Professor Eulália Maria Lahmeyer Lobo has produced another excellent study of Latin American colonial administration. In the present volume she goes far beyond her earlier work—Administração colonial Luso-Espanhola nas Américas (Rio de Janeiro: Editôra Companhia Brasileira de Artes Gráficas, 1952), in which Portuguese and Spanish colonial administrative methods were compared. As the subtitle of the present volume indicates, it is concerned with socio-economic aspects.

The first chapter deals with Portuguese and Castilian antecedents as colonizing nations, bringing their political evolution to the thirteenth century. The second chapter is concerned with colonial administration of Spain and Portugal from 1492 to 1550. Succeeding chapters deal minutely with central, provincial, and municipal administration of the two empires through the era of Pombal. This is an excellent and valuable study, and one which should be widely used in Latin American graduate programs. It ranks along with the works of Ots Capdequi, C. H. Haring, B. W. Diffie, and others dealing with colonial administration in the New World empires.