Bound Lives chronicles the lived experience of race relations in northern coastal Peru during the colonial era. Rachel Sarah O'Toole examines how Andeans and Africans negotiated and employed casta, and in doing so, constructed these racial categories. Royal and viceregal authorities separated "Indians" from "blacks" by defining each to specific labor demands. Casta categories did the work of race, yet, not all casta categories did the same type of work since Andeans, Africans, and their descendants were bound by their locations within colonialism and slavery. The secular colonial legal system clearly favored indigenous populations. Andeans were afforded greater protections as "threatened" native vassals. Despite this, in the 1640s during the rise of sugar production, Andeans were driven from their assigned colonial towns and communal property by a land privatization program. Andeans did not disappear, however; they worked as artisans, muleteers, and laborers for hire. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Andeans employed their legal status as Indians to defend their prerogatives to political representation that included the policing of Africans. As rural slaves, Africans often found themselves outside the bounds of secular law and subject to the judgments of local slaveholding authorities. Africans therefore developed a rhetoric of valuation within the market and claimed new kinships to protect themselves in disputes with their captors and in slave-trading negotiations. Africans countered slaveholders' claims on their time, overt supervision of their labor, and control of their rest moments by invoking customary practices. Bound Lives offers an entirely new perspective on racial identities in colonial Peru. It highlights the tenuous interactions of colonial authorities, indigenous communities, and enslaved populations and shows how the interplay between colonial law and daily practice shaped the nature of colonialism and slavery.

This fascinating reference book delves into the origins of the vernacular and scientific names of sharks, rays, skates and chimeras. Each entry offers a concise biography, revealing the hidden stories and facts behind each species’ name.

Is Bonaparte's Gull named after Napoleon Bonaparte? Is the Pallas' Sandgrouse named for the same individual as the Pallas' Warbler? This entertaining book provides for the first time a mini-biography of every person after whom a bird has been named in the English vernacular--some 1,400 individuals. Featuring 150 illustrations, Whose Bird? is arranged in the style of an encyclopedia with entries indexed both by relevant individual and by bird. The book concentrates on the people--heroes, romantics, fanatics, and many others. Entries explain who the people were, when and where they traveled, what else they did and were famous for, with whom they were connected, what they wrote and published, and how birds came to be named after them. Filled with fascinating stories about the lives and times of naturalists over the centuries, this accessible reference volume will intrigue readers at every level of interest in ornithology.