Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Edited by
Gabriel Paquette
This new monograph series seeks to explore the complexities of the relationships
among empires, modernity and global history. In so doing, it wishes to challenge
the orthodoxy that the experience of modernity was located exclusively in
the west, and that the non-western world was brought into the modern age
through conquest, mimicry and association. To the contrary, modernity had
its origins in the interaction between the two worlds. In this sense the imperial
experience was not an adjunct to western modernization, but was constitutive
of it. Thus the origins of the defining features of modernity the bureaucratic
state, market economy, governance, and so on have to be sought in the
imperial encounter, as do the categories such as race, sexuality and citizenship
which constitute the modern individual.
This necessarily complicates perspectives on the nature of the relationships
between the western and non-western worlds, nation and empire, and centre
and periphery. To examine these issues the series presents work that is
interdisciplinary and comparative in its approach; in this respect disciplines
including economics, geography, literature, politics, intellectual history,
anthropology, science, legal studies, psychoanalysis and cultural studies have
much potential, and will all feature. Equally, we consider race, gender and
class vital categories to the study of imperial experiences.
We hope, therefore, to provide a forum for dialogues among different
modes of writing the histories of empires and the modern. Much valuable
work on empires is currently undertaken outside the western academy and has
yet to receive due attention. This is an imbalance the series intends to address
and so we are particularly interested in contributions from such scholars.
Also important to us are transnational and comparative perspectives on the
imperial experiences of western and non-western worlds.
Edited by
Gabriel Paquette
Trinity College, Cambridge
2009014723
Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Series Editors Foreword
INTRODUCTION: Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and its
Atlantic Colonies in the Long Eighteenth Century
Gabriel Paquette*
ix
xi
xvii
1
PART I Southern
Europe
and its
Atlantic
Colonies, c. 17501830: An Overview
1
23
33
41
PART
II The
Rise
of
Public Political Culture:
The Efflorescence of Civil Society and its
Connection to State Reform
5
47
63
vi
99
119
PART
III The
State
as
an
Incubator
of
Enlightenment and an Engine of Reform
10 In the House of Reform: The Bourbon Court of
Eighteenth-Century Spain
Charles C. Noel
11 Legal Despotism and Enlightened Reform in the les du Vent:
The Colonial Governments of Chevalier de Mirabeau and
Mercier de la Rivire, 17541764
Pernille Rge
12
13
145
167
183
203
229
PART
IV Political
Economy
and the
Reform
of
Society and the State
15
253
Contents
vii
271
PART
V The Limits
of
Enlightened
Reform
18
307
339
Index
389
Acknowledgments
This volume has emerged from the paper presentations, discussions, and
debates which took place during the Enlightened Reform in Southern
Europe and its Atlantic Colonies, c. 17501830 workshop that was held at
Trinity College, Cambridge in December 2007. In addition to the scholars
whose essays are published in this volume, a significant number of historians
generously participated in the workshop proceedings as speakers, discussants,
chairs, or interrogators from the audience. The ideas, concepts, and arguments
contained in this volume would be considerably weaker were it not for their
indispensable involvement. These historians are: Professor Derek Beales,
Professor Tim Blanning, Professor David Brading, Professor Paul Cheney,
Professor Richard Drayton, Professor Sir John H. Elliott, Ms. Carrie Gibson,
Dr. Maurizio Isabella, Professor Kenneth Maxwell, Professor Anthony
McFarlane, Dr. William Nelson, Dr. William OReilly, Dr. Joan-Pau Rubis,
and Professor Hamish Scott.
Many material debts were assumed during the course of both the
development and the completion of the project. Several institutions in
Cambridge generously sponsored the workshop at which this volume of
essays was conceived: the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences,
and Humanities (CRASSH), the Programme on Exchanges of Economic and
Political Ideas since 1760 based at the Centre for History and Economics
(Kings College), Trinity College, the Faculty of Historys G.M. Trevelyan
Fund, and the Centre of Latin American Studies. Beyond the Fens, the
Royal Historical Society and the British Academy offered crucial material
assistance. In addition, several of these organizations offered other forms
of valuable assistance. CRASSH provided the main venue for the meeting
and also lent its formidable logistical support to the project. The Master,
fellows, and staff of Trinity College provided workshop participants with
splendid and undoubtedly memorable hospitality. The Centre for History
and Economics sponsored, designed, and hosted a marvellous workshop
website. The support of several individuals was crucial to the projects success
and they deserve special mention: Professor David Armitage, Professor Tim
Blanning, Mrs. Hansa Chauhan, Professor Richard Drayton, Ms. Sarah
Horal, Ms. Catherine Hurley, Mr. James Lees, Ms. Inga Huld Markan,
Ms. Michelle Maciejewska, Professor Cecilia Miller, Dr. Chris Morley,
Dr. William OReilly, Professor Vijay and Mrs. Jennifer Pinch, Ms. Amy Price,
Professor Michael Proctor, Dr. Rod Pullen, Dr. Pedro Ramos Pinto, Mr. Ian
Reinhardt, Ms. Johanna Bard Richlin, Professor Emma Rothschild, Dr. David
Todd, Mr. Brian Trow, and Mr. Tony Weir. I also thank my former students at
Harvard University who survived my seminar Reform and its Discontents in
the Southern Atlantic World and, more importantly, enthusiastically engaged
with the historiography of enlightened reform.
As editor, I extend my appreciation to Professor Philippa Levine and
Dr. John Marriot for selecting this volume for publication in the Empires
and the Making of the Modern World, 16502000 series and for their kind,
eminently helpful suggestions and guidance at each stage of this process.
Mr. Tom Gray and Mrs. Emily Ruskell of Ashgate have been extraordinarily
patient and I appreciate their timely assistance and sage counsel. I also offer
my gratitude to the two anonymous, expert peer reviewers for their astute,
thorough comments and criticism which improved the volume immensely,
not least my own essays.
The publication of this book has been made possible by a grant from the
Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research
(University of London). The College Council of Trinity College provided
a further subvention which enhanced additional features of the books
production. I thank both the Scouloudi Foundation and Trinity College for
their generous support of this project.
I thank the contributors to this volume for believing in the project from
its inaugural stirrings until its completion and, most importantly, for offering
such stimulating essays for publication. They have made the task of editing
this book both a joy and a memorable intellectual experience.
Gabriel Paquette
Cambridge, Massachusetts
21 September 2009
Notes on Contributors
Christopher Peter Albi teaches Latin American history at Trinity University
in San Antonio, Texas. He received his B.A. from the University of Manitoba,
his law degree from the University of Toronto, and his Ph.D. in 2009 from
the University of Texas at Austin. His current research interest is legal culture
in colonial Mexico.
Kenneth J. Andrien is Humanities Distinguished Professor in History at
Ohio State University. He received his B.A. at Trinity College and his M.A.
and Ph.D. degrees at Duke University. He is the author or editor of six books
and numerous articles dealing with the Spanish American Empire, focusing
primarily on the Andean region.
Francisco Bethencourt is currently Charles Boxer Professor of History at
Kings College London. He was director of the National Library of Portugal
(19961998) and director of the Gulbenkian Foundation Cultural Centre
in Paris (19992004). He taught at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (1982
1998). He obtained his Ph.D. at the European University Institute, Florence
(1992). He co-edited Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 14001800 (2007) and
Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 14001700 (2007). His
main publications are LInquisition lpoque moderne. Espagne, Portugal et
Italie, XVeXIXe sicles (1995, followed by Portuguese, Brazilian and Spanish
editions, plus a forthcoming English edition), and as co-editor Histria da
Expanso Portuguesa, 5 vols (19981999). He is currently working on the
history of race relations and racism in the Atlantic world, 15001800.
Matthew Brown is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University
of Bristol, the editor of Simn Bolvar: The Bolivarian Revolution (2009) and
Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital (2008),
and the author of Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simn Bolvar,
Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (2006). Before Bristol he
held fellowships at the European University Institute in Florence and the
Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville.
xii
Notes on Contributors
xiii
xiv
Notes on Contributors
xv
the western Mediterranean and Italy in the generation after the War of the
Spanish Succession.
Luiz Carlos Villalta is a professor of History at the Universidade Federal de
Minas Gerais (U.F.M.G.). He received his doctorate in Social History from
the Universidade de So Paulo. His research interests include: censorship,
libraries, reading practices and political movements in the Luso-Brazilian
world in the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Named a Productivity Scholar by the Brazilian National Council of Scientific
Development (CNPq), he participated in the research project Ways of the
Novel in Brazil 18th and 19th Centuries (Caminhos do Romance no Brasil
Sculos XVIII e XIX; http://www.caminhosdoromance.iel.unicamp.br), coedited the book As Minas Setecentistas (2 vols, 2007), and wrote 17891808:
O Imprio Luso-Brasileiro e os Brasis (2000), in addition to authoring many
chapters, articles and essays in a variety of scholarly journals and books
published in Brazil, Portugal, Spain and France.
xviii
with other European empires to a far greater extent than the British Atlantic
in the eighteenth century, that France is also included in the agenda.
Such perspectives open up exciting avenues of inquiry for historians, for at
stake here is the integrity of the notion of the European Enlightenment, the
geopolitics of modernization, and therefore the periodization of modernity. In
the longer term, we can dare to imagine that by integrating also the experience
of European expansion to the East a yet more complete and satisfying account
of colonial modernity will emerge.
Posing the larger question of what shapes politics and policy, these
diverse essays which bring into focus hitherto neglected sites for studying
eighteenth-century politics draw out the webs and threads which linked
Southern Europe and its empires through cross-national collaboration and
an increasingly international cultural capital. Bringing together the strands
of political, cultural and imperial history, Paquettes volume pushes the
boundaries for both metropolitan and imperial histories in intriguing ways.
Philippa Levine and John Marriott
INTRODUCTION
in the long eighteenth century? And how were these new policies, and the
ideas that underpinned them, interpreted and implemented by magistrates,
intendants, and other agents of local government? The conclusions reached
by historians who have researched these types of questions have been wideranging and hotly contested. Some scholars even cast doubt on the claim
that government policy was affected at all by enlightenment thought, no
matter how this capacious category is defined. They portray the apparatuses
of political power as hostile or at least impervious to, instead of permeated
and shaped by, new currents of thought. Enlightened reform, then, is hardly
an ossified concept, but rather one whose features and contours continue to
arouse fierce debate in contemporary scholarship.
The essays in this volume reappraise the utility of enlightened reform, a
term which encompasses and subsumes the well-established sub-categories of
enlightened absolutism and enlightened despotism, as an organizing concept
for the study of Southern Europe states and their Atlantic empires in the
period 17501830. This type of analysis has rarely occurred in a systematic
way. It has, perhaps, been assumed that models based on the evidence from
certain regions are applicable universally. The lions share of the existing
scholarship has considered the concept of enlightened reform in the context of
developments in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Southern Europe,
let alone Portuguese, Spanish, and French America, has largely been ignored
or relegated to the historiographical periphery. This tendency undoubtedly
For an indispensable review of the historiography of enlightened absolutism,
see H.M. Scott, The Problem of Enlightened Absolutism, in Scott (ed.), Enlightened
Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Late Eighteenth-Century Europe (Basingstoke, 1990).
