Negotiating conquest
Subtitle: gender and power in California, 1770s to 1880s
By: Miroslava Chávez-García.
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Tucson
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
Subjects: Mexican American women -- California -- Social conditions -- 18th century.; Mexican American women -- California -- Social conditions -- 19th century.; Sex role -- California -- History.; Power (Social sciences) -- California -- History.; Mexican Americans -- California -- Social conditions -- 18th century.; Mexican Americans -- California -- Social conditions -- 19th century.; California -- Social conditions -- 18th century.; California -- Social conditions -- 19th century.; California -- Colonization -- Social aspects.; California -- Ethnic relations.
Description: "Negotiating Conquest begins with an examination of how gender and ethnicity shaped the policies and practices of the Spanish conquest, showing that Hispanic women, marriage, and the family played a central role in producing a stable society on Mexico's northernmost frontier. It then examines how gender, law, property, and ethnicity shaped social and class relations among Mexicans and native peoples, focusing particularly on how women dealt with the gender-, class-, and ethnic-based hierarchies that gave Mexican men patriarchal authority. Despite this power, females of different classes and ethnicities found ways to elude constraints in both the home and society." "Drawing on archival materials - including dozens of legal cases - that have been largely ignored by other scholars, Chavez-Garcia examines federal, state, and municipal laws across many periods in order to reveal how women used changing laws, institutions, and norms governing property, marriage and sexuality, and family relations to assert and protect their rights. By showing that mexicanas contested the limits of male rule and insisted that patriarchal relationships be based on reciprocity, Negotiating Conquest expands our knowledge of how patriarchy functioned and evolved as it reveals the ways in which conquest can transform social relationships in both family and community."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-232) and index.