Book excerpt: Studies in Spanish American regional history have, as yet, made little attempt to incorporate the struggles for independence within the context of provincial society and politics viewed over the broader period that spans the late colonial and early national experience of Latin America. This book attempts a new perspective: it emphasises the provincial milieu and popular participation in its varied forms, often ambiguous and contradictory. The central aim is to examine social conflicts, chiefly in the Mexican provinces of Puebla, Guadalajara, Michoacán, and Guanajuato from the middle of the eighteenth century, and to assess their relationship to the widespread insurgency of the second decade of the nineteenth century.