Abstract
The cycle of early Bourbon reform for the colonies that began in the late 1710s and ended in the mid-1730s embraced far more than commercial affairs alone. Beyond Atlantic trade, it also encompassed a further range of measures, affecting colonial administration (including the territorial organization of the colonies), fiscal affairs (from the administration of the treasury to the coinage), the mining sector (both for mercury and silver), and relations with the Peruvian Church. This chapter, then, considers these other areas, that complemented the commercial program discussed in the preceding chapter. Indeed, they more than complemented it; for as we shall see, commercial concerns arguably lay behind several of the other reforms now undertaken, in fields as diverse as territorial organization or the taxation of silver mining in Peru.
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Notes
Cédula, May 25, 1717, reproduced in Jerónimo Becker and José María Rivas Groot, El Nuevo Reino de Granada en el siglo XVIII (Madrid: Asilo de Huérfanos de la S. C. de Jesús, 1921), pp. 200–3; also Antonio Muro Orejón, Cedulario americano del siglo XVIII, 3 vols. (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1956–77), vol. 2, xxxii–xxxiii.
María Teresa Garrido Conde, “La primera creación del virreinato de Nueva Granada,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 21 (1964), pp. 25–144, esp. pp. 47–89; De la Pedrosa’s instructions are reproduced in extract in Ernesto Restrepo Tirado, Gobernantes del Nuevo Reyno de Granada durante el siglo XVIII (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Universidad, 1934), pp. 46–48.
See the varying accounts in Garrido Conde, “La primera creación,” esp. pp. 40–42, 62, 72–73, and 119–20; Becker and Rivas Groot, El Nuevo Reino de Granada, pp. 69–71; José María Ots Capdequi, Instituciones de gobierno del Nuevo Reino de Granada durante el siglo XVIII (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1950), Chap. 4, esp. pp. 175, 194;
Anthony McFarlane, Colombia before Independence: Economy, Society and Politics under Bourbon Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 187–91; and now, at considerable length, Francisco Antonio Eissa-Barroso, “Politics, Political Culture and Policy Making: The Reform of Viceregal Rule in the Spanish World under Philip V (1700–1746),” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2010, Chap. 3.
Lance R. Grahn, The Political Economy of Smuggling: Regional Informal Economies in Early Bourbon New Granada (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997);
Jaime Jaramillo Uribe, “n,” in J. A. Ocampo (ed.), Historia económica de Colombia, 2nd ed. (Bogotá: Planeta, 1988), pp. 53–54, 69;
Germán de Granda, “Una ruta marítima de contrabando de esclavos negros entre Panamá y Barbacoas durante el Asiento inglés,” Revista de Indias 36:143–4 (1976), pp. 123–46.
Enrique de la Matta Rodríguez, El asalto de Pointis a Cartagena (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1979); the same author’s “La ‘rebelión’ de Diego de los Ríos: Una página inédita de la historia de Cartagena de Indias’, Anuario de Estudios Americanos 31 (1974), pp. 955–71, studies circumstances surrounding the official investigation into the disaster.
Villalonga’s extraordinarily large retinue has been discussed by Ainara Vásquez Varela, “Jorge de Villalonga’s Entourage: Political Networking and Administrative Reform in Santa Fe (1717–1723),” in Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso and Ainara Vásquez Varela (eds.), Early Bourbon Spanish America: Politics and Society in a Forgotten Era (1700–1759) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 111–26.
Geoffrey J. Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, 1700–1789 (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 143–46; Garrido Conde, “La primera creación,” pp. 116–17.
José Antonio Manso de Velasco, Conde de Superunda (Alfredo Moreno Cebrián, ed.), Relación y documentos de gobierno del Virrey del Perú, José Antonio Manso de Velasco, Conde de Superunda (1745–1761) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1983), pp. 333–34.
See Mark A. Burkholder and D. S Chandler, From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687–1808 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977); the same authors’ “Creole Appointments and the Sale of Audiencia Positions in the Spanish Empire under the Early Bourbons, 1701–1750,” Journal of Latin American Studies 4 (1972), pp. 187–206;
and Guillermo Lohmann Villena, Los ministros de la Audiencia de Lima en el reinado de los borbones (1700–1821) (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1974), xcvii–cvi.
Cédula, October 10, 1725, in Juan Joseph Matraya y Ricci, Catálogo cronológico de pragmáticas, cédulas, decretos, órdenes, y resoluciones reales. (1819; Buenos Aires Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia del Derecho, 1978), p. 301; Kenneth J. Andrien, “The Sale of Fiscal Offices and the Decline of Royal Authority in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1633–1700,” Hispanic American Historical Review 62 (1982), pp. 49–71, see p. 71. The latter article also discusses sales to the Tribunal de Cuentas in the period 1700–45.
Alfredo Moreno Cebrián, El corregidor de Indios y la economía peruana en el siglo XVIII (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1977), tables, pp. 86–96; also the same author’s “Venta y beneficios de los corregimientos peruanos,” Revista de Indias 36:143–44 (1976), pp. 213–46.
John H. Parry, The Sale of Public Office in the Spanish Indies under the Hapsburgs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953), Chaps. 2–4. While now superseded for other posts, this work remains authoritative on these lesser positions.
On the importance of these factors in access to higher posts, see John Lynch, The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1598–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 180–81, 402–3;
Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Sociedad y estado en el siglo XVIII español (Barcelona: Ariel, 1976), p. 92;
and Henry Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain, 1700–1715 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), pp. 37–38.
