In this concise volume, Jonathan Schorsch focuses on two cases covered in his much longer work, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century (2009). Here the emphasis is on four individuals caught up in two different persecutions done by the Holy Office in its Novohispanic and neogranadino tribunals. Schorsch examines the extremely complex topic of the connections and conflicts that these case studies reveal as existing between judeoconversos and African-descended subjects within the Spanish empire. In the preface, the author acknowledges that a study of the tensions that simmered between these groups will resonate with current and highly polemical debates.
This book has a different structure and analytical style than a conventional academic work of history, which allows Schorsch's text to range broadly and creatively in terms of both sources and the interpretations that he applies to his provoking topic. After an introduction providing brief...