Political Corruption and Reform in Bourbon Spanish America

Abstract

Measured by modern standards, the system of government in eighteenth-century Spanish America was deeply and pervasively corrupted. This is at least the conclusion to be drawn from the famous report which Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa presented to the Spanish crown in 1749, under the title of ‘Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdoms of Peru’. 1 This report, like the observations on their travels which the authors had published the previous year, arose from their experience during a lengthy sojourn in South America (mainly Ecuador and Peru) between 1735 and 1746. Here, however, the similarity ended. While the memoir on their travels was for publication, the Discourse was emphatically not intended for public consumption. Written at the behest of the Secretary of State for the Indies, it gave a graphic account and made a swingeing denunciation of the corruption and misrule in Peru, and was meant only for the eyes of the king’s ministers. So relentless, indeed, was their indictment of colonial government that its authors themselves explicitly discouraged the circulation of their manuscript for fear that their work might be used against Spain by its enemies. 2 Their apprehension was not misplaced. When the Discourse was eventually published in 1826, it did serve just such purposes, for, under the more lurid title of Noticias Secretas de América , its dramatic account of corruption and misgovernment in Spain’s colonial administration provided a convenient context for understanding the contemporary movements for Spanish American independence. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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