The Institutional Framework of Colonial Spanish America. Lynch 1992

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The Institutional Framework of Colonial Spanish AmericaAuthor(s): John Lynch

Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 24, Quincentenary Supplement: The Colonial andPost Colonial Experience. Five Centuries of Spanish and Portuguese America (1992), pp. 69-81Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/156946Accessed: 15-05-2015 17:14 UTC

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2/14

The Institutional Framework of

Colonial

Spanish

America

JOHN

LYNCH

The colonial state

Spain

asserted its

presence

in America

through

an

array

of

institutions.

Traditional

historiography

studied these in

detail,

describing

colonial

policy

and American

responses

in

terms

of

officials, tribunals,

and laws.

The

agencies

of

empire

were

tangible

achievements and

evidence of the

high

quality

of

Spanish

administration.

They

were

even

impressive

numerically.

Between crown

and

subject

there

were

some

twenty major

institutions,

while

colonial

officials were

numbered

in

their

thousands.

The

Recopilacidn

de

leyes

de

los

reynos

de

las

Indias

(I68 )

was

compiled

from

400,000

royal

cedulas,

which

it

managed

to

reduce to a

mere

6,400

laws.1

Thus the institutions were

described,

classified,

and

interpreted

from

evidence

which

lay

in

profusion

in

law

codes,

chronicles,

and

archives.

Perhaps there was a tendency to confuse law with reality, but the standard

of

research was

high

and derecho

ndiano,

as

it

was

sometimes

called,

was the

discipline

which first

established

the

professional study

of

Latin American

history.

This

stage

of research was

brought

to an

end

by

new

interests and

changing

fashions

in

history,

and

by

a

growing

concentration on

social

and economic

aspects

of

colonial

Spanish

America.

Institutional

history

lost

prestige,

as

historians

turned

to the

study

of

Indians,

rural

societies,

regional

markets,

and

various

aspects

of

colonial

production

and

exchange, forgetting perhaps that the creation of institutions was an

integral part

of social

activity

and their

presence

or

absence

a

measure

of

political

and economic

priorities.

More

recently,

institutional

history

has

returned

to

favour,

though

it

is

now

presented

as a

study

of

the colonial

state. It

may

be that the term

'colonial

state' sounds

more

impressive

than

'colonial

institutions',

and we are

simply studying

the same

thing

under

a

different

name. There

are,

however,

a

number of

significant changes.

Historians

have

become

more

interested

in

the

concept

and nature of

power,

its

reflection of interest

groups,

its

application

to

social

sectors. So

1

C.

H.

Haring,

The

Spanish

Empire

n America

New

York,

I963),

p.

Io5.

J.

Lat. Amer.

Stud.

Suppl.69-81

Printed n

GreatBritain

69

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/14

70

John Lynch

institutional

history

is

placed

in a

wider context and

historians now

study

the informal

mechanisms

of

imperial

control as well as the

formal

agencies

of

government.

In

the

second

place,

we have learnt

more

clearly

that

institutions did not function

automatically

by

dictating

laws and

receiving

obedience. The normal instinct of the

crown's American

subjects

was not

to

obey

laws,

but to evade or

modify

them

and,

from time

to

time,

to

resist

them.

Response

to the colonial

state has become a

favoured field of

research,

and rebellion

takes

precedence

over reform.

Moreover,

it

is

recognised

that the

colonial state

operated

at

various levels. The

source of

power

lay

at a

great

distance

from

America,

and local

officials were far

removed from their

sovereign,

surrounded

by

a

world of

competing

interests and a society from which they themselves could not remain

detached. Between

Madrid and Potosi

laws

passed

through

a whole

series

of filters.

Finally,

the

chronology

of

institutional

change

has

become more

precise

and more

significant,

and

points

the

way

more

firmly

from

the

first

to the

second

age

of colonial

experience.

The

politics

of

control

Administrative

history

used

to

be devoid of

political

content. Now

we see

that the colonial

state

proceeded essentially by

politics,

that

officials had

to negotiate compliance, that Americans were masters of the political deal.

Negotiation

was not alien to the

bureaucracy. Viceroys

and

corregidores,

who had

usually

negotiated

their own

appointments,

functioned with

some

degree

of

independence

and did not

necessarily

agree

with

every

law

they

had to

apply.

The administration

possessed

institutional,

though

little

military,

power

and derived its

authority

from

the historic

legitimacy

of

the

crown and its own

bureaucratic

function,

one of the

principal

duties

of

which was to collect and remit

revenue. The

bureaucracy

was

a

mixed

system,

only partly

professionalised.

Some officials

saw

their

office as a

service to the

public

for which

they

charged

fees;

others

derived their

income from

entrepreneurial

activities;

others from

salaries.

Whether

this

was feudal or

capitalist

is not

important;

the fact

is

that all

officials more

or

less

participated

in

the

economy

and

expected

to

make a

profit

from

their office. The crown

on the other hand wanted

its servants

to

remain

aloof from

colonial

society,

immune from local

pressures;

yet

in all

cases

-

viceroy,

audiencia,

corregidor

-

this

ideal was undermined. So too was

its

desire

for a

united

bureaucracy,

one which

presented

a

solid front to

the colonial

world. This

was

a

vain

hope,

for

the

bureaucracy

was divided

by

ideas and

interests,

and the

power

of the crown

reached

its

American

subjects

in a

fragmented

form.