In the case of Spain, for example, one historian adhering to this view is Francisco
Snchez Blanco, particularly his El Absolutismo y las Luces en el Reinado de Carlos III
(Madrid, 2002).
In addition to the essays and bibliographical references in H.M. Scotts edited
volume, see, for example, Derek Beales, Joseph II: In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741
1780 (Cambridge, 1987); and Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police-State: Social and
Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia (New Haven and London,
1983).
Though Southern Europe and its Atlantic colonies have been largely marginalized
in historiography, there is no paucity of books which engage with the concept in one
form or another. Among the most outstanding are: Richard Herr, The Eighteenth Century
Revolution in Spain (Princeton, 1958); Franco Venturi, Settecento Riformatore (5 vols,
Turin, 196990); D.A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico (Cambridge,
1971); Kenneth Maxwell, Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal 17501808
(Cambridge, 1973) and Maxwell, Pombal: Paradox of the Enlightenment (Cambridge,
1995); Carlo Capra, Il Settecento, in Capra and Domenico Sella (eds), Il Ducato di Milano
Introduction
The absence of studies that integrate the histories of European states and
their overseas colonies, too, is glaring. In particular, few historians have sought
to show how European and ultramarine reforms were fundamentally, and
inextricably, linked and how the rhythm, direction, and scope of metropolitan
reform was influenced, often decisively, by colonial affairs. The unfortunate
result of both the prevailing consensus concerning the enlightenments
diffusion from core to periphery and the Europe-centered approach to
reform has been to shroud, discard, or portray as anomalous many aspects of
the Southern European and extra-European past.
This volume aims to redress these imbalances and to fill these lacunae by
presenting a series of case studies that bring Southern Europe and its Atlantic
colonies both under the same analytical lens and fully into the historiographical
mainstream. As a result, the contributors to this volume seek to broaden and
dal 1535 al 1796 (Turin, 1984); Giuseppe Galasso, La Filosofa in Soccorso de Governi:
La Cultura Napoletana del Settecento (Naples, 1989); Anthony McFarlane, Colombia Before
Independence (Cambridge, 1993); and Jos Lus Cardoso (ed.), A Economia Poltica e os
Dilemas do Imprio Luso-Brasileiro (17901822) (Lisbon, 2001).
Carla Hesse, Towards a New Topography of Enlightenment, European Review
of History, 13:3 (2006): 500; As Richard Butterwick has pointed out, those who ignore
the enlightenment on the periphery may run the risk of missing important aspects of the
enlightenment as a whole: a flash of light can be disorienting, even blinding at its source.
Projected, refracted and filtered, light can be clearer, and its effects more easily analyzed,
at a distance, from the peripheries of the illuminated space. See Butterwick, Peripheries
of Enlightenment: an Introduction, in Butterwick, Simon Davies and Gabriel SnchezEspinosa (eds), Peripheries of the Enlightenment Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth
Century (Oxford, 2008), p. 6.
The exceptions, of course, are notable: Jeremy Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution
in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton, 2006); Jorge Caizares-Esguerra, How to Write the
History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century
Atlantic World (Stanford, 2001); Maxwell, Conflicts and Conspiracies; Stanley J. Stein and
Barbara H. Stein, Silver, Trade and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern
Europe (Baltimore and London, 2000) and Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the
Age of Charles III, 17591789 (Baltimore and London, 2003).
Introduction
being two self-contained political and cultural worlds in the long eighteenth
century, can only be understood fully when their histories are fused.
Treating Southern Europe and its overseas appendages as a single unit of
analysis is not a choice guided solely by geographic and linguistic convenience.
It rather reflects the prevalence of shared assumptions, as well as common
threads, connecting the European states and ultramarine territories to one
another. A broad consensus existed in Southern Europe. As Derek Beales has
argued, a system in which the monarch possessed the full legislative power,
under whatever name, was widely regarded as the best form of government
and the best hope of securing rational reforms.11 In addition to this shared
conviction, there were at least three types of links that make comparative
study both possible and fruitful. The first type was dynastic and diplomatic.
For example, not only did the Bourbons sit on the thrones of France, Naples
and Spain, but Charles III of Spain had ruled at Naples for twenty-five years
before moving to Madrid in 1759.12 Even after his accession to the Spanish
throne, Charles brought many of his Neapolitan advisors with him to Madrid
and remained in constant communication with Bernardo Tanucci, his former
chief advisor in Naples.13 The so-called Family Compact between Bourbon
monarchs of Spain and France, concluded in 1761, was a factor in the final
phase of the Seven Years War and then again during the American War of
Independence (17751783).14 Furthermore, the ministers of Portugal, Spain,
France, Naples, and Parma collaborated intimately in the expulsion of the
Jesuits from their respective states, both American and European, in the 1750s
and 1760s and cooperated as they sought the Societys suppression.15 These
episodes, and others, suggest an elevated level of interaction, cooperation,
and mutual influence on both the spheres of international diplomacy and
domestic policy making.
Derek Beales, Philosophical Kingship and Enlightened Despotism, in Mark
Goldie and Robert Wokler (eds), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political
Thought (Cambridge, 2006), p. 522.
12
Anna Maria Rao, Carlos de Borbn en Npoles, Trienio: Ilustracin y Liberalismo
[Madrid], 24 (1994): 541.
13
On Tanucci, see the special issue Bernardo Tanucci. La Corte, Il Paese, 1730
1780: Atti del Convegno. Catania 1012 Oct. 1985, Archivio Storico per la Siciliana
Orientale [Catania], 84 (1988).
14
H.M. Scott, The Birth of the Great Power System, 17401815 (Harlow, 2006), esp.
chs 4, 8.
15
H.M. Scott, Religion and Realpolitik: The Duc de Choiseul, the Bourbon Family
Compact, and the Attack on the Society of Jesus, 17581775, International History
Review, 25:1 (2003): 3762.
11
Introduction
the Iberian states and France often came into prolonged and extensive contact
where colonial affairs and oceanic commerce were involved. Not only did
French merchants exercise remarkable influence in Cdiz, Spains chief
maritime port,21 but Bordelais slavers would also insinuate themselves in the
littorals of Portuguese-claimed Mozambique and Angola.22 More generally,
France and the Iberian states were forced to meet the following challenges:
colonial administration and far-flung economies built around the extraction
of precious metals and export-oriented commodities; the accommodation of
indigenous peoples and a rising tide of discontent; the slave trade, chattel
slavery and the spectre of revolt; autonomy-seeking colonists of European
descent; the regulation of oceanic commerce and emigration schemes; and
clashes arising from contact between free-wheeling merchants of diverse flags
in distant precincts of the earth. Policy-makers in European states without
empires, with certain crucial exceptions, could avoid such subjects.23
No single historian, working alone, could write a history that did justice
to the complex issues involved in studying the intersection of enlightenment
ideas and policy-making in Ibero-America, Brazil, France, Italy, Portugal, and
Spain in the long eighteenth century. The chronological and geographical
breadth, social and economic complexity, and political heterogeneity
appear to conspire to frustrate efforts at generalization across national and
geographical boundaries, thus accelerating the trend toward historiographical
fragmentation. Local factors and conditions, of course, exercised a powerful
influence. Historians must appreciate the local adaptation of cosmopolitan
themes and regional needs and traditions.24 Notwithstanding this recognition,
the contributors to this volume have sought to identify and describe patterns,
the English. She concludes that there were indeed innumerable connections between the
oceanic or colonial world and the interior France, see Rothschild, A Horrible Tragedy in
the French Atlantic, Past & Present, 192 (2006): 69, 71, 107.
21
Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, esp. ch 10.
22
Richard Drayton, The Globalisation of France: Provincial Cities and French
Expansion, c. 15001800, History of European Ideas, 34 (2008): 429.
23
Though it would be intriguing to consider to what extent policies in the Atlantic
colonies of Portugal, France and Spain resembled the new territories within Europe,
particularly Corsica and, after 17723, Galicia. Furthermore, it could be fruitful to
examine the similar features of population expansion schemes pursued in places like
Patagonia not only with the Nuevas Poblaciones of Southern Spain, but also together
with the internal colonization initiatives undertaken in Catherine the Greats Russia. I
am grateful to Professor H.M. Scott for pushing me to think along these lines. Personal
communication with the author, 12 August 2008.
24
Till Wahnbaeck, Luxury and Public Happiness: Political Economy in the Italian
Enlightenment (Oxford, 2004), p. 193.
Introduction
Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain
and Spanish America (New Haven and London, 2003); Laurent Dubois has rightly argued
that to understand the Atlantic as an integrated intellectual space is the only way
to destabilize the still strong, at times seemingly unmovable, presumption that Europe
and European colonists were the exclusive agents of democratic theory. Instead we might
understand more about the complex and contradictory inheritances of the enlightenment if
we explore the possibility that it was crafted not only in Europe but also in the Caribbean.
See Dubois, An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the
French Atlantic, Social History, 31:1 (2006): 7.
29
One of the major contributions of scholarship informed by postcolonial theory has
been to reveal that metropolitan ambitions were never unilaterally imposed in colonies. As
Gyan Prakash argues, colonial categories were never instituted without their dislocation
and transformation colonial power [was] a form of transaction and translation. See
Prakash, After Colonialism, in Prakash (ed.), After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and
Postcolonial Displacements (Princeton, 1995), p. 3; on the relevance of postcolonialism to
Latin America, see Fernando Coronil, Latin American Postcolonial Studies and Global
Decolonization, in Neil Lazarus (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary
Studies (Cambridge, 2004).
30
Leo Gershoy, From Despotism to Revolution 17631789 (New York, 1944),
p. 318.
28
10
policies which were seldom genuinely new and frequently selfish.31 These
appraisals undoubtedly have presented a challenge to which earlier generations
of historians were compelled to respond.
H.M. Scott has argued convincingly that the Enlightenment should be
interpreted as the intellectual context within which political reforms were
fashioned, not the direct inspiration of specific legislative acts. Enlightened
reform, in Scotts view, is a matter of mental attitudes, not of trying to plant
physiocratic doctrines in foreign soils.32 Furthermore, as Alexander Grab
has shown, many different strands of enlightenment thought were often
commingled, thus complicating the identification of particular influences in
the making of policy.33 These insights serve as a point of departure for the
contributors to this volume. A more flexible approach to enlightened reform
does not demand that the historian identify an exact, discernible trace of a
particular tract of political philosophy on a discrete policy measure. Nor does
it necessitate identifying the direct influence of an individual monarch in the
pursuit of specific reform initiatives, though many examples of this sort could
be found.34 It rather encourages the reconstruction of the broad intellectual
milieux in which both texts and policies were produced.
