"Relying on extensive new archival discoveries, The Mosquito Confederation demonstrates that the rise and decline of the Mosquito Confederation was not merely a footnote in Central American history, nor was the confederation relegated to the margins of the colonial world. Indeed, the Mosquito were protagonists in shaping the region's complex history, and the confederation's expansionist geopolitical program represented a "conquest in its own right." In describing these processes, Mendiola excavates the roles of diverse peoples in Central America's Caribbean borderlands including "thoughtful Mosquito leaders who balanced complex geopolitical considerations, Afro-descended Central Americans who shaped Spanish and English responses to the Mosquito, and Amerindians who moved among Spanish, English, and Mosquito worlds"--