At the centre of

discussion

of

colonial

institutions

are the local

elites,

yet

these

are

also a research bottleneck.

Who

were

they?

How did their



4/14

Spanish

Colonial Institutions

71

minds work?

Are we to treat them

as

economic

interest

groups,

or should

we

emphasise

their American

identity?

The colonial

elites,

an essential

part

of

any

interpretation

of

the

colonial

state,

have

rarely

been studied in

themselves,

and it is

only

in recent

years

and for certain

parts

of

Spanish

America that

their

composition

and

thinking

have been

identified.2 Yet

it

was their

economic

power

that

politicised

relations

between the

bureaucracy

and

the

public,

and forced officials to

bargain

and

compromise.

Local

elites were born

in

the

conquest

itself,

a

private

enterprise,

which earned for its

participants

credits

which

they

could

subsequently

cash

into

grants

of

labour and resources. Since

then vested

interests

in

land,

mining,

and

commerce

had

consolidated

local

elites,

who

increasingly

used their

power

to

influence

and

manipulate

the

bureaucracy,

or

alternatively

used

patriarchal, kinship,

and

political leverage

to

compensate

for

economic

failure

and

to

overcome

the

resistance of

subordinate

social

groups.3

Economic

interests tended to fuse

the various

elite

components

into

a

single

sector,

and

Spanish

officials

had to

coopt,

or

confront,

peninsulares

as

well as creoles.

Thus

gradually

the

bureaucracy

itself

became

part

of

a network of

interests

linking

officials,

peninsulares,

and creoles.

The colonial

state,

therefore,

reflected not

only

the

sovereignty

of

the

crown but also the power of the elites. In Upper Peru officials in the

seventeenth

century

acquiesced

in the

system

whereby

the mita

was

delivered

to

mine

owners

not as

Indian

conscripts

but

in

silver,

which

could be used to

employ

substitutes

from

the free labour

market,

or

simply

as

an

alternative income

to

mining.

Thus

the Potosi mita

was

transformed into a tax for the

benefit not of the

crown but of the mine

owners.

While

the colonial

state

theoretically

had the

power

to

abolish

the

mita,

it

was reluctant

to

exercise it out

of

fear

that

the

mining economy

might collapse

and that reform

might provoke

resistance and

rebellion.4

In

emergencies

of this kind the crown found from

experience

that it could

not

rely

on

regular

officials but

had to

appoint

special

commissioners with

extraordinary

powers.

When

in

I659-60

Fray

Francisco

de

la

Cruz,

provincial

of the

Dominicans

in

Peru and

bishop

elect

of

Santa

Marta,

was

2

Jose

F. de

la

Pefia,

Oligarquiay

propiedad

en

Nueva

Espana

ll0o-I624

(Mexico,

I983),

studies

an

early

oligarchy

in

Mexico;

Robert

J. Ferry,

The Colonial Elite

of

Early

Caracas: Formation and Crisis

Iz67-I767

(Berkeley,

Cal.,

I991),

a later one

in

Caracas.

D.

A.

Brading,

The First

America.

The

Spanish

Monarchy,

Creole

Patriots,

and the Liberal

State 1492-1867 (Cambridge,

I991)

identifies, among other things, the origins and

growth

of

creole

identity.

3

Susan

E.

Ramirez,

Provincial

Patriarchs: Land Tenureand

the

Economics

of

Power n Colonial

Peru

(Albuquerque,

NM,

i986).

4

Jeffrey

A.

Cole,

The Potosi Mita

zW73-z700.

Compulsory

Indian Labor in the

Andes

(Stanford,

Cal.,

I985),

pp.

44,

123-30.



5/14

72

John

Lynch

appointed 'superintendent

of

the mita' and

charged

with

investigating

abuses,

he took a

strong

stand

in

favour of the

Indians and

against

mine

owners,

tried

to

impose

controls on

the mita

system,

and ordered

a

stop

to all mita deliveries in silver. The chronicler Arzans recorded that 'the

rich

azogueros

assembled

and

agreed

that it was not

advisable to discredit

the

mita';

one

night

Cruz

was

murdered

in

his

bed,

the victim of

poison

in his

hot chocolate.5 It did not

pay

to alienate

the

local

oligarchy

or

to

disturb

the colonial

consensus;

institutions

had to

yield

to interests.

Although

the abolition

of the

mita

was

mooted

from time to

time,

the

most that was

accomplished (i692-7)

was a

reform of conditions

and a

prohibition

of deliveries

in

silver.

The

distortion

of the mita

in

favour

of

mine owners was

accompanied

by

other manifestations

of

regional compromise

and

by

further

'Americanisation'

of

colonial

institutions.

A

second

example

revealed

by

recent research was

the

persistence

of

fraud

in the Potosi mint. The cost

of

extracting

and

refining

silver

was

met

by

a

simple

device,

the

adulteration

of the silver used

to make

coins

by

the addition

of

excessive

amounts

of

copper.

