Colonial Lima

Abstract

By the mid-sixteenth century, Lima, or the City of the Kings, had become the main political, economic, religious, and cultural center of the Spanish monarchy in South America, just a few decades after its foundation by Francisco Pizarro in 1535. Pope Paul III promoted Lima to a bishopric in 1541 and an archbishopric in 1546, while the Crown elevated it to the capital of the new viceroyalty of Peru, created in 1542. These pontifical and royal grants led Lima to host the principal political, religious, and commercial institutions in the viceroyalty, which comprised modern Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and parts of Chile, Argentina, Panama, and Venezuela, until the eighteenth century. Lima’s geographical position in the middle of South America’s western coast converted it into the gate of the region’s riches. Global commercial and communication networks expanded over the Andes thanks to the nearby port of Callao, which became the most important in the South Sea, as the Spaniards called the Pacific Ocean. In almost three decades of Spanish control, Lima underwent various transformations due to migration, internal and external political and military conflicts, diseases, and other recurrent or episodic events. The early decades of Spanish conquest and colonization witnessed the reconfiguration of the urban and rural landscapes and the social elements within them. Lima witnessed the permanent and temporary presence of individuals from diverse parts of the New World, Africa, Asia, and Europe, shaping the city’s dynamic and cosmopolitan character. The encomenderos’ civil wars, the discovery of silver and quicksilver mines, Viceroy Toledo’s reforms, the first pirate attacks, and epidemic outbreaks shaped the first century of Lima’s colonial rule. By the seventeenth century, Lima consolidated its nuclear position within western South America, which endured another wave of transformation with the end of the Habsburg dynasty and the forthcoming introduction of the Bourbon reforms in the eighteenth century. The political crisis that Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula produced in the Spanish monarchy accentuated the discontent produced by the Bourbon reforms among the population in Lima and other provinces. Its political position in the Spanish monarchy motivated royalist and patriot troops to fight to control Lima, which functioned as a military logistic center and battleground for both sides during the process of Peru’s independence. The studies cited in this bibliography explore the social diversity that characterized Lima’s population and their cultural contribution to shaping one of the most significant urban centers in Spanish America through centuries that involved meaningful changes and continuities.