Change over Time in the Iberian World: Stabilization and Transformation of Law (16th–19th Centuries)

Luisa Stella de Oliveira Coutinho Silva (Hg.)
Max Planck Studies in Global Legal History of the Iberian Worlds, Band 8
Leiden: Brill 2026

ISBN (Harback): 978-90-04-76441-5
ISBN (e-book): 978-90-04-76442-2

This book examines legal change in the Iberian empires by analyzing colonial experiences through the dynamic relationship between global and local processes. Drawing on case studies from Portuguese and Spanish imperial contexts, it challenges views of colonial law as a rigid system imposed from metropolitan centers. Instead, this volume shows how law was continuously reshaped through negotiation, adaptation, and contestation in colonial settings. Norms were transformed through everyday practices, jurisdictional conflicts, and interactions among diverse actors. By examining normative regulation, religious jurisdiction, legal practice, and criminal justice, this book highlights the local production of legal knowledge within imperial structures and reconsiders the relationship between law, power, and social practice in early modern colonial societies.

Contents

Preface

List of Figures, Charts and Tables

Notes on Contributors

1 Change over Time in the Iberian Empires
Legal History and Experiences of Change between the Global and the Local
Luisa Stella de Oliveira Coutinho Silva

2 The Dynamics of Normative Change
Sollicitatio ad Turpia in the Inquisitorial Courts of Spanish America (16th and 17th Centuries)
Mariana Meneses Muñoz

3 Ignorance Lost
The Arrival of Franciscan Missionaries and the Jesuit Normative Discourse in Japan (16–17th Centuries)
Rômulo Ehalt

4 Negotiating their Lives
Normativity in Widows’ Petitions over Inheritance, Properties and Debts in 18th- and 19th-Century Porto, Portugal
Ana Mafalda Pereira Lopes

5 Conveying Normativity to the Sound of Drums
An Exploration of the Normative Production of Bandos by Governors of the Portuguese Atlantic World (17th–18th Centuries)
Arthur Curvelo

6 Legal Changes and Royal Officers in Portuguese America
The Correições in the Towns of Curitiba (1721) and Aquiraz (1729) and their Normative Power
Gustavo César Machado Cabral

7 A Gendered Penalty
Adultery, Recolhimentos and Legal Change in Portuguese America (18th Century)
Vanessa Massuchetto

8 Normativities of Freedom
Suing for the Possibility to Self-Purchase in São Paulo during the Second Half of the 18th Century
Felipe Garcia de Oliveira

9 Dealing with the Normative Complexity of the Colony
Policey, Legal Change and Paths of New Meanings of Law in the Administration of the Diamond District (1771–1808)
Nathaly Mancilla-Órdenes

Index