<P>"This book charts new directions in thinking about the construction of new world identities.... Bennett does a masterful job." —Judith A. Byfield, Dartmouth</P><P>In this study of the largest population of free and slave Africans in the New World, Herman L. Bennett has uncovered much new information about the lives of slave and free blacks, the ways that their lives were regulated by the government and the Church, the impact upon them of the Inquisition, their legal status in marriage, and their rights and obligations as Christian subjects.</P>