Notes

Introduction

Note to Epigraph: Otero, “Apuntes para una biografía,” 336. All translations from Spanish are mine unless otherwise noted. The original: “Si un día se escribe la historia literaria y social de México, este personaje, que nacido en principios del siglo XVIII, murió en su fin (4 de Junio de 1794) viendo cuanto en él pasó, hará un gran papel, porque es una grande época la suya, y porque él fue tambien grande en ella.”

1. Gamboa, Comentarios.

2. I have chosen to use the eighteenth-century spelling and style of Gamboa’s name. It is now usually written Francisco Javier Gamboa. The first account of his life appeared shortly after his death, written by the scientist-priest-journalist José Antonio de Alzate and published in the Gacetas de literatura on December 22, 1794. One hundred years after Otero’s sketch, the legal scholar Toribio Esquivel Obregón studied Gamboa’s legal thinking in Obregón, Biografía de Don Francisco Javier Gamboa. More recently, the Mexican historian of science, Elías Trabulse, published a short biography that highlighted the Enlightenment’s influence on Gamboa’s thinking: see Trabulse, Francisco Xavier Gamboa.

3. Castañeda, Manaña Forever?, 186.

4. For example, according to Alan Knight, “Royal officials took refuge in the famous motto of colonial government: obedezco pero no cumplo (‘I obey but do not carry out’). . . . A display of formal obedience could mask a multitude of sins, and the gulf between administrative theory and practice often gaped, in colonial as in modern Mexico.” See Knight, Mexico: The Colonial Era, 61.

5. Hanke, “A Modest Proposal,” 117. The debate in the Hispanic American Historical Review between Hanke and Benjamin Keen on the Black Legend and law remains pertinent. See Keen, “The Black Legend Revisited”; Keen, “The White Legend Revisited.”

6. On popular legal culture see Cutter, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 31–43. On popular participation in criminal proceedings, see Herzog, Upholding Justice. On native engagement with Spanish justice, see Borah, Justice by Insurance; Owensby, Empire of Law; Novoa, The Protectors of Indians; Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture; Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-between; Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion. On how slaves used the legal system, see McKinley, Fractional Freedoms. On late colonial litigation, including that initiated by women against their social superiors, see Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial.

7. This is the position most associated with the new institutional economics pioneered by economic historian Douglass North. See North, Institutions. For a recent ambitious work from this school, see Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail.

8. Coatsworth, “Inequality, Institutions and Economic Growth,” 557.

9. On New Spain’s silver capitalism in general, see Tutino, Making a New World. For a convincing rebuttal of the institutional assumption that Spanish law and regulation held back economic growth see Dobado and Marrero, “The Role of the Spanish Imperial State.”

10. Tau Anzoátegui, Nuevos horizontes. See also Duve and Pihlajamaki, New Horizons in Spanish Colonial Law.

11. On the historiography reconsidering ancien régime politics and law, see Garriga, “Orden jurídico y poder político en el Antiguo Régime.” Historians reexamining colonial empires generally assume the relative weakness of colonizing powers and thus the necessity to negotiate terms of sovereignty with colonial subjects. On negotiated empires see especially Greene, “Negotiated Authorities.” On the relationship between law and colonialism, see Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures. For a convenient summary of new, mainly English-language studies on law and governance in the Spanish empire see Tutino, Mexico City, 1808, 110–17.

12. For a recent summary of recent Spanish legal historiography, see Garriga, “¿De qué hablamos los historiadores del derecho?”

13. I want to thank Alejandro Agüero, a fellow participant in Bernard Bailyn’s last International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, held at Harvard in 2010, for clarifying this idea for me. He summarizes his account of the Spanish juridical order in Agüero, “Las categorías básicas de la cultura jurisdiccional,” 19–58.

14. Quoted by Tau Anzoátegui, La ley en América hispana, 434–35.

15. On the ius commune see Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe; Stein, Roman Law in European History; Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition.

16. Tau Anzoátegui, La ley en América hispana, 18.

17. See especially Tau Anzoátegui, El poder de la costumbre.

18. Borah, Justice by Insurance, 51–55. On the judicial duties of the viceroy, see Cañeque, The King’s Living Image; Sembolini Capitani, La construcción de la autoridad; Lira, “La actividad jurisdiccional del virrey.”

19. Quoted in Garriga, “Los límites del reformismo borbónico,” 789.

20. On petitioning and legal communication see Ross, “Legal Communications and Imperial Governance”; Masters, “A Thousand Invisible Architects.”

21. See especially Tau Anzoátegui, Casuismo y sistema.

22. The first Mexican audiencia failed when its president, Nuño Beltrán de Gúzman, proved even more destructive than the man he came to subdue, Hernán Cortés. The court was reorganized in 1530.

23. Sembolini Capitani, La construcción de la autoridad, 145.

24. Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 5, chapter 3, paragraph 7. In 1971 historian Lewis Hanke remarked that the audiencia was “the most important and interesting institution in the government of the Spanish Indies.” Hanke, “A Modest Proposal,” 124. Studies of the audiencias include J. H. Parry, The Audiencia of New Galicia; Sanciñena Asurmendi, La audiencia en México; Martiré, Las audiencias y la administración de justicia en las Indias; Burkholder and Chandler, From Impotence to Authority; Gayol, Laberintos de justicia.

25. On connections between high court judges and oligarchic families in the eighteenth century, see Tutino, Mexico City, 1808, 43–46.

26. On the legal culture of Castile at the time of American colonization, see Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile. See also Pagden, “Law, Colonization, Legitimation, and the European Background.” 1–31.

27. Owensby puts the importance of negotiations between the crown and the Natives of New Spain nicely: “Spanish rule over Mexico’s Indians did not rest mainly on strict obedience. Everything from royal to viceregal orders to requests by a local corregidor could be subject to discussion and negotiation. . . . Power could only be exercised by admitting that the Indians would contest and negotiate it at every step.” Owensby, Empire of Law, 39.

28. Recent studies include Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century; Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire; Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform. See also Guimerá, El reformismo borbónico; Tandeter and Hidalgo Lehuedé, Procesos americanos hacia la redefinición colonial; Garriga, “Los límites del reformismo borbónico.”

29. On Gálvez and his family see Folguera et al., Los Gálvez de Marcharaviaya.

30. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico.

31. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 162. Stanley and Barbara Stein made a similar judgment on Gamboa: “Ostensibly, the Comentarios were a manual on silver-mining technology in New Spain, but Gamboa’s hidden agenda (on instructions from the Mexico City Consulado) was to enhance the image of Mexico City’s merchant magnates and promote the continued insulation of their economic space from the flotistas of the comercio de España at Jalapa, both during and after the ferias.” Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 229. Recently Vera Candiani, in her exceptional environmental history of colonial Mexico City, repeats this reductive view of Gamboa, calling him “a relentless ally and consultant for the merchant guild” who “in 1761 presented a vast program that would have allowed Mexican merchant capital to control mining.” Candiani, Dreaming of Dry Land, 214–15.

32. Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 5, chapter 3, paragraph 48. On Solórzano’s understanding of the role of custom in the legal order see Tau Anzoátegui, El poder de la costumbre, 311–40.

33. On the mining tribunal generally, see Howe, The Mining Guild of New Spain; Flores Clair, El Banco de avío minero novohispano.

Chapter One

Note to Epigraph: Relación de méritos, 1757, Archivo General de Indias, Indiferente General 157. Gamboa submitted his official curriculum vita to the crown in 1757 and again in 1759, part of his effort to win an audiencia posting.

1. On eighteenth-century Guadalajara see Van Young, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico.

2. Originally located in Compostela near the Pacific coast, it was moved to Guadalajara in 1560.

3. Parry, The Audiencia of New Galicia in the Sixteenth Century, 3.

4. Otero claimed that the executors of his estate may have embezzled or squandered his fortune. Otero, “Apuntes para una biografía,” 304.

5. Relación de méritos, 1757, AGI, Ind Gen, 157.

6. Relación de méritos, 1757, AGI, Ind Gen, 157.

7. Gamboa probably started his education, like most young boys at the time, with his parish priest.

8. Van Young, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, 216–19.

9. Luque Alcaide, La educación en Nueva España en el siglo XVIII, 146.

10. See Navarro, “Tradition and Scientific Change in Early Modern Spain,” 331–87.

11. On the Colegio Imperial see also Simon-Díaz, Historia del Colegio Imperial de Madrid.

12. Navarro, “Tradition and Scientific Change in Early Modern Spain,” 355–58.

13. Otero, “Apuntes para una biografía,” 322–23.

14. See Crawford, The Andean Wonder Drug.

15. Ramos Lara, Difusión e institucionalización de la mecánica newtoniana, 48–53; Sánchez-Blanco, Europa y el pensamiento español del siglo XVIII, 40–41.

16. Chiaramonte, Pensamiento de la ilustración, xv–xvi.

17. Feingold, “Preface,” ii–xi. See also Sánchez-Blanco, Europa y el pensamiento español del siglo XVIII, 108–14; Navarro, “Tradition and Scientific Change in Early Modern Spain,” 354–57.

18. Burkholder and Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers, 212.

19. See Garcidueñas, El antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 13–15.

20. Brading, “Government and Elite in Late Colonial Mexico,” 405.

21. Osores, Historia de todos los colegios de la ciudad de México desde la conquista hasta 1780, 59; Gonzalbo, Historia de la educacion en la epoca colonial, 223–25.

22. Osores, Noticias bio-bibliograficas de alumnos distinguidos del Colegio de San Pedro, San Pablo y San Ildefonso de Mexico, 199.

23. Osores, Historia de todos los colegios, 76.

24. Gonzalbo, Historia de la educacion en la epoca colonial, 106–23.

25. Acevedo, El discreto estudiante. The Jesuit priest Acevedo wrote the book in the early seventeenth century and the college reprinted it after a student disturbance at the college in 1719.

26. Acevedo, El discrete estudiante.

27. Acevedo, El discreto estudiante.

28. Molina del Villar, Por voluntad divina, 37–40.

29. Molina del Villar, Por voluntad divina, 68.

30. Molina del Villar, Por voluntad divina, 64.

31. Brading, Mexican Phoenix, Our Lady of Guadalupe, 124.

32. Molina del Villar, Por voluntad divina, 106–7.

33. On the rise of Our Lady of Guadalupe as the main figure in Mexican religion in the eighteenth century, see Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 277–87.

34. Like Gamboa, Eguiara was of Basque descent. Their paths likely crossed during Gamboa’s days as a student at San Ildefonso and certainly in the 1740s when both were active members of the Basque confraternity of Nuestra Señora de Aránzazu.

35. Gamboa and Berrio shared a love of books and science, with the later possessing one of the best collections of scientific instruments in New Spain. See Reyna, “La biblioteca de José Miguel Calixto de Berrio y Zaldívar, segundo conde de San Mateo de Valparaíso y primer marqués del Jaral de Berrio.”

