This important study begins with an insight that might seem obvious had it not largely eluded generations of historians: The territorial formation of Spain and Portugal, on the one hand, and Spanish and Portuguese America, on the other, have connected histories. Throughout the early modern period, a diverse cast of Iberian characters on both sides of the Atlantic settled contested spaces and put them to varied use. Farmers, ranchers, nobles, clergy, settlers, soldiers, and Crown and local officials asserted claims to those spaces that left rivals either excluded, subordinated, or, less frequently, united in common interest. Rather than following a royal design, the resulting confrontations tended to be spontaneous, unplanned, and often violent. In the process, the New World’s native peoples suffered more than others, but conflicts also pit Spaniards against Portuguese, settlers against missionaries, hamlet against hamlet, and nobles against peasants.
Gradually, modern borders in Iberia and South America...