Taxing Difference in Peru and New Spain (16th–19th Century)

This book addresses the negotiation of categorizations in colonial societies in Spanish America from a new vantage point: fiscality. In early modern empires (poll) taxes were a significant factor to organize and perpetuate social inequalities. By this, fiscal categorizations had very concrete effects on the daily life of the categorized, on their assets and on their labor force. They intersected with social categorizations such as gender, profession, age and what many authors have termed race or ethnicity, but which is denominated here, more accurately with a term from the sources, calidad. They were imposed by legislation from above and contested via petitions from below, the latter being a type of source scarcely analyzed until now.