This was noticed

as

early

as

I633

-

it was difficult

to

overlook

a

25

per

cent reduction

in silver

-

and official

warnings

were

given

by

the crown

to

the

assayers

at

Potosi.

The reaction

of the

viceroy,

the marquis of Mancera, was typical of a consensus official: he preferred

not

to

press

local interests

too hard. He advised

that

to

provoke

trouble

in Potosi

might

scare off

those who sold

adulterated

silver

to the

mint,

often

the same

people

who advanced

credit

to the

mines;

this

would

bring

operations

to a halt and cause

riots

in

the

streets.

But the Council

of the

Indies,

faced with

a

rejection

of Potosi

coins

in

Spain

and

by Spain's

creditors

in

Europe,

insisted

on

pursuing

the

perpetrators.

A new

president

of

the audiencia

of La

Plata,

Francisco

de Nestares

Marin,

priest

and former

inquisitor

in

Spain,

took measures

to restore

the value

of

Potosi coinage and imposed punitive fines on three guilty silver merchants.

In

I650

he had the

leading

coinage

criminal,

Francisco Gomez

de la

Rocha,

author of

the

pesos

rochunos,

xecuted

by garrotting.

The

Spanish

crown

could

not

afford

to

jeopardise

its

financial

credibility

in

Europe,

but

in

Upper

Peru

many

local interests

were alienated

by

this unusual

rejection

of

consensus.6 President Nestares

Marin

died

the

same

night

as Francisco

de

la

Cruz,

in

equally

suspicious

circumstances.

5

Bartolome

Arzans de

Orsua

y

Vela,

Historia

de

la

Villa

Imperial

de

Potosi,

(eds.)

Lewis

Hanke and Gunnar

Mendoza (3 vols., Providence, RI, I965), I, pp. I88-90; Cole,

The

Potosi

Mita,

pp.

92-3, 126-30.

6

Arzans,

Historia de la Villa

Imperialde

Potosi,

II,

pp.

190-1;

Guillermo Lohmann

Villena,

'La

memorable crisis monetaria de mediados

del

siglo

XVII

y

sus

repercusiones

en el

virreinato del

Perut',

Anuario de Estudios

Americanos,

vol.

33

(1976),

pp.

579-639;

Peter

Bakewell,

Silver

and

Entrepreneurship

n

Seventeenth-Century

otosi

The

Life

and

Times

of



6/14

Spanish


73

The

colonial state was

not

as

strong

as it

appeared;

it

could

not

always

protect

its own

officials. The

Spanish

crown and the Council

of

the Indies

were on

the

other side

of

the

Atlantic;

officials

had to live in

the societies

they

administered;

the

government

needed revenue.

To

reveal

a

need was

to

expose

a

weakness

and to

give

local

groups

the

leverage

they

wanted

to make deals

with bureaucrats instead

of

merely obeying

them. The

colonial state

remained

intact,

but

only

by

diluting

one of the essential

qualities

of

a

state,

the

power

to

exact obedience.

In the

process

colonial

bureaucracies

lowered their

expectations,

identified with local

interests,

and

recognised

the existence of

regional

identities.

Colonialconsensus

As

government

descended

into

politics

and local elites

penetrated

government,

so

Spanish

America came to

be administered

by

a

system

of

bureaucratic

compromise.

The

process

has been described as

an informal

understanding

between

the crown

and

its

American

subjects:

'The

unwritten constitution

provided

that basic decisions were

reached

by

informal consultation between the

royal

bureaucracy

and the

king's

colonial

subjects. Usually

there

emerged

a

workable

compromise

between

what

the central

authorities

ideally

wanted and what local

conditions and

pressures

would

realistically

tolerate. ' These have become

key

concepts

in

the

reinterpretation

of

colonial

government,

though

it

may

be that the

arguments

need finer

tuning,

especially

the

suggestion

that there was a

pact

between

king

and

subjects,

and that the

procedure

was one of

'bureaucratic decentralisation'. In

the

first

place

the colonial

compromise

was

not a transfer of

power

from

metropolis

to

colony,

from the

Council

of

the

Indies

to the

overseas

bureaucracy.

The colonial

state consisted

of

king

and council in

Spain

and

viceroys,

audiencias,

and

regional

officials

in

America;

we are

speaking

of a

dilution,

not a

devolution

of

power.

The

government

in

Spain

was

party

to the

compromise,

both

in

institutional

and

in

economic

policy:

it was the

crown which

sold colonial

offices

in

Madrid and

America,

and it

was

royal

officials

in

Seville who

colluded

with merchants in

breaking

the

laws of

trade. The true

contrast was not

between

centralism

and

devolution,

but between the

degrees

of

power

the

colonial state

was

prepared

to

exercise at

any

given

time.

Historians of

course are now

familiar with the

concept

of

Habsburg

decentralisation in

Antonio

Lopez

de

Quiroga

(Albuquerque,

NM,

1988),

pp.

36-42;

Luis

Miguel

Glave,

Trajinantes.

Caminos

indzgenas

n la

sociedad olonial.

Siglos XVI/XVII

(Lima,

1989),

pp.

