Bourbon Reforms Research Articles

The mid-eighteenth-century Bourbon reform of repartos de mercancías to the Indian population in Peru and New Spain. Monopoly or government policy?

ABSTRACT Although the matter of repartos (the sale on credit to Indians of goods they might need) has been extensively studied, the purpose that led the Crown to establish a system around them in 1751 is often neglected. Scholars usually understood the repartos as abuses carried out by the corregidores and alcaldes mayores (judges and local Spanish authorities) in the provinces of Peru and New Spain and tolerated by the government until their abolition from 1780 onwards. It is almost completely ignored that the 1751 decree was not a simple legalisation of the repartos to favour local elites, but quite the opposite, a true Bourbon reform with the intention of increasing the industriousness of the Indians and transforming them into buyers of colonial goods (mules, clothes, food) and European goods (textiles, iron, manufactures). It was a reform aimed at encouraging production, trade and the royal exchequer through taxation. The participation of different social sectors in the system contrasts with the idea of monopoly so often associated with the reparto. It is precisely this idea that results from prioritising the testimonies of the detractors of the repartos in the context of abolition rather than paying attention to the purpose of the system.

Analyzing Asymmetric Warfare Tactics During Bourbon Reforms: A Technological Perspective on Historical Causes and Modern Implications

Analyzing Asymmetric Warfare Tactics During Bourbon Reforms: A Technological Perspective on Historical Causes and Modern Implications

Robert H. Jackson, The Bourbon Reforms and the remaking of Spanish Frontier Missions, Brill, Leiden/Boston 2022, 356 pp.

Book Review

Imperial translators: Hiberno-Spaniards, the Bourbon reforms and political economy

ABSTRACT This article explains how 18th century Irish exiles in the Spanish Empire utilised a skill at imperial translation to promote the emulation of capitalistic British imperial policies. Focusing on the proyectista Bernardo Ward, the First Ministry of Ricardo Wall, and the slaving practices of Hiberno-Spaniards in Cuba, it argues that diasporic Irish played a key role in the Spanish Empire’s embrace of capitalism during the Bourbon Reforms.

Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire

Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire

Gamboa's World: Justice, Silver Mining, and Imperial Reform in New Spain

Gamboa's World: Justice, Silver Mining, and Imperial Reform in New Spain

The Mechanics of the Alcabalas: Reform, Local Bargaining, and Dwindling Taxation in New Granada, 1750–1810

AbstractThis article studies the mechanics of sales taxes in the viceroyalty of New Granada (present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and western Venezuela) during the second half of the eighteenth century. Advocating a careful examination of the accounting, institutional, and fiscal practices of North Andean customs houses, it provides an extensive discussion on how tax records can be harnessed to study the scope and nature of Bourbon reforms and to measure trade flows. The article pursues three interrelated goals. First, it studies the impact of local negotiations and jurisdictional fragmentation on local rates and revenue collection, providing new insights into the concrete mechanisms of tax bargaining. Second, the study reinterprets data on the main North Andean entrepôts of trade to measure fiscal cycles, real tax pressure, and tax incidence. Proposing a new method for examining customs records, this research shows how fiscal concessions and economic cycles led to diminishing fiscal revenues. Finally, the research places the viceroyalty within the broader context of fiscal change in the Spanish Empire, arguing that the region collected fewer revenues not only because of its comparatively smaller economic activity but also because the combination of custom and reform yielded lower taxation rates and unique fiscal structures.

Fearful Vassals: Urban Elite Loyalty in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, 1776–1810 by Peter Blanchard

