| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.3

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Latin American Law: A History of Private Law and Institutions in Spanish America. By M.C. Mirow. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. xiii + 343 pp. Illustrations, maps, charts, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

Mirow's book will primarily interest historians of Latin America and comparative law. As the introduction suggests, it is "a general and first exploration of relatively uncharted waters," attempting to synthesize hundreds of years and hundreds of scholarly works about the history of private law and legal institutions in Spanish America (p. xi). Primarily a synthesis of published scholarly works, the book organizes vast amounts of empirical data into an overall framework foregrounding the ways law and legal institutions mirrored changes in social relations within Latin America. As Mirow demonstrates, private law and legal institutions played critical roles in structuring the Spanish colonial project and in contributing to the emergence of modern Latin American states and economies.

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