This hefty collection, 530 pages long, has 20 chapters by authors of multiple nationalities. Nineteen essays are in Spanish and one in Portuguese; the book also includes an introduction (in Spanish) as well as a preface and postface (both in Italian). The time frame spans the 1400s to around 1800. The collection espouses a global perspective that is preeminently Spanish, centered in Iberia, with two forays into Portugal, one into Sardinia under Spanish rule, and four into Spanish America. Chapters on Asia and Africa have a Spanish connection through missionaries in China and the Philippines as well as Catholic “renegades” who converted to Islam in northern Africa.
The broad geographical and chronological scope is of a piece with the wide-ranging subject matter outlined in the title: resistance, violence, and police, primarily but not exclusively in early modern urban contexts. The introduction by Tomás Mantecón Movellán, Marina Torres Arce, and Susana...