Reviewed by: Fearful Vassals: Urban Elite Loyalty in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, 1776–1810 by Peter Blanchard Evan C. Rothera Blanchard, Peter. Fearful Vassals: Urban Elite Loyalty in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, 1776–1810. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. Fearful Vassals examines loyalty in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata by focusing on elites in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Córdoba who "played a vital role in the viceroyalty's affairs, getting involved in local decision-making to ensure that their interests and their goals were protected" (4). Rather than mouthing sentiments about independence and revolution, elites demonstrated "a firm commitment to the Spanish king and to Spanish rule" (4). Elite loyalty to Spain and the king was rooted in their fears about perceived threats to their wealth and lifestyles. Over the course of nine chapters, Peter Blanchard, currently [End Page 227] professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto, develops his fascinating analysis. The creation of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata offered elites "opportunities that helped develop a growing sense of commitment to the region" (15) and Spanish officials formed strategic alliances with elites. Far from undermining urban elite loyalty, the Bourbon Reforms "created a distinct new homeland with opportunities for the urban elites who were determined to take advantage of them" (42). Elites strictly controlled entry into their ranks and frequently turned to Spain "in the belief that Spain would provide support for the standards they had set and that it would act to reaffirm their privileged position in the viceroyalty" (44). Indeed, the king became an essential mediator in disputes among members of the elite who, in turn, had a vested interest in retaining the king as the ultimate distant authority. Perceived threats from the population of African descent and the local indigenous population also worried elites. These fears gave them additional reasons to support continued ties with Spain. Like other places in the Americas, many people saw slaves as a threat, but they did not want to end the slave trade or slavery itself. Loyalty to Spain thus seemed necessary to protect and expand slavery, especially because many considered slavery essential to the economic growth of the viceroyalty. Without Spain, "this essential aspect of colonial life and the associated economic returns would be seriously compromised" (132). Indigenous people also worried the elite. Again, unsurprisingly, they looked to Spain for military support. People of African descent and indigenous people represented, to members of the elite, threats as well as arguments in favor of maintaining ties with Spain. Urban elites also worried about the actions of foreign nations and foreign nationals and looked to Spain for assistance and protection. In sum, challenges and uncertainties strengthened, rather than undermined, ties with Spain to the point that many people in the viceroyalty saw Spain "as the only possible protector" (164). The British invasions were a major milestone on the road to separation. People's reactions revealed "the depths of loyalty of the viceroyalty's population" (169), and even groups that the elites feared, such as people of African descent and indigenous people, "provided support or showed a willingness to fight to maintain Spanish rule" (169). That said, despite the outpouring of loyalty among all sectors of the viceroyalty's population, the aftermath of the British invasions foreshadowed important transformations. As Blanchard notes, "The status of the viceroy was substantially weakened and along with it royal authority and [End Page 228] all the intricate mechanisms for ensuring elite control" (193). Still, the British invasions had nevertheless stimulated loyalty to the king and to Spain even though Spain provided very little assistance against the British. What caused elite loyalty, which derived much of its strength from being anchored in fears, to eventually crumble? Most notably, Napoleon's invasion of Spain forced elites "to confront new and even greater questions of how to maintain their control, now without any real possibility of aid from Spain" (195). Some people had tumbled onto the idea, after the British invasions, that residents of the viceroyalty could manage their own affairs. Napoleon's invasion only reinforced this notion and helped undermine...

Review: Cabotajes Novohispanos: Espacios y contactos marítimos en torno a la Nueva España, by Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos

Review: <i>Cabotajes Novohispanos: Espacios y contactos marítimos en torno a la Nueva España</i>, by Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos

