The 1624 Tumult of Mexico in Perspective (c. 1620–1650)

In The 1624 Tumult of Mexico in Perspective Angela Ballone offers, for the first time, a comprehensive study of an understudied period of Mexican early modern history. By looking at the mandates of three viceroys who, to varying degrees, participated in the events surrounding the Tumult, the book discusses royal authority from a transatlantic perspective that encompasses both sides of the Iberian Atlantic. Considering the similarities and tensions that coexisted in the Iberian Atlantic, Ballone offers a thorough reassessment of current historiography on the Tumult proving that, despite the conflicts and arguments underlying the disturbances, there was never any intention to do away with the king’s authority in New Spain.

Angela Ballone, Ph.D. (2012), University of Liverpool, works as a Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History of Frankfurt am Main. Previously, she has been Fellow at the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome (2016) and the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (2014–2015). She is currently working on the project ‘Translating Solórzano from Within’ on the jurist Juan de Solórzano Pereira (1575–1655).

"What stood at the centre of this processes, indeed what made it possible for local power struggles to be resolved, was a shared understanding of the principles of law, power, and authority which bound the early modern Spanish world together and which, as Ballone demonstrates, were fundamentally the same on both sides of the Atlantic." - Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, in: The International Journal of Maritime History 31(2) (June 2019) [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ijh]
“Superando la narrativa de las historias nacionales, Ballone apuesta por un enfoque “atlántico” para estudiar el tumulto de 1624. Así, la autora concibe este conflicto no como algo restringido a la política interna del virreinato de la Nueva España, sino como un fenómeno cuyas causas y repercusiones deben ser ubicadas en ambos lados del Océano Atlántico, un espacio que es entendido más en términos de continuidad que de ruptura o separación.” - Francisco Quijano, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – UNAM (Mexico), in: Los Reinos de las Indias en el Nuevo Mundo (blog), 22 January 2019 [https://losreinosdelasindias.hypotheses.org/]
“La autora sugiere de un modo convincente que la solución del conflicto, - y los radicales cambios de postura de la corona - se explican tanto por la evolución de las relaciones de poder en Madrid, y por los imperativos de la política extranjera de España, como por el análisis que ella hace de la situación local. (...) Reexaminando la crisis mexicana de 1624, Ballone logra innovar. Poniendo a debate la noción de autoridad monárquica mediante el análisis de su ejercicio concreto, apropiándose de los objetos y de las herramientas de la historia de las redes y de los de la historia atlántica, la autora logra abrir nuevas perspectivas.” - Pierre Ragon, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre (France), in: Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos (blog), 17 December 2018 [https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/74030].

"In the finest tradition of Atlantic history, Angela Ballone’s monograph about the 1624 tumult of Mexico City brings us a broader understanding of how royal authority was made in New Spain and Spanish America". Gibran Bautista y Lugo, in Fifteenth–Seventeenth Centuries.