Yet even as the enlightenments relation to reform has been revised,
historians have come to disagree about the nature of the enlightenment itself.
As a monolithic Enlightenment has been undermined and a multiplicity
of enlightenments as vital in Sweden as in France, as robust in Valencia
as in Madrid uncovered, some scholars have noted a scattering effect
which may deprive the category of enlightenment of real analytical weight.35
M.S. Anderson, Historians and Eighteenth-Century Europe 17151789 (Oxford,
1979), pp. 12022, 131; N.B. later editions of Andersons Europe in the Eighteenth Century,
1713-83 reflect a more positive appraisal of the concept.
32
Scott, The Problem of Enlightened Absolutism, pp. 1718. Though, interestingly,
T.J. Hochstrasser has demonstrated how physiocracy was exported as far afield as India.
See his Physiocracy and the Politics of Laissez-Faire, in Goldie and Wokler (eds), The
Cambridge History, pp. 43841.
33
Alexander Grab, The Politics of Subsistence: The Liberalization of Grain
Commerce in Austrian Lombardy under Enlightened Despotism, Journal of Modern
History, 57:2 (1985): 205.
34
Professor Derek Beales has kindly pointed out to me that the reigns of both
Joseph II and Leopold II furnish numerous examples of a rulers direct impact on reform
policy and its implementation, particularly in Lombardy, with regard to the legal code,
education, the Church, and the betterment of the peasantry. Personal communication
with the author, 2 July 2008.
35
On a multiplicity of enlightenments, see Roy Porter and Mikul Teich (eds),
The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge, 1981); Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment
31
Introduction
11
Against Empire (Princeton, 2003), p. 264; the quotation is taken from Jonathan Sheehan,
Enlightenment, Religion and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay, American
Historical Review, 108:4 (2003): 1075.
36
Hesse, Topography of Enlightenment, p. 505.
37
John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 16801760
(Cambridge, 2005).
38
Though the scope of reform has been broadened in recent years, it is perhaps
lamentable that one of the chief areas studied by earlier generations of historians of
enlightened reform religious reform (both the reform of certain features of Catholicism
and of the Church itself ) and the recalibration of ChurchState relations in an international
context has attracted less attention in recent years. While the essays by Kenneth Andrien
and Vctor Peralta directly address this subject, much more work in this area needs to be
done. For a fascinating and pioneering recent study, see Dale K. Van Kley, Religion in the
Age of Patriot Reform, Journal of Modern History, 80 (2008): 25295.
39
On Campomanes, see Vicent Llombart, Campomanes: Economista y Poltico de
Carlos III (Madrid, 1992) and Concepcin de Castro, Campomanes: Estado y Reformismo
Ilustrado (Madrid, 1996).
12
The term was coined by Isaiah Berlin in his essay The Counter-Enlightenment,
in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (New York, 1980). For a brilliant
discussion of the shortcomings of this category and for the connection between it and The
Enlightenment itself, see Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French
Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2001), ch. 1.
41
Girolama Imbruglia, Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Naples, in Imbruglia
(ed.), Naples in the Eighteenth Century: The Birth and Death of a Nation State (Cambridge,
2000), p. 73; for a pioneering study, however, that demonstrates that lawyers succeeded in
turning French courtrooms into an open forum for the discussion of religious toleration,
judicial reform, and the abuse of privilege three of the issues dearest to the philosophes,
see David A. Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime
France (New York and Oxford, 1994), p. 207. See also ch. 6 The Vanguard of Reform.
42
Anna Maria Rao, Enlightenment and Reform: an Overview of Culture and
Politics in Enlightenment Italy, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 10:2 (2005): 156.
40
Introduction
13
14
it should be recognized that where central authority triumphed it often did so,
paradoxically, through decentralizing administration and delegating authority
and additional privileges to local mercantile and agrarian elites, the nobility
and an array of councils, juntas and tribunals.47 Regimes may have survived
because of, not in spite of, devolution and the rejuvenation of composite
monarchy structures.
What impact has this shifting understanding of absolutism had on the
concept of enlightened reform? To a greater degree than the older emphasis
on crown-led despotism or absolutism permitted, historians now accept the
major function played by what might be classified as civil society institutions,
or the burgeoning public sphere, in the creation of a milieu in which reform
initiatives could flourish.48 To be sure, as Tim Blanning has demonstrated, the
enlightenment was not always a subversive movement. It often developed
within and in support of the established order, not outside and against it. Civil
society and the crown commonly enjoyed amicable and mutually supportive
relations.49 Indeed, the essays in this volume make clear that a broader notion
of reform facilitates an enhanced appreciation of the role of institutions, such
as provincial academies and economic societies, both in the making of state
policy and in initiating projects to which government officials were compelled
states rights, traditional constitutions and constituted bodies had prevailed. See Palmer,
The Age of Democratic Revolutions: A Political History of Europe and America, 17601800.
I: The Challenge (Princeton, 1959), p. 396.
47
Among the recent efforts to demonstrate the limits of absolutism in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, see Nicolas Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and
Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy (London and New York, 1992); Peter
Campbell, Power and Politics in Old Regime France (London and New York, 1996); and
Ruth MacKay, The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth
Century Castile (Cambridge, 1999).
48
Much of this recent research, of course, is indebted to some extent to Jrgen
Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category
of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA, 1989); in addition to the abundant literature on
Southern Europe, great interest in the public sphere has been shown by historians of Latin
America: see, for example, Vctor M. Uribe-Uran, The Birth of a Public Sphere in Latin
America during the Age of Revolution, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42:2
(2000): 42557; Renn Silva, Los Ilustrados de Nueva Granada, 17601808: Genealoga de
una Comunidad de Intrepretacin (Medelln, 2002); and Kirsten Schultz, Royal Authority,
Empire and the Critique of Colonialism: Political Discourse in Rio de Janeiro, 1808
1821, Luso-Brazilian Review, 37:2 (2000): 731.
49
T.C.W. Blanning, Reform and Revolution in Mainz, 17431803 (Cambridge,
1974), pp. 347; Joseph II (London and New York, 1994); and The Culture of Power and
the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 16601789 (Oxford and New York, 2001).
Introduction
15
16
Introduction
17
The fourth topic addressed in this volume concerns the periodization of the
epoch which historians consider the apogee of enlightened reform. There was
a discernible acceleration of the pace of reform initiatives during the second
half of the eighteenth century, particularly following the Seven Years War.
Yet this recognition should not discount the significant reform activity which
occurred before 1750. There was a keen interest in reshaping government
stretching at least to the seventeenth century, whether one looks to Richelieu
and Colbert in France or to Olivares and the arbitristas in Spain.55 The
institutional foundations for many of the initiatives which flourished in the
eighteenth century were laid in the seventeenth.56 Indeed, as Nuno Monteiro
argues in his essay, it was to these earlier traditions that the Marquis of Pombal
appealed when he embarked on his overhaul of Portuguese institutions after
1755. The existence of formidable precursors begs the question of whether
this notion of a late eighteenth-century age of reform is itself enveloped
in myth, a relic of the self aggrandisement and self fashioning of officials to
justify policies, particularly departures from past practices, which triggered
widespread resistance or dismayed entrenched, privileged groups. Manuel
Lucena-Giraldos essay, in particular, suggests that the 1740s were a heyday
of enlightened reform. He thus presents a serious challenge to the widelyaccepted periodization in the historiography of the Bourbon reforms in Spain
and its empire which privileges the aftermath of the Seven Years War in the
18
Introduction
19
many of the institutions and much of the rhetoric associated with enlightened
reform was subject to cosmetic change. Yet a great many of the aims and
techniques of the enlightened reformers persisted amidst the political turmoil,
laying the groundwork for nineteenth-century institutions and political
language.62 In France, as John Shovlin has pointed out, a language promoting
economic improvement as a form of patriotism was one of the ideological
foundations of the post-revolutionary order.63 Indeed, it may be argued that
a second era of enlightened reform in Spanish America and Brazil began after
its ostensible demise in Europe. Reform-from-above remained an irresistible
model for many political leaders in post-independence Spanish America.64
Some influential participants in the struggle for independence, as Matthew
Browns essay strikingly reveals, went so far as to contend that the installation
of a European prince might serve as a panacea for post-colonial Spanish
Americas political ills.
As an alternative, I would argue, historians would benefit from shifting
away from chronological periodization, which largely reflects (geo-)political
turning points and dynastic changes. Instead, they might favour a stylistic
periodization. Such a reorientation would enable historians to account for the
persistence of certain approaches to governance, of intellectual tendencies,
of fashions of government, of particular configurations of state and civil
society, and of political writers and state policy. Enlightened reform was
Napoleonic era was the last, and not very impressive, gasp of enlightened absolutism
confronted with enlightened absolutism writ large, the emperors opponents sought
similar improvement in their own states; see Esdaile, The Wars of Napoleon (London
and New York, 1995), p. 216; in his recent work on Naples, however, John Davis has
connected the enlightened reform programmes of the late eighteenth century with the
goals of the legitimists of the Restoration who still conceived of the state as the critical
agent of change, but whose trust in an enlightened prince had now been undermined;
see Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions (17801860)
(Oxford, 2006), p. 278.
62
J. Luis Maldonado Polo, for example, has shown that Spanish economic
societies and botanical study groups developed infrastructure that survived the political
convulsions of 17891815 thus permitting a relatively smooth transition to nineteenthcentury scientific institutions. See Maldonado, Agricultura y Botnica: La Herencia de la
Ilustracin, Hispania, 65:3 (2005): 106398.
63
John Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins
of the French Revolution (Ithaca and London, 2006), p. 213.
64
See, for example, Klaus Gallo, The Struggle for an Enlightened Republic: Buenos
Aires and Rivadavia (London, 2006).
20
not exclusively a feature of the Old Regimes landscape. Its forms and chief
attributes often survived well into the nineteenth century.65
This volume of essays will neither solve all of the problems it identifies nor
answer all of the questions it provokes concerning enlightened reform. Nor is
its coverage of fundamental themes comprehensive. Nevertheless, it is hoped
that this books publication will serve to renew debate about one of the most
enduring concepts common to all of the branches and sub-disciplines of an
increasingly fragmented European and Latin American historiography. While
drawing attention to the splendour of the Southern European and Atlantic
past for its own merits, it also aspires to make the subject relevant to historians
of unrelated specialisms in the hope that historians of vastly different periods
and approaches might once again enter into a common conversation.
PART I
Southern Europe and its Atlantic
Colonies, c. 17501830:
An Overview
Chapter 1
24
their values and goals were universal in scope. At the same time, the illuministi
were intensely patriotic, committed to harnessing ideas, wherever they had
been acquired, to the reform of their own societies. By these they understood
the individual states monarchies, principalities, and republics, to which
they belonged. But they also thought in peninsular terms, writing a common,
Tuscan Italian, and associating the particular predicaments of their states with
the more general decline of Italy since the Renaissance. These illuministi were
not nationalists; from the first Venturi insisted that Enlightenment was not
to be understood as the antecedent of Risorgimento. But, in their patriotism
as in their cosmopolitanism, the adherents of Enlightenment transcended the
ancient particularisms of Italian society and politics.
