"This is a beautifully written comparative frontier history that balances in-depth historical analysis of two relatively unexplored regions on the edge of the Spanish empire against broader insights into the active role that ecologies played in shaping the contours of European-indigenous encounters and processes of colonization over long periods of time. With this book, Cynthia Radding takes the 'new environmental history' of conquest and colonization to a new level."--Brooke Larson, author of "Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810-1910"
"There has been much talk about comparative history but precious little of it in the Spanish colonial period. Cynthia Radding has led the way."-- David J. Weber, Director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University
