Initialed notices were written by members of the editorial staff.
Socio-racial structure in colonial Hispanic America has been ably studied and presented in its broad outlines during the last decade by Magnus Mörner. This book is drawn from two previous works, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (1967) and La corona española y los foráneos en los pueblos de indios de América (1970), and reflects the objective of the Mexican Secretaría de Educación Pública to offer through SepSetentas syntheses of major works as well as monographs on Mexican history at a very reasonable cost. It treats such topics as the evolution of royal and ecclesiastical racial policy, the development and transformation of the caste society, various systems of Indian labor (with regional adaptations), and the difficulties inherent in the policy of Indian segregation. Mörner particularly emphasizes the manner in which the growth of hacienda and peonage brought social redistributions. Although pan-colonial and comparative in scope, the book provides many examples from New Spain to accommodate the primarily Mexican audience.
