“The essays . . . offer important insights into the complicated processes of social formation in the colonies. . . . [H]istorians, as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate students, will find much to think about in this provocative work.” - Karen B. Graubart, Catholic Historical Review
“This is a pioneering study of the constructions of socio-cultural identities in colonial Latin America. . . . [An] innovative collection of essays.” - David J. Robinson, Journal of Latin American Geography
“While scholarly in content, these short essays are readable and could be included in an undergraduate syllabus. The volume is crisply edited; many of the essays refer to each other. I highly recommend the volume for college and graduate courses. The essays invite comparison of different regions, in addition to offering intriguing lessons about the multiple ways that identities evolved in the colonial era.” - Deborah Kanter, The Americas
“This volume presents a superb collection of essays covering the muddled, confused, overlapping, and changing dimensions of identity-making in the Hispanic colonial empires of the New World. . . . The authors of these essays expose us to all these intensely real aspects of life in the Spanish and Portuguese empires of the Western Hemisphere. This volume should be required reading for those trying to understand how people related to one another, government, and institutions in these colonial empires.” - Sheldon Avenius, History: Reviews of New Books
“It is imperative that historians incorporate a number of perspectives to enhance our understanding of this unique period, especially within the studies on race and identity. Imperial Subjects does just that. The respective authors approach the subject through a variety of perspectives, incorporating unique themes, all of which are backed by a solid archival research.” - Larry V. Larrichio, Colonial Latin American Historical Review
“[T]his volume provides an excellent collection of well-researched and well-argued essays. Together they represent the most recent and cutting-edge scholarship on this topic. . . . The diversity in time period and geography make the collection highly useful to those researchers and scholars interested in comparative studies of race and ethnicity. The manageable length of each essay, in addition to the excellent introduction and conclusion, make this work an ideal text for introducing students to current research. Overall, the high calibre and diversity of research presented by Imperial Subjects make it a notable addition to the literature.” - Robert Schwaller and Matthew Restall, Social History
“Grounded in solid archival research and informed by sound, up-to-date theoretical approaches, these essays break substantial new ground in showing how ‘ordinary’ people experienced living in the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Anyone wishing to sample the best in recent scholarship on colonial Latin America should begin with this book.”—Cheryl English Martin, author of Governance and Society in Colonial Mexico: Chihuahua in the Eighteenth Century
“This excellent and necessary collection brings together some of the most important scholarship on race in colonial Latin America. Importantly, the contributors do not assume racial and ethnic identities to be static, nor do they take hybridity as a given. Rather, they examine the social identities that emerged from ‘contact points’ between institutions and individuals.”—Pete Sigal, author of From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Sexual Desire