A second tension, to which Venturi attached even more significance, was
that between utopia and reform. It was a characteristic of Enlightenment in
Italy that the drive to reform should be drawn towards utopian objectives.
Some illuministi were, by temperament and intellectual conviction, more
inclined to practical reform, and thus resisted the urge to utopian solutions;
others, by contrast, concluded that such solutions were the only viable basis
of reform. Given the conditions which faced them in Italy, however, all felt
the urge to radicalise their objectives, to quicken the pace of reform. Thus
economic development was sought not only to strengthen the state, or
to make more goods available to consumers; it must also achieve a much
greater degree of social equality, increasing the numbers of medium and small
property-owners on the land, and ameliorating the condition of the urban
poor. Likewise, penal reform was not only a matter of efficient government;
abolition of torture and the death penalty were requirements of common
humanity and equality before the law. The inherently utopian tendency of
Enlightenment reform, in short, was what ensured that such reform was never
to be limited to reinforcing and modernising the authority of existing rulers,
whether individual monarchs and princes, or the oligarchies who governed
the surviving city republics. Enlightenment reform was the antithesis of the
ragion di stato cultivated by the states of the antico regime.
Disdain for the existing states of Italy and their rulers notwithstanding,
Venturis model did allow for distinctions between them. On the whole,
monarchies and principalities were more open to reform, and gave the
illuministi more opportunity for its advocacy, than the surviving republics.
In Venice and Genoa, the patriciates were socially closed and politically
Franco Venturi, La circolazione delle idee, Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 41
(1954): 20322, a manifesto for the research to come, in which he set out his understanding
of the difference between the reforming Settecento and the Risorgimento.
Franco Venturi, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1971).
25
defensive. They knew about and discussed new economic ideas, but feared
their utopian, egalitarian tendency; as for the new, expansive republicanism
of the American colonists, with its rhetoric of the universal rights of man,
they shut their ears to it. (It would be in Geneva, not in Italy, that the debate
between the old and the new republicanisms would be articulated and given
political form.) By contrast, individual rulers recognised incentives to reform.
The regalist arguments of civilian jurists held out the prospect of gaining or
recovering property and revenue from the Church, and of asserting control
over the numbers and even appointment of clergy. Their confidence boosted
by the jurists, the Duke of Parma and King of Naples were not slow to follow
the lead of their Bourbon relations in France and Spain in expelling the Jesuits
(17671768); in Tuscany the Grand Duke Leopold actively supported the
anti-curial Jansenist Synod of Pistoia (1786). Potentially even greater were
the rewards of taking on the nobility, whose feudal privileges and usurpation
of royal jurisdiction and revenue were as damaging to the state as to the rural
population. In Naples, leading critics of the feudal system were promoted to
government office, and encouraged to develop policies which would break up
feudal estates.
Venturi and those who followed him did not pretend that this model of
Enlightenment and reform applied uniformly across the peninsula. Savoy was
the most notable exception, its rulers reforming early, in the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries, and according to maxims of ragion di stato, not
the ideals of Enlightenment. Their object was to strengthen their own state;
and they were quite prepared to compromise with the Church to achieve this,
whether by exiling and hounding the home-grown dissident Alberto Radicati,
or by kidnapping and imprisoning the Neapolitan Pietro Giannone as an
earnest of their loyalty to Rome. Tuscany too had differed from the model:
for all the radicalism of Leopold, and the economic awareness of officials, the
Grand Duchy had not produced an intellectual elite to match those of Milan
Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore V LItalia dei lumi 176490 2. La repubblica di
Venezia 17611797 (1990); and the posthumously-published fragment: Saggi preparatori
per Settecento riformatore. LItalia dei lumi: La repubblica di Genova 17611797 (Rome,
2002). See also the collection of extracts from Venturis works: Pagine repubblicane, ed.
Manuela Albertone (Turin, 2004).
Franco Venturi, Church and Reform in Enlightenment Italy: the Sixties of the
Eighteenth Century, Journal of Modern History, 48 (1976): 21532; Settecento riformatore
II La chiesa e la repubblica dentro i loro limiti 17581774 (1976).
Savoy barely features in Settecento riformatore. On the theme of Enlightenment
and reform, so far as it went, Giuseppe Ricuperati, Il Settecento, in Storia dItalia VIII Il
Piemonte sabaudo. Stato e territori in et moderna (Turin, 1994), pp. 441834.
26
and Naples. It was in these two that the flag of Enlightenment and reform
flew most prominently, because intellectuals had seized the initiative from
the established governing classes of magistrates and officials, and pushed their
monarchs in more radical directions. In Milan, a debate begun by the Il caff
group in the 1760s, and sustained by its leaders Cesare Beccaria and Pietro
Verri, built upon and reinforced initiatives promoted from Vienna since the
late 1740s; in Naples, the economic teaching of Antonio Genovesi and his
pupils, and later the anti-feudal polemics of Filangieri and Francesco Mario
Pagano, seemed to win over, if not the veteran minister Tanucci, then at least
the young Queen Maria Carolina and her ministers. Just as the monarchies
geared up to implement Enlightened reform, however, events in France in
the first half of the 1790s caused them to lose their nerve and backtrack. In
the new climate of reaction the intellectuals were isolated and radicalised:
given what Venturi had identified as the utopian tendency of Enlightenment
reform, it was no surprise that many of them now turned to revolution, as
offering a more immediate prospect of realising their goals.
The anti-model to Venturis account of Enlightenment and reform was
elaborated by Mario Mirri, in a long cry of protest published in 1992.10
Behind Venturis model, Mirri diagnosed the idealism of Benedetto Croce and
especially of the French literary historians Daniel Mornet and Paul Hazard:
ideas and their exponents were the agents of historical change, to the exclusion
of other possible causes. Mirri objected to the necessary identification of
Enlightenment with reform, as if one were inconceivable without the other.
He charged Venturi and those who thought like him, notably Giuseppe
Ricuperati, with devaluing the material and the particular in history. Their
model overlooked specific economic circumstances, misleadingly assumed
that all reforms could be assimilated to a single movement of reform, and
failed to respect the historically deep-rooted differences between the various
antichi stati italiani. Above all, Venturi had put too much weight on the
Naples and Milan are the principal reference points of Volumes I and V of
Settecento riformatore: I Da Muratori a Beccaria, 17301764 (1969), chs 6, 9 (Milan), 7,
8 (Naples); V LItalia dei lumi, 17641790, pt 1 La rivoluzione di Corsica: le grandi carestie
degli anni sessanta; la Lombardia delle riforme (1987), pp. 221305 (Naples), pp. 425834
(Lombardy).
A clear and compelling statement of this thesis is Anna Maria Raos brilliant chapter
Enlightenment and Reform, in John A. Marino (ed.), Early Modern Italy 15501796
(Oxford, 2002), pp. 22952.
10
Mario Mirri, Dalla storia dei lumi e delle riforme alla storia degli antichi stati
italiani, in M. Verga and A. Fratoianni (eds), Pompeo Neri, Atti del Colloquio di Studi di
Castelfiorentino, 1988 (Castelfiorentino, 1992), pp. 401540.
27
28
Nevertheless, it was clear that by the turn of the century research into
Enlightenment and reform stood in need of being refreshed by new agenda.
Three of these have emerged; at least two of them are represented in the
Italian studies included in this volume. The first of the new research agenda
has focussed on the intellectual content of Enlightenment thought, exploring
both its complexity and the extent of disagreement between its exponents.
Attention is now being directed to areas of intellectual enquiry, such as history
and the philosophy of history, which were marginal to Venturis account of
Italian Enlightenment.15 No less significant, however, has been reassessment
of the discipline which most obviously articulated Venturis identification
of Enlightenment with reform, political economy. The previous tendency
to homogenise Enlightenment political economy, and to assume that
Physiocracy was its culminating expression, has been disrupted from several
angles. It is now recognised that older strands of economic thinking, such
as those associated with ragion di stato and with Fnelons ideal of agrarian
self sufficiency, were more persistent than an emphasis on the novelty of
Enlightenment thinking would lead one to expect. In contrasting essays below,
Sophus Reinert and Koen Stapelbroek argue that both of these strands may be
found in the writings of the most lucid Neapolitan economic commentator of
the early eighteenth century, Paolo Mattia Doria.16 The inspiration of hitherto
neglected contemporaries is also receiving greater attention. The most obvious
example is Jean-Franois Melon, the interest of whose Essai politique sur le
commerce (1734) was picked up in Naples by 1740, and was subsequently
publicised by Genovesi and his pupil Francesco Longano.17
29
More complex still was the process by which economic ideas passed
through translation. Admiration for the English economic model reached Italy
through French translations of English writings. In the case of John Carys
1695 Essay on the State of England, the translation by Vincent de Gournay and
Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont included additional material as well as offering
a distinct interpretation of the original. Overseeing its further translation
from French into Italian, as the Storia del commercio della Gran Bretagna
(17571758), Genovesi added discursive notes of his own, complicating
its message yet again.18 Physiocracy itself, when it came, would be mediated
by a writer from outside the ranks of the sect, the German-Bernese Georg
Ludwig Schmid DAvenstein.19 Even once a range of available ideas had
been absorbed and adapted to address Italian circumstances, doubts might
remain about their applicability. Ferdinando Galianis hostility to Physiocratic
ideas about the grain trade is the best-known example of such scepticism.20
But others are coming to light, notably Paolettis criticisms of the effects of
luxury on an agrarian society such as Tuscanys,21 and Palmieris unpopular
questioning whether the feudal system was really the key to the economic
weakness of the kingdom of Naples.22 It is clear that economic commentators
were unable to offer government ministers a straightforward, intellectuallycoherent programme of reform; if Enlightenment was to inspire reform, those
in government would themselves have to be educated to choose the policies
which best suited the circumstances of their states.
Alongside this new interest in the content of Enlightenment thought has
been a second research agenda, intended to broaden and deepen the setting in
which ideas were received. Venturi was well aware that Enlightenment thinking
Sophus Reinert, Emulazione e traduzione: la genealogia occulta della Storia
del Commercio, in B. Jossa, R. Patalano, E. Zagari (eds), Genovesi economista, Atti del
Convegno di Studi di Napoli del 56 maggio 2005, (Naples, 2007), pp. 15592; and
Blaming the Medici: Footnotes, Falsification, and the Fate of the English model in
Eighteenth-Century Italy, History of European Ideas, 32 (2006), Special Issue Commerce
and Morality in Eighteenth-Century Italy: 43055
19
Schmid DAvensteins principal work was the Principes de la legislation universelle
(Amsterdam, 1776), Italian translation published in Naples in 1791; Vieri Becagli,
Georg-Ludwig Schmid DAvenstein e i suoi Principes de la legislation universelle: oltre la
fisiocrazia, Studi settecenteschi, 24 (2004): 21552.
