Comprising an array of distinguished contributors, this pioneering volume of original contributions explores theoretical and empirical issues in comparative law. The innovative, interpretive approach found here combines explorative scholarship and research with thoughtful, qualitative critiques of the field. The book promotes a deeper appreciation of classical theories and offers new ways to re-orient the study of legal transplants and transnational codes. Methods of Comparative Law brings to bear new thinking on topics including: the mutual relationship between space and law; the plot that structures legal narratives, identities and judicial interpretations; a strategic approach to legal decision making; and the inner potentialities of the 'comparative law and economics' approach to the field. Together, the contributors reassess the scientific understanding of comparative methodologies in the field of law in order to provide both critical insights into the traditional literature and an original overview of the most recent and purposive trends. A welcome addition to the lively field of comparative law, Methods of Comparative Law will appeal to students and scholars of law, comparative law and economics. Judges and practitioners will also find much of interest here.

This study focuses on post-Visigothic Latin chronicles as testimonies of an intense search for models of stability and social cohesion on the Iberian Peninsula. As the principal source of Iberian political thought between the eighth and mid-thirteenth centuries, these texts have long been regarded from the perspective of modern-day national boundaries of a political entity called Spain. From the post-national perspective of Mediterranean studies, which considers Iberian centres of power in cultural contact with the broader world, post-Visigothic Iberian chronicle writing is seen as a cultural practice that seeks to reconcile the imperative of unity and stability with the reality of diversity and social change. The book examines, firstly, the Andalusi Christian narrative of Visigothic political demise, which originated in Iberian dhimm? communities between the mid-eighth and mid-ninth centuries. Second, it explores the narrative of sovereignty, developed in Asturias-Leon from the late ninth century onwards. Finally, it examines the historiographical manipulation of both of these traditions in Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada's Historia de rebus Hispanie (1243). The ongoing contact between Iberian Latin textual communities and the broader Mediterranean is interpreted as central to both the development of Iberian historical mythology and its historiographical renovation.

Colonial Latin America was famed for the precious metals plundered by the conquistadores and the gold and silver extracted from its mines. Historians and economists have attempted to determine the amount of bullion produced and its impact on the colonies themselves and the emerging early-modern world economy. Using official tax and mintage records, this book provides decade-by-decade and often annual data on the amount of gold and silver officially refined and coined in the treasury and mint districts of Spanish and Portuguese America. It also places American bullion output within the context of global production and addresses the issue of contraband production and bullion smuggling. The book is thus an invaluable source for evaluating the rise of the early-modern economy.

This extraordinary book encompasses the time period from the first Christian evangelists' arrival in Latin America to the dictators of the late twentieth century. With unsurpassed knowledge of Latin American history, John Lynch sets out to explore the reception of Christianity by native peoples and how it influenced their social and religious lives as the centuries passed. As attentive to modern times as to the colonial period, Lynch also explores the extent to which Indian religion and ancestral ways survived within the new Christian culture.The book follows the development of religious culture over time by focusing on peak periods of change: the response of religion to the Enlightenment, the emergence of the Church from the wars of independence, the Romanization of Latin American religion as the papacy overtook the Spanish crown in effective control of the Church, the growing challenge of liberalism and the secular state, and in the twentieth century, military dictators' assaults on human rights. Throughout the narrative, Lynch develops a number of special themes and topics. Among these are the Spanish struggle for justice for Indians, the Church's position on slavery, the concept of popular religion as distinct from official religion, and the development of liberation theology.