Humboldt's Mexico: In the Footsteps of the Illustrious German Scientific Traveller by Myron Echenberg (review)
A number of the chapters are based on judicial documents, and the authors’ deep archival reading gives a genuine sense of their complexity. Chapter 5 illustrates this by explaining that one visita general in Mexico City involved interviews with 700 witnesses and resulted in a collection of 2,000 pages in 36 volumes (112). The book is particularly valuable in this regard. Such documental excavation brings to light insights about the power relationships between the diverse groups of people in imperial spaces, with the intersections of class, creole/Peninsular divisions, and race forming another theme across some of the chapters.