Colonial Habits

In Colonial Habits Kathryn Burns transforms our view of nuns as marginal recluses to one of central actors on the colonial stage. Beginning with the 1558 founding of South America's first convent, Burns shows how nuns in Cuzco, Peru played an active part in reproducing an Andean colonial order in which economic and spiritual interests were inextricably fused. Based on unprecedented archival research, Colonial Habits demonstrates how nuns became leading guarantors of their city's social order by making loans, managing property, containing "unruly" women, and raising girls. The study also reveals, however, their active part in subjugating Incas and creating a Creole elite. Coining the phrase "spiritual economy" to analyse the intricate investments and relationships that enabled Cuzco's convents to thrive, Burn explains how, by the late 1700s, this economy had faltered badly, making convents the emblems of decay and a focal point for intense criticism of a failing colonial regime. The book concludes with the nuns' postcolonial retreat from their previous roles, marginalised in the construction of a new republican order. Colonial Habits will engage those interested in early modern economics, women in religion, Latin American studies, and the history of gender, class, and race.