36. Osores, Noticias bio-bibliograficas, 1:101–2.

37. Osores, Noticias bio-bibliograficas, 1:104–6.

38. While in Madrid representing the Consulado of Mexico, Gamboa forwarded their petition to establish the college. Gamboa to the crown, 1760, AGI, Mexico 1702. See Mayagoitia, “Los rectores del Ilustre y Real Colegio de Abogados de México,” 101–6.

39. Osores, Noticias bio-bibliograficas, 1:129.

40. Maneiro and Fabri, Vidas de mexicanos ilustres del siglo XVIII, 3–48.

41. On the riot, which took place in the main square, see Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 125–80.

42. In November 1773, when Gamboa was an alcalde del crimen, he ordered the arrest of thieves on university property. The church complained he violated their jurisdiction by doing so. He filed a long letter explaining the origin of the mixed jurisdiction of the university and said there was no doubt the audiencia had the right to arrest ordinary criminals on university property. Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE), Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS.3535, no. 11.

43. The popularity of law may have declined in the 1720s and 1730s after Francisco de Garzarón, the visitor general to New Spain in the 1710s, removed all the locally born magistrates from the Real Audiencia of Mexico for alleged corruption. See Salvador, El mérito y la estratégia, 79–80.

44. Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe, 38; Stein, Roman Law in European History, 44.

45. Stein, Roman Law in European History, 33–35.

46. For a recent English edition see Burns, ed., Las Siete Partidas.

47. Barrientos Grandón, La Cultura Jurídica en la Nueva España, 31.

48. Stein, Roman Law in European History, 61.

49. Tau Anzoátegui, Casuismo y sistema, 78–79.

50. Stein, Roman Law in European History, 64.

51. Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition, 6.

52. Stein, Roman Law in European History, 71–74.

53. On the role of juridical opinion in Spanish America, see particularly Luque Talaván, Un universo de opiniones.

54. Peter Stein offers a nice description of the main difference between civil, or Roman, law and canon law: “The civil law was concerned with the common good of man on earth and the canon law with keeping him from sin and ensuring the salvation of his immortal soul.” Stein, Roman Law in European History, 51.

55. Sánchez-Arcilla Bernal, Manual de Historia del Derecho, 497.

56. Berní Catalá, El abogado instruído en la práctica civil de España (1738), 32.

57. Quoted in Tomás y Valiente, Manual de Historia del Derecho Español, 37–39; Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces en el reinado de Carlos III, 113–19.

58. The jurist and government minister Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos expressed this attitude clearly in his speech upon entering the Real Academia de Historia. See Jovellanos, “Discurso académico en su recepción a la Real Academia de la Historia (1780).” 71–102.

59. Tau Anzoátegui, El Jurista en el Nuevo Mundo, 8–14; Pérez-Perdomo, Latin American Lawyers, 27; Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 147.

60. Esquivel Obregón, Biografía de Don Francisco Javier Gamboa, 44–45.

61. On the life of Solórzano see García Hernán, Consejero de ambos mundos.

62. Tau Anzoátegui, “Entre leyes, glosas y comentos,” 147–66.

63. On his position regarding imperialism and creole rights, see Brading, The First America, 213–27.

64. Quoted in Tau Anzoátegui, “La variedad indiana, una clave de la concepción jurídica de Juan de Solórzano,” 208.

65. Osores, Historia de todos los colegios, 138.

66. The sources on this event are muddled. The Mercurio de Mexico, an early newspaper, reported that the ceremonies took place in March 1740 but did not mention either Gamboa or Torres. Gamboa did not mention his participation in his résumé. On the other hand, the nineteenth-century historian Manuel Orozco y Berra, drawing upon an unpublished Jesuit manuscript, mentioned it in his entry on Mexico City in the 1854 Diccionario Universal de Historia y de Geografia. He gave the date as December 1739. Despite the uncertainty, especially due to Gamboa’s failure to mention it, I think it likely took place as described in the Mercurio de Mexico in 1740 and later in the manuscript cited by Orozco y Berra. On Torres, who became a prebend at the Mexico City cathedral, see Sainz, “Un retrato olvidado del salón General de Actos del Colegio de San Ildefonso,” 48–57.

67. Burkholder and Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers, 212.

68. Mesía won a first-place prize in the college’s 1748 poetry contest, in which Gamboa also participated, for his Latin epigrams. Certamen Poetico, con que la humilde lealtad y reconocida gratitud del Real, y mas antiguo Colegio de S. Ildefonso de México, Seminario de la Compañia de Jesus, celebró el dia 23 de enero del año de 1748 la exaltacion al Solio de su Augustissimo Protector.

Chapter Two

Note to Epigraph: Gamboa received as a prize in a 1748 poetry contest held at San Ildefonso a set of polished silver buckles. The inscription read: “Gamboa, Estrados, y Parnasso / Para ti lo mismo juzgo; Aqui Papinio pareces; Allá Papiniano culto. De las hevillas que llevas / Para ceñir tu cothurno, No temas el aguijón, Que es tu ingenio mas agudo.” Papinius was a first-century Roman poet and Papinian a celebrated Roman jurist of the second century.

1. Relación de méritos, 1757, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Indiferente General, 157.

2. Quoted in Tau Anzoátegui, Nuevos horizontes, 71.

3. Castro, Discursos críticos sobre las leyes y sus interpretes, 1.

4. On legal professionals in Castile see Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 52–61.

5. Premo, Enlightenment on Trial, 36.

6. Osores, Historia de todos los colegios, 23.

7. Sahagún de Arévalo Ladrón de Guevara et al., Gacetas de Mexico, vol. 3, 230.

8. Relación de méritos, 1757, AGI, Ind Gen, 157.

9. Relación de méritos, 1757, AGI, Ind Gen, 157.

10. The case is discussed in Esquivel Obregón, Biografía de Don Francisco Javier Gamboa, 103–17.

11. Esquivel Obregón, Biografía de Don Francisco Javier Gamboa, 118–19.

12. Representación del Lic. D. Francisco Xavier de Gamboa al Virrey Primero Conde de Revillagigedo, en defensa de Fr. Joseph Torrubia, Custodio de la Provincia de Filipinas, preso en el castillo del Morro de la Habana a pedimento del Vice-comisario General Fr. Gregorio López, Año 1749. Biblioteca Nacional de México. Fondo Reservado, Colección Archivo Franciscano.

13. On Torrubia see Sequeiros, “El Aparato para la Historia Natural Española del franciscano granadino fray José Torrubia (1698–1761),” 59–127.

14. For a popular account of late eighteenth-century geological knowledge in Britain, see Winchester, The Map that Changed the World.

15. Tutino, Making a New World, 36. On the importance of Chinese demand for Mexican silver, see Schell, “Silver Symbiosis,” 89–133.

16. The surviving record of the case, Gamboa’s brief to the legal advisor of the viceroy, dates from shortly after Méndez’s death. Representación jurídica que haze Don Antonio de Arrieta en el pleito que trahe con Don Manuel San Juan Santa Cruz . . . sobre restitucion de sus minas en el Real de Santa Eulalia (1743), BANC MSS M-M 529, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

17. Conquista lasted just one year in office, succumbing to dysentery on August 22, 1741.

18. Representación jurídica que haze Don Antonio de Arrieta en el pleito que trahe con Don Manuel San Juan Santa Cruz, BANC MSS M-M 529, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

19. Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 5, chapter 3, paragraphs 29–30.

20. Representación jurídica que haze Don Antonio de Arrieta en el pleito que trahe con Don Manuel San Juan Santa Cruz, BANC MSS M-M 529, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

21. Representación jurídica que haze Don Antonio de Arrieta en el pleito que trahe con Don Manuel San Juan Santa Cruz, BANC MSS M-M 529, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

22. On Romero Terreros see Couturier, The Silver King; Canterla and Tovar, Vida y obra del primer conde de Regla.

23. Couturier, The Silver King.

24. Gamboa, Comentarios, 320–21.

25. Gamboa, Comentarios, 327.

26. Couturier, The Silver King, 64–65.

27. Brading, Mexican Phoenix, 135.

28. On the secularization of the doctrinas, see O’Hara, A Flock Divided, 55–64; Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 83–86. In practice, the impact of secularization was softened. The regular orders were allowed to maintain a couple of parishes in each province for revenue purposes and to maintain their larger convents. Transfers of parishes were often delayed until the deaths of their pastors. On church-state politics in eighteenth-century New Spain see also Brading, “Tridentine Catholicism and Enlightened Despotism in Bourbon Mexico,” 1–22.

29. Reconocimiento debido a las supremas regalías de el rey nuestro señor en la fundación de la Real Insigne Colegiata de la Santísima Virgen María Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, extramuros de México, Genaro García Collection (G283), Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

30. Brading, The First America, 347.

31. Reconocimiento debido a las supremas regalías de el rey nuestro señor en la fundación de la Real Insigne Colegiata de la Santísima Virgen María Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, extramuros de México, Genaro García Collection (G283), Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

32. Gamboa, Por el coronel D. Manuel de Rivas-Cacho.

33. Gamboa, Por el coronel D. Manuel de Rivas-Cacho, 93.

34. Gamboa, Por el coronel D. Manuel de Rivas-Cacho.

35. Gamboa, Por el coronel D. Manuel de Rivas-Cacho, 116.

36. Gamboa, Por el coronel D. Manuel de Rivas-Cacho, 97.

37. Gamboa, Por el coronel D. Manuel de Rivas-Cacho, 48.

38. Rivas Cacho got into trouble a few years later. In 1759 he was briefly jailed on the order of the viceroy, the Marqués de Amarillas, after he challenged the viceroy’s right to name new officers for the consulado’s militia, of which Rivas Cacho was the presiding colonel. Once again he suffered a blow to his reputation. He received vindication, however, when Madrid sent Amarillas a reprimand for taking such arbitrary action against the elderly merchant. Letters on Militia nominations, October 1759–August 1760, AGI, Mexico 2502.

Chapter Three

Note to Epigraph: Cadalso, Cartas marruecas, letter 26, 107.

1. On the importance of trust in overseas trading in the Spanish world, see Lamikiz, Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World; and Baskes, Staying Afloat.

2. For an excellent study of this network in action, see Pescador, The New World inside a Basque Village.

3. On the fueros see Fernández Pardo, La independencia vasca; and Heiberg, The Making of the Basque Nation.

4. Baltasar de Echave, Discursos de la antiguedad de la lengua cántabra bascongada. Echave’s book was republished repeatedly in Spain and Mexico for the next two hundred years. Zaballa Beascoechea, “Mentalidad e identidad de los vascos en México, siglo XVIII,” 157–69.

