Introduction

In this book Tamar Herzog explores the emergence of a specifically Spanish concept of community in both Spain and Spanish America in the eighteenth century.

Challenging the assumption that communities were the natural result of common factors such as language or religion, or that they were artificially imagined, Herzog reexamines early modern categories of belonging.

She argues that the distinction between those who were Spaniards and those who were foreigners came about as local communities distinguished between immigrants who were judged to be willing to take on the rights and duties of membership in that community and those who were not.