Transatlantic Obligations: Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-Era Peru and Spain

Since James Lockhart published in 1968 the pioneering Spanish Peru, 1532–1560, various scholars have successfully contributed to a better understanding of sixteenth-century Andean society. Jane Mangan offers in Transatlantic Obligations one of the most comprehensive attempts to study social dynamics in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the first century of colonization. Her focus is on the family, an institution that she understands as having played a central role in the colonial world due to its flexibility. Mangan shows how families established actions (via networks and obligations) and words (in a legal context) through which individuals were connected in different ways, such as dowries, bequests, legal powers, and letters. As these ties frequently linked spouses and children in several commitments from Peru to Spain and vice versa, Mangan's focus on the family assumes a transatlantic perspective, which gives this book its considerable...