5. Azcona Pastor, Possible Paradises, 2; Ruiz de Azúa y Martínez de Ezquerecocha, Vascongadas y América, 23–25.

6. Caro Baroja, La hora navarra, 60–65, 293; Stein and Stein, Silver, Trade, and War, 165.

7. Callahan, Honor, Commerce, and Industry in Eighteenth-century Spain; Caro Baroja, La hora navarra, 110–19.

8. See Caro Baroja, Los vascos, 195; Pescador, New World inside a Basque Village, xxi–xxii; Caro Baroja, La hora navarra, 20–25.

9. On the basis of their correspondence, Basques in America spoke Spanish even among themselves. Zaballa Beascoechea, “Cartas de vascos en México: vida privada y relaciones de paisanaje,” 98–99. In promoting a Basque dictionary in the early 1770s the RSBAP reminded its members: “Even though the peculiar language of the country is Basque, that of the Nation is Castilian, and therefore the native tongue of all the Spaniards.” Extractos de las juntas generales celebradas por la Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País (1771–1773), 91–101.

10. Extractos de las juntas generales celebradas por la Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País (1774–1776), 122

11. The minutes of the RSBAP are full of tributes to the social virtues of commerce. The Basque economic writer, Victor Forondo, wrote a defense of merchants in 1778, Sobre lo honroso que es la profesión del comercio. See Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces, 285.

12. Lamikiz, Trade and Trust, 30–34.

13. Jeremy Baskes, in his study of Spanish transatlantic commerce, provides the example of the far-flung Marticorena y Laurnaga clan of Navarre. One brother resided in Cadiz, another in Lima, a third in Guatemala, and the youngest in Veracruz. Meanwhile cousins involved in the business lived in Mexico City, Caracas, Veracruz, and Cadiz. Baskes, Staying Afloat, 18. For a comprehensive study of one important Basque family network, see Torales Pacheco, ed., La compañía de comercio de Francisco Ignacio de Yraeta.

14. Lamikiz, Trade and Trust, 9–14.

15. Luque Alcaide, “Asociacionismo vasco en Nueva España, 68–70.

16. Luzuriaga, Paranympho celeste.

17. Luque Alcaide, La Cofradía de Aránzazu, 40–41.

18. Luque Alcaide, “Asociacionismo vasco en Nueva España,” 71.

19. Luque Alcaide, La Cofradía de Aránzazu, 61–69.

20. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs, 59.

21. García, “Sociedad, crédito y cofradía,” 54–64.

22. Aránzazu Book of Elections, Archivo Histórico del Colegio Vizcaínas (AHCV), 006-111-015.

23. Aránzazu Book of Elections, AHCV, 006-111-015.

24. Pescador, New World inside a Basque Village, 84–91; Brading, Miners and Merchants, 76–79.

25. The fact that his father was not ordained at the time of his birth saved him from the stigma of being considered a sacrilegio. In 1746 he was able to petition successfully for legitimization.

26. Gazeta de Mexico, no. 80, 1734, AHCV, 005-V-007.

27. Echeveste specialized in trade with Asia through Acapulco. He served as rector, the chief officer of Aránzazu, in 1740. Ruiz de Azúa y Martínez de Ezquerecocha, Vascongadas y América, 222.

28. Muriel, “El Real Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola (1734–1863),” 26.

29. Constitution, 1753, AHCV, 005-V-007.

30. On Basque religiosity see Caro Baroja, La hora navarra, 47.

31. Rubio to Aldaco, September 20, 1751, AHCV, 005-V-007; Porras Muñoz, “La situación jurídica del Colegio de las Vizcaínas,” 115–24.

32. Quoted in Olavarría y Ferrari, El Real colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola, 30.

33. Decree, November 6, 1729, AHCV, 006-IV-006. See Angulo Morales, “La Real Congregación de San Ignacio de Loyola de los naturales y originarios de las tres provincias vascas en la corte de Madrid (1713–1896),”15–34; Noticia del origen, fundación, objeto y constituciones de la Real Congregación de naturales y originarios de las tres provincias vascongadas establecida bajo la advocación del glorioso San Ignacio de Loyola. Mariluz Urquijo, “El indiano en la corte, 17–18.

34. Stein and Stein, Silver, Trade, and War, 236–37, 319.

35. On Ordeñena, a native of Bilbao in Biscay, see González Caizán, “La Biblioteca de Agustín Pablo de Ordeñana,” 227–67.

36. In the late 1740s Echavarri ran afoul of the Viceroy Revillagigedo, who orchestrated his recall to Spain. The board of Aránzazu wrote to San Ignacio in May 1749 to vouch for Echavarri and ask for assistance in securing him a high judicial position in Spain. Echavarri, perhaps through the good offices of the Madrid congregation, returned to New Spain in 1752, his name cleared, and served on the Real Audiencia of Mexico until 1769, when the crown appointed him to the Council of the Indies. Aránzazu to San Ignacio, May 14, 1749, AHCV, 005-V-006. Burkholder, Biographical Dictionary of Councillors of the Indies, 36–37.

37. Aldaco to San Ignacio, June 15, 1752, AHCV, 005-V-007.

38. San Ignacio to Aldaco, January 24, 1753, AHCV, 005-V-007.

39. Ruiz de Azúa y Martínez de Ezquerecocha, Vascongadas y América, 234.

40. Ensenada to Rubio, September 1, 1753, AHCV, 005-V-007.

41. Lamikiz, Trade and Trust, 88–94.

42. The consulado sent petitions to the crown on at least three occasions, in 1744, 1747, and 1750. See instructions to the deputies, 1755, Archivo General de la Nación, (AGN), Archivo Histórico de Hacienda (AHH), 635–8.

43. On the exaggerated impact of the 1778 decree, see also Baskes, Staying Afloat, 7, 69–109.

44. The regulations on commerce in Jalapa had been issued in 1729 by Viceroy Casafuerte. They required that all merchandise landed in Veracruz to be sold at Jalapa to members of the Mexican consulado. The goods wouldn’t be moved upcountry to Mexico City until the fleet set sail from Veracruz, usually six or seven months after arrival. The crown’s main interest was the expeditious shipment of silver from New Spain to Spain. Mexican merchants also bought goods from nonmatriculated merchants in Cadiz, another violation of the rules shut down by the crown in 1729. See Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 128–29.

45. All of the consulado’s concerns were enumerated in the instructions they provided their Madrid deputies on June 8, 1755, found in AGN, AHH, 635–38.

46. See Salvucci, “Costumbres viejas, ‘hombres nuevos,’ 228–33.

47. A committee struck in 1750 to discuss trade, after the end of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, had decided to resume the fleet system to Mexico. Ferdinand’s chief minister Ensenada was unsure, thinking registros sueltos were preferable but not wanting to alienate the Consulado of Cadiz. Only after his ouster did the crown finally authorize the first fleet since the late 1730s. Llombart Rosa, Campomanes, 125.

48. Power of attorney to deputies, May 31, 1755, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Mexico 2502.

49. Valle Pavón, “Los excedentes del ramo Alcabalas,” 985–86.

50. Quoted in Olavarría y Ferrari, El Real colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola, 64.

51. Travel Authorization, August 8, 1764, AGI, Contratación, 5507, N. 1, R. 8; Domínguez Ortiz, Carlos III y la España de la Ilustración, 207.

52. On the confraternity of Guadalupe see Mariluz Urquijo, “El indiano en la Corte,” 10–38.

53. Weisser, “Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Spain,” 91–93.

54. Francisco Sánchez-Blanco argues that Spain in the first half of the eighteenth century was more intellectually open and dynamic than during the era of Charles III, usually seen as the high-water mark of the Enlightenment in Spain. See Sánchez-Blanco, Europa y el pensamiento español del siglo XVIII, 12–13.

55. For recent reevaluations of the Enlightenment, see Ferrone, The Enlightenment; Hamnett, The Enlightenment in Iberia and Ibero-America.

56. On Feijóo see Sánchez-Blanco, Europa y el pensamiento español del siglo XVIII, 43–56; López, “Aspectos específicos de la Ilustración española,” 23–39; Hamnett, The Enlightenment in Iberia and Ibero-America, 29–30.

57. Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces, 37.

58. Gamboa, Comentarios, 83.

59. François López, “El libro y su mundo,” 73–78.

60. Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces, 181.

61. Llombart Rosa, “Introducción: El pensamiento económico de la Ilustración en España (1730–1812),” 16.

62. Robert Sidney Smith, “The Wealth of Nations in Spain and Hispanic America, 1780–1830,” 104.

63. Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces, 24–28.

64. See Torales Pacheco, Ilustrados en la Nueva España.

65. See Llombart Rosa, “Introducción,” 69–70.

66. Gamboa to Bernardo de Iriarte, March 25, 1785, British Library, Egerton Manuscripts 517, pp. 162–64.

67. Tortella, “La España discreta,” 147.

68. Avaria to Arriaga, April 27, 1756, AGI, Mexico 2980. Valle Pavón suggests that Gamboa and Cotera may have greased some palms at the Council of the Indies and the Casa de Contratación. See Valle Pavón, “Los excedentes del ramo alcabalas,” 991.

69. Memorial of March 21, 1756, AGI, Mexico 2980.

70. Antonio de Ulloa, the commander of the last fleet to Veracruz in 1776, made the same argument. In a letter to Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli, his friend and ally, he wrote, “what Spain should consider is that silver and gold needs to circulate first in America, for up to five years, before it can be shipped abroad. These vassals are those processing the metal and putting it into circulation until it ships out. And even before metal is mined, it is contributing to the king’s coffers: from the alcabalas paid by the mines, from mercury, from the royal fifth or tenth, from revenue at the mint, to the tributes of Indians and even to the papal bulls sold indiscriminately to even those too ignorant to understand the nature of the religious feasts.” Quoted in Solano, Antonio de Ulloa y la Nueva España, 151–52.

71. Güemes y Horcasitas, “Relación de Don Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas a Agustín de Ahumada y Villalón (1755),” 811.

72. Güemes y Horcasitas, “Relación de Don Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas a Agustín de Ahumada y Villalón (1755),” 820.

73. Güemes y Horcasitas, “Relación de Don Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas a Agustín de Ahumada y Villalón (1755),” 825.

74. Valle Pavón, “Los excedentes del ramo alcabalas,” 975.

75. Gamboa, Comentarios, 168.

76. Valle Pavón, “Los excedentes del ramo alcabalas,” 998.

77. Gamboa, Comentarios, 168–71.

78. Brading, Miners and Merchants, 162.

79. Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 229.

80. Güemes y Horcasitas, “Relación de Don Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas a Agustín de Ahumada y Villalón (1755),” 811.

81. Campomanes, “Del beneficio de las minas,” 435. On Campomanes’s opposition to Gamboa’s plan, see Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 231–32.

