Government And Society In Colonial Peru

"This study of the structure of government and society in late colonial Peru is based upon detailed examination of the operation of the viceroyalty of the system of administration by intendants, partly in response to the demands for better provincial government expressed by the Túpac Amaru rebellion. Fisher examines relations between the intendants and other groups of administrators, and brings out the revolutionary implications of their attempts to stimulate municipal life and government and assesses Peru's increasing political and administrative instability upon the application of the viceroyalty of the Constitution of Cádiz."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

This study of the structure of government and society in late colonial Peru is based upon detailed examination of the operation of the viceroyalty of the system of administration by intendants, partly in response to the demands for better provincial government expressed by the Túpac Amaru rebellion. Fisher examines relations between the intendants and other groups of administrators, and brings out the revolutionary implications of their attempts to stimulate municipal life and government and assesses Peru's increasing political and administrative instability upon the application of the viceroyalty of the Constitution of Cádiz.

By the end of the eighteenth century, Peru had witnessed the decline of its once-thriving silver industry and had barely begun to recover from massive population losses due to smallpox and other diseases. At the time, it was widely believed that economic salvation was contingent upon increasing the labor force and maintaining as many healthy workers as possible. In Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru, Adam Warren presents a groundbreaking study of the primacy placed on medical care to generate population growth during this era. The Bourbon reforms of the eighteenth century shaped many of the political, economic, and social interests of Spain and its colonies. In Peru, local elites saw the reforms as an opportunity to positively transform society and its conceptions of medicine and medical institutions in the name of the Crown. Creole physicians, in particular, took advantage of Bourbon reforms to wrest control of medical treatment away from the Catholic Church, establish their own medical expertise, and create a new, secular medical culture. They asserted their new influence by treating smallpox and leprosy, by reforming medical education, and by introducing hygienic routines into local funeral rites, among other practices. Later, during the early years of independence, government officials began to usurp the power of physicians and shifted control of medical care back to the church. Creole doctors, without the support of the empire, lost much of their influence, and medical reforms ground to a halt. As Warren’s study reveals, despite falling in and out of political favor, Bourbon reforms and creole physicians were instrumental to the founding of modern medicine in Peru, and their influence can still be felt today.

This is the 2nd English edition of John Fisher’s acclaimed book. The study examines economic relations between Spain and Spanish America in the colonial period, and their implications for the economic structures of both parties, from the beginning of Spanish imperialism until the outbreak of the Spanish-American revolutions for Independence. Originally published in Spanish in 1992, the text has been fully revised for this first English edition. Fisher begins with a general overview of the economic aspects of Spanish imperialism in America until the mid-sixteenth century before considering what America was able to offer Spain (and, through her, Europe as a whole), in terms of products and resources. A detailed explanation of imperial commercial policy follows and a close examination is made of inter-colonial trade, explaining ways in which it was articulated both directly and indirectly towards trans-Atlantic structures. The final four chapters of the book deal exclusively with the Bourbon era inaugurated in 1700. Issues tackled include the Spanish defeat at the hands of the British, the impact of commercial reform upon economic life in America and Spanish-Spanish American relations on the eve of the revolutions for Independence.

This book analyses religious law in colonial India, exploring how it encouraged gender equality and a rethinking of the relationship between state and society.

Bound Lives chronicles the lived experience of race relations in northern coastal Peru during the colonial era. Rachel Sarah O'Toole examines how Andeans and Africans negotiated and employed casta, and in doing so, constructed these racial categories. Royal and viceregal authorities separated "Indians" from "blacks" by defining each to specific labor demands. Casta categories did the work of race, yet, not all casta categories did the same type of work since Andeans, Africans, and their descendants were bound by their locations within colonialism and slavery. The secular colonial legal system clearly favored indigenous populations. Andeans were afforded greater protections as "threatened" native vassals. Despite this, in the 1640s during the rise of sugar production, Andeans were driven from their assigned colonial towns and communal property by a land privatization program. Andeans did not disappear, however; they worked as artisans, muleteers, and laborers for hire. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Andeans employed their legal status as Indians to defend their prerogatives to political representation that included the policing of Africans. As rural slaves, Africans often found themselves outside the bounds of secular law and subject to the judgments of local slaveholding authorities. Africans therefore developed a rhetoric of valuation within the market and claimed new kinships to protect themselves in disputes with their captors and in slave-trading negotiations. Africans countered slaveholders' claims on their time, overt supervision of their labor, and control of their rest moments by invoking customary practices. Bound Lives offers an entirely new perspective on racial identities in colonial Peru. It highlights the tenuous interactions of colonial authorities, indigenous communities, and enslaved populations and shows how the interplay between colonial law and daily practice shaped the nature of colonialism and slavery.

This study consists of eight essays critical of the currently dominant guns and germs theories in the historiography of European colonial conquest causes. Other methods of conquest, notably communication control, were as vital as firepower and disease importation, and motives were often more important than methods.

The Andean region is perhaps the most violent and politically unstable in the Western Hemisphere. Politics in the Andes is the first comprehensive volume to assess the persistent political challenges facing Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.Arguing that Andean states and societies have been shaped by common historical forces, the contributors' comparative approach reveals how different countries have responded variously to the challenges and opportunities presented by those forces. Individual chapters are structured around themes of ethnic, regional, and gender diversity; violence and drug trafficking; and political change and democracy.Politics in the Andes offers a contemporary view of a region in crisis, providing the necessary context to link the often sensational news from the area to broader historical, political, economic, and social trends.