Tamar Herzog

• PhD in history and civilization, EHESS, Paris, France
• Professor at Harvard University

This text describes the precariousness of land rights in colonial Latin America. Drawing attention to usage rights and possession, rather than property rights, it surveys debates in the colonial courts regarding who the land belongs to, how it is assigned and conserved by communities, families, and individuals, and what can these do to protect thei...

This text seeks to de-center existing narratives regarding enslavement, which traditionally focus on how it was practiced in North America, and instead to observe it in the longue durée and more globally. It asks about the various roles enslaved persons played in different times and geographical locations, paying particular attention to the ways by...

Spanish American colonial law and its relationship to European law. Customary law and customs in Spanish America, indigenous and Afro-Latin American. Relationship law and religion. How to study colonial law.

The chapter studies the legal problems provoked by the independence of Latin American states. It asks what is a revolutionary law and surveys the multiple legal questions that had to be solved

What is legal history

This text examines Portuguese and Spanish documentation to show that Iberians invoked a variety of ways by which the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas could consent to their presence and domination. According to these sources, indigenous consent could be explicit or implicit, and it could be free or coerced, with each one of these situations g...

Covering the precolonial period to the present, The Cambridge History of Latin American Law in Global Perspective provides a comprehensive overview of Latin American law, revealing the vast commonalities and differences within the continent as well as entanglements with countries around the world. Bringing together experts from across the Americas...

This volume tells the story of the interaction between Christianity and law—historically and today, in the traditional heartlands of Christianity and around the globe. Sixty new chapters by leading scholars provide authoritative but accessible accounts of foundational Christian teachings on law and legal thought over the past two millennia as well...

This major new reference work with contributions from an international team of scholars provides a comprehensive account of ideas and practices of nationhood and nationalism from antiquity to the present. It considers both continuities and discontinuities, engaging critically and analytically with the scholarly literature in the field. Volume I sta...

Featuring contributions from leading scholars of history, law and politics, this path-breaking work traces the development of the United Kingdom's constitution from Anglo-Saxon times and explores its role in the creation, exercise and control of public power. Essays in Volume Two, entitled 'The Changing Constitution', examine the development of the...

This text takes issue with how present day debates regarding legal pluralism affect our vision of the past, as well as limit the horizons of possibilities in the future. It suggests that the genealogy of these debates determined what would be seen, and what ignored, and that, as a result, it has privileged some aspects, while forgetting the importa...

Este artigo examina os antecedentes do atual pluralismo jurídico latino-americano, estabelecendo o que é velho e o que é novo dentro dele. Nesse sentido, questiona-se por que os fenômenos vigentes atualmente são identificados como “pluralismo”, indagando sobre a maneira como esse pluralismo opera e, mais especificamente, como ele é aplicado de mane...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

The paper highlights some of the many contributions of António Manuel Hespanha to our understanding of the past. It describes how he perceived history (as an anthropological incursion into the past or a voyage to the unknown), the questions he raised (mostly regarding the early modern, colonial, and contemporary states), and the answers he provided...

Revista Tiempos Modernos: Este texto propone una nueva perspectiva para observar el viejo debate sobre leyenda negra o rosa. Partiendo de experiencias personales como residente en EEU, así como del estudio de fuentes y de la bibliografía, critica el deseo de opinar a favor de una u otra leyenda enumerando víctimas o denuncias y/o centrándose en riv...

This text interrogates the relations between a book and its readers. It describes why I wrote Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America some twenty years ago in terms of what I wanted to ask and answer, and it depicts how readers have used it since. Besides considering how the study of early modern citizens...

This text interrogates the relations between a book and its readers. It describes why I wrote Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America some twenty years ago in terms of what I wanted to ask and answer, and it depicts how readers have used it since. Besides considering how the study of early modern citizens...

Durante el siglo XVIII a lo largo y ancho de España, otros muchos individuos y grupos también pidieron permiso para instalarse en terrenos que según ellos estaban despoblados, tropezando con la oposición de los propietarios o sus arrendatarios. Quisiera aprovechar del debate entorno de la repoblación para indagar sobre los criterios que los contemp...

