Description: Gamboa's World examines the changing legal landscape of eighteenth-century Mexico through the lens of the jurist Francisco Xavier de Gamboa (1717-1794).
Brief description: Christopher Albi is an associate professor of history at SUNY New Paltz.
Review Quotes: Francisco Xavier de Gamboa was neither famous nor a nobody. But he was in the 'pivotal middle' of Spanish society, of colonial Mexican politics, and of the dynamic developments in the law and in the silver-powered economy of his century. Christopher Albi therefore sets out to persuade us that 'Gamboa's world' opens a unique, eye-opening, opinion-changing window onto how Spain's late-colonial empire functioned. He does a superb job. I am fully persuaded. From now on, anyone interested in better understanding eighteenth-century New Spain will need to spend time in Albi's world.--Matthew Restall, author of Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest and When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History