20
Stapelbroek, Love, Self-Deceit and Money, reassesses Galianis significance in the
Neapolitan context.
21
Wahnbaeck, Luxury and Public Happiness, pp. 12034.
22
John Robertson, Political Economy and the Feudal System in Enlightenment
Naples: Outline of a Problem, in R. Butterwick, S. Davies and G. Snchez Espinosa (eds),
Peripheries of the Enlightenment, SVEC, 1 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 6586.
18
30
31
32
less readily abandoned in the 1790s than the traditional narrative of reaction
has led us to expect. Moreover, there were under-appreciated continuities
between the reforms undertaken by the monarchies and those attempted
by the revolutionaries. Verri in Milan and Pagano in Naples might find
themselves participating in revolution in the company of much younger,
Jacobin radicals; but securing the new republics required economic, social and
institutional measures not so different from those applied by the monarchies
they replaced.26 Defeated once, the revolutionaries of 17961799 were given
a second chance by Napoleons conquest of Italy in 1806; as John Davis shows
for Naples, many of the reforms implemented during the French Decennio
(18061815) were initiated in 1799. (That Naples lost its intellectual elite in
1799 is a Crocean myth; for every Pagano who was captured and executed in
1799, there was at least one Cuoco who fled into exile, returning to resume
the work of reform in 1806.) When the Bourbons did finally return in 1815,
their reactionary rhetoric belied the debt they owed to the revolutionaries and
their French masters. If the rudiments of a modern state existed in Milan or
Naples by 1820, it was because the reform initiatives of the 1780s had, in the
meantime, been continued and consolidated, not abandoned. 27
Whether it is appropriate to take the further step of interpreting the
persistence of reforming initiative after 1790 as a prolongation of the
Enlightenment is another matter. There are good arguments for limiting the
use of the term Enlightenment to an intellectual movement in eighteenthcentury Europe, and for concluding that the social and political as well as
intellectual preconditions for the movements existence disappeared in the
French Revolution. But whether or not we persist in speaking of Enlightenment
up to the 1820s, reform and state-building are longer-term themes, which
historians may identify where and when they find them appropriate. If the case
of Italy suggests that we should be alert to continuities in reform and statebuilding from the 1780s to the 1820s, then we have every reason to look for
them elsewhere, in the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds of the Mediterranean
and the Atlantic.
Carlo Capra, La mia anima sempre stata repubblicana. Pietro Verri da patrizio
a cittadino, in Carlo Capra (ed.), Pietro Verri e il suo tempo (2 vols, Bologna, 1999),
pp. 51935; Davis, Naples and Napoleon, chs 46.
27
Davis, Naples and Napoleon, Parts IIIII.
26
Chapter 2
Enlightenment historiography has not been kind to Spain and its colonies.
The very category of the Enlightenment allegedly originated as a reaction to
the religious, political, and economic worlds Spain did so much to foster in the
early modern period. In the long eighteenth century, the Spanish Empire came
to stand for a world of unparalleled colonial brutality; murderous, stultifying,
inquisitorial religious intolerance; arbitrary and misguided monarchical
power that horded silver as it produced widespread poverty; and medieval
scholasticism that churned out scores of ignorant, bookish priests, lawyers,
and physicians. In short, Spains was a world enveloped in darkness ready to
be lit by the lights of science, the rule of law, and humanitarianism.
We have been told, that to bring the empire back from the doldrums,
enlightened reformers limited the power of the church and created new
institutions of learning; produced new wealth through manufacturing and
trade; strengthened the navy and the army to defend and chart the lands
and resources of the empire; and reigned in Creole corruption and autonomy
by the application of uniform legal practices and standards throughout the
colonies. Yet these so-called Bourbon reforms triggered revolts and discontent
throughout, heightening political awareness among the Creole elites who
rushed to declare independence after Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula.
Getting away from this narrative has not been easy. It offers a satisfying account
of the Enlightenment that furthermore links reform to the undoing of the
Spanish Empire. The essays on Spain and its Atlantic colonies in this volume
demonstrate many of the weaknesses of this narrative.
The first weak spot lies in the very concept of Enlightenment. Charles
Noel deftly synthesizes an alternative interpretation: the Enlightenment had
less to do with the triumph of reason over superstition and more with
the creation of new institutions and practices of bourgeois sociability and
consumption. Thus, according to Noel, the pulse of this movement ought to
34
35
tsunami wiped out the city of Lima in 1746, the new viceroy sought to take
advantage of the catastrophe to limit the power of some of the religious orders
by giving away their rural parishes (and income) to the secular clergy. What is
remarkable about the account offered by Andrien is not so much the efficacy
of the absolutist reformers but the success of the religious in slowing down
the will of the crown. It should be recalled that the secularization of Indian
parishes in the hands of the orders was a process that had already began in the
late sixteenth century.
Riots and revolts spawned by the Bourbon reforms notwithstanding,
the Spanish Empire remained resilient. As Jordana Dym demonstrates, it
was the crown that spearheaded the creation of public sphere in the colonies
by financing and promoting the creation of newspapers. The public of
Guatemala, for example, used newspapers to popularize useful knowledge to
promote commerce and trade, not to spout patriotic municipal agendas and
thus not to sow the seeds of independence thought. The breakdown of the
Spanish Empire in the wake of Napoleons invasion ought not to be linked
to the reforms of the eighteenth century. Independence was not inevitable.
Contingency (particularly the poor political and military choices of an
incompetent monarch, Ferdinand VII) might explain the unraveling of the
empire after 1815 better than any account that foregrounds inevitability due
to deep structural trends.
It remains to be seen whether the patterns of Enlightenment and reform
in Spanish America found in these essays differ from those in other Southern
and Northern Atlantic empires. In this volume, Gabriel Paquette invites us to
interpret the case of Spain and its colonies comparatively, along with those of
Italy, France, and Portugal and its Atlantic colonies. This is a long overdue and
welcome invitation. It is now up to the readers of this volume to draw, from
the essays, daring new interpretations.
For a recent, more general, account of the reforms (and their limits) introduced in
the wake of the earthquake-tsunami, see Charles F. Walker, Shaky Colonialism: The 1746
Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath (Durham, NC, and London,
2008).
Jeremy Adelman, An Age of Imperial Revolutions, American Historical Review,
113 (2008): 31940.
Chapter 3
France was the most universal of empires, in the long age of reform with
which this book is concerned. The interwar period of 1748 to 1756 was a
time of euphoric expansion in the French Atlantic empire, and so was the
postwar restoration of the 1820s. In the interrevolutionary period of 1783 to
1789, there were more slaves imported into the French part island of SaintDomingue, the modern Haiti, than into mainland North America and all of
the British Caribbean combined. France was a new kind of empire, in the
early years of the French Revolution; an empire of the land, or of the Eurasian
land mass, in opposition to the British empire of the oceans; an enlightened
empire; a new Rome, in opposition to the British Carthage; the First Empire
of the first Napoleon.
The French enlightenment, too, was an Atlantic and imperial enterprise.
The popular best-sellers of the late enlightenment, from Louis-Sbastien
Merciers Lan deux mille quatre cent quarante to the Anecdotes sur Mme. la
comtesse du Barri and Raynals Histoire philosophique et politique des deux
Indes were panoramas of naval and colonial connections. Voltaire, Diderot
and Condorcet were intricately involved in the details of colonial policy.
The French economists, including Quesnay, Gournay, Turgot, Dupont de
Nemours, Morellet, Mirabeau and Mercier de la Rivire, produced elaborate
plans of the reform of overseas as well as national administration. Turgots
objective as minister in 17741776, Dupont de Nemours wrote in his
biography, was to protect freedom on the entire surface of the globe. The end
of the enlightenment, for Samuel Taylor Coleridge, came with the restoration
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, available at http://www.slavevoyages.org/
tast/assessment/estimates.faces [last accessed 21 July 2009].
See Emma Rothschild, The Transnationalization of the History of France, Centre
for History and Economics, 2008.
38
of slavery in the French colonies, in 1802; O France, that mockest Heaven ...
Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind?
But the French Atlantic empire has been oddly invisible, for more than
two centuries, in histories of the enlightenment, of Atlantic reform, and of
the origins of the French revolution. The peace settlement of 1763, in which
France and Spain lost the scorching sands of Florida, and the icy rocks of
Canada, and which was seen at the time as one vicissitude among others
in the ebb and flow of eighteenth-century wars, has been identified, in
retrospect, as the outset of the inexorable rise of the Anglo-American empires.
The brilliance of the French economy, which grew faster, in the eighteenth
century, than the British economy, and in which the heart of growth was
overseas commerce, was obscured, in subsequent economic history, by the
industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century. The political history
of France in the eighteenth century has been the largely national story of the
origins of the French Revolution; a story which ends in the discontinuity of
new times, new institutions, and a new (or first) empire.
The expectations of the late eighteenth century are extraordinarily difficult
to imagine, now, in the light of the subsequent history of the United States
and the British Empire. It is very difficult, for example, to think oneself
into the ideas of the writers on commerce of the 1780s, for whom SaintDomingue was the richest and most promising economy of the Americas, and
the Spanish part of the island of Santo Domingo a new Eldorado, under the
influence of French administrative reform. But these different futures are a
part of how it really was, in the long age of reform and revolution. The French
Atlantic empire, both before and after the French Revolution, was far more
intricately intertwined than the British with other European empires, Spanish,
Portuguese, Dutch, and Danish. It had a different legal regime of slavery,
and a different organization of the slave trade, which reached its apogee, in
total numbers of slaves shipped across the Atlantic, in 1790. It had different
relationships to native Americans, and different understandings of the use and
ownership of land. It was an empire of the Caribbean America, oriented east
to west across the Gulf of Mexico, and north to south, towards Guiana and
Brazil.
39
France was not only a Southern European power, in the long eighteenth
century. It was a power in the north and the east, the Levant and the Ponant (in
the classification of the French navy of the times); a central European power,
and also, as in so many contemporary observations, the center of Europe.
It was a universal monarchy, and a universal empire, the object of interest
to Persian, Chinese, Russian and American visitors. But the French Atlantic
empire was also a Bourbon empire, as Gabriel Paquette points out in his
introduction to this volume, and a Catholic empire, in which the practices of
war, administration, conversion, and long-distance commerce, including the
practices of the Cdiz merchants in manufactures and the Nantes merchants
in slaves, were Franco-Spanish.
The essays in this volume present a long-overdue prospect of the Atlantic
world of the Southern Europe or Mediterranean empires. John Shovlin
provides a fascinating account of the multiplicity of reforms undertaken by the
French monarchy in the generation before the French Revolution, and of the
incorporation, within the royal administration, of the political culture of the
enlightenment. The kings officials were both influenced by and an influence
on the spaces, practices, ideas and sensibilities of enlightenment. Economic
reform, including the reform of colonial and commercial policies, was at the
heart of the enlightened administration, as Shovlin shows. The old regime
should not be judged, in this revisionist history, by the retrospective criterion
of whether or not it caused (or averted) the French Revolution; nor should
it be judged within the counter-revolutionary story, already well-established
in the 1790s, of an insidious enlightenment of philosophers, outside and
abstract influences on the minds and institutions of the state.
