238 book reviews Martín Marcos, David.  People of the Iberian Borderlands: Community and Confict between Spain and Portugal, 1640–1715.  Early Modern Iberian History in Global Contexts: Connexions. London: Routledge, 2023. Pp. xiv, 293 + 5 maps. ISBN 978-0-367-75820-2 (hardcover) US$170. Tis new book is a welcome addition to the growing number of studies that consider border identities and communities and the questions of liminality and fuidity that they present. Te specifc context is interesting for a number of reasons, as the raya was the porous border between Spain and Portugal during the so-called War of Restoration of Independence of Portugal from Spain that ensued as a result of the 1 December 1640 uprising against the Iberian Union (1580–1640). Te chronology that David Martín Marcos considers encompasses the war itself, which was concluded in 1668 with the Treaty of Lisbon, up to the year 1715 afer the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), a European confict in which Portugal took part as well. As a historian, Martín Marcos already has an impressive body of work to his credit, and this fascinating new study comes on the heels of other studies of the period, especially his El papado y la Guerra de Sucesión española (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2011), in which he masterfully reconstructed Rome’s involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession. Te ease with which he engages in Spanish and Portuguese historiography regarding the period he is studying shows how uniquely placed he is to deal with the questions at hand. Te raya has interested scholars of linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and history for decades. Tis new book, though, provides readers with an origi- nal take on the in-between border identity in the context of a confict in which denizens of the border were supposed to take sides and defne themselves as ei- ther Portuguese or Spanish. As Martín Marcos shows so eloquently, nothing is clear cut. Te porosity of the border had existed for centuries and the positions taken by people in the 1640–68 confict and its afermath were not entirely linear, allowing many to situate themselves in a fuctuating state of competing loyalties, especially for the border people he studies. His approach is flled with fascinating microhistories based on a number of archival nuggets, which work against an overarching narrative of fxed national identities and feshes out a complex story of interwoven stories that show the intrinsic ambiguity of many of these communities along the raya.