Martin Biersack's study, whose title translates to “Tolerated strangers: Spanish colonial rule and the extranjeros in the Americas,” is a pathbreaking analysis of how migrants became, remained, and ceased to be vecinos (recognized residents with rights and duties) in Bourbon Spanish America from 1700 to 1810. Biersack shows that integrating into society did not result merely from a crown fiat or community practice. Instead, the author praxeologically traces the manifold negotiations among metropolis, American authorities and corporations, and residents of foreign descent. A community usually regarded immigrants—by which the author mainly refers to male European immigrants as opposed to forced African migrants or spatially mobile Indigenous people—as transeúntes (transients) until they took up residence, desired to become vecinos, and were acknowledged as such, even if the crown continued to view them legally as foreigners. Marriage to a local was key, whereas the length of residence and landownership mattered less. Yet...

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