182-9

1.

7

John

Leddy

Phelan,

The

People

and the

King.

The Comunero

Revolution n

Colombia,

I78i

(Madison,

Wisc.,

1978),

pp.

xviii,

7,

30,

82-4.



7/14

74

John

Lvynch

the

peninsula

itself,

as the state

sought

to

share

the

growing

costs and

duties

of

government

and

war

by

delegating

them to

its wealthier

subjects,

and

even

allowed the administration of

justice

to

pass

into

the

hands

of

local elites.8 There

is, moreover,

a sense in which colonial

government

is

always

to some extent

decentralised

by

factors

of

distance and

communications.

But the

argument

concerns

political

power

rather than

administrative devolution.

The

colonial state embraced both the

metropolitan government

and the administration

in the

colonies,

but,

until

about

1750,

it

was

a consensus

state,

not an

absolutist state.

In

the

second

place,

for all the

linkage

between

colonial officials and

local

interests,

the two were

never

totally

merged:

the

thousands

of

complaints

and

appeals

to

the

Council

of

the Indies

against

colonial

officials

are evidence

enough

that

there

was

always

a distinction

between

state

and

subject.

Yet if some

of the

concepts

of

'bureaucratic

decentralisation' need

qualification,

the situation

it describes

was real

enough:

the

colonial

bureaucracy

came to

adopt

a

mediating

role between

crown and colonist

in a

process

which

may

be

called a colonial consensus.

The consensus could

be

seen

in

patronage

as well as

in

policy,

above

all

in the

growing

participation

of

creoles in

the

colonial

bureaucracy.

Americans

wanted

office

for a number

of

reasons,

as

a

career,

an

investment for the family, an opportunity to acquire capital, and a means

of

influencing policy

in

their

own

regions

and to their own

advantage.

They

wanted not

only

as

many

appointments

as

peninsulares,

or

a

majority

of

appointments;

they

wanted

them

above

all

in their

own

districts,

regarding

creoles

from another

region

as

outsiders,

hardly

more

welcome

than

peninsulares.

The demand of Americans

for

a

presence

in

the

administration,

together

with

government

desire

for

revenue,

found

a solution

in the sale

of office.

From

the

I63os

Americans

had the

opportunity

to

obtain

offices,

if not

by

right

then

by

purchase:

the

crown

began

to sell

treasury

offices in

I633,

corregimientos n

1678,

and

judgeships

in

the audiencias

in

i687.9

Creoles

crowded

into these

openings

and

institutions bent

to their

pressure.

Purchase

of

office

gave

the

incumbent

a

piece

of

property

and with

it a measure

of

independence

inside

the

administration;

it

also

eroded

that isolation

from local

society

which the

crown

sought

for its colonial

bureaucracy.

But

while the

Americanisation

of

the

bureaucracy

may

have

been

a

victory

for the

creole

elites,

it

was

a

further

setback for the

ethnic

communities

and those

who

had to

supply

8

Richard L. Kagan, Lawsuits andLitigants in Castile i7oo-r7oo (Chapel Hill, NC, 198 ),

pp.

210-II;

I.

A.

A.

Thompson,

'The

Rule of

Law

in

Early

Modern

Castile',

European

History

Quarterly,

vol.

14

(1984),

pp.

221-34.

9

Alfredo Moreno

Cebrian,

'Venta

y

beneficios

de

los

corregimientos peruanos',

Revista

de

Indias,

vol.

36,

nos.

143-4

(1976), pp.

2

3-46;

Fernando

Muro,

'El

beneficio

de

oficios

publicos

en

Indias',

Anuario de

Estudios

Americanos,

vol.

35

(1978),

pp.

I-67.



8/14

Spanish

Colonial

Institutions

75

tribute,

taxes,

and

labour,

groups

who found themselves

without

allies

under

the new

alignment.

The

sale

of fiscal office from

I633

weakened

royal

authority

where

it

most counted. In Peru

treasury

officials came to act not as executives of

the

imperial government

but

as mediators

between

the financial

demands

of the crown and

the resistance of

colonial

taxpayers.

An

informal

alliance

of

regional

officials and local

interests

-

merchants,

mine

owners,

and

other

entrepreneurs

-

came

to

dominate the

treasury,

with the

result that

imperial

control

relaxed,

opportunities

for fraud

and

corruption

increased,

and remissions of

revenue to

Spain

diminished.

1

In its

search for

revenue

devices

acceptable

to local

property

owners

the colonial

government

had

recourse

to

borrowing,

cutback on

funds

normally

sent to

Spain,

sale of

juros,

land

titles

and

public

offices,

while the

clergy,

landowners,

merchants,

and

other

privileged

members of

society

largely

escaped

new

taxes. These

desperate

measures were not

necessarily

signs

of economic

depression.

The

aZogueros

till took

their slice from

the mita

payment

in

money,

the

corregidores

from

defrauding

the tribute

revenue;

and

encomenderos

urned

themselves

into

hacendados,

consolidating

and

rationalising

their estates

into commercial

enterprises.

