The Spanish Empire at its height spanned most of the American continent, from California to the southernmost reaches of Chile, and contained millions of inhabitants of incredible ethnic diversity: white Spaniards, the criollos, mestizos, mulatos, zambos, and, of course, the native Amerindians; a vast colonial empire established in the course of three centuries. Newer scholarship[1] has attempted to explain the above success of Spanish empire formation as the result of a continuous process of ‘consensus building’, being the cooperation and constant negotiation of power, loyalty, and mutual benefits between the imperial metropolis in Madrid and the elite which emerged in the American localities, hereafter referred to as the creoles. In this way, conflict was largely avoided and given a more productive expression in the various councils the locals used for the communication of their grievances to the Spanish king, such as the audiencias and the cabildos, with outbursts of violence being few and far between, and always seen as the last resort.[2] That is, the same historiography claims, until the supposed watershed moment of the 18th century, when the Bourbon dynasty ascended to the Spanish throne and instituted a series of absolutist reforms which sought to undo the previous centuries’ consensus building, and bring the Americas under much stricter royal control, largely removing the elites from the imperial equation.[3] Yet, the story of the conflict between the Spanish centre and the periphery, be it overseas or in the Iberian Peninsula, is a story as old as the Spanish Crown itself, with the Catholic monarchs, Isabella I and Fernando II, having found themselves struggling to keep the disparate peninsular domains together, and the subsequent Spanish rulers trying to consolidate their authority and bring their realm closer together.[4]
The historical reality is, as demonstrated above, not as straightforward as a story of two centuries of consensus (16th and 17th) versus one of absolutism (18th), and this article’s objective will be to examine the extent to which the above narrative is accurate, and the points where it falls short of presenting a complete image of the political status quo in Spanish America. In doing so, the analysis will assume a mainly temporal dimension, moving through the Conquest and establishment in the 16th century to the consolidation of the 17th and the Bourbon Reforms of the 18th, without suggesting that the centuries were definite markers of change, only points of reference. At the same time, in recognising the vastness of the empire and the varying experiences of its parts, as well as the fact that reform in the Spanish Empire was never implemented universally,[5] I will frequently be focusing on specific areas as case studies, such as New Spain and New Granada. In the end, as I will demonstrate, the conclusion emerges that the Spanish Empire in the Americas was constructed through consensus which was not universally applied or to the same degree, and that the Bourbon Reforms of the 18th century, though certainly successful in some aspects, such as the restructuring of the colonial military and the reassertion of peninsular dominance, were the latest in a series of attempts by the Crown to test the limits of its authority in the Americas over the centuries. The Bourbon Reforms were simply the most blatant and comprehensive of the latter, and caused intense reactions in most American possessions, eventually forcing the Crown to negotiate consensus once more, albeit on a better footing than the preceding Habsburg era.
To begin my examination, I will have to focus on the establishment of the Empire in the Americas, largely in the 16thcentury, kickstarted by Columbus’ occupation of the Caribbean islands, but exponentially heightened with the landing of Cortés on the mainland in 1519 and the Conquest of Mexico (1519-1521). This was, undeniably, a conquest, and the violent eruption of the Spanish conquistadors in the world of the Amerindians does not, at first sight, summon notions of ‘consensus building’. Yet, in what would become a main theme of Spanish interactions, first with the natives and then with the creoles of the New World, the conquistadors of Cortés, dramatically outnumbered, and with only marginal technological superiority, desperately required the cooperation of the locals to succeed.[6] Therefore, contrary to the traditional image of the domineering conquerors, the conquistadors immediately sought the assistance of the Nahua tribes who were suffering under the yoke of the Aztec Empire which Cortés wanted to subdue in the name of the Crown. They did so by offering them honours, titles, gold, and privileges, such as the right to ride a horse or wear Spanish clothes and bear Spanish arms, or, later on, conquered land, exemptions from having to pay tribute or from the harsh encomiendaservice.[7] Cortés constantly emphasised in his men, the need for good behaviour towards friendly natives, and the importance of formal agreements over looting.[8] The Spaniards depended on the natives for logistical, material, and military support, and the natives saw in the newly arrived foreigners ways to benefit from the upset local balances, thus creating a proto-consensus based on mutual profit.
