Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage: Governing through Slavery in Colonial Quito by Sherwin K. Bryant (review)

For decades, scholars of slavery have distinguished between societies in the colonial Americas as slave societies or societies with slaves. Such a distinction emphasizes the materialist contribution of slaves and slavery to the overall production and reproduction of a society. Yet, such a distinction can obscure the lived experiences of slaves within their society and can reduce ideological and juridical manifestations of slavery to extensions of their material base. In Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage, Sherwin K. Bryant challenges this binary and argues that in Spanish America slavery was central to the establishment of territorial claims, the creation of colonial governance, and the formation of social hierarchies. In his study of slaves and slavery in the Audiencia of Quito, he demonstrates that even in a region considered by many to be a society with slaves, slavery played a vital role in constituting the colonial order. Bryant does so by examining slavery’s role in the political economy of the region and by providing qualitative windows into the lived experiences of slaves.

In the introduction, Bryant traces the history of Iberian slavery, especially its legal basis and ideological place within the social and religious order. Here he argues that slavery represented a form of ‘race governance’; it helped European colonizers to constitute colonial systems that categorized and divided their subjects into separate and legally differentiated categories. The four main chapters examine slavery in Quito thematically The first chapter highlights the importance of slavery in the constitution of the colonial order. Slavery and slave codes established ideal juridical relationships of power that emanated from the monarch and extended down through the social order to masters and slaves. Additionally, Bryant notes that slavery along with other forms of coerced labor including the encomienda and mi’ta served to regulate society and to promote economic development.

The second chapter considers the way in which slavery stripped captives of existing markers of social and ethnic difference (deracination) and then inscribed new categories and marks of difference onto them. In particular, Bryant traces how the Spanish American social and juridical order engaged the ‘blackening,’ branding, and baptism of enslaved Africans. The third chapter examines how Africans participated in baptism, marriage, and the creation of religious sodalities. Unfortunately for the historian, the preservation of historical records in this arena has been poor and limited to the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. Nevertheless, Bryant’s analysis of baptism and marriage records provides useful counterpoints to similar works by Herman Bennett on Mexico and Rachel O’Toole on Peru.

The final chapter examines Africans and their efforts to use the legal system to mediate their position in society. Like authors of other similar works, Bryant illustrates how enslaved peoples understood the mechanisms by which they could legally contest the impositions placed upon them. As legal rulings established precedents and new laws, slaves actively shaped the juridical basis of slavery through such legal contests.

Overall, Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage succeeds in demonstrating how omnipresent slavery could be in even a region that had relatively few slaves. Additionally, Bryant’s balancing of political economy with lived experience takes us beyond simple materialist or juridical explorations of this institution. By providing a holistic analysis, Bryant demonstrates that slavery was about more than just masters and slaves—all members of colonial society were shaped by the presence and importance of slavery. This balanced approach to slavery makes this book an important addition to our understanding of slavery in the Americas and its effects on Spanish American society. Finally, its exploration of a relatively understudied region makes it an excellent counterpoint to works that have examined slavery in Brazil, Mexico, or the Caribbean.