Falling prices

were

a

sign

not

of

stagnation

but

of

strong agricultural

production

fuelled

by

market demand.'l As for merchants, Lima was still a centre of overseas

trade,

a

place

where

profits

could be made and

investments decided.

In

short,

local

elites,

long

capable

of

accumulating

capital,

were

now

concerned to

protect

it,

especially

from the

tax

collector;

and

they

were

more

interested in

government

consumption

and

public

spending

within

Peru

than in

payments

to

Spain.

Institutions

mirrored these

priorities.

Peru's

seventeenth-century

crisis,

therefore,

derived not from

economic

depression

or

market

collapse

but

from

fiscal failure

and a

flawed

administration.12

The

colonial

state

sabotaged

its own

financial bu-

reaucracy when, in

i633,

under pressure from Philip IV and Olivares for

quick money,

it

approved

the

systematic

sale

of

all

high-ranking

treasury

appointments,

thus

permitting

corrupt,

inexperienced

officials with

strong

local

connections to

dominate the

treasury.13

This

was

the

reason

why

the

colonial state

faltered

in

Peru,

as

creoles

bought

treasury

offices,

10

Kenneth

J.

Andrien,

'The

Sale

of

Fiscal Offices and the

Decline of

Royal

Authority

in

the

Viceroyalty

of

Peru,

I633-1700',

Hispanic

American

Historical

Review,

vol.

6z,

no.

i

(1982),

pp.

49-71,

and

the same

author's

Crisis and

Decline: the

/iceroyalty

of

Peru

in the

Seventeenth

Century(Albuquerque, NM, 1985), p. 34, are the works which have most

advanced this

subject.

1

Luis

Miguel

Glave and Maria

Isabel

Remy,

Estructura

agrariay

vida

rural

en

una

region

andina:

Ollantaytambo

entre los

siglos

X[/I

y

XIX

(Cuzco,

I983),

pp.

I40-6o; Glave,

I7rajinantes,pp.

193-4.

12

Andrien,

Crisis

and

Decline,

pp.

74-5.

13

Ibid.,

pp.

103-4,

115--6;

Glave,

Trajinantes,pp. 193-4.



9/14

76

John

Lynch

established

family

and

political

networks,

and

became

part

of

local

interest

groups.

The

process

also

had

implications

for Indian

society,

now

confronted

by

an alliance of

bureaucrats,

corregidores,

and

mining

and

landed interests. While viceroys were

caught

between concern for revenue

and fear of

rebellion,

local officials

were left to maintain a

consensus,

placate

those

wanting

labour and

surpluses, ignore

the

pressure

on Indian

resources,

and line their

own

pockets.

They

avoided confrontation and

conflict,

but at the cost of

imperial

control;

and

by

resorting

to sales of

land,juros,

and

offices

they

kept

some revenue

flowing

but at the cost of

solvency

and

good government.

The second

agent

of

compromise,

the

corregidor,

is well known to

historians,

who have followed

his career from

unpaid

official to local

entrepreneur

in some

detail,

and

traced

the

dead

hand of colonial

monopoly

from the centre of

empire

to

the

remotest Indian

community.14

At the

heart

of the

system

were the merchant

speculators

in the

colonies,

who

guaranteed

a

salary

and

expenses

to

ingoing corregidores;

these,

with

the connivance of

caciques,

then

used

their

political

jurisdiction

to

force

the Indians

to

accept

advances

of

cash and

equipment

in

order to

produce

an

export

crop

or

simply

to consume

surplus

commodities

from

monopoly

merchants. This

was

the

notorious

repartimiento

de

comercio,

a

device which

linked various interest groups in a classic pattern of consensus. The

Indians were

forced into

producing

and

consuming;

officials who had

already

bought

their

offices received an

income;

merchants

gained

an

export

crop

and

captive

consumers;

and

the

crown saved

money

on

salaries.

Yet all this was

theoretically

illegal

and involved

the colonial

authorities at

every

level

in

a

process

of

lawbreaking,

a 'mal

necesario',

as one

viceroy

described

it,

justified

by

the need

to

give

the Indians

an

economic incentive. And

official connivance reached

the

point

of

attempting

to

regulate

the

system,

or at least

to

control

the

quota

and the

prices of the reparto, 'in order above all to bring relief to the Indians and

to

give

the

corregidores

a

moderate

income'.l

The interest

of

historians

in

this

process

has

focused

mainly

on

its

meaning

for Indian

society

and

its role

in

Indian

rebellion. But it

has

a further

significance

as

a crucial

detail

in

the transformation

of

imperial

authority

and the

growth

of

colonial consensus.

A

corregidor

whose

quasi-independence

had to be

recognised

by

a

viceroy

was

not

a

prime

instrument of

imperial

control.

The

highest

agency

of

bureaucratic

compromise

was

the

audiencia,

the

ultimate

goal

of

creole

ambition and

the

only

institution

in

the

colony

14

Alfredo Moreno

Cebrian,

El

corregidor

e indios

la

economza

eruana

en

el

siglo

XVIII

(Madrid,

1977),

pp.

I08--0.

15

Jose

A. Manso de

Velasco,

Relacion

y

documentos e

gobierno

del

virrey

del

Peri,

Jose

A.

