This book highlights the broad scope and span of resistance as a contentious practice in the early modern Iberian world.  In this context, from the late Middle Ages onwards, resistance, rooted in the political and legal language of the ‘old regime’ that provided agents with legitimacy and resources for their actions, took place mainly within the established jurisdictional system. These resources for litigation and demand made resistance a widespread kind of contesting practice related to wider protests. The authors assess the wide array of actions developed by individuals and communities to preserve their rights and identities.

The book demonstrates how the Portuguese and Hispanic polities and their colonial possessions experienced resistance from below over a long period of change that marked the rise of more centralised states. Offering a comprehensive overview of the variety of forms and expressions of resistance developed in different social, cultural, and territorial contexts, this collection sheds additional light on the relationship between order and conflict within early modern European empires.