82. Campomanes, “Del beneficio de las minas,” 441.

83. Campomanes, “Del beneficio de las minas,” 443.

84. Campomanes, “Del beneficio de las minas.”

Chapter Four

Note to Epigraph: Saint Isidore, considered perhaps the last great scholar of the ancient world, was the bishop of Seville from ca. 600 to 636. He compiled an encyclopedia of universal knowledge, known as the Etymologiae. He is the patron saint of computers. Quoted by Tau Anzoátegui, La ley en América hispana, 434–35.

1. Gamboa, Comentarios, prologue.

2. The Colegio Imperial included the Seminary of Nobles, an exclusive school within the college dedicated to the education of aristocratic youth. See Simon-Díaz, Historia del Colegio Imperial de Madrid.

3. Navarro, “Tradition and Scientific Change in Early Modern Spain,” 346–48. Gamboa would also have met Andrés Marcos Burriel, who in the 1750s led the effort to reorder church archives in Spain, and Esteban de Terreros, a philologist and paleographer who later wrote a quadrilingual dictionary of scientific terms in Castilian, French, Italian, and Latin. Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces, 68.

4. Pérez Melero, Minerometalurgia de la plata en México, 59.

5. Legal historian Bernardino Bravo Lira called Gamboa the last of the Baroque jurists of Spanish America. See Bravo Lira, “La Literatura Jurídica Indiana en el Barroco,” 229.

6. Gamboa, Comentarios, 73.

7. On Matienzo see Tau Anzoátegui, “El Gobierno del Perú de Juan de Matienzo.” Gamboa must have known Matienzo’s work in manuscript form since it was not published in full until the twentieth century.

8. Gamboa, Comentarios, 84.

9. Trabulse, “Francisco Xavier de Gamboa y sus Comentarios a las Ordenanzas de Minas de 1761,” 27–28.

10. Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 2, chapter 6, paragraph 23. On how diversity was reflected in law see Tau Anzoátegui, “La variedad indiana, una clave de la concepción jurídica de Juan de Solórzano”; Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 2, chapter 6, paragraph 23.

11. Gamboa, Comentarios, 467.

12. Sembolini Capitani, La construcción de la autoridad virreinal en Nueva España, 143.

13. Gamboa, Comentarios, 468–72.

14. Gamboa, Comentarios, 467–68.

15. On the administration of justice in Mexican mining see also Gómez Mendoza, “Las nociones normativas de justicia y gobierno en la minería mexicana del siglo XVIII al XIX,” 109–26.

16. Gamboa, Comentarios, 187.

17. See Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests.

18. Tutino, Making a New World, 8–14; Dobado and Marrero, “The Role of the Spanish Imperial State in the Mining-Led Growth of Bourbon Mexico’s Economy,” 860–61.

19. Dobado and Marrero, “The Role of the Spanish Imperial State in the Mining-led Growth of Bourbon Mexico’s Economy,” 862.

20. Gamboa, Comentarios, 7–8.

21. Gamboa, Comentarios, 108.

22. Gamboa, Comentarios, 230.

23. Gamboa, Comentarios, 373.

24. Gamboa, Comentarios, 83–90.

25. Gamboa, Comentarios, 95.

26. On the use of mercury to refine silver, see Guerrero, Silver by Fire, Silver by Mercury.

27. Motten, Mexican Silver and the Enlightenment, 26–27.

28. Gamboa, Comentarios, 413.

29. On this culture of state secrecy, see Cañizares-Esguerra, “Introduction,” 1–6.

30. Gamboa, Comentarios, 166.

31. Gamboa, Comentarios, 61.

32. Gamboa, Comentarios, 166.

33. Gamboa, Comentarios, 379.

34. Gamboa, Comentarios, 229–30.

35. Motten, Mexican Silver and the Enlightenment, 18.

36. Gamboa, Comentarios, 284.

37. Gamboa, Comentarios, 132.

38. Gamboa, Comentarios, 381.

39. Gamboa, Comentarios, 160.

40. Gamboa, Comentarios, 338.

41. Gamboa, Comentarios, 461.

42. Gamboa, Comentarios, 403.

43. Gamboa, Comentarios, 462.

44. José Saenz de Escobar, Geometria práctica y mecánica, divida en tres tratados, 1706, Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE), MSS. 7645.

45. Gamboa, Comentarios, prologue, unpaginated.

46. Gamboa, Comentarios, 236.

47. For an overview of metallurgy in colonial Spanish America, see Pérez Melero, Minerometalurgia de la plata en México, 69–109.

48. Gamboa, Comentarios, 407.

49. Torre Barrio y Lima, Arte del nuevo beneficio de la plata en todo genero de metales frios, y calientes.

50. Feijóo, Cartas eruditas y curiosas, vol. 2, letter 19.

51. Gamboa, Comentarios, 353.

52. On this fascinating attempt at technology transfer, see Sempat Assadourian, “La bomba de fuego de Newcomen y otros artificios de desague,” 385–57. See also Pérez Melero, Minerometalurgia de la plata en México, 56–57.

53. Gamboa, Comentarios, 359–60.

54. Gamboa, Comentarios, 360.

55. Medidas de minas y beneficio be los metales según Gamboa y otros para el uso de su dueño año de 1789, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Codex Sp 139.

56. Alzate y Ramírez, “Elogio Histórico del Señor D. Francisco Xavier de Gamboa,” 449.

57. Gamboa, Comentarios, 80.

58. Quoted in Gamboa, Comentarios, 78–79, note 39.

59. Gamboa, Comentarios, 78–79n39. In the same footnote, Gamboa quoted the arbitrista Martín González de Cellorigo, who in 1600 had already identified the bullionist fallacy. “Our Spain has its eyes so fixed on trade with the Indies, from which it gets its gold and silver, that it has given up trading with its neighbors; and if all the gold and silver that the natives of the New World have found, and go on finding, were to come to it, they would not make it as rich or powerful as it would be without them.”

60. Gamboa, Comentarios, 79.

61. Gamboa, Comentarios, 168–81.

62. Gamboa, Comentarios, 168.

63. Brading, Miners and Merchants, 162; Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 229.

64. Gamboa, Comentarios, 33.

65. Aldaco provided a foreword to a book by José Antonio Fabry, a mint official, who explained mathematically why lowering the mercury price would increase tax revenue from other sources. Fabry, Compendios a demostracion de los crecidos adelantamientos que pudiera lograr la Real Hacienda de Su Magestad mediante la rebaja en el precio de azogue.

66. Gamboa, Comentarios, 422.

67. Landázuri mentioned his early advocacy in a later opinion as contador-general of the Council of the Indies. Opinion of Landázuri, July 20, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1266.

68. Ibarra was considered one of the finest printers in all of Europe, for the quality of his paper and ink. See López, “El libro y su mundo,” 113.

69. Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces, 41–42; Domínguez Ortiz, Carlos III y la España de la Ilustración, 54–56.

70. Appointment to Sala de Crimen, April 11, 1764, Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Dirección General del Tesoro, 24–184–58.

71. Burkholder and Chandler, From Impotence to Authority, 167.

72. Travel Authorization, August 8, 1764, AGI, Contratación, 5507, N. 1, R. 8. Both of the Perón brothers would thrive in Mexico. After serving as Gamboa’s personal secretary, Manuel began a long career as a government accountant, first in the gunpowder office and then in the Mexico City mint. His brother Antonio became a mine and estate owner in Durango and served as a deputy on the Mining Tribunal. Ayarzagoitia followed his uncle into commerce and served as the executor of his estate in 1781. All three men became respected members of the Basque community in New Spain, charter members of the Mexican branch of the Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País. Torales Pacheco, Ilustrados en la Nueva España, 64, 226, 399.

73. A few months later eighty boxes of books arrived from Madrid. The Inquisition gave its approval, as was routine for the private importation of books. Unfortunately, the record does not include an inventory though it does include Gamboa’s license to read prohibited books, issued in Madrid on March 12, 1761. Permission, July 23, 1765, AGN, Inquisition, 1094, 163.

Chapter Five

Note to Epigraph: “Representación Vindicatoria,” 97–98. The probable author of this manifesto for creole rights was the oidor Antonio Joaquín de Rivadeneira, an alumnus of San Ildefonso.

1. On the obrajes in the economy of colonial Mexico, see Salvucci, Textiles and Capitalism in Mexico.

2. Residencia de Cruillas, Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Consejos 20716.

3. Burkholder and Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers, 298–99.

4. His appointment was made more in recognition of the long service of his father, Luís Manuel Fernández de Madrid, a former audiencia magistrate in Guatemala and Mexico, than his own merits as a jurist. Burkholder and Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers, 116.

5. Burkholder and Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers, 298.

6. Croix to Arriaga, February 27, 1767, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Mexico 1126.

7. See MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico, 22.

8. The other jails were managed by the municipal government, the archdiocese, the Inquisition, the royal mint, and the Acordada. The jail of the Acordada, the biggest and most feared, was the only purpose-built one. Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 88.

9. Hevia Bolaños, Curia Philipica. See also Bravo Lira, “Literatura Jurídica Indiana,” 231.

10. In Oaxaca, and perhaps in most regions some distance from the capital, even the most serious criminal cases were handled at the village level, without involvement by crown officials. Only murder, aggravated assault, and sedition had to be reported to colonial courts. See Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 74. On the informality of frontier justice see Cutter, Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 105–24.

11. On the importance of the support staff of the audiencia, see Herzog, Upholding Justice, 47–53.

12. On procuradores see Gayol, Laberintos de justicia.

13. Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 83.

14. Besides the agents directly appointed by the Sala de Crimen, the municipal government of Mexico City also commissioned constables and night watchmen (guardas de pito), who assisted the alcaldes ordinarios, the city judges. Soldiers and militia members also were called upon to police the city on occasion.

15. On criminal justice in eighteenth-century England, see the classic if controversial article Hay, “Property, Authority and the Common Law,” 17–64.

16. Scardaville, “Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial Mexico City,” 645.

17. Valle-Arizpe, Historia de la Ciudad de México segun los relatos de sus cronistas, 423.

18. Güemes y Horcasitas, “Relación de Don Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas a Agustín de Ahumada y Villalón (1755),” 814.

19. Gamboa to Cruillas, May 31, 1765, AGI, Mexico 1130.

20. Appointment to Sala de Crimen, April 11, 1764, Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Dirección General del Tesoro, 24–184–58. See also Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 5, chapter 3, paragraph 17.

21. Alencastre Noraña y Silva, “Relación dada por el Excmo. Señor Duque de Linares,” 773.

22. Gamboa to Cruillas, May 31, 1765, AGI, Mexico 1130.

23. José de Gálvez later championed the Gremio de Panaderos de Mexico, approving regulations that would have given bakers huge control over the market, at the expense of wheat farmers, millers, and independent market vendors. Gálvez on Panaderos, November 12, 1770, Real Biblioteca (RB), MS Ayala LVI/2829. The crown did not approve this very unpopular initiative.

