The Political Status of the Chilean Merchants at the end of the Colonial Period: The Concepcion Example, 1790-1810

Abstract

It is necessary to study the political status of Latin American merchants because we have so long heard that they were largely without franchise during the colonial period. We have been told that the creoles were the landowners, that the peninsulares were the merchants, and that the creoles generally controlled the cabildos. Though several writers have been investigating the merchants for some time now there are still historians who do not recognize the presence of a dynamic, influential group of creole merchants at the end of the colonial period. The Conceptión merchants (those who maintained residence in the town of Concepción) have been singled out for case study, but I am fully convinced that the patterns we see among them will apply also for the Santiago and far-northern merchants. By 1790 the town of Concepción was the capital of Chile's southern intendency, it was as it would demonstrate time and again in later years the capital of the south; and the south was the keystone of early nineteenth-century Chilean political life.