Manso de

f

elasco,

condede

Superunda

I74/-z76z),

(ed.)

Alfredo

Moreno

Cebrian

(Madrid,

1983),

pp. 285-6.



10/14

Spanish


77

whose

peculiar

union

of

legal,

political,

and

administrative

functions

qualified

it to

speak

for

king,

colonists,

and Indians

alike. Modern

investigation

of the colonial

audiencia

has

proved

to

be

a

turning point

in

our understanding of American institutions, the key to unlock many

problems

of colonial

government.

When,

in

1687,

the crown

began

to sell

appointments

of oidores

Americans seized the

opportunity.

They began

to

regard

their own

audiencia districts

as

patrias

and

to

claim

that

in

addition

to

their

intellectual,

academic,

and economic

qualifications

they

had

a

legal

right

to hold

all

offices

within their

boundaries.

By

175o

Peruvians

dominated

their home

audiencia of

Lima,

a

development paralleled

in the

audiencias

of

Chile,

Charcas,

and

Quito.

In this

way

money payments

and

local

influence came to

prevail

over

tribunals

and their

independence.

The

relevant statistics can be briefly summarised. In the period 1678-1750, out

of a total

of

3

I

audiencia

appointees

in

America,

I

38,

or

44

per

cent,

were

creoles,

compared

to 1

57

peninsulares.

Of

the

I

38

creoles, 44

were natives

of the districts

in

which

they

were

appointed,

and

57

were from

other

parts

of the

Americas;

almost

three-quarters

of the

American

appointees

bought

their offices.16

By

the

i76os

the

majority

of

judges

in the

audiencias

of

Lima,

Santiago,

and Mexico were

creoles.

This

was

a

major

shift

of

power

within the colonial state

and

radically

affected its

character.

The dilution

of

royal

authority,

the

absence

of

quality

control,

the

complacency

in

face

of

creole

wealth

and local

influence,

went

beyond

consensus

government

and

tipped

the

balance

against

the crown. Most

of

the creole oidoreswere linked

by

kinship

or

interests to the economic

elite;

the audiencia became

a

preserve

of rich and

powerful regional

families,

and the

sale of office came to form

a

kind of

American

representation

in

government.

The

absolutist state

From about 1750 the imperial government abandoned consensus and

began

to

reassert

its

authority,

anxious above all

to

recover its control of

American

resources,

and

to

defend them

against

foreign

rivals. Reform

depended upon

the

impetus given

by

the

king,

the

ideas and

initiatives

of

ministers,

and the finances to

implement

policies. Rarely

were

these three

preconditions

present simultaneously.

In

the

years

from

I750,

however,

they

came

together

and

converged

on

Spanish

America.l7

The

subsequent

programme

of

reorganisation

embraced the

whole

range

of

economic,

political,

and

military

relations

between

Spain

and

America.

From

1776,

when Jose de Galvez became minister of the Indies, policy quickened in

16

Mark A.

Burkholder and D.

S.

Chandler,

From

Impotence

o

Authority.

The

Spanish

Crown nd

the

AmericanAudiencias

Columbia,

Mo.,

1977),

p.

145.

17

For

fuller

treatment

of the

Bourbon

programme

see

John

Lynch,

Bourbon

Spain

I7oo0-8o0

Oxford,

1989),

pp.

329-74.



11/14

78

John

Lynch

pace

and was

driven

by

a determination

to

reduce

the creole

presence

in

colonial administration.

The

programme

has

long

been

described

as

one

of 'Bourbon

reform'. The advance

of the

Bourbon

state,

the

end

of

compromise government and creole participation, these were regarded by

the

Spanish

authorities as

necessary

steps

towards

control,

revival,

and

monopoly.

But to the

creoles

it

meant

that

in

place

of

traditional

bargaining

by

viceroys

who

were

prepared

to mediate between

king

and

people,

the

new

bureaucracy

issued

non-negotiable

demands

from an

imperial

state,

and to

creoles this was

not

reform.

The

participation

of Americans

in

colonial

government

was now

reduced,

as the

Spanish government

from

I750

began

to

curtail sale of

office,

to

reduce creole

appointments

in

Church and

state,

and to break

the

links between bureaucrats and local families. At a time when the creole

population

was

growing

and the number

of

creole

graduates

increasing,

and when the

bureaucracy

itself was

expanding,

in

short when

creole

pressure

for

jobs

was at its

height,

the

colonial

state was restored

to

the

hands of

peninsulares.

From

1764

new

officials,

the

intendants,

began

to

replace

corregidores;

it became

virtually

impossible

for

a creole to receive

a

permanent appointment

as intendant. At the same time a

growing

number of

senior

financial officials

were

appointed

from

the

peninsula.

Creole

military

officers

were

replaced by Spaniards

on retirement. The

object

of the new

policy

was

to

de-Americanise

the

government

of

America,

and

in

this it was successful.

Again,

audiencia research enables

us to measure

the

scale of

change.

