- Introduction. Writing a history of Father Kings and colonial minors
- A short history of minority in colonial Lima
- Between the written and the real: child rearing and adult authority, 1650-1750
- Whether son or stranger: institutions for child rearing
- Minor offenses: youth and crime in the eighteenth century
- The colonial child reborn: reform and enlightenment in the late colonial period
- The new politics of the child in the late colonial courts
- The new politics of the slave child in the late colonial courts
- Conclusion. Strange ties and interior fears.
Patriarchal law from Spain to the New World In a pioneering study of childhood in colonial Spanish America, Bianca Premo examines the lives of youths in the homes, schools, and institutions of the capital city of Lima, Peru. Situating these young lives within the frame-work of law and intellectual history from 1650 to 1820, Premo brings to light the colonial politics of childhood and challenges readers to view patriarchy as a system of power based on age, caste, and social class as much as gender. Although Spanish laws endowed elite men with an authority over children that mirrored and reinforced the monarch's legitimacy as a colonial ""Father King, "" Premo finds that, in practice, Lima's young often grew up in the care of adults - such as women and slaves - who were subject to the patriarchal authority of others. During the Bourbon Reforms, city inhabitants of all castes and classes began to practice a ""new politics of the child, "" challenging men and masters by employing Enlightenment principles of childhood. Thus the social transformations and political dislocations of the late eighteenth century occurred not only in elite circles and royal palaces, Premo concludes, but also in the humble households of a colonial city.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
