Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico
Puebla de los Ángeles, 1531–1706

Focuses on enslaved families and their social networks in the city of Puebla de los Ángeles in seventeenth-century colonial Mexico.

Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva (Author)

9781108419819, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 April 2018

242 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

Using the city of Puebla de los Ángeles, the second-largest urban center in colonial Mexico (viceroyalty of New Spain), Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva investigates Spaniards' imposition of slavery on Africans, Asians, and their families. He analyzes the experiences of these slaves in four distinct urban settings: the marketplace, the convent, the textile mill, and the elite residence. In so doing, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico advances a new understanding of how, when, and why transatlantic and transpacific merchant networks converged in Central Mexico during the seventeenth century. As a social and cultural history, it also addresses how enslaved people formed social networks to contest their bondage. Sierra Silva challenges readers to understand the everyday nature of urban slavery and engages the rich Spanish and indigenous history of the Puebla region while intertwining it with African diaspora studies.

Figures, tables, maps and documents
Archival references
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Early Puebla and the question of labor
2. Ambition, agency and abuse: the textile mills of Puebla
3. Captive souls: nuns and slaves in the convents of Puebla
4. The Puebla slave market, 1600–1700
5. Life in the big city: mobility, social networks, and family
6. The other market: commerce and opportunity
Epilogue
Appendices
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Hispanic & Latino studies [JFSL4], Ethnic studies [JFSL], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Regional & national history [HBJ]