As Spanish conquistadors and their Native allies advanced across the New World, the Spanish Crown and most of its subjects expected to erect a rigidly hierarchical aristocratic order modeled on Iberian society. Initially, this goal appeared within reach, as leading conquistadors ruled vast territories and populations as de facto noblemen. Contrary to most expectations, the Spanish Americas soon became a site of sustained and often radical challenges to this order. As conquistador authority eroded, alternative regimes emerged, including enclaves governed by powerful friars and by Indigenous lords seeking to preserve or reshape preconquest structures of rule. These arrangements, too, collapsed, frequently to the surprise of contemporaries. How did these three regimes fall? Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters center the actions of a broad range of colonial actors - non-elite Spaniards, Indigenous people, women, and the enslaved - who actively contested authority across the empire. While violence remained ubiquitous, these groups increasingly relied on paperwork—petitions, lawsuits, complaints, denunciations, and secret testimonies—to pursue their aims. Through this grassroots “lawfare,” subjects undermined the seigneurial ambitions of conquistadors, challenged theocratic claims advanced by friars, and constrained the power of Indigenous elites. These struggles had far-reaching consequences. They fueled campaigns against tyranny and enslavement, generated debates over law and governance, and produced new forms of knowledge, archives, and historical narratives that questioned truth and authority. At the same time, these radical challenges paradoxically contributed to the consolidation of a more stable colonial order by the 1570s, one headed by viceroys, bishops, and inquisitors. The Radical Spanish Empire reinterprets a pivotal historical period, demonstrating how the pervasive use of paperwork transformed political power and social order in the early modern Spanish Americas.

The event language is English.