UW-Madison History Professor Marcella Hayes’ forthcoming book, Black Self-Governance: The Making of Political Culture in Seventeenth-Century Lima, is already receiving praise. Black Self-Governance has won the 2025 Founder’s Prize for manuscripts in development from the Sixteenth Century Society. The book will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2026.
Black people were the majority of Lima’s population throughout the period, and they created officially recognized corporate bodies such as confraternities, militias, and guilds that included both free and enslaved people. Professor Hayes show that these women and men defined and defended their community by pursuing legal complaints, participating in civil defense, petitioning the king, voting for leaders, and organizing festivals. She argues that they carved out space in which enslaved people could have not only legal personhood, but also a degree of civic personhood. Read more about the forthcoming book here.