Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico

Brian P. Owensby

Published by Stanford University Press 2008

Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico

Brian P. Owensby

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503627109

Overview
Contents

About this book

Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico shows how Indian litigants and petitioners made sense of Spanish legal principles and processes when the dust of conquest had begun to settle after 1600. By juxtaposing hundreds of case records with written laws and treatises, Owensby reveals how Indians saw the law as a practical and moral resource that allowed them to gain a measure of control over their lives and to forge a relationship to a distant king. Several chapters elucidate central concepts of Indian claimants in their encounter with the law over the seventeenth century—royal protection, possession of property, liberty, notions of guilt, village autonomy and self-rule, and subjecthood. Owensby concludes that Indian engagement with Spanish law was the first early modern experiment in cosmopolitan legality, one that faced the problem of difference head on and sought to bridge the local and the international. In so doing, it enabled indigenous claimants to forge a colonial politics of justice that opened up space for a conversation between colonial rulers and ruled.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1. Opening Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Ordering the Circumstances of Encounter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
3. Help Us and Protect Us Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
4. Precarious Possessions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
5. Liberty, Not Servitude Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
6. Of Guilt and Punishment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
7. Voices in the Republic Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
8. Rebellious Subjects Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	250
9. Summation and Beyond Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	295
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313
Sources Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	351
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	367

Language: English
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 392
Illustrations
- Other: 6 maps

eBook

Published: May 30, 2008
ISBN: 9781503627109