Corruption, Inefficiency, and Imperial Decline in the Seventeenth-Century Viceroyalty of Peru

Abstract

The methodological problems involved in studying the political role of corruption and inefficiency have long baffled historians of seventeenth-century Spanish America. Complaints by contemporaries about various forms of corruption (fraudes), abuses (abusos), bribery (cohecho), and other forms of corruption (mala administratión), abound in the extant archivai documents of the period. In addition, successive viceroys and royal inspectors (visitadores) frequently charged that colonial officials were too stupid, lazy, or inexperienced to carry out their duties efficiently. One visitador in 1683, for example, described the administrative practices of high-ranking treasury officials in the viceregal capital of Lima as “la más ciega y descuidada que se ha visto en muchos siglos,” and went on to recommend that such officials be “despoblados de sus plazas, poniendo in su lugar personas capazes y inteligentes.”