Pernille Rge, in her original and illuminating chapter, examines the
relationship between enlightenment and reform, in the micro-history of the
French administration of the Antilles. The colonial experience, she shows, was
one of the important sources of the French economists or physiocrats ideas
of legal despotism; and thereby of the abstract enlightenment which was so
important to Tocquevilles story of the first French revolution. The French
islands can be seen, in the correspondence of the Chevalier de Mirabeau and
Mercier de la Rivire, as a chaos of illicit commerce and of endless change in
the relationships between empires and varieties of authority. The islands were
slave societies, with semi-enlightened administrations. As in Tocquevilles
description of Canada under Louis XIV one would imagine oneself in the
midst, already, of complete modern centralization, and in Algeria the origins
of enlightened despotism were to be found in the overseas France.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Lancien rgime et la rvolution, ed. J.-P. Mayer (Paris, 1967),
pp. 3512.
40
Chapter 4
Enlightened Reform in
Portugal and Brazil
Francisco Bethencourt
The government of Pombal, under the reign of King Jos of Portugal (1750
1777), dramatically enlarged state intervention and introduced significant
changes in government, relations with the Church, education, maritime
trade, urban development, industrial and agrarian production. The reform
of royal finances, with the creation of the Errio Rgio, centralised state
accountability with deep consequences at all levels of administration including
overseas territories. The specialisation of government was developed through
the creation of new secretariats of state. In Brazil, private captaincies were
suppressed; the autonomous state of Maranho and Par was abolished; a large
judicial reform was implemented; new financial and fiscal institutions, juntas
da fazenda, were created in each captaincy. The traditional recruitment of
viceroys, governors and captains among the high nobility received a temporary
set-back with the nomination of experienced bureaucrats. The assertion of the
power of the state before the Church implied an open conflict with the Jesuits
which resulted in their expulsion from Portugal and its colonies in 1759.
The Inquisition was explicitly placed under state control and the tribunal
of Goa was suppressed in 1774. The state also limited recruitment by the
religious orders. The reconstruction of Lisbon after the earthquake of 1755
benefited from the expropriation of land. Pombal chose the most modern
urban plan, a geometric grid that wiped out nearly all of the old churches
in downtown Lisbon. Maritime trade with the Northeast and North Brazil
came to be controlled by chartered companies. Wine production in Portugal
was geographically defined and a privileged company was created. Industrial
production was stimulated by protective laws and privileged companies,
such as the silk factory in Lisbon. The reform of the university included the
introduction of natural law and the establishment of laboratories linked to
the teaching of modern science. Primary and secondary schools also were
created to replace the old educational system controlled by the Church.
42
43
in Europe, precisely in the country where they had the strongest influence
at all levels, triggering expulsions in other countries and forcing the pope
to suppress the order. This and other measures meant that the relationship
between the state and the Church was disrupted and never returned to the
situation that had existed before Pombal, in which religious reason would
generally prevail. Pombals policies, then, opened the way for the creation of a
secularised political culture.
The problem of Brazil is that the colony, in contrast with Spanish
America, neither possessed a university nor a printing press. Moreover, the
introduction of factories was impeded by the central government. Brazilian
elites had to rely on local Jesuit colleges or send their children to the university
of Coimbra, in Portugal, which would reinforce loyalty to the centre. Yet,
when the university culture started to change in the second half of the
eighteenth century, Brazilian students were among the first to open up to
the new ideas of the Enlightenment. The absence of a local printing press
meant that Brazilians depended on imported books and the oral transmission
of knowledge. Censorship never means that books do not circulate at all; it
means that they cannot be used in a productive way, feeding conversations
and new printed reflections. But the penetration of liberal ideas, visible in the
sequence of conspiracies and revolts triggered by the Inconfidncia Mineira in
1789, means that we have to be more sensitive to an oral culture based on the
smuggling of manuscripts and forbidden printed books. The main problem
of the colony was, obviously, slavery: it clashed with the liberal ideas of the
colonial elite and blocked the issue of general citizenship for a long time. It
was not solved by the transfer of the royal court to Brazil in 18071808, after
the French invasion of Portugal, which carried with it the opening of the
ports to direct foreign trade, the introduction of the main organisms of the
state, print culture, industry, and colleges. It was not solved, either, by the
independence of Brazil in 1822: the late abolition of the slave trade in 1850
and slavery in 1888 left marks for the following generations. Slavery defined
the limits of liberal political reasoning in the tropics.
The issues raised here are contemplated by the three chapters concerning
Enlightenment in Portugal and Brazil included in this innovative collection.
Nuno Gonalo Monteiro develops his vision of the backward-gazing
references that framed the political status of Pombal and his promotion to
the titled nobility. Luiz Carlos Villalta tackles the crucial issue of the existence
of a public opinion in Portugal and Brazil and how it evolved based on the
circulation of forbidden books and oral transmission of knowledge. Gabriel
Paquette uses the fundamental work and action of Jos da Silva Lisboa, a
Brazilian conservative liberal favourable to independence, in order to question
44
PART II
The Rise of Public Political Culture:
The Efflorescence of Civil Society and
its Connection to State Reform
Chapter 5
Between the 1750s and the 1780s, the French monarchy experimented albeit
hesitantly and inconsistently with a broad array of reforms. Among other
innovations, it extended de facto religious toleration to French Protestants
from the late 1750s, followed by a fuller measure of legal toleration in the
1780s. In the 1760s, it temporarily deregulated the grain trade, relaxed aspects
of the exclusive trading regime in the Caribbean colonies, and abrogated the
monopoly of the French Indies Company. The royal government fostered
agricultural improvement by establishing agricultural societies in Paris and the
provinces and by subsidizing the economic and agronomic press. Censorship
of the book trade loosened somewhat in the final decades of the old regime, and
the administration permitted the establishment of numerous new periodicals.
Royal officials promoted industrial innovation and presided over a relaxation
of regulations governing manufacturing. Successive comptrollers general
(effectively, ministers of finance) sought to reform the fiscal administration
by centralizing receipts and payments in a single treasury, and by organizing
revenue collection in publicly controlled rgies. During a final, especially
ambitious, reform drive in the late 1780s, the monarchy abolished the
remnants of Crown serfdom and encouraged the few remaining French serfholders to do the same.
See, on censorship, Raymond Birn, La censure royale des livres dans la France des
Lumires (Paris, 2007), and Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution,
trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham, 1991); on toleration, Geoffrey Adams, The Huguenots
and French Opinion, 16851787: The Enlightenment Debate on Toleration (Waterloo, ON,
1991), and Dale K. Van Kley, The Damiens Affair and the Unraveling of the Ancien Rgime,
17501770 (Princeton, 1984); on the grain trade, Steven L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics and
Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV (2 vols, The Hague, 1976), and Judith A. Miller,
Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 17001860
48
49
50
51
us a sense of the sheer diversity of thought and expression in this period. Not
everything that was critical, new, or contestatory can be lumped under the
umbrella category of Enlightenment.
Recent work has shown that reforms, once regarded as inspired by the
philosophes were, in many cases, actually linked to more various constituencies.
The now classic example is the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in the early
1760s. Claimed by some in the party of enlightenment as a triumph against
superstition and priestcraft, historians now regard the defeat of the Jesuits
as the culminating triumph of political Jansenism. It was supporters of this
austere and heterodox strand of Roman Catholicism in the Parlement of Paris
who played the key role in proceedings against the Society. The philosophes
may have applauded the move, but their ideas did not drive it. The program
of military reform perhaps the most consistent and successful of all the
reform initiatives of the old monarchy found its most enthusiastic support
among provincial nobles, who sought to shore up their own professional and
social position against courtiers and wealthy anoblis. The rhetoric of merit, so
central to army reform, was an extension of a long-standing noble discourse
on royal service, not an Enlightenment novelty. Middling nobles also played
a role in forwarding an agenda of agriculture-based political economic reform.
They sought to recover Frances international influence, damaged by the loss
of the Seven Years War, and the patriotic language in which they couched
calls for economic regeneration reflected this commitment.
The whole notion of philosophic influence over rulers, or their agents, on
which conceptualizations of enlightened reform have traditionally been based,
must be treated with caution. Influence can imply that ideas have a kind of
causal logic of their own, leading scholars to pay inadequate attention to the
contexts in which those ideas are received. As Keith Baker observes, texts, if
For a brief overview of this scholarship, see William Doyle, Origins of the French
Revolution, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1999), pp. 3541.
Dale K. Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757
1765 (New Haven, 1975).
David Bien, The Army in the French Enlightenment: Reform, Reaction and
Revolution, Past & Present, 85 (1979): 6898; Rafe Blaufarb, The French Army, 1750
1820: Careers, Talent, Merit (New York, 2002); Jay M. Smith, Culture of Merit: Nobility,
Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 16001789 (Ann Arbor,
1996). The position that a language of merit, as used by eighteenth-century nobles,
represented an enlightenment-derived novelty is that of Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret, The
French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment, trans. William
Doyle (Cambridge, 1985).
John Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of
the French Revolution (Ithaca, 2006).
52
read, are understood, and hence reinterpreted, by their readers in con-texts that
may transform their significance; ideas, if received, take on meaning only in
relation to others in the set of ideas into which they are incorporated. Thus it
is important ... to avoid treating ideas as if they were causal, individual agents
of motivation and determination.10 The notion of influence implicitly locates
agency in the wrong place with intellectuals, or even with ideas rather
than where it belongs, with the actors being influenced. It might be more
fitting to speak of appropriation when dealing with the relationship between
government and enlightenment. When eighteenth-century policy makers
confronted novel challenges for which conventional conceptual or practical
tools were inadequate, they could look to philosophes for new resources or new
solutions. In so doing, however, they took what seemed useful, and modified
it for their own purposes. It was the needs of the consumers of ideas rather
more than the intentions of the producers that shaped the interaction.
A further challenge to the idea of enlightened reform, as generally
conceived, arises from the ongoing reconceptualization of the Enlightenment
in sociological terms. A definition of Enlightenment framed within a history
of ideas tradition has given way, at least partially, in recent decades, to
conceptions that define the phenomenon primarily in terms of sensibilities,
practices, and spaces. Historians emphasize that humanitarian campaigns
against torture and slavery may have had as much to do with social practices,
such as novel reading, as with the influence of Enlightenment ideas.11 Scholars
argue that aspirations to rational improvement were enacted within, and
fostered by, institutions such as masonic lodges, muses, and socits de penses.
