Since Time Immemorial
Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico
Published on 5. May 2023
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-1-4780-1698-4 (ISBN)
Description
In Since Time Immemorial Yanna Yannakakis traces the invention of Native custom, a legal category that Indigenous litigants used in disputes over marriage, self-governance, land, and labor in colonial Mexico. She outlines how, in the hands of Native litigants, the European category of custom-social practice that through time takes on the normative power of law-acquired local meaning and changed over time. Yannakakis analyzes sources ranging from missionary and Inquisition records to Native pictorial histories, royal surveys, and Spanish and Native-language court and notarial documents. By encompassing historical actors who have been traditionally marginalized from legal histories and highlighting spaces outside the courts like Native communities, parishes, and missionary schools, she shows how imperial legal orders were not just imposed from above but also built on the ground through translation and implementation of legal concepts and procedures. Yannakakis argues that, ultimately, Indigenous claims to custom, which on the surface aimed to conserve the past, provided a means to contend with historical change and produce new rights for the future.
Reviews / Votes
"Aimed at a scholarly audience, Yanna Yannakakis' Since Time Immemorial explores how Spanish authorities and indigenous elites navigated the ambiguous boundary between custom and law in16th-century Mexico. Deeply reasoned and argued, this book should be of interest to both history majors and experts interested in the legal framework of Spanish Mexico." - Noah Zachary (World History Encyclopedia) "Yannakakis has written a sophisticated and eminently readable text that could serve as an introduction to legal historical methods as well as a longue-durEe study of Mexican Native communities. It is an exemplary model for thinking about law from the bottom up without losing sight of imperial foundations or a historically romanticizing a Native past." - Karen B. Graubart (Colonial Latin American Review) "Since Time Immemorial shows persuasively how preconquest custom shaped the laws governing the Indigenous world of postconquest Mexico. But it equally demonstrates the complex ways that traditional customs were manipulated to refect new realities as well as how new customs contributed to the evolution of legal practices in colonial society." - Jeremy Baskes (Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
37 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
666 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-1698-4 (9781478016984)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Yanna Yannakakis is Associate Professor of History at Emory University, author of The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca, and coeditor of Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes, both also published by Duke University Press.
Content
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xiii
Part I. Legal and Intellectual Foundations: Twelfth through Seventeenth Centuries
1. Custom, Law, and Empire in the Mediterranean-Atlantic World 23
2. Translating Custom in Castile, Central Mexico, and Oaxaca 45
Part II. Good and Bad Customs in the Native Past and Present: Sixteenth through Seventeenth Centuries
3. Framing Pre-Hispanic Law and Custom 73
4. The Old Law, Polygyny, and the Customs of the Ancestors 109
Part III. Custom in Oaxaca's Courts of First Instance: Seventeenth through Eighteenth Centuries
5. Custom, Possession, and Jurisdiction in the Boundary Lands 139
6. Custom as Social Contract: Native Self-Governance and Labor 171
7. Prescriptive Custom: Written Labor Agreements in Indian and Spanish Jurisdictions 199
Epilogue 229
Notes 237
Bibliography 273
Index 305
Introduction xiii
Part I. Legal and Intellectual Foundations: Twelfth through Seventeenth Centuries
1. Custom, Law, and Empire in the Mediterranean-Atlantic World 23
2. Translating Custom in Castile, Central Mexico, and Oaxaca 45
Part II. Good and Bad Customs in the Native Past and Present: Sixteenth through Seventeenth Centuries
3. Framing Pre-Hispanic Law and Custom 73
4. The Old Law, Polygyny, and the Customs of the Ancestors 109
Part III. Custom in Oaxaca's Courts of First Instance: Seventeenth through Eighteenth Centuries
5. Custom, Possession, and Jurisdiction in the Boundary Lands 139
6. Custom as Social Contract: Native Self-Governance and Labor 171
7. Prescriptive Custom: Written Labor Agreements in Indian and Spanish Jurisdictions 199
Epilogue 229
Notes 237
Bibliography 273
Index 305