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Author:

Terrazas Williams, Danielle, author.

Title:

The capital of free women : race, legitimacy, and liberty in colonial Mexico / Danielle Terrazas Williams.

Publisher:

Yale University Press,

Copyright Date:

2022

Description:

xiii, 282 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps ; 23 cm

Subject:

1540-1810
Women, Black--Veracruz-Llave (State)--Veracruz-Llave (State)--Economic conditions--17th century.
Freed persons--Veracruz-Llave (State)--Veracruz-Llave (State)--Economic conditions--17th century.
Women merchants--Veracruz-Llave (State)--Veracruz-Llave (State)--17th century.
Women, Black--Veracruz-Llave (State)--Veracruz-Llave (State)--History--17th century.
Enslaved women--Veracruz-Llave (State)--Veracruz-Llave (State)--History--17th century.
Slavery--Veracruz-Llave (State)--Veracruz-Llave (State)--History--17th century.
Women slaves.
Slavery.
Freed persons--Economic conditions.
Race relations.
Women, Black.
Women, Black--Economic conditions.
Women merchants.
Mexico--History--Spanish colony, 1540-1810.
Veracruz-Llave (Mexico : State)--History--History--17th century.
Mexico.
Mexico--Veracruz-Llave (State)
History.
History.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents:

Introduction -- A Nexus of Worlds -- Defending Family -- Owning Slaves -- One Generation -- Capitalizing Status -- Preserving Legacies -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index.

Summary:

The Capital of Free Women' illuminates the history of how free African-descended women accumulated capital in seventeenth-century Mexico. While some women still labored as slaves, a new demographic began to emerge: free Black women of means. Free women in central Veracruz, sometimes just one generation removed from slavery, purchased land, ran businesses, served as influential matriarchs, managed intergenerational wealth, and even owned slaves of African descent. Using the notarial archives of the region, as well as royal edicts and ecclesiastical sources, Danielle Terrazas Williams explores the lives of Black women across the economic spectrum, evaluates their elite sensibilities, and challenges notions of race and class in the colonial period. More broadly, she asks readers to consider how colonial institutions imagined marginalized people and how race and gender influenced how people navigated imperial demands and religious expectations.

ISBN:

9780300258066
0300258062

OCLC:

(OCoLC)1262190412

LCCN:

2021942694

Locations:

OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)