The 1624 Tumult of Mexico in Perspective (c. 1620–1650): Authority and Conflict Resolution in the Iberian Atlantic

Abstract

Angela Ballone's book is an example of how a specific case can offer a new historiographical perspective. Among Ballone's main contributions is her emphasis that the assertion of royal authority was the primary expression of the spread of a common legal culture in the Iberian Atlantic. The 1624 tumult in Mexico City and its resolution constituted a critical and radical example of Spanish American elites' strength, but this strength was always circumscribed within the framework of respect for the king's authority as the source of all rights. This allows us to discard the traditional anachronistic theses about the opposition between creoles and Iberians and about the weakness of the royal authority during the seventeenth century.Another central contribution of the book is its attention to the apostolic character of the church's defense and the role of the two Mexico City archbishops involved in the crisis triggered by the 1624 uprising. Chapter 5’s second section persuasively demonstrates the degree to which the sources of law (doctrine, legislation, jurisprudence, custom) supported the positions held by the representatives of both royal and ecclesiastical authority. Thus the Marquess of Gelves, as well as his respective predecessor and successor as viceroy, the Marquess of Guadalcázar and the Marquess of Cerralvo, defended the preeminence of the viceroy by pointing to the realm of royal powers. However, the arguments of Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna and his successor, Francisco Manso y Zúñiga, showed the malleability of canon law for defending ecclesiastical prerogatives and invoking for archbishops greater legitimacy, as representatives of the king's priestly character and as depositaries of the apostolic tradition.In this sense, Ballone's treatment of the Mexican archbishops' actions confirms the desire of New Spain's diocesan prelates for preeminence. As pointed out by Óscar Mazín, Pérez de la Serna and Manso y Zúñiga provided precedent for an episcopacy in northern Spanish America faced with the greater power wielded by the viceroys of Peru, the most famous of such prelates being Pedro Moya de Contreras and Juan de Palafox y Mendoza. This aspect of the 1624 conflict and its resolution is central to Ballone's perspective, since if the crown never again used the real audiencia to substitute for a viceroy in New Spain, there were occasions when bishops exercised viceregal authority on an interim basis or by appointment: examples of this include the governments of Marcos de Torres y Rueda, Diego Osorio de Escobar y Llamas, Payo Enríquez de Rivera, and Juan de Ortega y Montañés.Ballone makes an extraordinary contribution in documenting the constitution and functioning of a junta del tumulto that worked until 1648 within the Madrid court. The meticulous attention to Mexican affairs among the members of the Councils of Castile and the Indies who constituted that extraordinary committee shows the extent to which the tumult had judicial consequences for the ministers and royal officials involved and the importance of Mexican affairs in the royal court. Especially revealing is Ballone's discovery of the sentence leveled against the relatives of the Marquess of Gelves. The junta's lengthy deliberations reveal the profound impact of events in the Indies on the royal court's decisions. Ballone raises interesting questions about how government and justice were modeled in the monarchy's various latitudes.These central contributions of documentation and interpretation underpin Ballone's balanced treatment of the historiography. Her generous review includes the unpublished theses that at the time constituted her monograph's antecedents. This book on the 1624 tumult also fits with Ballone's work on Juan de Solórzano Pereira, legal literature in Spanish America, and the legal aspects of the labor conditions in Indigenous societies. With subtlety and sobriety, Ballone has contributed to renewing the Atlantic history promoted by the historians of the British Empire and the European Hispanists. The book under review draws on the great lines of interpretation established by, among others, Horst Pietschmann, John Elliott, David Armitage, and Harald Braun. Simultaneously, Ballone's book complicates the multiplicity of problems that the Atlantic scale entails to place the making of royal authority in local settings, in consonance with the local-global explanations of imperial phenomena, while still admitting that Madrid was the court and Mexico the seat of a distant viceroyalty. With this, Ballone distances herself from the imperialistic character attributed to Atlantic history and instead deals with the specific aspects of the continuities within the Iberian worlds, particularly the cocreation of a common legal culture between rulers and ruled.In the finest tradition of Atlantic history, Angela Ballone's monograph about the 1624 tumult of Mexico City brings us a broader understanding of how royal authority was made in New Spain and Spanish America.