Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico

Brian P. Owensby is Associate Professor in the University of Virginia's Corcoran Department of History. He is the author of Intimate Ironies: Modernity and the Making of Middle-Class Lives in Brazil (Stanford, 1999).

• Contents Acknowledgments000 Chapter 1Opening000 Chapter 2Ordering the Circumstances of Encounter000 Chapter 3Help Us and Protect Us000 Chapter 4Precarious Possessions000 Chapter 5Liberty, Not Servitude000 Chapter 6Of Guilt and Punishment000 Chapter 7Voices in the Republic000 Chapter 8Rebellious Subjects000 Chapter 9Summation and Beyond000 Notes000 Sources Cited000 Index000

"This book should become required reading for anybody wishing to make sense of legal relations, adaptation and resistance in the early New World and similar colonial contexts. It is a truly major tour de force." - Victore M. Uribe-Uran (Journal of Latin American Studies) "This is the best study I've seen of how justice actually functioned in colonial Mexico. The key to Owensby's achievement is that he does not treat the law as an impartial and impersonal set of rules, but rather as an arena of contestation." - R. Douglas Cope (Brown University) "What makes Owensby's study so fresh is that he does not focus so much on imperial laws, kings' decrees, and viceregal regulations as on actual cases brought before the famous Juzgado Genreal de Indios (the Indian Court) from 1590 to 1700. Here is the law at its bare-knuckle, rawest edge, where an aggrieved community seeks redress. Trained as a lawyer himself, Owensby teases out of his sources a world where Native villages were not helpless victims, but actors in protecting their interests from outsiders and rogue insiders...Highly recommended." - CHOICE "Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico is a compelling work that offers a new approach to the relations between indigenous peoples, their king, and his representatives and to the different meanings of law in the colonial context...Well crafted and clearly written, this work offers a fascinating view of seventeenth-century Mexican society that will engage its reader regardless of specialization." - H-Net "This work is reliable and contributes to the history of law at home and abroad in colonial times." - Leonard Ashley (Bibliotheque d'humanisme et renaissance) "Owensby's careful research, lively writing, and persuasive argument make this book a real winner, suitable for specialist and student alike. This book is a 'must read' for those interested in Latin American history, comparative colonialism, or indigenous studies." - Charles Cutter (American Historical Review) "The book gives us a wealth of interesting legal cases and thought-provoking analysis, and it is well worth reading." - Caterina Pizzigoni (The Americas.)