Cédula, June 12, 1720, described by Marqués de Castelfuerte, “Relación del estado de los reynos del Perú … ” (1736), in Manuel Atanascio Fuentes (ed.), Memorias de los vireyes que han gobernado el Perú durante el tiempo del coloniaje español, 6 vols. (Lima: F. Bailly, 1859), vol. 3, pp. 56–369, see p. 210; also José de la Puente Brunke, “Política de la Corona en torno a las encomiendas peruanas (1670–1750),” Histórica 11 (1987), pp. 181–206; Luis Navarro García, “Felipe V y el Consejo de Indias: El debate de las encomiendas,” Temas Americanistas (Seville) 3, pp. 5–11. The process of incorporation was a slow one, dependent upon the deaths of incumbents; but by the mid-1750s, Viceroy Manso de Velasco could anticipate the only survivors being historic grants made to religious communities and colleges; Manso, Relación, p. 240.
Draft cédula to Villagarcía, n.d. (ca. 1736), A.G.I., Lima 642; see also Ramón Ezquerra Abadía, “Problemas de la mita de Potosí en el siglo XVIII,” in La minería hispana e iberoamericana: Contribución a su investigación histórica, vol. 1. (León: Cátedra de San Isidoro, 1970), pp. 483–511, esp. p. 496.
Castelfuerte, Relación, pp. 230–33; Castelfuerte to Crown, November 7, 1725, A.G.I., Lima 506; Lima Royal Officials to Crown, November 15, 1725, A.G.I., Lima 429. For the terms and discussion of the asientos celebrated between 1660 and 1722, see Respuesta del señor fiscal, June 2, 1738, A.G.I., Lima 506; also Clarence H. Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1918), pp. 69–85.
For reform of the coinage in New Spain, see Christoph Rosenmüller, “Assayers and Silver Merchants: The visita of 1729/1730 and the Reform of Mexican Coinage,” American Journal of Numismatics, 2nd series, 16–17 (2005), pp. 179–93.
Humberto Burzio, La ceca de Lima, 1565–1824 (Madrid: Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre, 1958), pp. 39–41.
John J. TePaske and Herbert S. Klein, The Royal Treasuries of the Spanish Empire in America, 4 vols. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1982–1990), vol. 1 Peru, x.
This paragraph draws on Adrian J. Pearce, “The Peruvian Population Census of 1725–1740,” Latin American Research Review 36:3 (Oct. 2001), pp. 69–104.
A significantly fuller discussion of this topic is presented in Adrian J. Pearce, “Huancavelica 1700–1759: Administrative Reform of the Mercury Industry in Early Bourbon Peru,” Hispanic American Historical Review 79:4 (Nov. 1999), pp. 669–702.
Early Bourbon reform of the mercury industry in New Spain is discussed by Antonia Heredia Herrera, La renta del azogue en Nueva España: 1709–1751 (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1978), esp. pp. 103, 13–32.
Heredia Herrera, La renta del azogue, pp. 13–17; Antonio Matilla Tascón, Historia de las minas de Almadén 2 vols. (Madrid: Gráficas Osca, 1958–87), vol. 2, pp. 36, 121–26.
Antonio Rodríguez Villa, Patiño y Campillo: Reseña histórico-biográfico de estos dos ministros de Felipe V (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1882), pp. 44–46.
José Eusebio de Llano Zapata, Memorias histórico-fisicas-apolo-geticas de la América meridional (1757; Lima: San Pedro, 1904), pp. 145–46.
Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, pp. 137–56, 177–88; for the meetings of 1734–35, see p. 195; a more recent important discussion is Mariano Ardash Bonialian, El Pacífico hispanoamericano: Política y comercio asiático en el imperio español (1680–1784): La centralidad de lo marginal (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2012), pp. 114–17.
Jeffrey Cole, The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 119–21.
The major account of the debates regarding the mita that took place over four decades to 1732 is Ignacio González Casasnovas, Las dudas de la corona: La política de repartimientos para la minería de Potosí (1680–1732) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000), esp. part 3.
See Bartolomé Arzans de Orsúa y Vela, Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí, 3 vols. (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1965), vol. 3, pp. 68–69.
Cole, The Potosí Mita, pp. 115–22; Ignacio González Casasnovas, “Un intento de rectificar el sistema colonial: Debates y proyectos en torno a la mita de Potosí a fines del siglo XVII (1683–1697),” Revista de Indias 50:189 (1990), pp. 431–53.
Enrique Tandeter, Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), p. 11.
Silvio Zavala, El servicio personal de los Indios en el Perú, 3 vols. (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1978–80), vol. 1, pp. 17, 29; González Casasnovas, Dudas de la Corona, p. 429.
See Pearce, “The Peruvian Population Census,” esp. pp. 82–84, 92–95. Although the topic has not been the subject of any definitive research, there are grounds to suppose that Peru’s native population displayed relatively strong growth from its historic low point following the epidemic of the early 1720s, until at least the late nineteenth century. On the later period, see the outstanding article by Paul Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru: Some Revisions,” Latin American Research Review 26:3 (1991), pp. 109–57.
Peter Bakewell, “Mining,” in Leslie Bethell (ed.), Colonial Spanish America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 203–49, p. 240, fig. 4.
Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia, 1700–1783 (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas”, 1988), Chap. 2 (titled “El virrey Castelfuerte y la primera coyuntura rebelde”) and fig. 4, p. 296; Pearce, “The Peruvian Population Census,” pp. 84–87 and 102.
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Pearce, A.J. (2014). The First Cycle of Reform, 1710s to 1736: Government, Treasury, Mining, and the Church. In: The Origins of Bourbon Reform in Spanish South America, 1700–1763. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362247_5
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