Damned Notions of Liberty: Slavery, Culture, and Power in Colonial Mexico, 1640–1769 (review)
Damned Notions of Liberty marks an exciting and important contribution to the literature on slavery in the Atlantic World. Recent scholarship on Mexico has spotlighted the colony as a unique (yet possibly representative) example of various forms of agency, ranging from the ability to manipulate colonial institutions for individual gain to utilizing magic and witchcraft to gain leverage in local communities. In light of the accomplishments of recent works, Proctor challenges us to consider several correctives. One addresses the long-term ability of Mexico to serve as an incubator for African and black culture. Through re-examining the corpus of marriage records prior to 1650, Proctor reaffirms what others have already found: there was tremendous endogamy amongst slave populations that was ethnically-based. However, Proctor adds a subtle shift in how the evidence can be interpreted. Given the tremendous cultural proximity and interactivity that many African populations enjoyed, Proctor suggests that we broaden our view of endogamy to accommodate cultural relationships that did not conform to narrow ethnic designations. In other words, he notes that culturally endogamous unions could involve marriages between individuals of different but related ethnicities. Using this calculus, Mexico emerges with substantially greater degrees of African slave endogamy than hitherto imagined. By association, this high degree of endogamy could produce stronger African influences on black life.