This text asks how a greater familiarity with European law would change our vision of colonial territories, most particularly, Latin America. Concentrating on the study of immemorial and native customs in both European and American territories, it argues that these customs were not necessarily ancient or authentic. Instead, they authorised making l...

This text asks how a greater familiarity with European law would change our vision of colonial territories, most particularly, Latin America. Concentrating on the study of immemorial and native customs in both European and American territories, it argues that these customs were not necessarily ancient or authentic. Instead, they authorised making l...

Se estudia el debate del siglo XVIII en torno de la repoblación de los despoblados con el fin de repensar los criterios barajados en la época. Nos preguntamos cómo se identificaban los despoblados, por qué se los quería reformar y cuál era el papel de la memoria en estos procesos. Igualmente se indaga cómo se entendía la utilidad pública y qué rele...

This text summarizes some of the findings regarding municipal citizenship (vecindad) and membership in the kingdom community (naturaleza) in Spain from the middle ages to the twentieth century and compares and contrasts them with the conclusions reached by Maarten Prak. Basically agreeing with his main discoveries, it nonetheless argues that in Spa...

This Companion aims to give an up-to-date overview of the historical context and the conceptual framework of Spanish imperial expansion during the early modern period, mostly during the 16th century. It intends to offer a nuanced and balanced account of the complexities of this historically controversial period analyzing first its historical underp...

Herzog’s essay examines the “dialogues” between Portuguese colonists and “not-yet domesticated” Natives of the Amazon basin. She aims to uncover the legal structures and understandings that gave meaning to what each side expected from and sought to gain from their agreements. She demonstrates that this interaction was more a matter of negotiation t...

Arguing for the urgent need to place colonial and European history in dialogue, this text criticizes the literature that examines campaigns to resettle the native population of Spanish America in villages, identified as reducciones or congregaciones. It argues that, rather than a colonial technology aimed at controlling and exploiting the colonized...

These are the flyer, table of contents and introduction of my most recent book on the History of Law in Europe, covering from Roman law to the European union. Comprehensive and concise, it bridges the continental and Anglo-American traditions and focuses on vital questions of legal authority and legitimacy. The book interrogates the origins of core...

Herzog analyzes how nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American states used and misused history to make claims to territory. Appealing to the idea that they each had “historical rights” to certain lands, these countries pretended to solve their territorial and border conflicts by recreating what they imagined was their extension during the col...

This chapter surveys how individuals were identified and whether their movement was controlled in early modern Spain and Spanish America. It argues that because Spanish (and Spanish American) structures assumed the existence of a freedom to immigrate, most processes aimed at registering identities were concerned not with immigration but with distin...

This article examines the different meanings of native status in Spanish America. It argues that the classification of Indigenous peoples as "natives" was not meant to reflect a reality of indigeneity as many have assumed, but instead was geared towards attributing them with a particular legal status, which in Peninsular Spain was reserved to membe...

Scholars of colonial Spanish America are divided between those who cherish Spaniards for respecting indigenous land rights and those who denounce them for not having done so. For the first group, Spanish respect was enshrined in political and theological debates and in legislation and practice that from the sixteenth century asserted that natives h...

Este ensayo indaga sobre el sentido, utilizacion y extension de los conceptos “natural” y “extranjero” tanto en Espana como en Hispanoamerica durante el periodo moderno. Aboga por una lectura que destaca i. que la distincion entre naturales y extranjeros no siempre era importante, ni siquiera relevante; ii. que para que haya discusiones al respecto...

F REEDOM Bound explores how law powerfully shaped colonizing, work, and civic identities from the founding of British America through the Civil War. Christopher Tomlins's broad-ranging, bril-liant account stays within the English Atlantic. How might a comparative look at the Spanish colonial experience provide a fresh critical perspective on Tomlin...

We tend to think about the inhabitants of the Atlantic world as members of discrete groups. We thus argue that 'Spaniards' had encountered 'Indians', 'Europeans' competed with one another, and 'Africans' were imported as slaves. Although these categories may be meaningful to us, like all identities and processes of identification, they were dynamic...

