Our friend, colleague, and teacher António Manuel Hespanha, Portugal's foremost historian of law and administration and a major influence on the reconceptualization of Brazilian colonial history and of the history of the Portuguese empire in general, passed away on July 1, 2019, after a long struggle with colon cancer. Renowned not only for the volume and quality of his publications but also for his personal kindness and generosity to students and colleagues, his scholarship greatly influenced the post–António de Oliveira Salazar generation of historians in his own country as well as the broader scholarly communities of Europe and Brazil. His work should be of interest to anyone interested in government, law, and society in the ancien régime, and especially to those interested in the Lusophone and Hispanic monarchies and their empires.

Shortly after completing a degree in law at the University of Coimbra in the late 1960s, Hespanha became an...

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