The Capital of Free Women

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Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico

Danielle Terrazas Williams

View Inside Format: HC - Paper over Board
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A restoration of the agency and influence of free African-descended women in colonial Mexico through their traces in archives
 
“A breathtaking study that places free African-descended women at the nexus of questions about religion, commerce, and the law in colonial Mexico. Danielle Terrazas Williams has produced a dazzling and important contribution to the history of women, family, race, and slavery in the Americas.”—Sophie White, author of Voices of the Enslaved
 
The Capital of Free Women
examines how African-descended women strove for dignity in seventeenth-century Mexico. Free women in central Veracruz, sometimes just one generation removed from slavery, purchased land, ran businesses, managed intergenerational wealth, and owned slaves of African descent. Drawing from archives in Mexico, Spain, and Italy, Danielle Terrazas Williams explores the lives of African-descended women across the economic spectrum, evaluates their elite sensibilities, and challenges notions of race and class in the colonial period.

Danielle Terrazas Williams is Lecturer in the School of History at the University of Leeds. She won the Kimberly S. Hanger Prize from the Southern Historical Association for the research and writing of material included in this book.

“A wonderfully rich book, alive with vivid vignettes of enterprising women who supported themselves and their families. . . . It contains valuable insights into the history of women and the family, of slavery and racial mixture and of the regional economy.”—Silvia Arrom, Revista

"Engaging a variety of sources, this robust study offers an important glimpse of the world that free African-descended women made for themselves and their families."—Michele Reid-Vazquez, University of Pittsburgh
 

“Beautifully written and extensively researched, The Capital of Free Women is a welcome addition to the growing field of Afro-Mexican studies and free people of color in the Ibero-American world.”—Michelle McKinley, author of Fractional Freedoms
 

“A breathtaking study that places free African-descended women at the nexus of questions about religion, commerce, and the law in colonial Mexico. In revealing their complex strategies and their indefatigable claims to socioreligious legitimacy, Danielle Terrazas Williams has produced a dazzling and important contribution to the history of women, family, race, and slavery in the Americas.”—Sophie White, author of Voices of the Enslaved
 
ISBN: 9780300258066
Publication Date: April 12, 2022
296 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
9 b/w illus.