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The Spanish Monarchy and the Creation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717–1739): The Politics of Early Bourbon Reform in Spain and Spanish America

2018; Duke University Press; Volume: 98; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-4379238

1527-1900

Renée Soulodre-La France,

History and Politics in Latin America

In this study of the Spanish monarchy in the early eighteenth century, Francisco Eissa-Barroso is concerned with charting the creation, suppression, and re-creation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. While the author acknowledges that these historical events have long been recognized, he suggests that they have yet to be closely examined, analyzed, and explained. The author challenges the traditionally accepted analysis that the viceroyalty was created because of local circumstances; that the viceroy was a failure and his performance, as well as the expense of the viceregal court, caused the suppression; and that defensive considerations and international war stimulated its re-creation. Rather, Eissa-Barroso recontextualizes the creation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada as part of transformations in approaches and attitudes to monarchical rule in the early Bourbon period. His argument is that these seemingly ambivalent and contradictory processes in fact addressed both metropolitan and local Spanish American situations, even as they were very much the product of court struggles occurring in Madrid. He suggests that while Spanish Americans were consulted, their voices were manipulated by institutions in Spain. Court factions, the secretaries of state, and the councils could and did serve their own interests by selectively using Spanish American concerns.The historiographical contextualization interwoven into the work suggests that the salient processes have been treated either from the Spanish perspective, without much reference to Spanish America, or through Spanish American nationalist historical writings, which view reforms from the angle of royalist interest. To fill out his analysis of the different forces at work to create these processes, the author adopts a polycentric view that highlights the connections and relationships between various centralized institutions of the monarchy and the Spanish American elite groups who sought to influence developments. In so doing, he demonstrates that the control exercised by various centers of political power was not necessarily even.The main thesis of this book is that Philip V and his ministers shared a new vision of the monarchy's function in governance, one that suggested that the king, far beyond only providing justice to his subjects, was responsible primarily for his subjects' material well-being and the economic development of the various regions under his mandate. To demonstrate this thesis, the author traces the policymaking processes of reform.Eissa-Barroso's methodology is to minutely examine the extant documentation related to these administrative matters, charting the shifts in language used and the significance of these inclusions or omissions to the exercise of power within the viceroyalty and within Spain. Where there are no documents, the author analyzes why the historical record is silent and draws on other types of sources to triangulate the processes that explain the events under discussion. The author suggests that there are so few documents referring to the initial creation of the viceroyalty precisely because of the unorthodox process of that creation, through the via reservada rather than through the more typical consultation with the councils. In this way, the reform, rejecting mediatizing corporations and institutions such as the Council of the Indies, the Consulado, or the Casa de Contratación, was effected through the actions of a small group of men who had the king's confidence. Eissa-Barroso demonstrates how later, through the re-creation of the viceroyalty, the crown was effective in bringing those mediatizing institutions into compliance, if not complete support of the reforms, by essentially stacking their membership.Set within the broad historiography of Spanish monarchical rule, this work reveals that a small group of men close to the king made the decision to create the viceroyalty even as they sidestepped the slow horizontal consultation process that had been the norm under the Hapsburgs. The author argues that the fall of royal secretaries such as Giulio Alberoni and the vagaries of the king's mental state opened the way for challenges to such reforms and eventually the undoing of the viceroyalty in 1723. The reform program depended implicitly on individual initiatives and support. As the crown regrouped, it is evident that the reforms continued, but more discreetly until the re-creation in 1739.This book demonstrates graphically what a man's world was the Spanish empire. The book remains very much at an institutional and administrative level of analysis. For historians concerned with more marginalized social groups and individuals, this history highlights the odds against which other social actors participated in, and influenced, historical processes. This detailed work provides valuable insight into the functioning of a world empire and the historical influences that shaped the most obvious contours of that world.