24. Campillo y Cossío, Nuevo sistema de gobierno ecónomico para América. On whether Campillo wrote the paper attributed to him see Navarro García, “Campillo y el Nuevo sistema: Una atribución dudosa,” 22–29. See also Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, 136–38; Owensby, “Between Justice and Economics,” 143–69.

25. Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, 248.

26. Gálvez, Discurso y reflexiones de un vasallo sobre la decadencia de Nuestras Indias, RB, MS Ayala II/2816. See also Navarro García, La política americana de José de Gálvez según su “discurso y reflexiones de un vasallo.”

27. The Discurso y reflexiones de un vasallo was a typical product of eighteenth-century proyectismo. According to Kuethe and Andrien, “Proyectistas were usually self-promoters, often seeking appointments as the result of their Panglossian expositions. Most pieces contained little that was truly original or even innovative.” Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, 204.

28. Juan and Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdoms of Peru.

29. MacLachlan, Spain’s Empire in the New World, 76–77.

30. Gálvez, Discurso y reflexiones de un vasallo, RB, MS Ayala II/2816.

31. Gálvez, Discurso y reflexiones de un vasallo, RB, MS Ayala II/2816. To his credit, Gálvez admitted in his 1771 final report as visitor general that the magistrates of the audiencia, even the creoles he instinctively mistrusted, fulfilled their duties loyally. “I have not seen verified the inconveniences that I feared from their relationships and alliances with the major families of this city.” Gálvez, Informe del marqués de Sonora al virrey don Antonio Bucarely y Ursúa.

32. Gálvez to the crown, November 20, 1765, AGI, Mexico 1701.

33. Cruillas to Arriaga, March 20, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265.

34. To be sure, Cruillas might have had something to hide. There were rumors that his secretaries demanded “gratifications” before dispatching routine work and Madrid was already contemplating charges against him. Audiencia to Cruillas, February 8, 1763, Residencia de Cruillas, AHN, Consejos 20716. See also Gálvez, Informe del marqués de Sonora al virrey don Antonio Bucarely y Ursúa, xxxii.

35. Gálvez to Arriaga, March 20, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1703.

36. The bloodshed might have been much worse if the former viceroy of New Spain, the Conde de Revillagigedo, now captain general of the army, had not refused to order his troops to fire on the crowd. Domínguez Ortiz, Carlos III y la España de la Ilustración, 104–05. Revillagigedo served as an advisor to Charles and Esquilache on colonial affairs. See Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 49–50.

37. On the Madrid riot see especially López García, El Motín contra Esquilache; Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, 256–58. Lluis Roura i Aulinas argues that the popular unrest in spring 1766 was a genuinely revolutionary moment, perhaps the first sign in Europe of the rupture of the ancien régime. See Roura i Aulinas, “Expectativas y frustración bajo el reformismo borbónico,” 181.

38. The best account of the troubles of 1766 and 1767 remains Castro Gutiérrez, Nueva ley y nuevo rey. See also Tutino, Making a New World, 235–37.

39. On mine labor and the partido see Pérez Melero, Minerometalurgia de la plata en México, 27–30.

40. Bergamo, Daily Life in Colonial Mexico, 162. On the strike in Real del Monte see Ladd, The Making of a Strike; Danks, “The Labor Revolt of 1766 in the Mining Community of Real del Monte,” 143–65; Chavez Orozco, ed., Conflicto de trabajo con los mineros de Real del Monte, año de 1766.

41. See Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 115–24.

42. While on patrol in January 1766, Gamboa put down two brawls that pitted soldiers against civilians started in pulquerias. Gamboa to the crown, May 6, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1707.

43. Documents on Real del Monte, Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Civil 2166, exp. 2.

44. Aldaco had apparently lost a fortune trying to restore the Santa Brigida mine along the Vizcaína vein. See Valcárcel opinion on the Mining Tribunal, August 29, 1774, AGI, Mexico 2240; Gamboa, Comentarios, 355.

45. Gamboa, Comentarios, 337.

46. Quoted in Canterla and Tovar, Vida y Obra del primer Conde de Regla, 109.

47. Gamboa to Arriaga, February 26, 1768, AGI, Mexico 2778. Unfortunately, Terreros refused to accept Gamboa’s new labor code. He continued to insist that the partido should be abolished and soon convinced Croix and Gálvez of the same. For the next few years one of the most important mining complexes in New Spain operated well below capacity as Terreros refused to return to active management unless the partido was eliminated.

48. Croix to Sala de Crimen, September 10 and 15, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265; Sala de Crimen to Croix, September 16, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265.

49. Vagrancy decree, February 26, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1266.

50. The memorial was included in a package of reports sent to Madrid by the viceroy. Croix to Council of the Indies, November 26, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265.

51. Fabián y Fuero to Croix, October 4, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265. Fabián became unpopular with the elite of Puebla when he tried to impose greater austerity in convent life. Brading, The First America, 495–96.

52. Palacios to Croix, September 27, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265.

53. Book 2, title 17 of the Recopilación de las leyes de Indias covered the duties of the alcaldes del crimen.

54. Although all three alcaldes del crimen signed the Sala de Crimen’s correspondence, Gamboa later admitted that he was the lead author. Gamboa to Arriaga, February 26, 1768, AGI, Mexico 2668.

55. Sala de Crimen to Croix, October 14, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265.

56. Solórzano seemed to support this reading of the five-league limit. Alcaldes del crimen could only hear cases “in the places where the courts are located and within five leagues.” Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 5, chapter 5, paragraph 1.

57. Gamboa, Comentarios, 467.

58. Tau Anzoátegui, El poder de la costumbre, 102.

59. Cornide to Croix, November 22, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265.

60. Cornide was despised by opponents of the visita. One pasquinade at the time, addressed to Croix, who liked to play cards, put it this way: “Llévate a tu Cornide / ese tosco gallego / que robaba a dos manos / mientras que tú jugabas a los cientos.” In English, “Take Cornide out of here, that rude Galician, who robbed with both hands while you played card games.” Varias composiciones en verso contra Gálvez y el Marqués de Croix, Biblioteca Nacional de Epaña (BNE), MSS/20258–31.

61. Castro, Discursos críticos sobre las leyes y sus interpretes.

62. Castro, Discursos críticos sobre las leyes y sus interpretes 183.

63. On Castro’s critique of the legal order see Tau Anzoátegui, El poder de la costumbre, 105; Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces, 116–17.

64. Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 5, chapter 3, paragraph 10.

65. Tau Anzoátegui, “La variedad indiana, una clave de la concepción jurídica de Juan de Solórzano.”

66. On the Acordada see MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico; Mendoza Muñoz and D’abbadie Soto, El capitán Miguel Velázquez Lorea y el Real Tribunal de la Acordada de la Nueva España; Hidalgo Nuchera, Antes de la Acordada.

67. Las Siete Partidas, part 7, title 8, law 3.

68. Las Siete Partidas, part 7, title 14, law 8.

69. In 1755 one of the tasks assigned to Gamboa, then the consulado’s deputy in Madrid, was to seek relief for the consulado from the obligation to fund the Acordada.

70. MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico, 33–34.

71. Espinosa de los Monteros, Oración contua funebre, . . . al Theniente Coronel D. Joseph Velázquez Lorea.

72. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 98.

73. Güemes y Horcasitas, “Relación de Don Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas a Agustín de Ahumada y Villalón (1755),” 799.

74. Provisions on Illegal Liquor, August 22, 1755, AGI, Mexico 2502. In 1772, the Acordada absorbed this jurisdiction as well.

75. In 1756 the crown ratified this decision. MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico, 91. Although conflict between the two forces was frequent, the Acordada tended to concentrate on property crimes, like robbery, while the Sala de Crimen handled violent offences against persons, such as murder and rape. See Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 54.

76. Güemes y Horcasitas, “Relación de Don Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas a Agustín de Ahumada y Villalón (1755),” 814.

77. MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico, 56.

78. Sala de Crimen to Council of the Indies, November 24, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265.

79. Sala de Crimen to Croix, November 24, 1766, AGI, Mexico 1265.

80. Council’s decision, October 29, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1126. The crown attorney had recommended that the Sala de Crimen’s jurisdiction be affirmed but with the requirement that the court reduce the excessive number of lieutenants in Puebla. Fiscal’s opinion, October 8, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1265.

81. Fabián to Croix, 1768, AGN, Real Audiencia, Vol. 14, Correspondence, p. 445

82. Sala de Crimen to Croix, December 18, 1769, AGN, Real Audiencia, Vol. 14, Correspondence, p. 443.

83. Sala de Crimen to Croix, December 16, 1769, AGN, Real Audiencia, Vol. 14, Correspondence, p. 440.

84. MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico, 51.

85. MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico, 74.

86. MacLachlan, “Acordada,” 108–16.

87. MacLachlan, “Acordada,” 114–16.

88. Quoted in MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico, 34.

89. The whole matter is covered in Council of the Indies on Presidios, May 21, 1771, AGI, Mexico 1130. On presidio punishment see Mehl, Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World.

90. Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 112.

91. Sala de Crimen to the Crown, June 26, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1130.

92. On special treatment for Indians in the criminal justice system, see Uribe-Uran, “Innocent Infants or Abusive Patriarchs?” 812.

93. There was some truth to this apparently racist assumption. Sedentary Indians from the central highlands of Mexico had little exposure to the tropical diseases that flourished on the coast and were thus more likely to die. On the historical importance in America of mosquito-spread diseases like malaria and yellow fever, see McNeill, Mosquito Empires.

94. Haslip-Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 112–16.

95. Sala de Crimen to the Crown, December 23, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1707.

96. Sala de Crimen to Croix, July 8, 1768, AGN, Real Audiencia, Vol. 14, p. 178.

97. Sala de Crimen to Croix, March 9, 1769, AGN, Real Audiencia, Vol. 14, p. 394.

98. Nothing was done to fix the problem until the late 1770s when the crown finally allotted a share of pulque revenue to the Sala de Crimen as well. It also agreed to restore the collera, at least in part. Courts could resume sending convicts to bakeries and pork butchers but not to the more abusive obrajes. Opinion of the Council of the Indies, May 29, 1777, AGI, Mexico 1126.

99. Stanley and Barbara Stein concluded that an array of conservative forces, but not necessarily the Jesuits, were behind the trouble. “The coup of March 1766 suggests a wide consensus among privileged groups behind the decision to abort Esquilache’s reform policy. The colegiales in the Consejo de Castilla and its Sala de Alcaldes who precipitated the motín were reinforced by Andalusian magnates in furnishing actors, intermediaries, and advisors in the crisis. Informal and formal webs tied these groups to the secular and regular clergy, whose participation was clarified by the activity of the bishops of Cuenca and Cartagena, the Cinco Gremios Mayores, and—less visible—the Consulado de Cadiz.” Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 114. This seems a bit too conspiratorial to me and takes agency away from hungry, angry plebeians.

