Episode 381: How the Indigenous and Other Non-Elites Challenged the Spanish Empire

In this episode of Diverse Voices Book Review, host Hopeton Hay speaks with historians Jorge Cañizares‑Esguerra and Adrian Masters, co‑authors of THE RADICAL SPANISH EMPIRE: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World. Their groundbreaking research overturns the familiar narrative of Spanish conquest and reveals a hidden history of Indigenous agency, political strategy, and bottom‑up power.Drawing on hundreds of thousands of archival documents, the authors show how Indigenous people, commoners, Afro‑descendants, and even women used petitions, lawsuits, denunciations, and paperwork to challenge conquistadors, confront corrupt officials, and reshape colonial society. As Masters explains, “this paperwork… very strangely, is really what conquers the New World, but in the process, it allows hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people to participate in shaping society.”Jorge Cañizares‑Esguerra is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of How to Write the History of the New World, Puritan Conquistadors, and Nature, Empire, and Nation.Adrian Masters is a project leader in the Department of History at Trier University in Germany and the author of We, The King: Creating Royal Legislation in the 16th‑Century Spanish New World.Follow Diverse Voices Book Review on Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Bluesky - @diversevoicesbooks.bsky.social