The Fabric of Resistance: Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru

Di Hu's The Fabric of Resistance: Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru analyzes how obrajes (textile workshops) and haciendas (large landed estates) located in Pomacocha, in the Peruvian province of Vilcashuamán in the modern region of Ayacucho, facilitated Indigenous peoples' social landscapes. The author explores this through an innovative methodological approach that draws from “archaeology, history, architecture, demography, GIS/spatial analysis, and social network analysis” (p. 8). The author applies this methodology to examine records that include census data, diagrams of architecture, maps, legal cases, royal reports, and ledgers, to name a few of her primary sources. Hu argues that Ayacucho's Amerindian groups maintained their social landscape after being forced to relocate to new provinces under the Inca and then expanded these relationships under Spanish colonial rule, which led to an increase in rebellions in the central Andes toward the end of the eighteenth century and during the early nineteenth.To support her argument, Hu organizes The Fabric of Resistance into five succinct and well-balanced chapters that proceed in chronological order. Hu uses works from James C. Scott and Fernand Braudel to establish that although revolutions rarely occur, and are typically suppressed quickly when they do, “weapons of the weak” emerged continually to undermine hegemonic rule. Yet many scholars dismiss these events because they do not often lead to a change in regime. Hu challenges this dismissal and suggests that over a longue durée these purportedly minor actions “inform short-term events like rebellions” (p. 3). Hu explores Inca imperialism in her first chapter and the Inca labor systems that the Spanish adopted during colonial rule. The Inca forced Indigenous workers (mitmaqkuna) to relocate to new regions to help integrate newly acquired territories into the empire. Hu shows that under the Inca and the Spanish these forced laborers re-created their former social landscapes in the new territory. The Indigenous Andeans relied on these methods that influenced future generations residing in and around Pomacocha under Spanish colonialism. In Hu's second chapter, she emphasizes how Indigenous people in the Andes supported each other through these social landscapes during times of unrest, especially after major earthquakes and the epidemics that led to the death of thousands of Indigenous people in the early eighteenth century.Chapter 3 emphasizes the effect that spatial and social control had on the Indigenous workers in the Pomacocha obrajes. The author shows that when a new foreman came into the obraje, any alterations to custom (costumbre) threatened textile production. Additionally, Hu contends that food customs helped establish strong kinship bonds between different Indigenous groups laboring in the workshops. Hu's fourth chapter explores the apex of the Bourbon reforms. The author's principal focus in this chapter is how King Charles III's economic and social policies led to an increase of open rebellions in the Andes at the start of the 1760s, which culminated with the Tupac Amaru II revolt from 1780 to 1782. While the Indigenous population of Pomacocha did not participate in this rebellion, it had a lasting impact on these individuals, who took up arms against the crown in the nineteenth century.In Hu's final chapter, she shows that the Pomacocha obraje served as a pivotal staging area for Simón Bolívar and his forces. More importantly, however, Hu examines how and why the Indigenous laborers decided to support Bolívar's revolution. To answer these questions, Hu explores the identity of the Morochucos, or the Indigenous and mestizo inhabitants of the Vilcashuamán area of Ayacucho. This group proved pivotal in gaining Peru's independence from Spain. She establishes the group's evolution through a demographic analysis of surnames. The Fabric of Resistance's short conclusion suggests that the connections between Indigenous resistance in Pomacocha during the colonial period contribute to our understanding of the hacienda workers who rebelled against the hacendados (owners of haciendas) in the mid-twentieth century.Numerous historians have explored the topic of Indigenous resistance against Spanish colonialism and the aftermath of these revolts in the Andes. Several notable works in this historiography include Steve J. Stern's Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (1982), Alberto Flores Galindo's Buscando un inca: Identidad y utopía en los Andes (1986), Charles Walker's Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1840 (1999), and Cecilia Méndez's The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State, 1820–1850 (2005), to name a few. Like these works, Hu's The Fabric of Resistance should be considered essential reading for archaeologists, geographers, and especially historians interested in rebellions and revolutions and their aftermath in the colonial Andes.

A space for defence: The Cadiz cove as a model for fortification and navigation in the early modern Spanish Atlantic

During the early modern age, La Caleta, as a strategic cove into the Bay of Cadiz, underwent numerous defensive improvements to protect the Cadiz emporium from possible attacks by other powers. These engineering works were to become a model for Spanish military architecture. The mobility of military engineers made significant contributions to reinforcing and upholding the Spanish Atlantic Bridge, not only through the Carrera de Indias, but also through the transmission of scientific and military knowledge, which was a major feature of Bourbon reformism. The multidimensional nature of this phenomenon is clearly illustrated by the fortification of Cadiz as the monarchy's main commercial port and naval base, which involved not only defensive improvements, but also aids to navigation – measures that were also applied in South American harbours during the eighteenth century.

