The Capital of Free Women
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico
Danielle Terrazas Williams
View Inside
Format: HC - Paper over BoardPrice: $65.00
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.
Publication Date: April 12, 2022
9 b/w illus.
