Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World explores the representation of political, economic, military, religious, and juridical power in texts and artifacts from early modern Spain and her American colonies. In addition to analyzing the dynamics of power in written texts, chapters also examine pieces of material culture including coats of arms, coinage, paintings, engravings and armor. As the essays demonstrate, many of these objects work to transform the amorphous concept of power into a material reality with considerable symbolic dimensions subject to, and dependent on,...

Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World consists of ten chapters that examine the representation of political, economic, military and symbolic power both in Spain and the New World under the Habsburgs.