The Bourbon Reforms and Spanish America

2019 ◽  
pp. 128-144
Keyword(s):  
Spanish America ◽  
Bourbon Reforms

scholarly journals Extranjeros in Amerika - Gesetzgebung und bourbonische Reformpolitik

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 281-305
Author(s):  
Martin Biersack
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Bourbon Reforms ◽  
The Impact

The article examines the impact of the early Bourbon reforms on the politics towards foreigners in Spanish America. It reconstructs two of the main governmental instruments to control migration: naturalization procedures and legislation on foreigners. Regarding the naturalization practice, the article describes the changes it experienced during the eighteenth century, such as the non-application of the Composición and the newly introduced instrument of the Cartas de tolerancia. Legislation aimed to close gaps by which foreigners so far had tried to avoid an expulsion from America. Both, changes in naturalization procedures and legislation finally should strengthen the king’s sovereignty concerning the legal admission of foreigners. Nevertheless, in practice the American authorities still held many resources to tolerate foreigners by their own.

State-Civil Society Cooperation and Conflict in the Spanish Empire: The Intellectual and Political Activities of the Ultramarine Consulados and Economic Societies, c. 1780–1810

2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
GABRIEL B. PAQUETTE
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Bourbon Reforms ◽  
Imperial Governance

This article analyses the intellectual and political activities of the newly-created consulados and Economic Societies in Spanish America between 1780 and 1810. It argues that these institutions decisively shaped both the formulation and implementation of metropolitan policy. Colonial elites used the consulados and Economic Societies as a vehicle to pursue licensed privilege and moderate, incremental reform in the context of a revivified, socio-economically stable Old Regime. They embraced the Bourbon reforms and used them to their advantage. Judging from consulado documents, the prevailing relationship between civil society and the state in Spanish America, at least until the late 1790s, was amicable and mutually supportive. After that time, mainly due to the disruption of Atlantic commerce, close co-operation gave way to conflict, but always within the framework of a cohesive empire. Drawing on archives in Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Spain, this essay traces the coalescence of numerous local intelligentsias that collaborated, to varying degrees, in the renovation of imperial governance and, simultaneously, incubated a robust public sphere in the nascent polities which gradually emerged after the collapse of Spanish royal authority in 1808.

Scots and Access to Spanish America from Before the Union to 1748

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Lenman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Political Life ◽  
British State ◽  
Scottish Politics ◽  
Partial Integration ◽  
The Way

This article begins with the idea that there was a vigorous political life in Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century which could focus on issues other than Jacobitism or government patronage. The article focuses on the non-dynastic issues in Scottish politics that predated the Union and which carried on into the Westminster parliament to the accompaniment of considerable activism in Scotland, and a distinctive contribution from Scottish members of both houses of the legislature. The example here examined is the burning issue of securing commercial access to the forbidden lands of Spanish America. Studying it reveals very clearly that ‘The theme of Scotland's partial integration into the British state’ and the way in which it ‘was never wholly successful’, goes back to the very start of the eighteenth century.

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