100. In theology the Jesuits supported the doctrine of probablism, which held that when there was a question solely of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of an action, it was permissible to follow a solidly probable opinion in favor of liberty, even if the opposing view might be more probable. This allowed the Jesuits flexibility in their worldwide missionary endeavors but in the eyes of its critics was dangerously relativistic. In philosophy the Jesuits upheld the work of Francisco Suárez, one of their own, who argued that the people had the right to rebel against tyrannical rulers. This support for notions of popular sovereignty offended regalists and absolutists. See Sánchez-Blanco, El absolutismo y las luces, 86; Tau Anzoátegui, Casuismo y sistema, 57–60.

101. There were clear anti-Semitic undertones to the accusations against the Jesuits. Their enemies saw them as greedy and arrogant cosmopolitans, who pulled secret levers of power to get their way and harbored among their ranks many conversos (converted Jews) and crypto-Jews. See Roura i Aulinas, “Expectativas y frustración bajo el reformismo borbónico,” 189–91.

102. Garcidueñas, El antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 18.

103. Decorme, La obra de los jesuitas mexicanos durante la epoca colonial, 1572–1767, vol. 1 of 2, 447–48.

104. The cabildo of Mexico City complained to Madrid about the desecration of the college, seeking to maintain it as a school. Cabildo of Mexico to Arriaga, July 27, 1767, and August 27, 1768, AGI, Mexico 1126.

105. Clavijero, “Breve descripción de la Provincia de México de la Compañia de Jesús, segun el estado en que se hallaba en año de 1767,” 297.

106. López de Priego, “Carta de un religioso de los extintos Jesuitas, a una hermana suya, religiosa del convento de Santa Catarina de la Puebla de los Angleles (1785),” 24–25.

107. Gálvez, Informe sobre las rebeliones populares de 1767 y otros documentos inéditos.

108. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 122. Similarly, David Brading judged the visitor general’s response “a watershed in Mexico’s colonial history.” Brading, The First America, 468.

109. Varias composiciones en verso contra Gálvez y el Marqués de Croix, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS/20258–31.

110. Decree by Croix on Jesuit pamphlets, November 27, 1767, AGI, Mexico 2778.

111. Remarkably, at this precise moment, Archbishop Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana, who had supported the Jesuit expulsion, presided over the long-delayed opening of the Basque school for girls, the Vizcaínas, officially named after the founder of the Jesuit order, San Ignacio de Loyola. Aránzazu to the king, September 27, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1701.

112. Lorenzana to Arriaga, December 1, 1767, AGI, Mexico 2778.

113. According to Gamboa, when he went to speak about the dangers of exposing the Native population to the rigors of the presidios, Croix’s legal advisor Cornide insulted him. Gamboa to Arriaga, February 26, 1768, AGI, Mexico 2778.

114. Croix to Arriaga, August 27, 1769, AGI, Mexico 1369.

115. Croix to Arriaga, August 27, 1769, AGI, Mexico 1369. Croix, an enthusiastic card player himself, might have just been upset that he not been invited to the visitor general’s parties.

116. Lorenzana to the crown, December 1, 1767, AGI, Mexico 2778. Lopez Portillo, a generation younger than Gamboa, was also a native of Guadalajara educated at the Jesuit college of San Ildefonso. Juan José de Eguiara y Eguren, author of the Bibliotheca mexicana (1755) mentioned Lopez Portillo as a paragon of American intellectual accomplishment. See Brading, The First America, 389.

117. Croix to Arriaga, August 27, 1769, AGI, Mexico 1369.

118. Quoted in Navarro García, “Destrucción de la oposición política,” 3.

119. Gamboa to Arriaga, February 26, 1768, AGI, Mexico 2778.

120. Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 5, chapter 10, paragraph 20.

121. Gamboa to Arriaga, February 26, 1768.

122. Opinion of Campomanes and Moñino, March 5, 1768, AGI, Mexico 2778.

123. They refer specifically to “criollos” in their report.

124. On the new Spanish tax collectors who arrived with Gálvez, who sought opportunities to enrich themselves as enthusiastically as those whom they replaced, see Salvucci, “Costumbres viejas, ‘hombres nuevos.’”

125. When Gamboa was writing the Comentarios in Madrid, Campomanes was writing a tract urging radical reforms to colonial trade, including the abolition of the Cadiz monopoly. Rodríguez de Campomanes, Reflexiones sobre el comercio español a Indias (1762). See Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 61.

126. “Representación Vindicatoria (1771),” 86.

127. “Representación Vindicatoria (1771),” 97–98.

128. David Brading has called the representation the “last grand statement of the traditional themes of creole patriotism in New Spain before the debates of 1808.” Brading, The First America, 483. See also Tutino, Mexico City, 1808, 122–26.

129. Lorenzana to Croix, July 19, 1768 and Croix to Arriaga, July 26, 1768, AGI, Mexico 2778.

130. Opinion of the Council of Castile, January 6, 1769, AGI, Mexico 2778.

131. At the same time he was preparing to leave Mexico by order of the king, he was also being considered by the Council of the Indies for a promotion in Mexico. In October 1769 he received one first-place vote in the election to replace Francisco Echevarri as oidor in the Sala de lo Civil. The position went to his Spanish-born colleague Francisco Leandro de Viana. Consultation of Cámara de Indias, October 6, 1769, AGI, Mexico 1641.

132. Gamboa to Arriaga, August 29, 1769, AGI, Mexico 2778.

133. Gamboa to Arriaga, August 29, 1769, AGI, Mexico 2778.

134. Notarized transfer between Gamboa and Meave, AGI, Mexico 2778.

135. Gamboa reported to Croix that he had to pay 2,000 pesos for a single cabin for himself and son, plus another 2,000 pesos in costs. Gamboa to Croix, November 4, 1769, AGN, Real Audiencia, Vol. 14, Correspondence 1767–68, p. 459.

136. Might Gamboa and his son have crossed the Atlantic on the premier ship of the Spanish navy, built in Havana and launched in March 1769? Or was this a humbler ship with the same name, Santisima Trinidad?

Chapter Six

Note to Epigraph: Gálvez, Informe, 1771, quoted in Howe, The Mining Guild of New Spain, 1.

1. Gálvez, “Abril 20 de 1765, Inventorio de los bienes, créditos y alhajas pertenecientes al Señor Don Joseph de Gálvez Gallardo,” 7–58.

2. A representative opinion attributing the increase to the Mining Tribunal is offered by TePaske and Brown, A New World of Gold and Silver, 77.

3. Gamboa to Arriaga, April 13, 1770, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Mexico 2778.

4. Representation, June 13, 1770, AGI, Mexico 1876. This package was included in a 1781 submission, when he was fighting his transfer to the Audiencia of Santo Domingo.

5. Urrutia to Arriaga, December 1, 1770, AGI, Mexico 2778.

6. Urrutia to Arriaga, November 27, 1771, AGI, Mexico 2778.

7. Priestley, José de Gálvez, 245–66.

8. Priestley, José de Gálvez, 278–81.

9. Reglamiento del Gremio de Panaderos de Mexico, November 12, 1770. Real Biblioteca (RB), MS Ayala LVI/2869.

10. Varias composiciones en verso contra Gálvez y el Marqués de Croix, de hacia 1771, Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE), MSS/20258–31.

11. Croix was despised by the end of his mandate, seen as a toady of Gálvez. One verse bid farewell to the viceroy this way: “Adios, Marqués de Croix / que ocupaste tu tiempo / en estar en tu cuarto / firmando, siempre, como en un barbecho.” To “firmar en barbecho” means to sign something without first reading it. Varias composiciones en verso contra Gálvez y el Marqués de Croix, de hacia 1771, BNE, MSS/20258–31.

12. On Bucareli see Priestley, José de Gálvez, 287–88; Bobb, The Viceregency of Antonio Maria Bucareli in New Spain.

13. Bucareli to Arriaga, February 22, 1772, Real Academia de la Historia, Bucareli 4308.

14. Croix to Urrutia, December 20, 1771, AGI, Mexico 2778.

15. Opinion of fiscals, April 7, 1778, AGI, Mexico 2778.

16. Permission to depart, AGI, Contratación, 5516, n. 186. Perón may have been with Gamboa since 1764, when as a teenager he traveled to New Spain with Gamboa.

17. Cámara de Indias, October 6, 1769, AGI, Mexico 1641.

18. In 1776 the crown increased the size of the audiencia from eight oidores and four alcaldes del crimen to ten and five, respectively. In 1788, however, the numbers were reduced, through attrition, back to eight and four. On the role of oidores in government see also Sanciñena Asurmendi, La Audiencia en México en el reinado de Carlos III, 44–47. Cañeque, The King’s Living Image, 65.

19. Gamboa’s representation, March 14, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1876. Romero de Terreros, “Epigrafia de la Hacienda de Xalpa,” 418–21.

20. Tutino, Making a New World, 281–87.

21. Representation by Encarnación, December 15, 1777, AGI, Mexico 1862.

22. Gamboa’s representation, March 14, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1876; Brading, The First America, 178.

23. BNE, Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3535, no. 187.

24. Gamboa’s representation, March 14, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1876.

25. BNE, Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3535, no. 294; Luque Alcaide, “Francisco Javier Gamboa y la educación del indígena en México (siglo XVIII),” 47–61.

26. Gamboa’s representation to the crown, March 14, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1876.

27. Sarría to Gálvez, May 25, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1867.

28. Sarria, Ensayo de metalurgia.

29. Instructions, March 16, 1765, quoted by Priestley, José de Gálvez, 416–17.

30. Fabry, Compendios a demostracion de los crecidos adelantamientos.

31. Gálvez, Discurso y reflexiones de un vasallo sobre la decadencia de Nuestras Indias, RB, MS Ayala II/2816.

32. Gamboa, Comentarios, 379. Borda was focused at the time on his own proposal for the rehabilitation of the Quebradilla mine in Zacatecas, which the crown approved with a package of concessions in 1768. Cédula on Quebradilla project, March 12, 1768, AGI, Mexico 2235.

33. Representation on mercury prices, March 28, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1266.

34. Relación de méritos, 1759, AGI, Ind. Gen. 158, no. 20. Landázuri proposed the construction of a second mint in Guadalajara, as had Gamboa, and lobbied for a university there, a project finally accomplished in 1792. López-Hidalgo Preciado, “Fundación de la Real Universidad de Guadalajara,” 62–67. On Landázuri, see also Bernard, Le Secrétariat d’État et le Conseil espagnol des Indes, 126–32; Burk-holder, Biographical Dictionary of Councillors of the Indies, 88–89.

35. Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 69–79.

