Beyond Black and Red is the first book to deal primarily and specifically with relations between Africans and native peoples in colonial Latin America. Matthew Restall has collected nine essays that represent contributions to the larger fields of colonial Latin American history, African diaspora studies, and ethnohistory. Among the subjects addressed are marriage and miscegenation, identity and nomenclature, cultural exchanges, labor, and cooperation in resisting colonialism versus collaboration.
;
The authors examine core areas such as Mesoamerica, the Andes, and Brazil, and peripheral ones such as Florida, Colombia, and the Orinoco basin. The contributors find that relations between black and native peoples were sometimes harmonious, sometimes hostile, depending on local dynamics and individual agendas. Native and black soldiers fought sometimes as comrades, sometimes as adversaries, and couples in mixed marriages might identify as Indian or as black depending on where the advantage lay in a given society.
Contributors to Beyond Black and Red
Patrick J. Carroll, professor of history, Texas A & M University, Corpus Christi
Susan Kellogg, professor of history, University of Houston
Kris Lane, Wakefield Distinguished Associate Professor of History, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
Hal Langfur, assistant professor of history, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Jane Landers, associate professor of history, Vanderbilt University, Nashville
Christopher Lutz, director of Plumsock Mesoamerican Studies/CIRMA
Norma Angélica Castillo Palma, profesora investigadora of comparative and regional history, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa
Stuart B. Schwartz, George Burton Adams Professor of History, Yale University
Renée Soulodre-La France, assistant professor of history, King's University College, University of Western Ontario, London
Ben Vinson III, associate professor of Latin American history, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Neil Whitehead, professor of anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison
