Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performance of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain by Nicholas R. Jones (review)

petition and testimony, and missionary correspondence, among others— but her election of Greenblatt over Butler enables her to sidestep accusations of anachronism while still demonstrating that honor affords individual subjects a means to negotiate with and authorize themselves to institutional power, and to claim agency within its sphere of control. The book’s most significant contribution revolves around this dynamic of negotiation and exchange between soldier and sovereign, providing valuable new insight into the popu lar understanding of sovereignty in the early modern Spanish Empire. The notion of meritorious ser vice implies that certain conditions or forms of ser vice exceed the general pact of subjection— that is, the idea that sovereigns owe their subjects something (order, protection, wellbeing) in exchange for their compliance— and therefore require additional recognition. Harden shows us that, at least in the military context, the concept of honor cuts both ways; it is the common currency between soldier and sovereign, insofar as it codifies the norms of be hav ior for both parties to this unspoken agreement to exchange extraordinary ser vice for extraordinary reward (loyalty and re spect from the soldier, and timely and proportionate recognition from the sovereign). Arms and Letters may prove most useful to researchers working on military textual production— life writing, petitions and probanzas, testimony, correspondence, and historiography—in the early modern Spanish Empire, but will certainly also be of interest to anyone studying autobiography, selffashioning and identity formation, and conceptualizations of sovereign power during the period.