36. Llombart Rosa, Campomanes, 130–34.

37. See Burkholder, “The Council of the Indies in the Late Eighteenth Century,” 404–23.

38. Gamboa, “Breve Noticia del origen y formación de las Perlas,” RB, MS Ayala, 2834.

39. Landázuri, “Noticia de los Minerales de Oro y Plata que contienen las Provincias de el Reyno de la Nueva España, con expresión de los nombres de las Minas principales, y de el estado, en que actualmente se hallan,” RB, MS Ayala, 2824.

40. See Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 151–53. The Steins’s view of Landázuri is not entirely consistent. On the one hand, they describe him as colonialist to the core, opposed to both manufacturing and mercury mining in New Spain. On the other hand, they admit his close ties to the merchants of Mexico City, who invested in domestic manufacturing and mining.

41. Opinion of Landázuri on unminted silver, July 20, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1266.

42. Tau Anzoátegui, Casuismo y sistema, 115.

43. On dissimulation as a legal mechanism see Tau Anzoátegui, “La disimulaión en el Derecho Indiano,” 223–43.

44. Landázuri opinion on mercury prices, July 13, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1266.

45. In the 1750s, the crown invited foreign scientists to Almadén, including the Irishman William Bowles and the German Heinrich Storr, to overhaul operations. Lowering the cost of production at Almadén and thus expanding output gave the crown the confidence to lower mercury prices in New Spain. See Motten, Mexican Silver and the Enlightenment, 7.

46. Dobado and Marrero accept that the improved mercury supply was the main factor in the growth of mining and with it the entire novohispano economy. See Dobado and Marrero, “The role of the Spanish imperial state in the mining-led growth of Bourbon Mexico’s economy,” 866–70. The crown also stimulated production by making blasting powder, another state monopoly, more available. Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, 234–36.

47. Gálvez to the crown, February 17, 1771, AGI, Mexico 1129; Council of the Indies opinion on Real del Monte, June 12, 1773, AGI, Mexico 1129.

48. Representation by Regla, Sepember 2, 1771, AGI, Mexico 1129.

49. Quoted in La administración de D. Frey Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursua, 366.

50. La administración de D. Frey Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursua, 374.

51. Opinion of Landázuri on Regla, July 19, 1772, AGI, Mexico 1129.

52. Royal cédula, July 20, 1773, AGI, Mexico 2235. At the same time, Bucareli requested that treasury officials across New Spain send to Mexico City detailed information about the mines in their districts, including ownership, production levels, mercury consumption, and fiscal revenue. For a compilation of the original reports see López Miramontes and Urrutia de Stebelski, Las minas de Nueva España en 1774.

53. Alzate y Ramírez, Asuntos varios sobre ciencias y artes, November 30, 1772.

54. Motten, Mexican Silver and the Enlightenment, 33. On Velázquez de León see Moreno, Joaquín Velázquez de León y sus trabajos científicos sobre el valle de México, 21–44.

55. Lassaga and Velázquez de León, Representación que a nombre de la Minería de esta Nueva España, hacen al Rey Nuestro Señor.

56. Lassaga and Velázquez de León, Representación que a nombre de la Minería de esta Nueva España, hacen al Rey Nuestro Señor.

57. Lassaga and Velázquez de León, Representación que a nombre de la Minería de esta Nueva España, hacen al Rey Nuestro Señor.

58. On the consulado’s role in the drainage project, see Candiani, Dreaming of Dry Land, esp. chapter six.

59. Acuerdo opinion, August 14, 1774, AGI, Mexico 2240

60. Opinion of Valcárcel, August 29, 1774, AGI, Mexico 2240

61. Lassaga to Gálvez, June 27, 1778, AGI, Mexico 2240.

62. Howe, Mining Guild of New Spain, 49.

63. Resolution of Council of the Indies, April 23, 1776, AGI, Mexico 2240.

64. Landázuri opinion, February 9, 1776, AGI, Mexico 2240.

65. Quoted in MacKay, “Lazy, Improvident People” Myth and Reality in the Writing of Spanish History, 147.

66. Llombart Rosa, “Campomanes, el economista de Carlos III,” 236–37.

67. Campomanes, “Del beneficio de las minas,” 443.

68. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 606.

69. TePaske and Brown, A New World of Gold and Silver, 77; Tutino, Making a New World, 160–64.

70. Garner and Stefanou, Economic Growth and Change in Bourbon Mexico, 36.

71. Gálvez, Informe del marqués de Sonora al virrey don Antonio Bucarely y Ursúa, 70.

72. Ordinance thirty-seven, analyzed by Gamboa, Comentarios, 323–40.

73. Audiencia representation to the crown, April 26, 1778, AGI, Mexico 2240.

74. Lassaga to Gálvez, June 27, 1778, AGI, Mexico 2240.

75. In September 1778 Antonio de Ulloa, in New Spain as commander of the last organized fleet, warned his close friend Bucareli that Gálvez was planning to elevate his brother Matías, who in his opinion was “limitadísimo, sin talentos ni instrucción.” Quoted in Solano, Antonio de Ulloa y la Nueva España, 378.

76. On Cossío see Brading, Miners and Merchants, 61–63.

77. Cossío to Gálvez, November 20, 1780, AGI, Mexico 1511.

78. Quoted in Sanciñena Asurmendi, La Audiencia en México en el reinado de Carlos III, 202.

79. See Tutino, Mexico City, 1808, 128–32. For the financing of Spain’s contribution to the United States’ independence see Valle Pavón, Donativos, préstamos y privilegios.

80. The royal order of Gamboa’s appointment was dated December 19, 1780.

81. Gamboa to the king, March 14, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1876. This submission, with eleven supporting documents, reviewed his entire career as an audiencia minister.

82. Bartolache certificate included in Gamboa’s March 1781 submission, AGI, Mexico 1876.

83. Mayorga to Gálvez, March 16, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1876.

84. Cossío to Gálvez, March 14, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1511.

85. Gamboa to Flores, April 16, 1788, AGI, Mexico 1879. Berrio died during construction of his family’s mansion in the center of Mexico City, today known as the Palacio de Iturbide and maintained as a cultural center by Citibanamex.

86. Mariana Berrio to Gálvez, January 11, 1782 AGI, Mexico 1876

87. Gamboa and Condesa de San Mateo to Gálvez, January 12, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1876.

88. Gamboa to Mayoraga, December 31, 1782, AGI, Mexico 1876. The Berrio estate case was hardly settled. The crown refused to accept the mayorazgo and the Moncadas divorced, amid mutual accusations of adultery. It was a huge scandal in the early 1790s. Revillagigedo to the king, August 31, 1792, Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Consejos, 21807.

89. Membership in the cathedral chapter was the most prestigious position open to priests in New Spain. These officers assisted and advised the bishop, handled diocesan protocol and conducted religious services in the cathedral itself. See Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 121–24.

90. Juan José de Gamboa to Gálvez, May 30, 1783, AGI, Mexico 1876.

91. Cossío to Gálvez, November 17, 1781, AGI, Mexico 1511.

92. Letter regarding tribunal’s accounts, August 12, 1786, AGI, Mexico, 2240.

93. Valdés, Gazetas de Mexico, August 11, 1784; Pérez Melero, Minerometalurgia de la plata en México, 44–52.

94. Posada to Valdés, December 30, 1788, AGI, Mexico, 2238.

95. Miners’ representation to the viceroy, August 7, 1782, AGI, Mexico, 2241.

96. Posada to Gálvez, September 2, 1786, AGI, Mexico, 2241.

97. Gamboa opinion on the Mining Tribunal, January 1, 1790, AGI, Mexico, 2238. See also Méndez Pérez, “El licenciado don Francisco Xavier de Gamboa en las Juntas de Arreglo de Minería de la Nueva España, 1789–1790,” 161–96.

98. Gamboa opinion on the Mining Tribunal, January 1, 1790, AGI, Mexico, 2242.

99. Elhuyar opinion on the Mining Tribunal, January 27, 1790, AGI, Mexico, 2242.

100. Ladrón de Guevara’s opinion, June 21, 1777, AGI, Mexico 2240.

101. Joaquín Velázquez de León to crown, May 26, 1778, Nuebas ordenanzas de minas, Hispanic Society of America, HC 336/645.

102. Howe, Mining Guild of New Spain, 62.

103. He could have been thinking about Juan Ordóñez Montalvo, a priest who headed the mining operations of the Valle Ameno family and who in 1758 had published a book about mercury refining.

104. Frederick Sonneschmidt, Descripción de los diferentes methodos que hay en este reyno de N. E. de beneficiar metales por amalgmación, manuscript, prologue, unpaginated, John Carter Brown Library.

105. This derision of local practical knowledge and the inflated expectations for the implementation of abstract scientific principles resembles modern statecraft as described by James C. Scott. See Scott, Seeing Like a State, 309–41.

106. Observations on Physics, July 30, 1787, AGI, Mexico 1878.

107. Alamán, Historia de México desde los primeros movimientos que prepararon su independencia en el año de 1808, hasta la época presente, vol. 1, 28.

108. Quoted in Howe, Mining Guild of New Spain, 383.

109. Grafe and Irigoin, “A stakeholder empire: the political economy of Spanish imperial rule in America,” 626.

110. Revillagigedo to Pedro Lorena, July 29, 1790, AGI, Mexico 2242.

111. In 1790, as part of the review of mining in New Spain, Viceroy Revillagigedo remitted to Madrid files on the concessions. The criteria used to structure concessions can be glimpsed in the opinion of José Antonio de la Cerda, a mercury official, to Pedro Lorena, October 5, 1790, AGI Mexico 2243.

112. Gamboa, Comentarios, 477–82.

Chapter Seven

Note to Epigraph: Revillagigedo to Floridablanca, August 29, 1790, AGI, Estado 20, no. 52.

1. See Garriga, “Los límites del reformismo borbónico.”

2. This argument is made by Michael Scardaville in the context of the criminal justice system of Mexico City. See Scardaville, “(Habsburg) Law and (Bourbon) Order,” 501–25.

3. Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 39.

4. Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 16.

5. Burkholder, Biographical Dictionary of Councillors of the Indies, 62.

6. Iriarte to Gamboa, December 24, 1784, British Library (BL), Egerton Manuscripts 517.

7. Gamboa to Iriarte, March 25, 1785, BL, Egerton Manuscripts 517.

8. Gamboa to Iriarte, March 25, 1785, BL, Egerton Manuscripts 517.

9. Gamboa report, March 25, 1785, BL, Egerton Manuscripts 517.

10. The slave code has been erroneously attributed to Gamboa by several authors. On Emparán’s role see Malagon Barceló, ed., Código Negro Carolino, xlv–li.

11. On the reform in Mexico City see Scardaville, “(Habsburg) Law and (Bourbon) Order.”

12. Audiencia to crown on new urban ordinances, February 25, 1786, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Santo Domingo 989.

