Spanish monarchs recognized the jurisdictions of many self-governing corporate groups, including Jews and Muslims on the peninsula, indigenous peoples in their American colonies, and enslaved and free people of African descent across the empire. Republics of Difference examines fifteenth-century Seville and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lima to show how religiously- and racially-based self-governance functioned in a society with many kinds of law, what effects it had on communities, and why it mattered. By comparing these minoritized communities on both sides of the Spanish Atlantic world, this study offers a new understanding of the distinct standings of those communities in their urban settings. Drawing on legal and commercial records from late medieval Spain and colonial Latin America, Karen B. Graubart paints insightful portraits of residents' everyday lives to underscore the discriminatory barriers as well as the occupational structures, social hierarchies, and networks in which they flourished. In doing so, she demonstrates the limits, benefits, and dangers of living under one's own law in the Spanish empire, including the ways self-governance enabled some communities to protect their practices and cultures over time.

About the Author
Karen B. Graubart is Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of the award-winning With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550-1700.

Reviews
Republics of Difference is an ambitious and compelling study of the Iberian republic as a tool for managing religious and cultural difference and as a unit of self-governance for legal minorities. Through meticulous transatlantic analysis across a broad swath of time, Graubart reveals the fungibility of the republic as imperial strategy while underscoring how leaders and residents of diverse republics mobilized notions of difference for their own ends. Her argument that republics catalyzed early modern legal pluralism and racial thinking in the Atlantic world represents a landmark contribution to multiple fields of history. * Yanna Yannakakis, Emory University *
Jurisdiction is the fabric of power. Graubart's book delves into the question of what happens when two jurisdictions-for instance, one of Indian laborers and officials living in a walled city, another one founded in colonial rule and Jesuit ideas of work-overlap. Republics of Difference demonstrates both the jurisdictional and institutional creativity of imperial subjects and the ways in which colonial rule kept such creativity at bay. * Jesus R. Velasco, author of Dead Voice: Law, Philosophy, and Fiction in the Iberian Middle Ages *
Republics of Difference is a fascinating transatlantic discussion of the role of self-governing republics as a tool not only for managing distinctive subgroups within the Iberian empire, but also for self-preservation for racial and religious minorities...Using an impressive array of legal and commercial records from both sides of the Atlantic, Graubart demonstrates how disenfranchised groups in Seville and Lima employed the distinction and legal status of a republic to preserve their own identity and exert agency within the Spanish Empire at the same time that the empire attempted to use republics to reinforce imperial control. This work is enhanced through the extensive use of GIS to cartographically present...statistical analysis. This well-written study makes important contributions to discussions of race, identity, and self-governance in the Spanish Empire, as well as to broader discussions within Atlantic studies. * Choice *
In this parallel rather than comparative history, Karen Graubart analyses the constitution of difference in the legally pluralistic Hispanic Monarchy, examining the ways that jurisdictions delegated to distinct corporate political units, dubbed republicas, negotiated with each other and the overarching royal dominion that hovered above them all... The true joy of this book are its microhistories, suggestive anecdotes that paint a vivid picture of life...The book provides a rich and suggestive mosaic that offers fundamental insights into the way that colonial, imperial power was exercised in Iberia and the Andes across diverse religious and racial communities, essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the social history of the Spanish Atlantic world. * Alexander Samson, English Historical Review *
Exceptionally original, well-researched, and well-written... Graubart's prose is lively and quick paced, as she moves back and forth between narrative case studies and illustrative anecdotes culled from archival sources, synthetic surveys of general trends, and finely grained analyses of an often elusive documentary record... Republics of Difference constitutes an exemplary work of interdisciplinary, comparative scholarship such that the reader sees as much continuum as rupture between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern and between European Iberia and New World Peru. This dense but very readable work will be appreciated by scholars in a range of fields and is eminently suitable to be assigned in a graduate or upper-level undergraduate seminar. * Brian A. Catlos, Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
This dense but very readable work will be appreciated by scholars in a range of fields and is eminently suitable to be assigned in a graduate or upper-level undergraduate seminar. * Brian A. Catlos, Journal of the American Academy of Religion *


Awards
Winner of Winner, 2023 Transatlantic Studies Association-Cambridge University Press Book Prize.



Book Information
ISBN 9780190233839
Author Karen B. Graubart
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 649g
Dimensions(mm) 159mm * 241mm * 25mm