ABSTRACT
New worlds emerged on both shores of the sixteenth-century Atlantic. This book explores one aspect of that history—the creation of new Spains—based on a comparison of two inquisitorial investigations that began in the 1540s. One took place in Oaxaca, in what is now Mexico, and the other in the Mediterranean kingdom of Valencia. These opening pages introduce the key themes in both investigations: the relations of Europeans and Native Americans in Oaxaca, the relations of Catholics and Muslims in Valencia, questions of conversion, and struggles over time that often involved the material world. Although models of coloniality have previously been applied to both Oaxacan and Valencian situations, the colonial is an idea that emerged in the progressive horizons of the eighteenth century. In contrast, early modern models of time and social change focused on imagined restorations of the past, restorations encapsulated in the concept of reduction.
