Bargaining for absolutism: A Spanish path to nation-state and empire building

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 88, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 173-209

  Irigoin, Alejandra ^a   Grafe, Regina ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 67649535203     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-2007-117     Document Type: Review

References (93)

1. John H. Elliott's recent comparison of the Spanish and British Atlantic empires, which had not been published at the time this article was written, is a powerful example of this more nuanced literature. John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1930 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2006)
2. Tulio Halperín Donghi, "Backward Looks and Forward Glimpses from a Quincentennial Vantage Point," Journal of Latin American Studies Supplement (1992): 221
3. John H. Elliott, "Empire and State in British and Spanish America," in Le Nouveau Monde, mondes nouveaux: L'expérience Américaine, ed. Serge Gruzinski and Nathan Wachtel (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations / Editions de l'Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1996), 380
4. Douglass C. North, "Institutions and Economic Growth: An Historical Introduction," World Development 17, no. 9 (1989): 1328
5. Ruth MacKay, "Lazy, Improvident People": Myth and Reality in the Writing of Spanish History (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2006), 2
6. I. A. A. Thompson, War and Government in Habsburg Spain, 1560-1620 (London: Athlone Press, 1976), especially chap. 3
7. and Ruth MacKay, The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999)
8. John H. Elliott, "A Europe of Composite Monarchies," Past and Present 137 (Nov. 1992): 48-71
9. As shown in Miguel Artola, La hacienda del Antiguo Régimen (Madrid: Alianza, 1982)
10. Juan E. Gelabert, La bolsa del rey: Rey, reino y fisco en Castilla (1598-1648) (Barcelona: Critica, 1997)
11. Maria del Carmen Angulo Teja, La hacienda española en el siglo XVIII: Las rentas provinciales (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2002)
12. Carmen Sanz Ayán, Estado, monarquía y finanzas: Estudios de historia financiera en tiempos de los Austrias (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2004)
13. Renate Pieper, La Real Hacienda bajo Fernando VI y Carlos III (1753-1788) (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1992)
14. and Anne Dubet, Hacienda, arbitrismo y negotiación política: El proyecto de los erarios públicos y montes de piedad en los siglos XVI y XVII (Valladolid: Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial, Universidad de Valladolid, 2003)
15. James D. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance, and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)
16. Helen Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns, 1516-1700 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1990)
17. Charles J. Jago, "Habsburg Absolutism and the Cortes of Castile," American Historical Review 86 (1981)
18. I. A. A. Thompson, "Absolutism in Castile," in Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. J. Miller (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990)
19. I. A. A. Thompson, "Crown and Cortes in Castile, 1590-1665," Parliaments, Estates and Representation 2, no. 1 (1982): 29-45
20. I. A. A. Thompson, "The End of the Cortes of Castile," Parliaments, Estates and Representation 4, no. 2 (1984): 125-33
21. This point is made by Colin M. MacLachlan, Spain's Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1988), chap. 1
22. John H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1986)
23. and John H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1963)
24. See Thompson, War and Government in Habsburg Spain
25. and MacKay, Limits of Royal Authority
26. "The formula's origins go back to the Roman law concept that the prince can will no injustice. The 'I obey' clause signifies the recognition by subordinates of the legitimacy of the sovereign power who, if properly informed of all circumstances, would will no wrong. The 'I do not execute' clause is the subordinate's assumption of the responsibility of postponing execution of an order until the sovereign is informed of those conditions of which he may be ignorant and without a knowledge of which an injustice may be committed." John Leddy Phelan, "Authority and Flexibility in the Spanish Imperial Bureaucracy," Administrative Science Quarterly 5, no. 1 (1960): 59
27. For the "philosophical matrix" underpinning Spain's governance see also MacLachlan, Spain's Empire in the New World, chap. 1
28. Artola, La hacienda del Antigua Régimen, chap. 4
29. See Stephan R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750 (London: Routledge, 2000)
30. Herbert S. Klein, The American Finances of the Spanish Empire: Royal Income and Expenditures in Colonial Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, 1680-1809 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1998), 2. The authors illustrate the centralizing tendency in the case of expenditure
31. Klein, American Finances of the Spanish Empire, 2