This understanding was nothing new for either party involved. For the conquistadors, fresh from the fires of the Reconquista, this was standard conquest practice; the co-opting of local elites with the promise of privileges, lands, and titles in order to forge alliances which would then facilitate the conquest, in what Oudijk and Restall coin ‘stepping-stone pattern’.[9] Accordingly, for the natives of Mexico and Mesoamerica, a characteristic aspect of the precolonial period was the division of land by the local potentates among their captains who formed an allied elite based on ethnic or marriage ties, or bonds of alliance; this was the way the native elite enlarged their control of land and privileges, and a method widely applied during the expansion of the Aztec Empire in the previous centuries.[10] Therefore, though divided by language and culture, the Spaniards and natives formed a consensus based on common experiences of expansion, in the name of opportunistic gain. Where consensus was not employed, disaster soon followed, as with the expedition of Nuño de Guzmán into New Galicia in 1529, whose infamously harsh treatment of the natives led to non-cooperation and desertion of native allies, leaving the expedition decimated, doomed to fail as attrition and local resistance soared.[11] In contrast, Antonio de Mendoza, New Spain’s first viceroy, just a decade afterwards, campaigned in the same region, but after having treated his native allies with respect and recognition of their status, and was met with much greater success, as native assistance proved crucial.[12]
The Tlaxcalans provide a model for what happened with many other tribes; first facing the Spaniards on the battlefield – non-consensus – and then, due to their common enmity towards the Aztecs, concluding an alliance with Cortés – consensus – proving to be the most important native ally of the Spanish in the conquest of Mexico.[13] Cortés had made substantial promises to them, which the Tlaxcalans, as did other natives, recorded and remembered for long after the conquest. Beyond the short-term opportunistic coalition of the early conquest, Tlaxcala in the ensuing decades, referring to its alliance with the Spaniards, sought to enhance its position within the now firmly established realm of New Spain, by negotiating privileges as late as the 1560s, nearly half a century after the Conquest, such as an exemption of all Tlaxcalans from the tribute all other natives had to pay, to protect its members from the encomiendas, and to prevent Spanish settlement within its lands.[14] In response to Spanish requests for use of the natives for hard labour, in 1532, Queen Isabella issued an edict, exempting the Tlaxcalans and other native allies from the payment of tribute and forced labour, recognising them as valued vassals of Spain, while simultaneously requiring them to aid in reconstruction projects of their own ‘goodwill’, effectively forcing them into negotiations with the same conquistadors who wanted to use them as slaves, who would now have to reach a consensus if they were to procure native assistance.[15] A new native elite had been created, one which confidently asserted its rights until well into the 17th century, when it had gradually become clear that once the Spaniards no longer required native assistance, with the era of conquests being largely over. The Hispano-Amerindian consensus was broken by the conquerors themselves who ignored Amerindian petitions and subjected most of them to the tribute-paying system in place.[16] Regardless, Spanish presence in Mexico had only been established due to the process of consensus-building between the conquistadors and the locals, no matter how much the Spaniards prided themselves as having been the sole conquerors and inheritors of the new lands.
Beyond the Amerindians, there was, however, another elite, created in the fires of the conquest and reinforced in the years afterwards, that would cling onto the idea of consensus much more actively than the disillusioned natives of Mexico, and this was the conquistadors and the Spanish settlers after them, who regarded themselves as much a conquering race as the warriors who had preceded them. Having come from Spain, the conquistadors firmly believed in the idea of reward for valour in battle. In the glory days of the Reconquista, Christian warriors who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield, received titles and honours by their sovereign, and became part of the noble elite of the lands they had helped conquer.[17] The conquistadors of the Americas believed that their feat had been no less great than the Reconquista, and that they deserved to be repaid in full for their service, particularly as many of them, Cortés included, had incurred substantial debts to pay for their expeditions in the first place.[18] As a result of their private enterprise, they emerged as elites from the conquest, most of them rich with Amerindian gold, land, and slaves in the form of the encomiendas, all of which they used to consolidate their position in the New World. Many of them little better than adventurers, with no hopes of a breakthrough into the Old World Spanish nobility, desired to become great men in their own right, in the Americas.[19]
In the beginning of the Conquest, their wishes were fulfilled as they became gobernadores and adelantados in the absence of any other authority, but soon enough they were able to channel their influence through the newly established audiencias,[20] as powerful encomenderos. Before long, a Viceroy had been appointed in New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, who was meant to consult the audiencia first, before making any decision which would affect the newly formed elite, in what could be interpreted as either the beginning of consensus building in the form of the constant negotiations of the various institutions of the elites in the Americas with the peninsular appointees of the Crown. As for the conquistadors themselves, they remained firm believers in the doctrines that characterised Spanish – Castilian – rulership since its conception, the idea of a contractual relationship between the monarch and his vassals, whereby both were part of one body, the corpus mysticum, which, if it were to operate in a healthy manner, it needed to do so based on consensus.[21] Inspired by the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X, the conquistadors held that for as long as the King did not fall into tyranny and ruled on the basis of natural and divine law, they would be his obedient and loyal subjects.[22] These were notions that they brought into the first viceroyalties established in the Americas, those of New Spain and Peru, and they would become intrinsic in how the creole elite which eventually emerged, would understand its relationship with the Crown across the Atlantic, as one built on consensus and negotiation.
