A Tale of Two Granadas

‘Conceptualizing the Spanish empire as a ‘Christian Republic’, the author highlights mestizos and the social spaces that, by design and/or by struggle, they inhabited in such an empire. The malleability of notions such as subjecthood, race, and ‘Repúblicas,’ expands our understanding of both mestizos and Spanish colonialism in the Americas.’ Alcira Dueñas, The Ohio State University

‘Max Deardorff’s insightful study reveals that the tensions between religious segregation and assimilation paradoxically informed royal and ecclesiastic policies regarding membership in the Republic of the Spaniards. Deardorff skilfully demonstrates that, by exploiting these tensions, granadinos and neogranadinos of partial or no Spanish/Christian ancestry secured a space within a wider Christian Republic.’ José Carlos de la Puente, Texas State University

‘In this lucidly written book, Max Deardorff explores what citizenship meant for those social actors in the early modern Spanish territories who faced degrees of exclusion due to their ethnicity and proximity to orthodox Christianity. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Deardorff brings together the Iberian Atlantic by looking at lesser-studied regions and the people inhabiting their margins, and also, at the Spanish powerholders who moved across the two jurisdictions.’ Joanne Rappaport, Georgetown University

‘[A] stunning example of how Atlantic history should be written.’ J. M. Rosenthal, Choice

‘This absorbing, erudite, and highly original book … gives its readers a window through which to see the political configurations of the Spanish Empire and its imprints within the broader context of Catholic reform and growing Atlantic connections. The book’s appearance will not only benefit scholars of colonial Spanish America but also those working on the religious and political changes unfolding during the first century that followed the integration of the Americas into the contours of global history.’ James V. Torres, American Historical Review