Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract The conclusion sets aside discussions of theory and empirical evidence, and brings together observations from the previous chapters to present a description of the material worlds of colonial Mexico City during the sixteenth century. It provides a discussion of the wealth of colonizers, and the coins and receipts they used to create wealth; of the houses of colonizers and the different Indigenous technologies used to build them; of the furniture used by colonizers to seek distinction and to create alliances with Indigenous people; of the food and pottery that colonizers imported or adopted from Indigenous people; of the Spanish fashions that they wore, and the Indigenous people who made a good portion of those clothes; and of the tools colonizers imported and the sociotechnical systems they formed with Indigenous people. By taking Indigenous power into account, the chapter presents a new vision of the material world in sixteenth-century Mexico City.