At the First Table: Food and Social Identity in Early Modern Spain. Jodi Campbell. Early Modern Cultural Studies. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. x + 238 pp. $30.
However, Feros downplays the importance of this biblical narrative in the creation of legal privilege. After 1555, the conquered Navarrese used the discourse of Spain and purity of descent to demand the privileges of naturaleza as a coequal kingdom of the monarchy. The Basques went one over. They became the only pure descendants of the original lineage of Tubal. As the Basque cornered the market of Spanishness, Charles V decreed in 1526 that even Basque commoners should enjoy the noble status of hidalgos and the legal right to settle in any kingdom as naturales. Feros offers a thoughtful, erudite, yet incomplete first approximation to the cocreation of the twin early modern categories of nation and race both in Europe and America. His insights should help us understand not only the current political debates in Spain but also where American exceptionalism truly lies. Whether to critique or praise, miscegenation was at the core of Spanish interpretations of nation and empire. In 1691, the Virginia General Assembly decreedmiscegenation illegal andmanumission possible only if the freed blacks were removed from the territory. Blacks could be nothing other but slaves. The contrast helps us understand both the origins of white supremacy and the truly exceptional nature of nation and race in Anglo-America.