The Institutional Framework of Colonial Spanish America

Abstract

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 Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias (1681) 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 indiano, 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.

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