Premo does a solid job of reading deeply into the written record to show how the litigants were active participants in a process that was often handled largely in text. This is important groundwork for what comes later....Premo's book is a very worthwhile collection of battle stories from the front lines of the Enlightenment.
Rufus F., Ordinary Times The best books reveal truths we didn't know and make them seem obvious. Bianca Premo's masterfully researched and beautifully written book shows how ordinary men and women shaped Atlantic legal culture as they sued more powerful adversaries. The result is required reading for anyone interested in law and empire, the Americas in world history, and new approaches to the history of ideas.
Lauren Benton, Vanderbilt University In Spain, legal culture privileged extralegal solutions to communal conflict, promoting the informal mediation of the powerful within and therefore reinforcing a patriarchal ancien-regime. Not in the New World. Bianca Premo marshals overwhelming empirical evidence to show that subordinates in Spanish America regularly took social superiors to court: wives husbands, Indian commoners caciques, slaves masters. This is social history of the law at its best that untethers the Enlightenment from its traditional, parochial European moorings. To understand Enlightenment, go to Peru, don't read Voltaire.
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, University of Texas at Austin Combining prodigious archival research with sterling prose, this book centers unlettered Latin Americans' contributions to the Enlightenment. In challenging a timeworn narrative, Premo makes signal contributions to histories of slavery, women, and indigenous peoples. A towering achievement.
Pamela Voekel, author of Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico Meticulously and convincingly argued, this book seeks to address why litigiousness in six regions of the Spanish empire increased in the eighteenth century...Premo has written a brilliant work of groundbreaking, critical importance that should be read by Latin Americanists, early modernists, and legal scholars alike. Her study also lays the groundwork for future research on the Enlightenment
from below
a growing area of investigation in eighteenth-century studies.
Nancy Van Deusen, Hispanic American Historical Review This wide-ranging comparative analysis of litigation is an impressive feat-most legal histories focus on one or two sites to convey a sense of legal culture, consciousness, or custom as these evolved within a particular place. Even within this panoramic survey, Premo does not lose sight of the local nuances, as she is well attuned to the flexible nature of legality as savvy actors deployed arguments that best supported their claims...a richly detailed book that requires time to mine its richness and to digest the debates it provokes. As we become more attuned to the rhizomatic nature of legal change, Premo shows how ordinary litigants deserve the spotlight as agents of the Enlightenment.
Michele McKinley, American Historical Review