This chapter explains the council and king’s ratification of hundreds of thousands of royal decrees, and the unique categories that these edicts contained, such as mestizo and mulato. It outlines the pathways through which vassals of all social backgrounds suggested new laws to the ruling Council of the Indies. Pressed for time, the council’s overwhelmed ministers often transplanted petitions’ vocabulary verbatim into decrees. This meant that subjects often phrased imperial laws minor and major, regional and Indies-wide. Using a multistep archival methodology, this chapter demonstrates how scholars can match vassals’ petitions to decrees, then shows how legal categories such as mestizo and mulato came about through the petitions of not only Spaniards but also Indians, mestizos, and mulatos themselves. Subjects of any social background could therefore introduce and shape Indies legal constructs, and the empire’s agenda from the ground up. It considers the lawmaking royal signature, as well as some vassals’ dangerous decision to attempt its forgery. Lastly, it reflects on the nature of the de partes/de oficio divide in decree production, the number of gobierno royal decrees, and the costs of their production for vassals.

From contact, gendered violence was critical to the European conquest of America. The Spanish conquistadors sexually exploited indigenous women as part of their subjugation of native societies in Mexico and Peru. French and English colonists also exploited native women, although they imagined themselves as victims of Indian sexual abuse. In the English colonies, the importance of the household as a unit of political organisation gave men enormous power over women and other dependents. This concealed sexual violence in the family and spousal abuse. Rape was illegal in the English colonies, but rarely prosecuted, except among the Quakers in Pennsylvania. The prevalence of unfree labour also contributed to gendered violence in early America. Indentured servants were often left to the mercy of their masters. Enslaved African American women were routinely brutalised and raped in order to reproduce more slaves. The Enlightenment and the American Revolution challenged colonial sensibilities. As the power of the household head weakened and marriages were idealised as loving relationships, spousal abuse and rape were problematised and prosecuted at higher rates. However, the persistence of slavery limited these changes to white women.