When this consensus was not respected, protest and a violent reaction were soon to follow. In the case of the conquistadors, when King Carlos V, influenced by Bartolomé de las Casas and his work on the maltreatment of the Amerindians, passed the New Laws, parts of which essentially stripped the conquistadors from their main source of income, the encomienda, the reactions were instantly negative. In Peru, the encomenderos, led by Gonzalo Pizarro, rose up in arms against the Crown’s representatives, slaughtering the Viceroy and denouncing the Crown’s decision as a tyrannical one, in direct breach of the contractual relationship between monarch and subjects.[23] The regime in Madrid, in another characteristic response in the face of fierce colonial reaction to its more interventionist policies, replied with offers of amnesty and concessions with regards to the application of the New Laws, granting the rebels all that they asked, and an outlet for their grievances through the institutional framework still in development.[24] Pizarro refused and moved towards the establishment of an independent kingdom in Peru, and thus, his hubris lay not in rebelling against the Crown’s policies, something which could be smoothed over by institutional consensus, but in seeking to remove himself from the institutional framework entirely. His men having deserted him, he was eliminated by loyalist forces.
In New Spain, on the other hand, the astute Mendoza, applied what would come to define consensus-rule in the Americas, the doctrine of ‘se obedece pero no se cumple’, recognising the validity of the royal command but refusing to execute it until further negotiations with the local elite were conducted and the decision appealed, thus avoiding violence entirely.[25] Thereafter, this was the way the empire would be consolidated in the Americas, by allowing local elites to appeal the decisions of the Crown through the cabildos and the audiencias, negotiating which concessions each side would grant the other, and thus creating an arena for effective conflict resolution. The creole elite’s reaction to unpopular policies and royal servants, would be mitigated by the staunch belief that across the ocean awaited a king who would listen to their grievances and respond accordingly, and the king in Madrid was content in seeing his authority recognised through the periphery’s appeals to his person. Any resistance to royal policy would take place within a universally understood institutional framework and Pizarro’s rebellion would be seen as the exception, not the rule.
Until the third decade of the 17th century, this balance was maintained fairly well as the empire was being expanded and consolidated throughout the rest of Latin America, and the upper echelons of the increasingly mixed population coalesced into the creole elite one comes to recognise in the mid- to late periods of the Spanish Empire. As elites were and are wont to do, they sought to expand their powerbase and wealth, as well as the limits of their influence, from New Spain to the north to New Granada and Peru to the south, but their efforts had hitherto been confined to the municipal level, as public offices were as of yet out of their reach.[26] Unable to access regional power in any other way, the urban families of New Spain, New Granada, and Peru, engaged in extensive intermarriage as well as marriage with the peninsulares who came to fill in important posts in the colonial administration from Spain, creating a vast network of interconnected families of elites across Spanish America which furthered the consolidation of the empire through consensus, this time one based on marriage.[27] At the same time, the various religious orders, such as the Jesuits, were also creating a powerbase of their own in the Americas through a vast administrative and clerical apparatus built around the cause of the conversion of the natives. The communities of new converts they created were based on the already existing Amerindian ways of communal organisation, which also possessed important elements of consensus building.[28] From the mestizos to the Amerindians to the white peninsulares, the consensus-based framework of the Spanish Empire in America worked to incorporate all as it consolidated itself. This balance, however, was not to last.
