Description
Trade ReviewJustice in the New World is an exciting and timely collection of essays with thinkers who have been at the forefront of research on legal intelligibility in the Americas. The collection brings questions of justice, law, and legality into an imperial and comparative frame, with close attention paid to the differences in the Iberian and North American worlds. -- Michelle McKinley, University of Oregon School of Law,Author of Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima
The essays in this volume unsettle much of the conventional wisdom about the process of colonization, by revealing the staggering complexity of the laws role in mediating relationships between settlers and indigenous people in the American colonies of Britain and Spain. The essays are richly researched and elegantly written, and they are bracketed by extraordinarily thoughtful introductory and concluding chapters. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in colonial or legal history. -- Stuart Banner,author of How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier
What could 'law' and 'justice' mean in the context of the European conquest and colonization of the Americas? The deeply researched essays in this volume examine illuminating cases where justice was a contested, ever-shifting concept as indigenous peoples and colonizers confronted one another in settings from Brazil and Peru to Florida, New England and Virginia. Featuring a distinguished roster of scholars, the books broadly comparative approach, as well as its insistence on foregrounding indigenous justice, will ensure that it is recognized as a landmark contribution to the burgeoning literature on law and colonialism. -- Allan Greer,McGill University
This edited volume explores the negotiations between Iberian, English, and Indigenous legal regimes in the crucible of the early US. It begins with Owensby and Ross’s excellent introduction to recent scholarship on early European empires, emphasizing that the Spanish and Portuguese sought to incorporate Indigenous peoples in their colonial structures, and the English kept natives separate .… Though the stated focus of the collection is the law and its workings, it is enlightening and useful for readers interested in many other aspects of colonial and native encounters and developments. * Choice *
This collection makes a compelling contribution to the field, and is a must-read for everyone with an interest in histories of colonial law and culture. * Journal of the History of International Law *
The editors deserve praise for their willingness to incorporate diverse, even conflicting, perspectives on the multiple intersections of law with colonialism in Iberian American and Anglo-American contexts… Taken as a whole, the collection marks a turning point in legal scholarship on colonialism in the Americas. * Journal of American History *