In the

period

175

i-i808,

of the 266

appointments

in

American audiencias

only

62

(23

per

cent)

went to

creoles;

and

in

i808

of the

99

officials

in

the colonial tribunals

only

6

creoles

had

appointments

in their

own

districts,

9

outside

their

districts.18

Regional

research

points

in

the

same

direction. The

bureaucracy

of

Buenos Aires was

dominated

by

peninsulares:

in the

period

1776-I8I0

they held 64 per cent of appointments,

portenos

29 per cent, and other

Americans

7

per

cent.19

Bourbon

policy

in

its

reformist

phase

has

been

widely

and

closely

researched in recent

decades,

and there

are

results

for

all

interests and

for

various

interpretations.

Historians interested

in

local

elites will

note the

shift

in relations between the

major

power groups.

The transition

from

permissive

to absolutist

government,

from

consensus

to

imperial

control,

enlarged

the

function of the

colonial

state at the

expense

of the

private

sector and

ultimately

alienated

the local

oligarchy.

The Bourbon

overhaul

of imperial government can be seen as centralising the mechanism of

control

and

modernising

the

bureaucracy.

The creation

of

new

18

Burkholder and

Chandler,

From

Impotence

o

Authority,

pp.

I

5-35.

19

Susan

Migden

Socolow,

The

Bureaucrats

of

Buenos

Aires,

I769-1800:

Amor al

Real Servicio

(Durham,

NC,

1987),

p.

132.



12/14

Spanish


79

viceroyalties

and

other units of

government applied

central

planning

to

a

conglomeration

of

administrative, social,

and

geographical

units,

and

culminated

in

the

appointment

of

intendants,

the

prime agents

of

absolutism. The implications of the intendant system can now be better

appreciated

than

they

were

when

modern research

first studied the

institution.

The

reform can

be seen

as more than an

administrative and

fiscal

device;

it

also

implied

closer

supervision

of

American societies

and

resources.

This

was

understood

at

the

time.

What

the

metropolis thought

was

rational

development,

the American elites

interpreted

as an attack on

local interests.

For

the intendants

replaced

those

corregidores

(and

in

Mexico alcaldes

mayores)

whom we have seen as

experts

at

reconciling

different interests.

They

were also

supposed

to terminate

the

repartos,

and

to

guarantee

the Indians the

right

to trade and work as

they

wished. But

traditional

ways

died hard. Colonial

interests,

peninsular

and

creole

alike,

found the new

policy inhibiting,

and

they

resented the

unwonted

intervention

of the

metropolis.

The

abolition

of

repartos

threatened not

only

merchants and landowners but also the

Indians

themselves,

unaccustomed

to

using money

in

a free market and

dependent

on

credit

for livestock

and

merchandise. Local

interests

took the

law

into

their own

hands.

In

Mexico and Peru the

repartosreappeared,

as

landowners

sought

to retain their

grip

on

labour and the

merchants

to restore

old consumer

markets.

Thus Bourbon

policy

was

sabotaged

within

the

colonies

themselves;

the old

consensus between

government

and

governed

no

longer prevailed.

The new absolutism also had a

military

dimension,

though

here the

results

were

ambiguous,

and

modern

research

has

not

entirely

resolved

the

problems

of

interpretation.

The

prejudice

against

creoles,

and in

particular

the fear that

arming

creoles

might

compromise

royal

political

control,

seem to have

been overcome

by

pressing

defence needs at a

time

when Spaniards were reluctant to serve in America. So the colonial

militias were

reorganised

and

expanded,

and even the officer

corps

of

the

regular

army

underwent

increasing

Americanisation.

By

I779

creoles

achieved

a

majority

of

one in

the Fixed

Infantry

Regiment

of

Havana,

though

Spaniards

still

dominated the

higher

offices;

by

1788 5I

of

87

officers were

creoles.20

Although

Galvez

frequently

discriminated

against

creoles

to

strengthen royal

authority,

especially

in

New

Granada and

Peru,

he was unable to

reverse the

Americanisation of

the colonial

regular army,

with

the

exception perhaps

of

its

most

senior ranks.21 The

process

was

hastened by the

shortage

of

peninsular

reinforcements, and

by

sales of

20

Allan

J.

Kuethe,

Cuba,

i173-si8.

Crown,

Military,

and

Society

(Knoxville, 1986),

pp.

126-7.

21

Allan

J.

Kuethe,

Military

Reform

and

Society

in New

Granada,

I773-Io80 (Gainesville,

Florida,

1978),

pp.

170-1,

I8o-i.



13/14

80

John

Lynch

military

offices,

which

were

systematically expanded

from

1780

to raise

revenue,

another

exception

to Bourbon

reformism.22 Americanisation

was

not

considered

to

be

too

great

a risk

to

imperial

control,

and the new

imperialism

was based not on massive militarisation but on the traditional

sanctions

of

legitimacy

and

bureaucracy.

Contrasts

in

government

The movement

towards Bourbon

absolutism and closer

control

of

colonial

resources is

now an established theme

of

historiography.

The

normal

assumption

is

that this was

a transition from

inertia

to

decision,

from

neglect

to

reform,

from

loss to

profit.

These

judgements

are

perhaps

open to revision. It may be that Habsburg colonial government responded

realistically

to

economic

and social

conditions

in

America.

