The Black middle : Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in colonial Yucatan
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The Black middle : Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in colonial Yucatan
Stanford University Press, c2009
Available at 2 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [409]-426) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Winner of the Conference on Latin American History's 2010 Mexican History Book Prize.
The Black Middle is the first full-length study of black African slaves and other people of African descent in the Spanish colonial province of Yucatan. Matthew Restall makes expert use of Spanish and Maya language documents from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, found in a dozen different archives. His goal is to discover what life was like for a people hitherto ignored by historians. He explores such topics as slavery and freedom, militia service and family life, bigamy and witchcraft, and the ways in which Afro-Yucatecans (as he dubs them) interacted with Mayas and Spaniards. Restall concludes that, in numerous ways, Afro-Yucatecans lived and worked in a middle space between-but closely connected to-Mayas and Spaniards. The book's "black middle" thesis has profound implications for the study of Africans throughout the Americas.
Table of Contents
Contents List of Figures, Maps, and Tables xxx Preface and Acknowledgments xxx A Note on Sources xxx Abbreviations of Archival Sources xxx Introduction: Making the Boatloads Visible 1 Chapter One: Involuntary Colonists 000 Chapter Two: People as Property 000 Chapter Three: Race and Rank 000 Chapter Four: Ways of Work 000 Chapter Five: Ways Up and Ways Out 000 Chapter Six: Communities 000 Chapter Seven: Magical Meetings 000 Conclusion: The Afro-Yucatecan Middle 000 Appendices A: Selection of Documents by Afro-Yucatecans 000 B: Afro-Yucatecans and the Population of Colonial Yucatan 000 C: Afro-Yucatecans travelling under license from Spain to Yucatan 000 D: Sales and values of slaves in Yucatan 000 E: Spanish slave-owners in Merida 000 F: Afro-Yucatecans accused of witchcraft by the Inquisition 000 G: Afro-Yucatecan Baptism Records, Merida 000 Reference Matter Notes 000 Glossary 000 Bibliography 000 000 Index 000
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