The Radical Spanish Empire
How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World
Book •
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters examine how petitions, lawsuits, and other paperwork empowered commoners, indigenous actors, friars, and conquistadors to contest authority in the Spanish Americas.
The book shows that many royal decrees and colonial institutions emerged in response to bottom-up lawfare rather than exclusively from top-down directives.
It traces how this paperwork culture generated massive practical knowledge (cartography, mining, administration) and a vernacular skepticism that destabilized elite claims to authority.
The authors argue this radical paperwork politics helped create the administrative and archival structures of the Spanish Empire and left a long legacy in Latin America.
By reframing the origins of the political and public sphere in the Atlantic, the book challenges longstanding liberal and decolonial historiographical narratives.
The book shows that many royal decrees and colonial institutions emerged in response to bottom-up lawfare rather than exclusively from top-down directives.
It traces how this paperwork culture generated massive practical knowledge (cartography, mining, administration) and a vernacular skepticism that destabilized elite claims to authority.
The authors argue this radical paperwork politics helped create the administrative and archival structures of the Spanish Empire and left a long legacy in Latin America.
By reframing the origins of the political and public sphere in the Atlantic, the book challenges longstanding liberal and decolonial historiographical narratives.
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Discussed by the authors as their new book explaining how bottom-up paperwork politics remade the Spanish New World.
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters, "The Radical Spanish Empire: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World" (Harvard UP, 2026)
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Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters, "The Radical Spanish Empire: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World" (Harvard UP, 2026)