Intellectual exchange flourished in a renewed and expanded republic of letters
with its foundations in academies, scientific societies, and the correspondence
they sustained. The eighteenth century saw the emergence or transformation
of a critical public sphere grounded in print culture, especially the periodical
press and an expanded book trade. In short, Enlightenment is often viewed,
today, less as a body of ideas or texts than as a new public culture, linked to
novel modes of sociability, and organized around commitments to rational
improvement, intellectual exchange, and the advancement of shared notions
of the common good.12
Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political
Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1990), p. 19.
11
Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York, 2007).
12
Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, LEspace des francs-maons: Une sociabilit europenne au
XVIIIe sicle (Rennes, 2003); Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, LEurope des Lumires (Paris, 2004);
Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment
(New York and London, 2000); Daniel Roche, La France des Lumires (Paris, 1993);
10
53
54
55
56
21
57
58
59
ought to be encouraged to go into trade, was intended to pave the way for
an edict reiterating arrts of 1669 and 1701 that conferred on the nobility
the right to engage in wholesale commerce without derogation.33 In 1758,
the abb Morellet was commissioned by Daniel Trudaine to write a work
arguing in favor of lifting restrictions on the manufacture of printed calicoes
in France.34 An edict legalizing the practice followed in 1759.35 In the late
1760s, the Physiocrats functioned as virtual official propagandists for the
policy of the monarchy on the liberalization of the grain trade. Comptroller
general tienne Maynon dInvau hosted a dinner each week to which the
Physiocrat Pierre-Samuel Dupont was invited, along with two former
associates of Gournay, Louis-Paul Abeille and the abb Morellet. In 1769,
Maynon dInvau invited Morellet to write an attack on the French Indies
Company, whose monopoly on the China and India trades he had decided
to suspend.36 I am not suggesting that all initiatives for political economic
reform emanated from within the royal government. Moreover, those which
did originate there would have enjoyed little success had they not tapped an
authentic vein of public engagement in problems of political economic order.
But the fact remains that the monarchy was a participant in this public debate,
not an idle bystander.
Policies of fostering debate and creating spaces for exchange always
within limits can be seen as analogous to the royal governments efforts
to create spaces of liberty and innovation in the French economy. In the
aftermath of the War of Austrian Succession prescient observers judged that
France was falling behind economically and that if the French monarchy was
to preserve its preeminence in Europe it would have to borrow aspects of
the Anglo-Dutch model.37 Economic actors should be given more liberty to
make their own choices because such freedom spurred innovation and created
prosperity. Government policy on the grain trade is a case in point. As Judith
Miller shows, the heavy-handed regulatory measures of the early eighteenth
Gabriel-Franois Coyer, La noblesse commerante (London, 1756). On the context
in which the work was published, see Guy Richard, Noblesse daffaires au XVIIIe sicle
(Paris, 1974).
34
Abb Andr Morellet, Rflexions sur les avantages de la fabrication et de lusage des
toiles peintes en France (Geneva, 1758).
35
Pierre Deyon and Philippe Guignet, The Royal Manufactures and Economic and
Technological Progress in France before the Industrial Revolution, Journal of European
Economic History, 9:3 (1980): 61132.
36
Andr Morellet, Mmoire sur la situation actuelle de la Compagnie des Indes (n.p.,
1769).
37
Henry C. Clark, Compass of Society: Commerce and Absolutism in Old-Regime
France (Lanham, MD, 2007).
33
60
century grain censuses and confiscations, capital punishment for rioters and
hoarders were gradually replaced in the fifty years before the Revolution
with more gentle strategies that sought to channel market forces rather than
attempting to coerce economic agents into behaving in a manner contrary to
their interests. One strategy pursued by officials with responsibility for urban
provisioning in the 1750s and 1760s was to use simulated sales. When prices
were high, publicly owned grain supplies were sold, often at a loss, through
a straw man, who masked the official intervention as a private transaction.
The goal was to assure buyers that there was no shortage of supply while
convincing sellers that prices would not continue to rise. Under Turgot, such
official market manipulations were briefly prohibited in favor of a more purely
market model.38
In its policies on colonial trade, the monarchy indicated a willingness to
introduce spaces of relative freedom, or to relax restrictions in an effort to
animate commerce. The French Antillean colonies were governed under what
was known as the Exclusif, a legal regime that required colonists to buy all their
provisions and manufactures from the mother country. Because supplies were
available from North America at much lower prices, contraband trade was
rife between the French sugar islands and their British neighbors. Successive
ministers of the navy and colonies in the 1760s and 1770s sought to improve
the situation by maintaining what Jean Tarrade has called the Exclusif mitig,
a trading regime under which colonists were permitted to buy some of their
provisions locally while remaining tied to taking metropolitan manufactured
goods. The monarchy extended freedom of trade on a limited basis to Guyana
and to Saint-Lucia, and tacitly tolerated a certain level of smuggling. Any
greater measure of liberty was strongly resisted by commercial interests in the
metropole which stood to gain from a monopolistic trading relationship with
the islands.39
A key goal of the Crown in its regulation of the manufacturing economy
during the 1770s and 1780s, as Philippe Minard shows, was to animate the
dynamic, innovative capacities of entrepreneurs and workers by allowing
a greater degree of freedom. The most important policy shift occurred
under Necker when the comptroller general redefined the mission of the
Inspectorate of Manufactures from enforcing quality-control regulations on
textile manufacturers to animating trade and gathering information.40 In the
royal bureaux with responsibility for industrial policy, as Jeff Horn shows,
Judith A. Miller, Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern
France, 17001860 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 26, 567, 65, 72.
39
Tarrade, Le commerce colonial de la France.
40
Minard, La fortune du colbertisme, pp. 32024.
38
61
42
the will, or the power, to stop change from being blocked by constituencies
that stood to lose their privileges. It is perfectly reasonable to consider reform
from such a perspective, but viewed in a less teleological light we might also
recognize that the French monarchy played an important and deliberate
role in fashioning the spaces, practices, ideas and sensibilities of the French
Enlightenment. One can discern a shift, in the second half of the eighteenth
century, in the strategies of rule adopted by the monarchy a move to sidestep,
or supplement, traditional, corporate forms of mediation between Crown and
society. In this period, the monarchy resorted ever more to the public sphere
as a way to communicate with, and mobilize, its subjects. It did so by staging
public debates, by creating spaces for the kinds of intellectual exchanges it
believed would
generate public utility, or by constructing social spaces for the
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exercise of a limited freedom. In so doing, the monarchy became a significant
actor in the new public culture of the Enlightenment. This is the sense, I
would argue, in which it is most meaningful to speak of enlightened reform
in a French context.
Chapter 6
64
eventually returned to Naples in 1806 and held various offices under the Napoleonic
government from which he was dismissed with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.
For a recent account of Cuocos life, see A. de Francesco, Vincenzo Cuoco: Una vita politica
(Rome/Bari, 1997).
A relatively recent, and refreshing, account of the question has been written by a
French historian: H. Burstin, Ancora sulla rivoluzione passiva: Riflessioni comparative
sullesperienza giacobina in Italia, Societ e storia, 79 (1998): 7595. On this question,
see also A.M. Visceglia, Genesi e fortuna di una interpretazione storiografica: la rivoluzione
napoletana del 1799 come rivoluzione passiva, Annali della Facolt di Magistero della
Universit degli Studi di Lecce, 1 (1972): 188204, and A.M. Rao, Sociologia e politica del
giacobinismo: il caso napoletano, Prospettive settanta, 2 (1979): 21239.
See Cuoco, Saggio storico, p. 90. On this theme, see my article The Patriots and the
People in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples, History of European Ideas, 20 (1995): 2039.
See, for example, R. Darnton, The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-revolutionary France
(London, 1996), T.C.W. Blanning, Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics (Oxford,
2002), and D. Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (Berkeley, 2002).
65
more than anywhere else in Italy, before and after 1799. In fact, Neapolitan
reformers had hoped for and imagined a new role for a literate public which
would support a reform programme under the Bourbon monarchy and hold
strong against the entrenched powers of a feudal nobility. Similarly, under
the short-lived Neapolitan republic, revolutionaries appealed to this public
and even made steps to widen it. This essay will analyse the hopes for this
wider public through the role of the middle class (or ordine mezzana) in the
writings of Francesco Mario Pagano, whose life and career spanned the shift
from enlightenment to revolution in Naples at the end of the eighteenth
century. In turn, and more ambitiously, this essay is also an initial attempt to
find a middle ground between the concerns of intellectual historians trying
to establish genealogies of ideas and the concerns of cultural historians who
are more interested in the interplay between ideas and the cultural spaces in
which they are imagined.
Vincenzo Cuoco believed that the revolutionaries could never have won
over the support of the public because they were so distant in their ideas
and in their language from the people of Naples. He wrote: The Neapolitan
nation could be considered as divided in two peoples, diverse for two centuries
and by two degrees of climate. This gap had been created by the admiration
for foreign ideas and customs by reformers under monarchy and had been the
greatest obstacle to the establishment of liberty under the republic. Cuocos
judgement has distracted historians for two hundred years with discussions about
the originality of the constitution of 1799, in particular in comparison to the
earlier French constitutions. His analysis also highlighted the problem of the
public in the Neapolitan context. Cuoco recognised the difficulty of establishing
a democracy in a society without democratic traditions, writing: What is there to
hope from this language which is in all the proclamations directed to the people?
Finalmente siete liberi ... The people did not yet know what liberty was. It was
J.A. Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions
(17801860) (Oxford, 2006), p. 10.
Cuoco, Saggio storico, p. 90.
Ibid.
A detailed analysis of the 1799 constitution and its relation to Paganos earlier
writings under monarchy and earlier French and Italian constitutions is developed in
the final chapter of my dissertation: M. Calaresu, Political Culture in Late EighteenthCentury Naples: The Writings of Francesco Mario Pagano (Cambridge Ph.D, 1994). On
the French constitutions as sources, see also Mario Battaglini, Mario Pagano e il Progetto di
costituzione (Rome, 1994), pp. 325, and, on Gaetano Filangieris Scienza della legislazione,
as a source, see Vincenzo Ferrone, La societ giusta ed equa: Repubblicanesimo e diritti
delluomo in Gaetano Filangieri (Bari/Rome, 2003), pp. 22547.
Cuoco, Saggio storico, p. 104.
66
a problem that reformers like Pagano, as we shall see, had already recognised in
their writings. Most Neapolitans reform writers, however, would have argued that
this gap was not the result of slavish imitation and admiration of foreign models
but of centuries of feudal government. It was against the powers of the feudal
nobility that reformers hoped to cultivate a public which would be educated in
its own traditions and history of both liberty and oppression and to which it
could make appeals for support for an enlightened reform programme under the
Bourbon monarchy.10
Francesco Mario Pagano (17481799), like many other Neapolitan writers
of the eighteenth century, pointed to the political traditions of the Kingdom
as the fundamental problem, in which the monarchy had been made weak
by competing jurisdictional frictions with the feudal nobility and with the
Papacy.11 Many had argued that this weakness of monarchical government
had been allowed to develop during the two centuries of misrule by the
Spanish (and briefly by the Austrians). It was not until the arrival of Charles
of Bourbon in 1734, as the resident monarch of an autonomous kingdom,
that the authority of the crown, it was believed, could be asserted with some
effect against the powers of the feudal barons and the Church as landowners.
