Students of slavery in the Americas have long recognized that the law of the Spanish Empire provided more in the way of formal, judicially enforceable rights for enslaved people than did the legal regimes of the English, French, Dutch, and other New World empires. That distinction was at the heart of Frank Tannenbaum's 1946 pioneering comparative effort Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas. Tannenbaum's writings helped precipitate a debate that has lasted to the present day on how much we might be able to rely on the law as an indicator of the lives and circumstances of slaves, freed people, and others who lived out their lives in New World slave systems. Ricardo Raúl Salazar Rey's Mastering the Law: Slavery and Freedom in the Legal Ecology of the Spanish Empire provides a thoughtful look at the role of law in Spain's American colonies. The study provides both...

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