Increasingly, from the late 16th century onwards, the Habsburg monarchy in Madrid faced mounting financial difficulties and began putting public offices up for sale, beginning with notarial posts leading up to all local offices. As the 1630s wore on, Felipe IV began selling treasury offices as well to the wealthy creoles who could afford them, and, with the situation intensely exacerbated by the disastrous Thirty Years War, the sales would only grow more frequent and more comprehensive. Finally, in 1687 posts within the audiencias themselves were put up for sale, the last line of peninsular defence before creole ambition.[29] The flood gates had been opened, and the elites gradually infiltrated almost the entirety of the Spanish imperial apparatus in the Americas, outside the viceregal posts. Fraud and corruption soared as the criterion for office was now wealth, not competence. Yet, the most important consequence of the 17th century’s gradual loss of control was the fact that whereas before, consensus had been used to establish and consolidate the empire in the Americas, it was now arguably used to dismantle it. This did not mean that the creole elite sought to distance itself from Spain through its actions but rather, concerningly, that it did not seem to care about whether its actions brought about that result or not. The elites, using the networks of consensus they had already established in the preceding decades, strove to increase their wealth and influence by keeping as much of the colonial capital in America, and by defending local creole interests before the demands of the central authorities in Madrid. There was never outright challenging of Spanish government, but control over the colonies was slipping away all the same.
Thus, towards the end of the 17th century, a powerful creole elite had emerged which the Crown increasingly needed to placate in order to achieve good and effective government, to the extent that this was possible, in the Americas. It was a different kind of consensus, but consensus nonetheless. Yet, as a counter-argument to the idea of decline of central power, one must remember, as Cristopher Storrs correctly points out, that while, due to elite empowerment, more wealth remained in America, such as in the case of New Granada which only exported gold,[30] it was the Crown which decided how it was to be spent, the Crown which set the priorities of colonial administration through the peninsular viceroys it appointed, and the Crown to whom the elites still looked for validation and accumulation of honours.[31] As he suggests, perhaps optimistically, though this was not a powerful interventionist monarchy, its softer touch approach meant that the colonies and the elites which represented them were happy to remain within the system of consensus which the increasingly decentralised empire provided, rather than outside it, even providing private militias for its defence. Even in those territories which were violently wrested away from it, such as those to Louis XIV of France, creole loyalty staunchly remained to the Spanish Crown which had allowed them to grow so powerful and prosperous.[32] In further contradiction of Lynch’s and McFarlane’s arguments about 17th century decline of imperial authority, Alejandro Cañeque suggests that the process was not the same in all parts of the Spanish Empire, and that in New Spain for example, the viceroys retained a very active role over the inner workings of the cabildo.[33] Moreover, he holds, the sale of offices such as that of the oidor was quite rare, at least in New Spain, and was met with resistance from both viceroy and other oidores, while the New Spanish cabildo, even at the height of its power, lacked sufficient members because the local elites were not interested in purchasing the regidores positions, as the viceroy assured the king in 1693.[34] The accountability that came with the posts, which more often than not led to the imprisonment at the slightest sign of fraud, had made them undesirable to the local Mexican elite.
In the end, the 17th century process of ‘decline’ was not one of increasing decentralisation, but an ongoing struggle across the empire between various groups of creole and peninsular elites over the nature of the monarchy. Whether the king’s authority stemmed from both his person and the consensus he held with his subjects, as the ‘constitutionalists’ maintained, hearkening back to the conquistadors’ belief in the corpus mysticum, or whether the subject elites were only there to advise the king who would make the final decision on all matters, as the ‘absolutists’ thought.[35] The former acted as if their proposition was true, seeking to acquire the gravitas they believed justly belonged to them, whereas the latter sought to limit them from doing that very thing.
