This book examines how documents, those crucial instruments of governance in the Spanish empire, were shaped by particular conceptions of distance.
"Making the case that the way we define centre and periphery can have a significant impact on how we write history, Sellers-García follows several documents from their place of origin to their ultimate destination. By shadowing these documents over time and space Sellers-García illuminates the process by which they influenced, and were influenced by, conceptions of distance and peripherality, while incorporating into the conversation the various people who along the way handled, read, debated, and added content to them-all of which give us great insight into the colonial production of knowledge."