32. Klein interpreted a high correlation between the pace of spending and the trend of revenues as a sign for restraint in the empire's public expenditure. American Finances of the Spanish Empire, 7
33. Margarita Suárez, Desafíos transatlánticos: Mercaderes, banqueros y el estado en el Perú virreinal, 1600-1700 (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001)
34. and Carlos Marichal, La bancarrota del virreinato: Nueva España y la las finanzas del imperio español, 1780-1810 (Mexico: El Colegio de México / Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999)
35. There were forced donations and individual and collective contributions in wartime but voluntary loans from individuals or corporations were substantial. Marichal, La bancarrota
36. For a discussion of some of the rates see Regina Grafe and Maria Alejandra Irigoin, "The Spanish Empire and Its Legacy: Fiscal Re-distribution and Political Conflict in Colonial and Post-Colonial Spanish America," Journal of Global History 1, no. 2 (2006): 249
37. David Brading and Harry Cross, "Colonial Silver Mining: Mexico and Peru," Hispanic American Historical Review 52, no. 4 (1972): 578
38. Under the real patronato de las Indias the king, as patron of the Church of the Indies, acted as the Pope's vicar in ecclesiastical administration, so that royal agents administered ecclesiastical taxes and nominated church dignitaries. Phelan, "Authority and Flexibility," 52
39. Manuel Araya Bugueño, "Fiscalidad y economía regional: Arica 1759-1799," Chungara, Revista de Antropología Chilena 35, no. 1 (2003): 143
40. James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983), 106
41. There was no centralization in the administration of the tax collection in the empire, and instead each particular main caja related to the overarching Real Hacienda or to the contaduría mayor of the Council of the Indies. In 1605 Philip III created the first Tribunales de Cuentas in Lima, Bogotá, and Mexico to survey and to control the returns of the system, a supervisory and auditing agency, which oversaw the work of the royal treasury officials. TePaske and Klein, Royal Treasuries of the Spanish Empire, 1:viii
42. Phelan, "Authority and Flexibility," 55, 51
43. Elliott, "Empire and State," 368-69
44. For the shares see Grafe and Irigoin, "Spanish Empire," 249-50
45. Klein, American Finances of the Spanish Empire, 23, 47, 95
46. Hermes Tovar Pinzón, El Imperio y sus colonias: Las Cajas Reales de la Nueva Granada en el siglo XVI (Bogotá: Archivo General de la Nación, 1999)
47. and R. W. Patch, "Imperial Politics and Local Economy in Colonial Central America 1670-1770," Past and Present 143 (May 1994): 77-107
48. John Lynch, The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1598-1700, rev. ed. of Spain under the Habsburgs, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 81
49. Halperín Donghi, "Backward Looks," 219-34
50. See Paul Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535-1585: Precedent, Patrimonialism, and Royal Parsimony (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1980)
51. and Juan Marchena, "La financiación militar en Indias: Introducción a su estudio," Anuario de Estudios Americanos 36 (1979): 81-110
52. Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, 127
53. For a case see Allen J. Kuethe, Military Reform and Society in New Granada, 1773-1808 (Gainesville: Univ. Presses of Florida, 1978)
54. Carlos Marichal and Matilde Souto Mantecón, "Silver and Situados: New Spain and the Financing of the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean in the Eighteenth Century," Hispanic American Historical Review 74, no. 4 (1994): 587-613
55. Adolfo Meisel, "Subsidy-Led Growth in a Fortified Town: Cartagena De Indias and the Situado, 1751-1810," paper presented at Latin American Cliometrics Association, Stanford, CA, 17-18 November 2000, p. 22
56. Araya Bugueño, "Fiscalidad."
57. These included presidios in the northwest and Santa Fe, El Paso, San Buenaventura, and Cajigal, etc., in the east. Increasingly after the 1790s, San Luis Potosí distributed money to Saltillo and the presidios and colonies in Nuevo Leon, Nuevo Santander, and Texas. John J. TePaske and Herbert S. Klein, Ingresos y egresos de la Real Hacienda de Nueva España (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1986)
58. Allen J. Kuethe, "Guns, Subsidies and Commercial Privilege: Some Historical Factors in the Emergence of the Cuban National Character, 1763-1815," Cuban Studies 16 (1986)
59. Eduardo Saguier, "La conducción de los caudales de oro y plata como mecanismo de corrupción: El caso del situado asignado a Buenos Aires por las cajas reales de Potosí en el siglo XVIII," Historia 24 (1989)
60. Zacarías Moutoukias, "Power, Corruption, and Commerce: The Making of the Local Administrative Structure in Seventeenth-Century Buenos Aires," in The Atlantic Staple Trade, vol. 1, Commerce and Politics, ed. Susan Socolow (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1996)
61. Kuethe, "Guns"; Saguier, "La conducción de los caudales," 287-317
62. The annual situado out of Potosí between 1673 and 1702 averaged 110,000 pesos. Moutoukias, "Power," 787-88
63. For an example, see Juan Carlos Garavaglia, "El ritmo de la extracción de metálico desde el Río de la Plata a la Península, 1779-1783," Revista de Indias 36 (1976)
