Transatlantic Obligations

Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-Era Peru and Spain

Jane E. Mangan

The first systematic study of families in sixteenth century Peru with a transatlantic focus
Traces family obligations connecting Peru and Spain through dowries, bequests, legal powers, and letters

Transatlantic Obligations

Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-Era Peru and Spain

Jane E. Mangan

Description

The sixteenth-century changes wrought by expansion of Spanish empire into Peru shaped the ways of being a family in colonial Peru. Even as migration, race mixture, and transculturation took place, family members fulfilled obligations to one another by adapting custom to a changing world. Family began to shift when, from the moment of their arrival in 1532, Spaniards were joined with elite indigenous women in political marriage-like alliances. Almost immediately, a generation of mestizos was born that challenged the hierarchies of colonial society. In response, the Spanish Crown began to promote the marriage of these men and the travel of Spanish women to Peru to promote good customs and even serve as surrogate parents. Other reactions came from wives in Spain who, abandoned by husbands, sought assistance to fulfill family duties. For indigenous families, the pressures of colonialism prompted migration to cities. By mid-century, the increase of Spanish migration to Peru changed the social landscape, but did not halt mixed-race marriages. The book posits that late sixteenth-century cities, specifically Lima and Arequipa, were host to indigenous and Spanish families but also to numerous 'blended' families borne of a process of mestizaje. In its final chapter, the legacies for the next generation reveal how Spanish fathers sometimes challenged law with custom and sentiment to establish inheritance plans for their children. By tracing family obligations connecting Peru and Spain through dowries, bequests, legal powers, and letters, Transatlantic Obligations presents a powerful call to rethink sixteenth-century definitions of family.

Transatlantic Obligations

Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-Era Peru and Spain

Jane E. Mangan

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Matchmaking: Law, Language, and the Conquest-Era Family Tree
Chapter 2: Removal: For the Love and Labor of Mixed-Race Children
Chapter 3: Marriage: Vida Maridable in a Transatlantic Context
Chapter 4: Journey: Family Strategies and the Transatlantic Voyage
Chapter 5: Adaptation: Creating Custom in the Colonial Family
Chapter 6: Legacy: Recognition, Inheritance, and Law on the Transatlantic Family Tree
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Transatlantic Obligations

Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-Era Peru and Spain

Jane E. Mangan

Author Information

Jane E. Mangan is Professor of History and Latin American Studies at Davidson College. She is the author of Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí and co-author of Women in the Iberian Atlantic.

Transatlantic Obligations

Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-Era Peru and Spain

Jane E. Mangan

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the Bandelier/Lavrin Book Prize in Colonial Latin American History of the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies
Winner of the Friedrich Katz Prize of the American Historical Association

"[B]eautifully written and exhaustively researched...Mangan's study offers an excellent model of a history that is both global and local, while in the process examining whether the Atlantic served to unite or divide imperial peoples...Cogent and readable, Transatlantic Obligations will appeal to students of all ranks and professional scholars. Ultimately, it challenges us to reconsider whether the heterogeneous 'modern family' of our period is such a recent creation."--Dana Velasco Murillo, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Transatlantic Obligations is a tremendous scholarly asset for those who seek a sophisticated understanding of the nexus between empire, colonialism, and family making, a tour de force useful for Latin Americanists, world historians, and historians of marriage and the family. This community will certainly welcome a rare and intriguing rendition of colonial men's history focused on the more 'domestic' sphere of the household."--Alcira Duenas, American Historical Review

"Transatlantic Obligations is a path-breaking and impressive contribution. It is precisely because it delves into multiple and difficult sources and asks fresh questions that it raises additional sets of enquiries. At the core, it demolishes from yet another angle the stereotypical concept of the 'Dos Republicas,' composed of Spaniards and of Natives...It alerts colonialists to how much there is yet to learn about the complex of interactions between Spaniards and Natives in the early generations after first contact."--Journal of Early Modern History

"Transatlantic Obligations is an ambitious and readable account of Spanish emigration and its consequences in the conquest period."--H-Net

"Writing with clarity, empathy, and erudition, Mangan illuminates the complex responsibilities inherent in establishing and maintaining transatlantic family ties in sixteenth-century Spain and Peru. Her nuanced reading of notarial sources brings to life the subjects of the book: Spanish fathers, indigenous mothers, and their children who navigated the legal, social, geographic, and cultural terrain of fictive and consanguineal kinship, law, and household relations. Transatlantic Obligations is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the history of the family in the early modern world."--Nancy E. van Deusen, Queen's University

"Transatlantic Obligations is a masterwork of social history. Jane Mangan exploits a wealth of untapped sources on both sides of the Atlantic to paint an entirely new, composite portrait of the early colonial Peruvian family. As Mangan shows, 'blended families were mainstream,' not only among the first generation of conquistadors and Inca princesses, but also among the middling classes of artisans, merchants, petty indigenous nobles, and even among the poor. Colonial demographic realities clashed with Spanish law and indigenous tradition at many junctures, but Mangan also finds considerable evidence of 'tender ties' amid the tension. Most significantly, Mangan demonstrates that no simple 'colonial family' die was cast in the sixteenth century. In Peru especially, this period was marked instead by unexpected twists as a wide array of individuals and clans resisted the legislative push toward separate 'republics' of Indians and Spaniards."--Kris Lane, Tulane University