It was the latter who seemed to triumph as the dust settled after the War of the Spanish Succession and the new Bourbon dynasty ascended the throne in the face of Felipe V. Having witnessed first-hand the destructive factionalism between the various provincial elites hostile to the new French dynasty, which had turned peninsular Spain into a battleground, the Bourbons’ administration was characterised by a deep distrust of the creole elites in the Americas. Imbued with a regalist and centralist agenda, emulating the absolutist tendencies of the other monarchies of Europe, and with a deep sense of imperial decline and corruption, the Bourbon kings immediately sought to bring about drastic change in the administration of the Americas, more actively than any dynasty before them.[36] Their goals centred around the minimisation of local power and the closer integration of the American elites; in short, the bringing back into the fold of the overseas empire, after a century of seemingly loosening authority. Change did not come immediately.
In 1750, under Fernando VI, it was decreed that all sales of offices in the Americas were to end, and the new appointees would be from educated and most importantly loyal peninsulares[37] who would be far removed from local interests, thus placing the interest of the state above that of the individual. General inspectors were sent in the Americas, starting with Cuba in 1764, in the form of the intentados and the intendencias in order to remedy the fragmentation of authority and replace the widely regarded as corrupt corregidores, in their majority creoles.[38] Gradually, the reforms proved to be successful in wresting back power within the assemblies from the creoles to the peninsulares by the late 18th century. Though increasingly anxious, the creole elite put their faith in the old system of consensus and sought to satisfy the Crown’s new demands for a peninsular-educated professional class of administrators, by sending their sons to study in Spain,[39] and also, employing the method they knew all too well, by arranging marriages with newly arrived peninsular officers, as another channel into power.[40] The Crown attempted to curtail this by restricting marriages from 1776 onwards, but after witnessing the North American Revolution, it assumed yet again a more consensus-based approach, granting the creoles what they wanted, in the form of honours such as the distinction of the Orden de Carlos III, or other titles of nobility. Unsurprisingly, the provinces where most titles had been conceded were also the most loyal ones.[41]
Most crucially, it seemed as if the rhetoric in Madrid had changed, moving entirely away from consensus and into absolutism, and once the creole elites realised this, much like the conquistadors of earlier centuries, they reacted very negatively, first with petitions that went unanswered and then with armed insurrection. Characteristic were the 1765 Quito riots, which assumed a distinctly anti-peninsular character, though never an independentist one, the 1780 Túpac Amaru rebellion in Peru, and the 1781 Comuneros Revolt in New Granada, all in response to the increasing demands of the central administration in the form of trade monopolies and rising taxes, as well as the exclusion of the creole elite from positions of authority in their own patrias.[42] The Túpac Amaru rebellion served as a unifying force for the forces of the Crown and those of the creoles, due to its mainly Amerindian character, and highlighted the advantages of effective cooperation between centre and periphery, as the rebels were mainly put down by colonial regiments.[43] More importantly, with the New Granadan Comuneros, the local expression of the Bourbon regime, in the face of the peninsular-manned audiencia, was forced into an albeit counterfeit compromise. The rebel creoles who had so much faith in the consensus system that they simply accepted the guarantees that their demands would be respected by the local audiencia and dispersed peacefully en masse.[44] Beyond localised dissent, however, the main cause was that the unwritten ‘constitution’ between Crown and creoles had been broken, and thus armed revolt was their only option, in the absence of institutions where such grievances could reach the king.
These rebellions, though largely isolated in character, caused great anxiety in the Spanish administration and led to a reconsideration of policy, whereby most reforms were retracted, as early as 1765, in the reform process, after the revolt in Quito. Consensus seemed indeed to be able to make or break the Spanish Empire in the Americas. It was particularly in the military context that this became more obvious, as the Bourbons sought to reform the defence of their colonies against British incursions. With capital unavailable to fund professional local militias, the Crown was once against forced to turn to the creole elites, particularly in Cuba, New Granada and Peru, enticing them with titles, honours and commercial privileges which would cover the cost of the maintenance of the new regiments.[45] Once the familiar consensus-structure had been re-established, at least in the military arena, the creoles were all too happy to oblige, arming and staffing effective colonial units, making up for more than 70% of colonial military officers by the end of the 18th century.[46]
In conclusion, having examined the early period of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, it becomes clear that it would have been established at a much slower and more reduced rate without the consensus-building which took place between the conquistadors and the Amerindian elite they encountered. Moreover, in its subsequent consolidation in the 17thcentury, the dynamics of the earlier conquest were thoroughly solidified, as between Spanish authorities and the American locals, thereafter principally the creoles, there existed a substantial margin for mutual benefit which served as a basis upon which to build long-lasting and more intimate bonds, while nevertheless always trying to increase their authority at the expense of the other. Finally, with regards to the impact of the Bourbon Reforms, one can neither define it as minimal, as peninsular dominance was undoubtedly re-established in the audiencias, nor as substantial, as, despite the absolutist rhetoric laden with Enlightenment political philosophy, the reforms displayed an important degree of continuity with earlier attempts at similar changes, such as the New Laws of Carlos V aimed at cutting conquistador ambitions short, and, in the end, led to new negotiations of consensus after having tested yet again the limits of the Crown’s authority over its American territories.