64. Marichal and Souto Mantecón, "Silver and Situados."
65. Kuethe, "Guns," 129-30, n. 16
66. Ramon de la Sagra, Historia económica, política y estadística de la isla de Cuba o sea de sus progresos en la población, la agricultura, el comercio y las rentas (Habana: Imprenta de las Viudas de Arazoza y Soler, impresoras del gobierno y capitanía general, de la Real Hacienda y de la Real Sociedad Patriótica por S.M., 1831), 278
67. Meisel, "Subsidy-Led Growth," 20. Using Meisel's estimates, the per capita addition of income from the situado was $19.00, whereas the annual wage of a laborer was about $37.00
68. Ricardo Levene, History of Argentina (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1937), 109
69. cited in R. A. Humphries, British Consular Reports on the Trade and Politics of Latin America, 1824-1826 (London: Offices of The Royal Historical Society, 1940), 29 n. 2
70. One estimate puts the annual situado at one and a half million pesos after the creation of the viceroyalty. Tulio Halperín Donghi, Revolución y guerra: Formación de una elite dirigente en la Argentina criolla (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1979), chap. 2
71. Johanna von Grafenstein, "Política de defensa de la España Borbónica en el Gran Caribe y el papel del virreinato novo hispánico" (paper presented at the 21st conference of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, 1998)
72. Kuethe, Military Reform, 83
73. and Rebecca Earle Mond, "Indian Rebellion and Bourbon Reform in Granada: Riots in Pasto, 1780-1800," Hispanic American Historical Review 73, no. 1 (1993): 99-124
74. There had been previous outbreaks of discontent in New Granada: in the 1740s as a result of the creation of the Compañía de Caracas, which would end benefits for local cacao growers from their vast contraband trade with the Dutch; in 1765 a rebellion broke out in Quito against the alcabala and the aguardiente monopoly, which ended peacefully but illustrated the prevalence of local identities before the crown's interests. Joseph Pérez, Los movimientos precursores de la emancipación en Hispanoamérica (Madrid: Alhambra, 1977)
75. Scarlett O'Phelan Godoy, "Las reformas fiscales borbónicas y su impacio en la sociedad colonial del Bajo y Alto Perú," in The Economies of Mexico and Pent during the Late Colonial Period, 1760-1810, ed. Nils Jacobson and Hans-Jürgen Puhle (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1986)
76. Riots occurred in Arequipa, Cuzco, La Paz, and Cochabamba and "were fundamentally reformist, decrying perceived abuses of power by royal officials but doing so through appeals (however violent) to the crown to redress grievances." David T. Garret, "'His Majesty's Most Loyal Vassals': The Indian Nobility and Tupac Amaru," Hispanic American Historical Review 84, no. 4 (2004): 588 and 591. Garret gives good examples for the escalation from battles in colonial courts to the Great Rebellion
77. Allen J. Kuethe and G. Douglas Inglis, "Absolutism and Enlightened Reform: Charles III, the Establishment of the Alcabala, and Commercial Reorganization in Cuba," Past and Present 109 (Nov. 1985): 118-43
78. In 1797 Cuba had been opened to neutral trade. Two years later the crown revoked the law. However, the captain general and the intendente agreed to "suspend the compliance with this decision." In fact, they not only maintained the permit to import foodstuffs but extended it to include clothing and all other articles of commerce. This incident shows clearly that the refusal to heed the orders of the Juntas de Sevilla was not an affront to their legitimacy, but quite to the contrary, this refusal was based on the same notion that had governed the relationship with the king. See de la Sagra, Historia económica, 144, 366-68
79. Joseph Pérez, La Révolution des "Comunidades" de Castille (1520-1521) (Bordeaux: Institute d'Etudes Ibériques, 1970), 515-68. The people's consent constitutes hence the true source of royal prerogative
80. Pérez, Las movimientos, 28
81. O'Phelan Godoy, "Las reformas fiscales."
82. J. Rodríguez O., Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998)
83. David Bushnell and Neill Macaulay, The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994)
84. François-Xavier Guerra, "The Spanish-American Tradition of Representation and Its European Roots," Journal of Latin American Studies 26, no. 1 (1994): 1-35, 2
85. "It began with a general frenzy of traditionalists, it was carried out in the name of historical legitimacy, of the king and religious traditions." Ibid., 1
86. David R. Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish Miracle", 1700-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 323
87. Halperín Donghi, "Backward Looks," 222
88. Bushnell and Macaulay also use the notion "ultimate power of decision making" although they do not elaborate on the constitutional implications. Bushnell and Macaulay, Emergence of Latin America, 26
89. This "marks Spain's subsequent political history." Ringrose, Spanish Miracle, 319
90. Maria Alejandra Irigoin, "Macroeconomic Aspects of Spanish American Independence: The Effects of Fiscal and Monetary Fragmentation, 1800s-1860s," Universidad Carlos III, Departamento de Historia Económica working paper, no. 03/25 (09) (2003)
91. Garret, "'His Majesty's Most Loyal Vassals'"
92. and Sergio Serulnikov, "Disputed Images of Colonialism: Spanish Rule and Indian Subversion in Northern Potosí, 1777-1780," Hispanic American Historical Review 76, no. 2 (1996): 189-226
93. For the political implications, see M. A. Irigoin, "Gresham on Horseback: The Monetary Roots of Spanish American Political Fragmentation in the Nineteenth Century," Economic History Review (forthcoming 2008)