Many years ago I wrote an essay entitled “Sons (and Grandsons) of Bolton” examining recent trends in borderlands historiography. The volume under review demonstrates that Mexican borderlands research is not only in a post-Boltonian, but even in a post-Weberian stage. From the editors to the contributors to the author of the foreword, many familiar names abound: De la Teja, Frank, Weber, José Cuello, Cynthia Radding, Jane Landers, Susan Deeds, Tom Sheridan et al. This excellent volume gathers together 11 explorations of how, and how well, the Spanish crown controlled its distant northern frontier in the face of a penny-pinching colonial bureaucracy, hostile indigenous peoples, and ever-increasing encroachment by foreign powers.Far from a reiteration of the Boltonian presidio and mission paradigm, the essays reflect a new level of sophistication in exploring how social control was exercised, how it was linked to constructions of social identity, and how indigenous and European conceptions or misperceptions of one another played a central role across time and space on the frontier. Each is solidly rooted in archival research, and the authors frequently refer to each others’ work, reflecting a close-knit community of scholars who have been exchanging ideas for a long time. In fact, the genesis for this volume was a conference co-sponsored by Southern Methodist University, home of the dean of the “new” borderlands history, David J. Weber.De la Teja’s introduction sets the theme: “social control as a broad concept encompassing the myriad ways in which a society attempts to maintain order by persuading, coercing, or educating individuals to accept and behave according to the principles and values — norms — ” that the Spanish, in this case, sought to impose (p. xiii). Alfredo Jiménez opens the collection with “Who Controls the King?” an essay that reviews the “intricate combination of royal authority, power and responsibility, mutual rights and obligations, doggish loyalty and fervent obedience to the king, confidence in God and the throne, and the freedom to demand, complain, and defend oneself” (p. 6). In separate chapters, Gilbert Din and Jane Landers examine Spanish military, economic, and social diplomacy in Louisiana and Florida, where powerful colonial neighbors (France and Britain) and the presence of disparate native groups, as well as African and Afromestizo populations, both free and chattel, made for a particularly complex ethnic stew. Along the same lines is Frank’s essay, “‘They Conceal a Malice Most Refined’: Controlling Social and Ethnic Mobility in Late Colonial New Mexico.” Here the malice is represented by the economic activities of New Mexico’s vecinos, who consistently trade and treat with the Apache, Comanche, and Ute tribes in defiance of regulations. The authorities were also trying to exercise a gentle control over a restive Pueblo population, ever mindful of the Great Revolt of 1688, as well as keeping Franciscan power in check.Delving deeper into the question of social control is Susan Deeds, whose essay deals with “gender, power, and magic in Nueva Vizcaya.” The tale of Antonia, the mulatta slave who masqueraded as a man, is a story of freedom not only “from legal bonds of slavery, but also from the gendered bonds of patriarchy in a frontier province” (p. 95). Deeds uses historical work on women’s roles in Latin American society, in conjunction with Inquisition and Jesuit records, to reconstruct a case of witchcraft, “love sorcery,” clerical temptation, and social deviance in the seventeenth century.Juliana Barr, in “Beyond Their Control: Spaniards in Native Texas,” inverts the usual historical perspective by pointing out that it was the Spanish who stumbled into already-existing networks of trade, warfare, and alliance: “In seeking to understand negotiations of power in Texas, it is essential to recognize that Texas was a core of native political economies, a core within which Spaniards were often the subjects or potential subjects of native institutions of social control” (p. 152). Cynthia Radding explores the “central, ongoing tension” between reducción, a policy of congregating Sonoran peoples into nucleated villages for tax, labor, and evangelization purposes, and dispersion to scattered rancherías, as well as the struggle between colonialism and traditional cacique patterns of rule. Radding examines the role of the mission cabildo as both an instrument of social control and a vehicle for resistance.José Cuello looks at how the “system of castas” operated as a form of social control through the creation of “racialized hierarchies,” expanding the old Magnus Mörner models into greater depth in a frontier context. Geographical particularity is reflected by the essays of Cecilia Sheridan, Patricia Osante, and Jim Sandos, who examine how social control was exercised, respectively, in the northeast, Nuevo Santander, and mission society in Alta California.While too specialized for the general reader, scholars knowledgeable in frontier historiography will appreciate the scrupulous primary and secondary research, as well as the depth of sophistication that these essays bring to what is becoming the “post” post-Boltonian school of borderlands history.