 1248-1502
- 2 Lima's Indian Republics, 1532-1650
- Part II: Jurisdiction
- 3 Institutionalizing Legal Difference in Castile
- 4 Aljama, or the Republic of Difference
- 5 Caciques and Local Governance in the Andes
- 6 Pueblos de indios: Entangled Authority in the Lima Valley
- Part III: Order and Disorder
- 7 The Specters of Black Self-Governance
- 8 Walls and Law in Lima and Its Cercado
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Karen B. Graubart is Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of the award-winning With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550-1700.
Summary
Spanish monarchs recognized the jurisdictions of many self-governing corporate groups, including Jews and Muslims on the peninsula, indigenous peoples in their American colonies, and enslaved and free people of African descent across the empire. Republics of Difference examines fifteenth-century Seville and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lima to show how religiously- and racially-based self-governance functioned in a society with many kinds of law, what effects it had on communities, and why it mattered. By comparing these minoritized communities on both sides of the Spanish Atlantic world, this study offers a new understanding of the distinct standings of those communities in their urban settings. Drawing on legal and commercial records from late medieval Spain and colonial Latin America, Karen B. Graubart paints insightful portraits of residents' everyday lives to underscore the discriminatory barriers as well as the occupational structures, social hierarchies, and networks in which they flourished. In doing so, she demonstrates the limits, benefits, and dangers of living under one's own law in the Spanish empire, including the ways self-governance enabled some communities to protect their practices and cultures over time.
Additional text
This dense but very readable work will be appreciated by scholars in a range of fields and is eminently suitable to be assigned in a graduate or upper-level undergraduate seminar.
