Hundreds of Castilian free black men and women obtained royal travel licenses to cross the Atlantic in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as black Old Christians. They settled across the Spanish Indies and developed trades as artisans, traders, sailors, healers, and small business owners, often becoming prominent and wealthy vecinos (residents). Exploring these often obscure and long-invisible biographies of individuals, the article revisits key historiographical debates about race, purity of blood, and vassalage in the early Spanish empire. [for a copy of the accepted manuscript if you do not have institutional access to the publication, please email me (c.ireton@ucl.ac.uk) and I will send it to you] http://hahr.dukejournals.org/content/97/4/579.abstract?abspop=1&related-urls=yes&legid=ddhahr;97/4/579

The Iberian World: 1450–1820 brings together, for the first time in English, the latest research in Iberian studies, providing in-depth analysis of fifteenth- to early nineteenth-century Portugal and Spain, their European possessions, and the African, Asian, and American peoples that were under their rule. Featuring innovative work from leading historians of the Iberian world, the book adopts a strong transnational and comparative approach, and offers the reader an interdisciplinary lens through which to view the interactions, entanglements, and conflicts between the many peoples that were part of it. The volume also analyses the relationships and mutual influences between the wide range of actors, polities, and centres of power within the Iberian monarchies, and draws on recent advances in the field to examine key aspects such as Iberian expansion, imperial ideologies, and the constitution of colonial societies. Divided into four parts and combining a chronological approach with a set of in-depth thematic studies, The Iberian World brings together previously disparate scholarly traditions surrounding the history of European empires and raises awareness of the global dimensions of Iberian history. It is essential reading for students and academics of early modern Spain and Portugal. https://www.routledge.com/The-Iberian-World-14501820-1st-Edition/Bouza-Cardim-Feros/p/book/9781138921016

This chapter reviews the scholarly treatment of religion and race in the early modern Iberian Atlantic world and colonial Latin America and suggests new directions for research. Through a critical reflection of the place that Spain and colonial Latin America have held in histories of race in the West, the chapter challenges historians of the Americas to rethink their understanding of the relationship between religion and race in the early modern era. It highlights processes and ideologies visible in Spanish America and calls for investigation into similar dynamics in the Anglophone colonies.