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Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico. By Brian P Owensby. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. Pp. x, 379. Figures. Notes. Sources Cited. Bibliography. $65.00 cloth.
The story that Brian Owensby tells us is one of active engagement and constructive reaction instead of surrender in front of a colonial power. The protagonists are the indigenous people of seventeenth-century Mexico. So, we may ask, what is new? In truth, the creative response of the native people of Mexico to the Spanish presence has already been the topic of many books. However, this book aims to see this relation through the lens of the law - the legal procedure itself and what the indigenous subjects understood or made of it. Focusing on such matters rather than using lawsuits as sources to get to details about colonial life is quite rare, although it has been attempted before (the author acknowledges his debt to Woodrow Borah, for one), so the perspective is interesting and refreshing.
With an eye to jurisprudence and...