From Bourbon Reform to Open Markets in California, 1801-1821

The Consulado de México was the mercantile guild that acted as commercial nerve-center of Spain’s empire in the Americas. From 1801 to 1821, one of its members, Pedro González de Noriega, influenced California’s economic growth by putting his nephew, José de la Guerra y Noriega, into the colony’s military supply line. In 1801, for what purpose did De la Guerra y Noriega come to California? Whatever his intention, his life-plan changed in 1810, when insurgency broke out in New Spain, and military payroll ceased to arrive in California. Between 1811 and 1821, how did De la Guerra y Noriega adapt to this structural change by negotiating with international merchants from Manila to San Blas and Lima to supply California? As Spain’s empire unraveled, we follow the microhistory of the Noriega mercantile network, as it reconfigured to the macroeconomic context of political transformation of the Pacific Rim in the context of Mexican independence from Spain. The De la Guerra Collection at the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library reveals that Guadalajara was Mexico’s emerging center for Pacific commerce, with San Blas as Guadalajara’s principal port. By Mexican independence in 1821, De la Guerra had established Santa Bárbara, California as the center of his family’s business, rather than Mexico City. Even as Manila merchants relocated to Tepic, he maintained ties with them. He also traded with the British in Callao, Peru, which is how he came to send his son to be educated in Liverpool with the Brotherston family.

Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire

Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire

Gray Gold: Lead Mining and Its Impact on the Natural and Cultural Environment, 1700–1840

Gray Gold: Lead Mining and Its Impact on the Natural and Cultural Environment, 1700–1840

Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico by Corinna Zeltsman

Reviewed by: Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico by Corinna Zeltsman Shelley Garrigan Keywords Printer, Political Actor, Patronage, Bourbon Reforms, Privileges, Technology, Press Freedom, Censorship, Labor, Authorship, Print Shop, Ignacio Cumplido, Inquisition, Lafragua Law, Property, Nationalization, Liberal Triumph, Porfirio Díaz, Compositor, Criminalization zeltsman, corinna. Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico. U of California P, 2021. 350 pp. Corinna Zeltsman has made a powerful contribution to Mexican studies with this detailed and profound investigation, which traces the politics of printing through the multilayered sociocultural and governmental shifts that mark the long nineteenth century in Mexico, at one point the printing hub of the Americas. Zeltsman’s investigation takes readers on a tour through the intricate debates, on-the-ground labor practices, disagreements, and laws through which printing practices evolved, traversing printing workshop floors, government offices of shifting administrations, churches, collections of official and ephemeral printed matter, jail cells, and the streets of Mexico. The effect is a persuasive invitation to consider the centrality of print culture with respect to the larger dynamics that unfold around it as the century progresses. The sheer amount and variety of archival work in this piece of scholarship is extraordinary; Zeltsman draws from a range that includes several state and municipal, notarial, and church archives, libraries, records from the 19th-century Mexican national government printing office, and a special collection of 19th-century artifacts housed at the Sutro Library of California to reconstruct a complex series of portraits of the various and evolving political dynamics in which 19th-century Mexican print culture was [End Page 637] embedded. In the introduction, the author invokes the ideas of Ángel Rama, Benedict Anderson, and Jürgen Habermas to contrast their affirmations regarding print and the public sphere in different sociopolitical contexts with Mexico, and successfully argues the case for constructing a different, more nuanced type of framework from which to assess the complexity of print dynamics in the 19th-century Mexican context. The first two chapters cover the late colonial period. Chapter one illustrates how Mexico, in the development of a nascent print culture, differed from the classic narratives of the north Atlantic in which print capitalism evolved as an independently financed venture that stood in rebellious opposition to the status quo. In Mexico, printers relied upon the vertical privileges granted by the viceregal system that operated during the era of the Bourbon reforms in order to receive permission to establish their businesses, and political actors strongly influenced the news that reached the public. In one of several gripping case studies that emerge in this investigation, Zeltsman focuses on the Gazeta de México run by Manuel Antonio Valdés, and the eventual loss of his printing privileges due to a conflict with the viceroy regarding the role of print in demonstrating individual nationalist allegiances to the Spanish Crown during the monarchical crisis of 1808. Chapter two focuses on the uneven evolution of press laws at the tail end of the colonial era, which awakened an intricate set of conflicts that would require several decades to resolve. First appearing in the Cortes of Cádiz in 1810 Spain, the laws abolishing privileges and licenses were enacted during a two-month window in Mexico in 1812, and then again during the Liberal Triennium of Spain in 1820. The vague parameters around freedom of the press required the creation of a new regulatory framework beyond the Inquisition, leading to the birth of a censorship office and a press prosecutor. The result was an abundant air of uncertainty regarding what could be printed and why. A lively published debate between two writers and the printer-heir Alejandro Valdés sheds light on how the boundaries between authors and printers were still very much in flux, and an illegal and scandalous broadside in Puebla reveals the tenuous abilities of liberal forms of print censorship to maintain social order. Chapter three, set in the 1840s, marks a shift in the historic alliance between printers and the state as officials struggled to maintain social order in an era of extreme uprisings and instability. Who, ultimately, was responsible for a given published work...

