In 1570's New Kingdom of Granada (modern Colombia), a new generation of mestizo (half-Spanish, half-indigenous) men sought positions of increasing power in the colony's two largest cities. In response, Spanish nativist factions zealously attacked them as unequal and unqualified, unleashing an intense political battle that lasted almost two decades. At stake was whether membership in the small colonial community and thus access to its most lucrative professions should depend on limpieza de sangre (blood purity) or values-based integration (Christian citizenship). A Tale of Two Granadas examines the vast, trans-Atlantic transformation of political ideas about subjecthood that ultimately allowed some colonial mestizos and indios ladinos (acculturated natives) to establish urban citizenship alongside Spaniards in colonial Santafé de Bogotá and Tunja. In a spirit of comparison, it illustrates how some of the descendants of Spain's last Muslims appealed to the same new conceptions of citizenship to avoid disenfranchisement in the face of growing prejudice.

Winner, 2024 Bandelier/Lavrin Book Prize, Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies

Winner, 2024 The Alfred B. Thomas Book Award, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies

‘Conceptualizing the Spanish empire as a ‘Christian Republic’, the author highlights mestizos and the social spaces that, by design and/or by struggle, they inhabited in such an empire. The malleability of notions such as subjecthood, race, and ‘Repúblicas,’ expands our understanding of both mestizos and Spanish colonialism in the Americas.’

Alcira Dueñas - The Ohio State University

‘Max Deardorff’s insightful study reveals that the tensions between religious segregation and assimilation paradoxically informed royal and ecclesiastic policies regarding membership in the Republic of the Spaniards. Deardorff skilfully demonstrates that, by exploiting these tensions, granadinos and neogranadinos of partial or no Spanish/Christian ancestry secured a space within a wider Christian Republic.’

José Carlos de la Puente - Texas State University

‘In this lucidly written book, Max Deardorff explores what citizenship meant for those social actors in the early modern Spanish territories who faced degrees of exclusion due to their ethnicity and proximity to orthodox Christianity. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Deardorff brings together the Iberian Atlantic by looking at lesser-studied regions and the people inhabiting their margins, and also, at the Spanish powerholders who moved across the two jurisdictions.’

Joanne Rappaport - Georgetown University