PescadorJuan Javier, Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha (Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), pp. xxiv+256, $34.95, hb. - Volume 42 Issue 3 - TAMAR HERZOG

Adelman's most recent book studies the transition from empire to nationhood in both Spanish and Portuguese America. Rather than portraying this passage as foretold—either because empires were doomed to fail, or because nationalism was bound to succeed—Adelman wishes to reconstruct the uncertainties of the process that led to the demise of one polit...

This article examines the regime of naming (both given and surnames) in early modern Spain and Spanish America. It summarizes the existing literature and criticizes its conclusions (that such a regime of naming did not exist) by analyzing primary documents from both the Old and the New World and by demonstrating that there were clear rules concerni...

Résumé Cet article envisage le débat concernant le regroupement des Indiens en villages (réductions au Pérou, congregaciones en Nouvelle-Espagne) dans l’Amérique espagnole coloniale. Plutôt qu’une stratégie visant à l’extraction des ressources, cette politique correspond à une représentation selon laquelle ceux qui vivaient sans enracinement commun...

Herzog challenges a traditional narrative of the emergence of the nation state in her study of Spain and the New World, arguing that citizenship in Spain and in Spanish America was rooted in the early modern period, and remained rooted thereafter, in local practices of participation and community rites, which allowed municipalities to decide who th...

Taking issue with the debate on the forced transfer of Indians to villages (reducciones or congregaciones) during the colonial period, this article argues that rather than a colonial strategy, aimed at extracting resources, these transfers were motivated by the perception that those who lived without communal attachment were dangerous. These indivi...

The central point of this article is the means of identifying aliens and distinguishing them from natives (also called «Spaniards»). My intention in analysing the situation in Castile and America in the modern age up to the wars of independence is (i) to examine the relationship between the debates about native status in Castile (up to the 17th cen...

The Americas 62.4 (2006) 655 In this short yet concise book, Jay Kinsbruner synthesizes much of the bibliography on Spanish American cities. He begins by tracing the meaning of "urban" and the history of pre-Columbian cities, in order to concentrate on the colonial period. Interested in both structures and processes, Kinsbruner surveys the foundati...

The Colonial Spanish-American City. By Kinsbruner Jay . Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Pp. xv, 182. Illustrations. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $40.00 cloth; $18.95 paper. - Volume 62 Issue 4 - Tamar Herzog

Based on the study of 36residencias by corregidores and ministers from the territory of the Audiencia of Quito, this article criticises traditional historiography for its insistence on the inquisitorial role of the residencias and for focusing on analysis of their outcomes. It takes the view to the contrary that the residencias were first and forem...

This chapter argues that the question posed in its title involves not just an exercise in comparative history. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Spanish exceptionalism was an accepted fact. It was cherished and lamented by Spaniards and foreigners alike. “Europe” served as the standard against which Spain was measured, and it appe...

In this book Tamar Herzog explores the emergence of a specifically Spanish concept of community in both Spain and Spanish America in the eighteenth century. Challenging the assumption that communities were the natural result of common factors such as language or religion, or that they were artificially imagined, Herzog reexamines early modern categ...

This book is the result of a collective effort by a group of scholars from Latin America, Europe, and the USA, who together wished to write a legal history that would center on the common experiences of Latin American societies over a long time span, which began before Europeans invaded the continent and continues to date. The aim was to identify a...

BentonLauren, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiii + 285 pp. ISBN 0-521-00926-X (paperback); 0-521-80414-0 (hardcover). - Volume 26 Issue 2 - Tamar Herzog

Hispanic American Historical Review 81.3-4 (2001) 782-783 La mosaïque indienne: Mobilité, stratification sociale et métissage dans le corregimiento de Cuenca (Equateur) du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. By Jacques Poloni-Simard. Civilisations et Societes, 99. Paris: Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2000. Maps. Tables. Figures. No...

Las relaciones entre redes personales y capitales institucionales, están en el centro de reflexión de este artículo. Tomando como ejemplo el papel de quien fuera tesorero de la Real Hacienda de Quito en las décadas de 1730 y 1740, quisiera argumentar a favor de la imposibilidad de entender el establecimiento de relaciones sociales, sin la mediación...