Despite its location in the Mexican north, Saltillo, founded during the age of the Chichimeca wars of the mid–sixteenth century, is one of the older cities of Mexico. Looking at the settlement during the last decades of the eighteenth century, Offutt uses the careers and activities of politically important hacendados and merchants to construct a case for the importance of Saltillo in the region and in Mexican colonial history. Although she makes reference to a handful of more recent works throughout the book, her arguments, outlined in a brief introductory chapter, present a challenge primarily to the perspectives of François Chevalier and Herbert E. Bolton and the Boltonians—not exactly the most recent theoretical perspectives on the role of New Spain’s northern frontier in colonial history. As a result, the rest of the book, although it provides useful information on the mercantile and landed elites of Saltillo, feels stilted and narrow,...

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