In Bad Christians, New Spains, Byron Ellsworth Hamann has attempted an ambitious goal—comparing the experiences of Indigenous Mesoamericans and Spanish moriscos (descendants of Muslim converts to Christianity)—through a tightly focused monograph on two sets of Inquisition trials, one on each side of the Atlantic. Hamann analyzes these trials in dialogue to provide evidence of the interconnections across the Spanish empire in the sixteenth century. His focus on a “Mediterratlantic world” provides concrete examples of the global vision of early modern Spaniards, thus carrying forward the work of scholars such as Francisco Bethencourt and Kimberly Lynn on the Inquisition, Henry Kamen on Spain’s empire, and Sabine MacCormack on the legacy of antiquity in the early modern Spanish world. Hamann’s monograph contributes to the ongoing project of destabilizing the assumption that ideas, knowledge, and power flowed exclusively from the center to the periphery. He also highlights the ways in which relations...

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