Redes empresariales y administración estatal: La provisión de materiales estratégicos en el mundo hispánico durante el largo siglo XVIII

Redes empresariales y administración estatal: La provisión de materiales estratégicos en el mundo hispánico durante el largo siglo XVIII

Global Revolutions

Global Revolutions

Politics, morals and politicisation in the eighteenth-century Spanish monarchy. The creation of a public sphere and its enemies

ABSTRACT This paper examines the politicisation process that took place in the Hispanic monarchy towards the end of the Ancien Régime, with a special focus on analysing the actors involved in the Bourbon reformism. Our approach enables us to overcome the “upward politicisation/downward politicisation” dichotomy which is commonplace in current historiography. Based on this approach, we propose to reconstruct the connections between these actors and the circles in which modern forms of politics arose. Said connections transformed these actors culturally, and distanced them from the non-politicised culture of traditional communities. In that sense, throughout the 18th century the reformist endeavours of the crown were a major driver of politicisation but affected only a minority, coming as they did before the age of massive politicisation in the 19th and 20th centuries. We take a detailed look at the case of the traditional societies of the Basque Country and Navarre to demonstrate the scope of this first politicisation.

Grain Architecture in Bourbon New Spain: On the Design of Guadalajara and Querétaro’s Alhóndigas

During the late colonial period, numerous Novohispanic cities embarked on an unprecedented number of projects aimed at reshaping their urban spaces and improving infrastructures, including new facilities for grain storage and supply. The construction of alhóndigas (public granaries), along with other public works and infrastructures, was further propelled by the implementation of Bourbon reforms in Spanish America and the 1780s reorganization of the colonies into intendencias (provinces), as part of the monarchy’s efforts to improve the colonial administration and economy and centralize royal power. The newly appointed royal officials (intendentes) were instrumental in the implementation of these reforms, overseeing tax collection, promoting economic growth and agricultural production, improving mining, and developing a program of public works to embellish and modernize the urban environments and ameliorate the living conditions of their residents in sanitation, public health, water infrastructure, and food supply. This essay explores the projected alhóndigas for two late colonial Mexican cities and how they engaged with contemporary discussions about the efficacy of public works, the circulation of ideals promoted by enlightened reformers on good governance and civic order, issues of artistic and architectural production, and the transmission of a reformist aesthetic agenda from the center to the provinces of New Spain.

Regional timber supply for shipbuilding and maintenance of war fleets in Cadiz: methods, agents and phases (1717-1736)

In the period of 1717-1736, the southern peninsular forests became a new resource frontier at the service of the Spanish Navy, in the context of the Bourbon Reforms. The timber supply for shipbuilding and maintenance of war fleets in Cádiz was made through four methods: direct administration by commissioned services; purchase from regional middlemen merchants; articulation between contractors and direct administration; articulation with the Royal Exchequer. The rhythm of supply was the reflex of different needs and constraints in three phases: maintenance of fleets during the period of consolidation of Cádiz as a naval and commercial center (1717-1727); the first shipbuilding series (1728-1731); the impact of the 30’s Mediterranean campaigns and the shipbuilding production of Ciprian Autran (1731-1736).