Description
Book SynopsisYanna Yannakakis traces the creation of Indigenous custom as a legal category and its deployment as a strategy of resistance to empire in colonial Mexico.
Trade Review"Aimed at a scholarly audience, Yanna Yannakakis'
Since Time Immemorial explores how Spanish authorities and indigenous elites navigated the ambiguous boundary between custom and law in16th-century Mexico. Deeply reasoned and argued, this book should be of interest to both history majors and experts interested in the legal framework of Spanish Mexico." -- Noah Zachary * World History Encyclopedia *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction xiii
Part I. Legal and Intellectual Foundations: Twelfth through Seventeenth Centuries
1. Custom, Law, and Empire in the Mediterranean-Atlantic World 23
2. Translating Custom in Castile, Central Mexico, and Oaxaca 45
Part II. Good and Bad Customs in the Native Past and Present: Sixteenth through Seventeenth Centuries
3. Framing Pre-Hispanic Law and Custom 73
4. The Old Law, Polygyny, and the Customs of the Ancestors 109
Part III. Custom in Oaxaca’s Courts of First Instance: Seventeenth through Eighteenth Centuries
5. Custom, Possession, and Jurisdiction in the Boundary Lands 139
6. Custom as Social Contract: Native Self-Governance and Labor 171
7. Prescriptive Custom: Written Labor Agreements in Indian and Spanish Jurisdictions 199
Epilogue 229
Notes 237
Bibliography 273
Index 305
