Intellectual Histories of the Black Atlantic

Scholarship that has embraced pervasive ‘truths’ about the meaning of black skin colour in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Iberian world—primarily, that Iberians’ visions of purity of blood led Iberian thinkers to exclude Black Africans from the possibility of claiming an Old Christian status—has rendered invisible various discourses pertaining to Africa, Catholicism, Blackness and slavery in this period, and also the important intellectual work of free and enslaved Black men and women in crafting meanings of Blackness and Catholicism in localised sites in the Atlantic world. The works under review here explore how varied ideas about Blackness circulated and obtained currency in particular sites in Iberia and the Americas, while centring the intellectual work of Black Africans and their descendants. Collectively, these studies explore how enslaved and free Black men and women in Iberia and the Americas shaped early modern Catholicism through devotional practice, performance of religious festivities, litigation, royal

Ancient history · Atlantic World · Genealogy · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · History · History, Culture, and Diplomacy