Bourbon Reforms
[4] The reforms achieved mixed results administratively but succeeded in alienating the local elites of the Americas (who called themselves Criollos) and eventually led to the independence of all overseas dominions of the Spanish crown.
At the end of the 17th century, Spain was an ailing empire, facing declining revenues and the loss of military power, ruled by a weak king, Charles II, who left no successor.
On his deathbed, Charles willed the crown to the French-born successor, but an international conflict ensued, known as the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1702 to 1713 and pitted Austria, England, and other European countries against the French House of Bourbon.
Spain turned to France for help with the export of its goods, which was the first time in Spanish colonial history that legal trade occurred with a foreign nation.
Spain's problems with its neighbor were the biggest concern, and the Spanish Bourbons made constant short-term adjustments to colonial and increasingly, continental war-making.
The new wave of reforms included larger exploitation of resources in the colonies, increased taxes, the opening of new ports allowed to trade only with Spain, and the establishment of several state monopolies.
[15] The addition of the viceroyalties in order to compensate for challenges of distance between northern South America and Peru also came about as a result of the need to protect the vital trade routes that existed between these regions.
Additionally, in the wake of the implementation of comercio libre [es] (free internal trade) by Jose de Gálvez, merchants in Spanish America petitioned the crown for new consulados.
Furthermore, the advances Americans (Criollos) had made in the local bureaucracy in the past century and a half, usually through the sale of offices, were checked by the direct appointment of (supposedly more qualified and disinterested) Spanish officials.
Spain lost some of its primary European possessions to the Austrian Habsburgs[7] in addition to losing other territories such as the fortress of Sacramento, which brought the Portuguese in close proximity to Buenos Aires.
[10] In addition to its lost territory, Spain granted the asiento de negros, a monopoly contract on African slaves to Spanish America to Great Britain.
[20] Granting the asiento not only led to a significant loss of revenue for the Spanish Crown, it also provided channels through which British merchants could deal in contraband trade.
[25] One such strategy that proved highly profitable was the establishment of royal monopolies and trading companies as early as 1717 that controlled the production of export crops such as tobacco[26] and sugar in Cuba and cacao in Venezuela.
The overall evolution of monopoly policies suggests that the Bourbons were, in fact, quite aware of organizational problems that plague hierarchies, and that they had a solid understanding of the importance of transaction costs for the sustenance of bureaucracy.
The closing of tobacco factories and similarly perceived ‘failures’ at the end of the 18th century should be read with an understanding of the limitations of the political economy of colonialism and in light of policy changes in Madrid that happened in the context of a tumultuous Europe.
Prior to the Bourbon reforms, the practice of tax-farming allowed people, specifically members of the Creole elite, to purchase the right of tax collection from the crown.
However, as Bourbon reforms were put into effect, many colonial officials were condemned for corrupt practices, such as taking bribes and neglecting tax collection without considering the Crown's interest.
This shift to a focus on export crops and commercial agriculture further altered and limited the autonomy and functionality of the colonies, as they became resources in a system of direct extraction for the Spanish Empire.
[40] Following the disastorous loss of Havana and Manila in the 7 years war prompted the formation of a secret commission in Madrid to discuss and implement military reform.
[39] The mines had been declining due to technological issues and high costs: as tunnels deepened, flooding became easier and it became more expensive and time-consuming to extract mineral ores.
[47] Administrative reforms eliminating the miner's guild role in governance in the mine removed traditional checks and balances at the same time output was required to increase.
[47] Albeit production in Huancavelica was already in decline at the time, the collapse made the mines in Spanish America rely increasingly on quicksilver imported from Almadén in Spain.
Maroon communities on the coast of colonial Ecuador learned how Christianization became a tool for Afro-Amerindian rebels in Spain's empire and in the African diasporic world.
"While an Afro-Christian diasporic identity may have been in its formative stage during the sixteenth century, transfers of knowledge between the old world and the new were readily apparent in European interactions with Maroons on the Esmeraldas coast.
The expulsion represented aspects of liberal ideology as a need to break away from colonial past, progress and civilization as attainable objectives, education as a neutral term of religious instruction, and the separation of the Catholic Church and state.
Along this line of reasoning, historians Kenneth Andrien and Allan Kuethe argue that "claims of a Jesuit-led conspiracy allowed the crown to find a scapegoat without confronting directly the broad array of popular and conservative political forces opposed to reform".
While the above-mentioned trends can be seen when looking at the core areas of Spanish America, even at the height of the Bourbon reforms, missionaries still played an active part in the Spanish-American colonial empire.
Missionaries often were sent with presidial soldiers into the wilderness of the moving frontier as an arguably more human and, to the crown, less expensive method of converting, subjugating, and incorporating new indigenous peoples.
Although the prevalence of missionary groups might have declined in most areas, there still existed a rhythmic and constantly fluctuating relationship in which missions, the military, and civil settlement in frontier society.
In Venezuela, the movement was essentially an economic protest which the government by its response turned into a rebellion; its social base was among smaller farmers and merchants, many of them criollos, and their cry was ‘long live the King and death to the Vizcayans.