It is true

that

negotiation

and

compromise

had

their

disadvantages

and

failed

to

provide

quality

control

over colonial

government;

but

they

were

methods born

of

experience

and achieved

a

balance

between

the demands

of the crown

and

the claims of the

colonists,

between

imperial

authority

and

American

interests.

These methods

of

government

kept

the

peace

and did not

provoke

the creoles into extreme

positions;

indeed

they

favoured

a kind

of American

participation

in

administration

in

the

period

650o-175o.

At

the same time they did not deprive Spain of the profits of empire; modern

research

shows

that the

age

of

depression

was

in fact

an

age

of

abundance,

and that treasure

receipts

had

never

been

greater

than

they

were in the

second

half of

the

seventeenth

century.23

No doubt these

had

to be

shared

with

foreigners,

but

that too

was

part

of

the

compromise

and

responded

to the

Spanish

economic

system

of the time.

Bourbon

government,

without

changing

conditions,

changed

the

character

of the colonial state

and the exercise

of

power.

Charles

III

and

his

ministers knew

less

of

Spanish

America

than

do

modern

historians.

The records

lay

around them - from

viceregal

capitals,

seats of

audiencias,

remote

corregimientos

and indeed

were

being

newly organised.

But

they

seem

not to have read

them,

or

if

they

read

them,

not

to

have

understood

their

meaning.

The

past

was

ignored,

indeed

repudiated.

The

growth

of

local

elites,

the

strength

of

group

interests,

the sense of

American

identity,

and the

attachment of

regional

patrias,

all the features

of state and

society

acknowledged

by

consensus

government

were

ignored

by

the

new

absolutism.

The

Bourbons

proceeded

as

though

history

could be

stopped,

the development

of a

community reversed,

mature

peoples

reduced

to

22

Juan

Marchena

Fernandez,

Oficialesy

soldados

n el

ejercito

de Ame'rica

(Seville, i983),

pp.

95-120.

23

Michel

Morineau,

Incroyables

azettes

etfabuleux

metaux.

Les

retoursdes

tresors

americaines

d'apres

les

gazettes

hollandaises

XVI-XVIIP

siecles)

(Cambridge,

i985),

pp.

250,

262z.



14/14

Spanish


81

dependants.

The

logical

outcome of the

Habsburg

model of

colonial

government

was

more

consensus,

greater compromise,

better

oppor-

tunities

for

Americans,

the

possibility

of

political development.

Far

from

conceding

this,

the Bourbons

sought

to return

Americans to

a

primitive

dependence

which had

been dead

for

more than a

century.

Yet

it

was

impossible

to restore the

pre-consensus empire

intact. The

intervening

period

of

compromise government

and local

participation

had

left a

historical

deposit

which could not be

effaced.

Consensus,

or

the

memory

of

it,

was

now

part

of

the

political

structure of

Spanish

America.

Events

had

moved on

since

the

conquest;

local

oligarchies

no

longer

functioned

in the same

way

as their

ancestors;

colonial

society

was now locked into

the royal administration. In the process interest groups had become more

exploitative

and saw themselves as

part

of

the

imperial

elite

with

a

right

to share

in

the

gains

of

empire.

Their own

demands

on

Indian labour and

resources were

not

compatible

with the Indian

policy

of

the

Bourbons

in

the

decades

after

1750,

a

policy

which

sought

to free

the

Indians from

private

exploitation

in

order

to

monopolise

them as

subjects

and

taxpayers

of

the state. There was now

competition

between

exploiters.

The difference between

the

old

empire

and

the

new

was not a

simple

difference

between concord

and conflict. Even

after

the

civil

wars of the

sixteenth century and the victory of the colonial state, the Spanish

bureaucracy

had to

live

with

opposition,

violence,

and

assassination. But

large-scale

rebellions were

characteristic

of

the second

empire,

not

the

first,

and

they

were

a

response

to

absolutism

by

those who

had

known

consensus.

Spanish

America

in

the

late

eighteenth

century

was

the

scene

of

irreconcilables. On

the

American

side

entrenched

interests and

expectations

of

office;

on

the

Spanish

greater

demands

and

fewer

concessions.

A

clash

appeared

to

be

inevitable.

Manuel

Godoy,

not

normally

known

for his

political judgement,

was shrewd

enough

to detect

the flaw in the

policy

of Charles III and

Galvez,

and to

appreciate

that

their

basic mistake

lay

in

trying

to

put

the clock

back and

to

deprive

Americans of

gains already

made:

'It

was not

feasible to turn

back,

even

though

it

might

have

been convenient to

do so.

People

endure with

patience

the lack of

benefits

they

have not

yet

enjoyed;

but

granted

that

they

have

acquired

them

as

of

right

and

enjoyed

the

taste,

they

are

not

going

to

agree

to have

them

taken

away.'24

Bourbon

institutions

carried

a new

political message

to

Spanish

Americans

and

closed the

door to

further

compromise.

24

Principe

de la

Paz,

iMemorias

BAE,

88-9,

2

vols.,

Madrid,

1956),

vol.

I,

p.

416.

The Institutional Framework of Colonial Spanish America. Lynch 1992

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