This book provides new perspectives into a subject that historians have largely overlooked. The contributors use fresh archival research from Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, and the Philippines to examine the lives of slaves and farmworkers as well as self-serving magistrates, bishops, and traders in contraband. The authors show that corruption was a powerful discourse in the Atlantic world. Investigative judges could dismiss culprits, jail them, or, sometimes, have them "garroted and their corpses publicly displayed."

"This fascinating collection of detailed studies rests on archival research spanning more than two centuries of Iberian rule and provides insight into the changing meaning of corruption from the Rio de la Plata to Mexico to the Philippine Islands." - Mark A. Burkholder, author of Spaniards in the Colonial Empire: Creoles vs. Peninsulars?

Christoph Rosenmuller is a professor of Latin American history at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and a former Fulbright fellow. He is also the author of Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues: The Court Society of Colonial Mexico, 1702-1710.