13. Iriarte’s report, June 8, 1785, BL, Egerton Manuscripts 517.

14. Real Cédula, April 12, 1786, BL, Egerton Manuscripts 517.

15. Gamboa to Iriarte, April 25, 1787, BL, Egerton Manuscripts 517.

16. On the Haitian revolution see Dubois, Avengers of the New World.

17. In 1785 the audiencia reported to Madrid that it heard 422 cases. Ventura de Taranco to the Audiencia, June 24, 1786, AGI, Santo Domingo 991.

18. Ventura de Taranco to the Audiencia, June 24, 1786, AGI, Santo Domingo 991; Audiencia to Council, December 25, 1787, AGI, Santo Domingo 991.

19. Response of crown attorney of Council of the Indies, March 1, 1788, AGI, Santo Domingo 991.

20. Garcia to Gálvez, March 23, 1786, AGI, Santo Domingo, 989

21. Audiencia to the crown, April 25, 1786, AGI, Santo Domingo 989.

22. Gamboa to the crown, May 6, 1767, AGI, Mexico 1707.

23. Fiscal’s opinion endorsed by the Council, September 4, 1786, AGI, Santo Domingo 989.

24. Maria Manuela de Urrutia to Gálvez, December 2, 1785, AGI, Mexico 1876.

25. Burkholder and Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers, 312–13.

26. Gamboa to the king, August 25, 1787, and Opinion of the fiscal, March 31, 1788, AGI, Santo Domingo 1006.

27. Gálvez also approved the establishment of the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, for which he deserves the everlasting gratitude of historians. See Solano, “José de Gálvez: Fundador del Archivo de Indias,” 7–52.

28. See Salvucci, “Costumbres viejas, ‘hombres nuevos.’”

29. Tau Anzoátegui, “La formación y promulgación de las Leyes Indianas: En torno a una consulta del Consejo de Indias en 1794,” 148–49.

30. For the most recent accounts of the rebellion see Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion; Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes. See also Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority.

31. Matías de Gálvez served from April 1783 to October 1784 and Bernardo de Gálvez from June 1785 to November 1786.

32. Eusebio Sánchez Pareja to Gálvez, January 27, 1787, AGI, Mexico 1743.

33. Gamboa to Porlier, January 25, 1788, AGI, Mexico 1879.

34. Gamboa to Porlier, March 25, 1788, AGI, Mexico 1879.

35. Gamboa to the Audiencia, April 30, 1789, Archivo General de La Nación (AGN), Civil 23.

36. Moncada to the crown, August 16, 1794, AGI, Estado 40, no. 7. Gamboa recused himself from any ongoing legal actions relating to the estate. Revillagigedo to king, August 31, 1792, Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Consejos, 21807.

37. Gamboa to Porlier, May 27, 1788, AGI, Mexico 1879.

38. Garriga, “Los límites del reformismo borbónico,” 801–04.

39. Brading, “Nuevo plan para la mejor administración de justicia en América,” 127–38.

40. Solórzano Pereyra, Política Indiana, book 5, chapter 3, paragraph 7; Brading, “Nuevo plan,” 377.

41. Brading, “Nuevo plan,” 379.

42. Quoted in Cañeque, The King’s Living Image, 166.

43. For a revisionist interpretation of this practice, see Baskes, Indians, Merchants and Markets. See also Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 399–405.

44. Gaspar de Zuñiga, viceroy from 1595 to 1603, said that the only solution was to raise the salaries of local officials significantly so they would not have to engage in business on the side. See Borah, Justice by Insurance, 112.

45. Gálvez, Informe del marqués de Sonora al virrey don Antonio Bucarely y Ursúa, 10.

46. Herrera returned to Spain in 1787 with his young wife and served as a consejero togado on the Council of the Indies until his death in 1794. See Burkholder and Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers, 161–62; Tutino, Mexico City, 1808, 55–56.

47. Campillo y Cossío, Nuevo sistema de gobierno ecónomico para América.

48. Intendancy Plan, January 15, 1768, AGI, Ind. Gen. 1713.

49. San Juan de Piedras Alvas to Arriaga, May 24, 1768, AGI, Ind. Gen. 1713.

50. Tau Anzoátegui, “La variedad indiana, una clave de la concepción jurídica de Juan de Solórzano,” 209.

51. Yuste, “El Conde de Tepa ante la Visita de José de Gálvez,” 131.

52. Viana was likely the richest member of the audiencia, thanks to his 1771 marriage to sixteen-year-old María Josefa Rodríguez de Pedroso García y Arellano, the heiress of New Spain’s largest pulque fortune. He later served on the Council of the Indies. On Viana see Burkholder and Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers, 353–54; Tutino, Mexico City, 1808, 51–52. See also Viana Pérez, “La actividad comercial de un oidor de la Audiencia de México: Francisco Leandro de Viana,” 117–38.

53. Owensby, “Between Justice and Economics: “Indians” and Reformism in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Imperial Thought,” 152.

54. On Ulloa see Solano, La pasión de reformar.

55. Solano, Antonio de Ulloa y la Nueva España, 151–52.

56. Solano, Antonio de Ulloa y la Nueva España, 158.

57. See Stein, “Bureaucracy and Business in the Spanish Empire, 1759–1804,” 2–28.

58. Gálvez’s intervention in customs collection in Mexico City in 1767 was also undermined by the crown’s failure to pay officials decent salaries. The new men felt just as obliged to collect “gratifications” as the men whom they replaced, whom Gálvez had charged with fraud. See Salvucci, “Costumbres viejas, ‘hombres nuevos,’” 249–53.

59. Porlier’s opinion on intendancies, December 2, 1801, AGI, Ind. Gen. 886. See also Tau Anzoátegui, Casuismo y sistema, 222–23.

60. Brading, Miners and Merchants, 67, 74, 83–87.

61. Flon to Porlier, July 28, 1789, AGI, Mexico 1976.

62. Audiencia to Porlier, January 10, 1790, AGI, Mexico 1881.

63. Gamboa representation to the king, December 22, 1791, Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE), Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3535.

64. Flon to Gardoqui, June 27, 1792, AGI, Mexico 1876.

65. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Carta al excelentísimo señor don Antonio Valdés, 1789,” 274.

66. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Carta al excelentísimo señor don Antonio Valdés, 1789,” 274.

67. BNE, Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3534, no. 241.

68. Revillagigedo to Porlier, November 6, 1789, AGI, Mexico, 1782.

69. Audiencia to the king, November 26, 1789, AGI, Estado 20, no. 47.

70. Revillagigedo to crown, November 26, 1789, AGI, Estado 20, no. 47.

71. Núñez de Haro to Porlier, November 26, 1789, AGI, Mexico 1879. On the importance of public display of political authority, see Cañeque, The King’s Living Image, 120–49.

72. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Relación Reservada (1794),” 1123–24.

73. Revillagigedo to Gamboa, December 14, 1789, BNE, Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3524, no. 280.

74. Revillagigedo to Gamboa, July 14, 1790, BNE, Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3534, no. 311.

75. Gamboa to Revillagigedo, August 30, 1791, BNE, Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3524, no. 392.

76. Sedano and García Icazbalceta, Noticias de México, vol. 2, 86–88.

77. Sedano and García Icazbalceta, Noticias de México, vol. 2, 86–88.

78. Residencia of Revillagigedo II, AHN, Consejos, 20723.

79. Both carvings were described in an early work of Mexican archaeology by the novohispano polymath Antonio de León y Gama in Descripción histórica y cronológica de las dos piedras, written in 1792. See also Brading, The First America, 461–63. Both carvings occupy prominent places today in Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología. On the most recent theory on the Aztec calendar stone, see Stuart, “El emperador y el cosmos,” 20–25.

80. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Relación Reservada,” 1084–85.

81. Gamboa to Revillagigedo, September 21, 1790, BNE, Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3534, no. 337.

82. Antonio Bassoco served as the treasurer of Nuestra Señora de Aránzazu at the same time Gamboa served as the brotherhood’s rector in the mid-1770s. Ruiz de Azúa y Martínez de Ezquerecocha, Vascongadas y América, 224.

83. Revillagigedo to Gamboa, September 19, 1790, BNE, Papeles referentes a Hacienda, MSS/3534, no. 335.

84. Revillagigedo to Floridablanca, August 29, 1790, AGI, Estado 20, no. 52.

85. Revillagigedo to Floridablanca, September 30, 1790, AGI, Estado 20, no. 53.

86. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Relación Reservada,” 1041.

87. On the theater in late-eighteenth-century Mexico City, focusing on enlightenment reforms of productions, see chapter two of Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico.

88. Revillagigedo to Porlier, January 10, 1792, AGI, Mexico 1131.

89. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Relación Reservada,” 1041.

90. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Relación Reservada,” 1047.

91. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Relación Reservada,” 1050.

92. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Relación Reservada,” 1054.

93. Güemes-Pacheco y Padilla, “Relación Reservada,” 1176.

94. Brading, Miners and Merchants, 128.

95. Geneological information drawn from familysearch.org, accessed on July 2, 2019.

96. Branciforte, July 25, 1794, AGN, Correspondencia de virreyes, 179, no. 16. On the institution of the Montepío see Sanciñena Asurmendi, La Audiencia en México en el reinado de Carlos III, 73.

97. Alzate y Ramírez, “Elogio de Gamboa.”

98. Alzate y Ramírez, “Advertencia del Autor de esta Gazeta en orden al siguiente Elogio, dispuesto por el Licenciado D. Mariano Castillejos, Abogado de esta Real Audiencia e Individuo de su Ilustre y Real Colegio (1794),” 279.

99. Alzate y Ramírez, “Elogio de Gamboa,” 445.

100. Alzate y Ramírez, “Elogio de Gamboa,”445.

101. Alzate y Ramírez, “Elogio de Gamboa,” 447.

102. Alzate y Ramírez, “Elogio de Gamboa,” 451.

103. Alzate y Ramírez, “Elogio de Gamboa,” 452.

Conclusion

1. Borah, Justice by Insurance, 40.

2. In the words of Brian Owensby, “By then [1700], law had become a chief means by which individuals and communities defended and contested liberty, land and local autonomy. It served as the fulcrum for balancing community and individual tensions in criminal and civil matters. It was the weapon of choice, sword as well as shield, in disputes between Indian communities. It bridged distances between Spaniards and Indians, but it also established boundaries. It offered ordinary Indians a means of approaching a distant king whose decrees were all that stood between them and innumerable opportunists.” Owensby, Empire of Law, 296.

3. Carlos Garriga argues that the decline in the number of creoles serving on the audiencias of America was the most important change that the Bourbon reforms effected in the administration of justice. See Garriga, “Los límites del reformismo borbónico.”

4. Observations on Physics, July 30, 1787, AGI, Mexico 1878.

5. See North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance; Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail. For a convincing rebuttal of this claim, see Dobado and Marrero, “The role of the Spanish imperial state in the mining-led growth of Bourbon Mexico’s economy.”