Indian and Slave Royalists in the Age of Revolution

Marcela Echeverri is Assistant Professor of Latin American History and MacMillan Research Fellow at Yale University, Connecticut.

• Introduction. Law, empire, and politics in the revolutionary age; 1. Reform, revolution, and royalism in the Northern Andes - New Granada and Popayán, 1780–1825; 2. Indian politics and Spanish justice in eighteenth-century Pasto; 3. The laws of slavery and the politics of freedom in late-colonial Popayán; 4. Negotiating loyalty - royalism and liberalism among Pasto Indian communities (1809–19); 5. Slaves in the defense of Popayán - war, royalism, and freedom (1809–19); 6. 'The yoke of the greatest of all tyrannical intruders, Bolívar' - the royalist rebels in Colombia's southwest (1820–5); Conclusion. The law and social transformation in the early republic.

'One of the great merits of this book - and something that makes it truly unique - is that it analyzes black and Indian political strategies within the space of the same historical narrative. Echeverri skillfully stretches conventional understandings of the geography of the Atlantic world by writing the history of a royalist bastion along the northern Pacific coast of South America. The breadth and depth of historiographical engagement in this manuscript is quite remarkable. There are only a handful of books that I have encountered that equal Echeverri's mastery of these diverse historical literatures.' Yanna Yannakakis, Emory University