Xenofon Kalogeropoulos is about to commence a DPhil in Ancient History at the University of Oxford (St. Anne's College) having graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science with an MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation.
Notes:
[1] John Lynch, The Institutional Framework of Spanish America, in Journal of Latin American studies, 1992-03, Vol.24 (S1), p.69-81 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 69.
[2] John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 131.
[3] Mónica Ricketts, Who Should Rule? Men of Arms, the Republic of Letters, and the Fall of the Spanish Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 10.
[4] Ibid., p. 11.
[5] Allan J. Kuethe, The Early Reforms of Charles III in the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1759-1776), in John R. Fisher, Allan J. Kuethe, Anthony McFarlane (eds.), Reform and Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1990), p. 28.
[6] Oudijk, Matthew Restall, Mesoamerican Conquistadors in the 16th Century, in Laura Matthew, Michel Oudijk (eds.), Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), p. 38.
[7] Susan Schroeder, The Genre of Conquest Studies, in Matthew, Oudijk (eds.), Indian Conquistadors, p. 17.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., p. 43.
[10] Ibid., p. 56.
[11] Ida Altman, Conquest, Coercion and Collaboration: Indian Allies and the Campaigns in Nueva Galicia, in Matthew, Oudijk (eds.), Indian Conquistadors, pp. 152-155.
[12] Ibid., p. 147.
[13] Oudijk, Matthew Restall, Mesoamerican Conquistadors in the 16th Century, in Matthew, Oudijk (eds.), Indian Conquistadors, pp. 46-47.
[14] Ibid., p. 21.
[15] Matthew, Whose Conquest? Nahua, Zapoteca, and Mixteca Allies in the Conquest of Central America, in Matthew, Oudijk (eds.), Indian Conquistadors, p. 112.
[16] Ibid., p. 114.
[17] Silvio Zavala, New Viewpoints on the Spanish Colonization of America, (New York: Russel & Russel, 1968), p. 70.
[18] Ibid., p. 69.
[19] John Lynch, The Institutional Framework of Spanish America, p. 71.
[20] Bernard Moses, The Establishment of Spanish Rule in America: An Introduction to the history and politics of Spanish America (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1965), p. 69.
[21] John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, p. 131.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid., p. 133.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Moses, The Establishment of Spanish Rule in America, pp 100-103.
[26] John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, p. 145.
[27] Ibid., p. 175.
[28] Silvio Zavala, New Viewpoints, p. 108.
[29] John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, p. 175.
[30] Anthony McFarlane, Alan Knight, Colombia before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics under Bourbon Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 3.
[31] Cristopher Storrs, The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy: 1665-1700, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 228-229.
[32] Ibid., p. 229.
[33] Alejandro Cañeque, The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013), p. 74.
[34] Ibid., p. 75.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ricketts, Who Should Rule?, p 10.
[37] Ibid., p. 19.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid., p. 46.
[40] Ibid., p. 20.
[41] Ibid.
[42] John Lynch, The Institutional Framework of Spanish America, p. 81.
[43] John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, pp. 355-57.
[44] McFarlane, Knight, Colombia before Independence, p. 4.
[45] Kuethe, The Early Reforms of Charles III, in Fisher, Kuethe, McFarlane (eds.), Reform and Insurrection, p. 28.
[46] Juan M. Fernandez, The Social World of the Military in Peru and New Granada, in Fisher, Kuethe, McFarlane (eds.), Reform and Insurrection, p. 57.