BOOK LAUNCH: We, The King: Creating Royal Legislation in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish World, by Adrian Masters. Cambridge University Press, 2023

Kicking-off the R-LAC events for this academic year (2023-2024), we are delighted to host the presentation of this new exciting book by Adrian Masters as an Online Event.

The volume challenges the standard academic top-down analytical approach of the sixteenth century Spanish Monarchy, uncovering and highlighting instead the importance of petitioning to the King and its relevance in the process of legislation development and governance. Masters therefore argues that this was a monarchy built from below and in permanent conversation with its subjects, radically opposing the view of a centrally managed system with limited participation of its subjects. The book questions the governance of Early Modern polities, and invites the readers to challenge academic understanding of political representation in the period, as well as its impact on the political construction of the Americas and Spain.

The event will be introduced by Dr Mario Graña Taborelli, Historian and Visiting Fellow at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of London and commentaries by Dr Fernando Cervantes, Historian, Reader in History, Bristol University. Author of: Conquistadores, A New History, Penguin Random House, UK, 2020 (15 minutes) and Dr Francisco Quijano, Historian, Main Researcher, Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM). Author of: Las repúblicas de la monarquía. Pensamiento constitucionalista y republicano en Nueva España, 1550-1610, UNAM, 2017.

Event outline

Introduction (5’)

Book presentation by the author (20’)

Comments from academic colleagues (20’)

Q&A Session open to all participants (15’)

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