See, for example, on the writing of pre-Roman history in the context of the
Neapolitan feudal debates in this period, M. Calaresu, Images of Ancient Rome in Late
Eighteenth-Century Neapolitan Historiography, Journal of the History of Ideas, (1997):
64161.
11
For a biography of Pagano, see Franco Venturis introduction to a selection of
Paganos writings, including in Venturi, Riformatori napoletani, vol. V of Illuministi italiani
(Milan/Naples, 1962), pp. 785833. Gioele Solaris Studi su Francesco Mario Pagano
(Turin, 1963) is the only monograph which attempts to provide a coherent analysis of
Paganos thought. For an introduction to the Neapolitan enlightenment in English, see
Venturi, The Enlightenment in Southern Italy, in Italy and the Enlightenment: Studies in
a Cosmopolitan Century, ed. S. Woolf (London, 1972), pp. 198225, and for the earlier
enlightenment and a comparison with the Scottish enlightenment, see J. Robertson, The
Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 16801760 (Cambridge, 2005). See also
Giuseppe Galasso, La filosofia in soccorso de governi: La cultura napoletana del settecento
(Naples, 1989), and, on Pagano, see Vincenzo Ferrone, I profeti dellilluminismo: Le
metamorfosi della ragione nel tardo Settecento, 2nd edn (Rome/Bari, 2000), esp. ch. 6, and
La societ giusta ed equa, chs 7, 8. The most recent account of Naples to the end of the
eighteenth century is G. Imbruglia (ed.), Naples in the Eighteenth Century: The Birth and
Death of a Nation State (Cambridge, 2000).
10
67
To the end of the century, reformers considered the institutions of the feudal
system as the primary obstacles to political reform in the Kingdom.12
Paganos Saggi politici (or Political Essays), first published in 17831785
with a second edition in 17911792, provide one of the most vociferous
criticisms of the feudal system in the Kingdom of Naples as a study of political
change through the history of human society from the origins of the earth to
the eighteenth century.13 At the centre of Saggi was an attempt to understand
the nature of feudalism and its consequent effects on the development of
civil society. The possession of land by feudal rights, exclaims Pagano, is the
greatest political absurdity that can be imagined.14 Feudal institutions, he
continues, destroy civil liberty, for not only do they include people and their
personal rights, by their labour, as property, but they also restrict and often
prohibit the selling and distribution of the products of the labour of others
with feudal monopolies and tariffs.15 For Pagano, the kind of property which
destroys the nature of property itself (defined according to the personal rights
exercised in the working of land) and a right which annuls another right is no
less than a civil monster.16 Pagano calls this imperfect form of government,
See A.M. Rao, Nel settecento napoletano: la questione feudale, in R. Pasta (ed.),
Cultura, intellettuali e circolazione delle idee nel 700 (Milan, 1990), pp. 8592, and The
Feudal Question, Judicial Systems and the Enlightenment, in G. Imbruglia (ed.), Naples in
the Eighteenth Century, pp. 95117. See also P. Villani, Il dibattito sulla feudalit nel Regno
di Napoli dal Genovesi al Canosa, in Saggi e ricerche sul settecento (Naples, 1968). On the
question of feudalism within an analysis of political thought at the end of the century, see
M. Calaresu, Political Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples, ch. 4. Most recently, see
J. Robertson, Political Economy and the Feudal System in Enlightenment Naples:
Outline of a Problem, SVEC, 1 (Oxford, 2008): 6586.
13
The full title is Saggi politici del civile corso delle nazioni o sia de principii, progressi,
decadenza delle societ (2 vols, Naples, 178385). The title of the second edition was
shortened to Saggi politici de principii, progressi, decadenza delle societ (3 vols, Naples,
17912). On the differences between the two editions, see Beatrice Sasso, I Saggi
politici di F.M. Pagano dalla prima alla seconda edizione, Atti dellAccademia di scienze
morali e politiche, (Naples), 93 (1982): 11355. For the definitive modern edition of the
second edition, see Pagano, Saggi politici, eds L. Firpo and L. Salvetti Firpo (Naples, 1993)
which has retained the original pagination. An anastastic edition of the first edition was
published in 2000: De saggi politici ed. F. Lomonaco (Naples, 2000). There are often
substantial differences between the two editions and, therefore, all references here will cite
the book, chapter and page number from the two original editions, unless the quotation
only appears in one edition.
14
Saggi (1792), V, xxi, p. 163.
15
Ibid.
16
Saggi (1792), V, xxi, pp. 1634.
12
68
69
heads to the law.22 Thus, for Pagano, a moderate government was possible only
if it was underpinned by a clear well-written legislation that would protect
the interests of the public good while guaranteeing civil liberty, essentially
a balance between private and public interests.23 All of Paganos moderate
governments at this most developed civil stage in the course of nations can
then be identified by having civil liberty and a legislation to guarantee this.24
Any moderate government must then find a way of maintaining civil liberty
while ensuring civil dependence a balance which the law should guarantee.
Paganos models of moderate government aristocracy, democracy, and
monarchy all work around this particular framework. Having reached
civil perfection, as Pagano pointed out in a published letter to his critics in
1785, each kind of government should guarantee civil liberty and ensure
civil dependence by legislation. In the Lettera, he denied that he favoured
one model (democracy) over any other model (aristocracy or monarchy) of
moderate government.25 However, while Pagano did not treat these models
separately in the Saggi, his discussion of each model reveals his own awareness
of the realities and limits of Neapolitan society and of Naples past in relation
to each of them. For example, although recognised as one of the three forms of
moderate government, aristocracy was most often dismissed and analysed for
its disadvantages. Because of the continuing existence of feudal institutions
in the Kingdom and a historiographical tradition in which the nobility was
portrayed as having prevented effective government for Neapolitans, it was
difficult for writers such as Pagano to envisage the flourishing of civil liberty
under any kind of aristocratic government.
Democracy, as a model of moderate government, presented a different kind
of problem for Pagano and his analysis reveals once again his awareness of the
limitations of Neapolitan society and his reservations about the suitability
of such a model for Naples. Democracies, according to Pagano, can only
be founded on a numerous and united plebeian class.26 This unity must be
complemented by education, since an uneducated demos was clearly incapable
Saggi, (1792), V, xxii, p. 166.
Ma quando la societ colta e perfetta, la civile libert viene rispettata. E questa
libert civile non pu esser mai sicura senza una saggia e regolare inalterabile legislazione
(Saggi (1785), V, xi, p. 125; (1792), V, xi, p. 124).
24
Ibid.
25
Pagano reminds his accusers that io chiamo regolari e perfetti the three types of
government, that is monarchical, aristocratic, and popular, in Lettera di Francesco Mario
Pagano avverso le imputazioni fatte a Saggi Politici [Naples, 17856], p. 24. For the dating
of the Lettera, see Solari, Studi, p. 63, fn. 68.
26
Saggi (1785), V, iv, p. 97; (1792), V, iv, p. 90.
22
23
70
71
poor and ignorant people of Naples can also be found in the accounts and guidebooks of
visitors to Naples; see M. Calaresu, The End of the Grand Tour and the Cosmopolitan
Ideal: Neapolitan Critiques of French Travel Accounts (17501800), in J. Elsner and
J.P. Rubis (eds), Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London, 1999),
pp. 13861.
35
Saggi (1792), V, v, p. 96. The paragraph on representative government was added
in the second edition. Filangieri also suggested the necessity of a guide in a democracy, in
Scienza della legislazione, Lib.I, ch.x, p. 135.
36
For example, Filangieri wrote: Da quel che si detto si pu facilmente dedurre
che una perfetta democrazia non pu avere che in un picciolissimo stato. Se la repubblica
singrandisce, se dopo dessere stata una citt, diventa una nazione, allora o bisogna
interamente mutare la costituzione, o bisogna ricorrere alla rappresentazione (Scienza
della legislazione, Lib.I, ch.x, p. 136, fn. h).
37
For an analysis of Paganos ephorate, see M. Calaresu, Political Culture in Late
Eighteenth-Century Naples, pp. 1878 and pp. 2679.
72
On the ceto civile in the late seventeenth century, see Salvo Mastellone, Pensiero
politico e vita culturale a Napoli nella seconda met del seicento (Messina/Florence, 1965).
Briefly, on the ambiguities of this term, see Giuseppe Ricuperati, Una lettura di Vico,
Giannone e Genovesi nei decenni della crisi dellantico regime a Napoli: Lesperienza
intelletuale e storiographica di Francesco Antonio Grimaldi, Studi Filsofici (Istituto
Universitario Orientale, Napoli), XXI (19878): 2067. More recently, see a discussion
of this class from the writings of Antonio Genovesi to the end of the century, see
G. Imbruglia, Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Naples, in Imbruglia (ed.), Naples
in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 7094.
39
See M. Calaresu, Constructing an Intellectual Identity: Autobiography and
Identity in Eighteenth-Century Naples, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 6 (2001):
157177. See also A.M. Rao, Intellettuali e professioni a Napoli nel Settecento, in
M.L. Betri and A. Pastore (eds), Avvocati, medici, ingegneri: Alle origini delle professioni
moderni (Bologna, 1997), pp. 4160, and Fra amministrazione e politica: gli ambienti
intellettuali napoletani , in J. Boutier, B. Marin and A. Romano (eds), Naples, Rome,
Florence, Une histoire compare des milieux intellectuels italiens (dix-septimedix-huitime
sicles) (Rome, 2005), pp. 3588.
38
73
fortune nourishes virtue.40 Here then are Paganos virtuous citizens, a middle
order between two material extremes:
Virtue is not ordinarily found in those who are very poor or very rich. Poverty creates a
vile and abject spirit and disposes it to corruption [...]; great wealth, on the other hand,
makes the spirit inert and lazy [...] not open to feelings of humanity, the foundation
and support of social virtues, promoting egoism which extinguishes the sacred fire of
patriotic zeal.41
The greater virtue of the members of this middle class (mezzana classe)
necessitates that they take over the major functions of government and this
principle must be established by legislation.42 In this way, love of luxury
would be replaced by love of glory, honour and virtue. Pagano even specified
a kind of vocational training by candidates for government posts who would
not only have a legal education but earlier experience in minor civic and
military offices.43 In this description he seemed to be suggesting some kind
of administrative class or magistracy, that is, not an independent legislative
power but a middle-class bureaucratic order.
The role of Paganos middle order is ambiguous and the question remains
whether this order has a concrete political function in the political models of
moderate government outlined in the Saggi politici. In its historical context,
the middle order developed with the establishment of civil liberty in all regular
governments. It provided an essential group of industrious and virtuous
citizens for government and society. However, by defining the middle order
as the most virtuous class in any society and asserting that government must
be guided by virtue, Pagano was clearly suggesting some sort of political role
for the members of this order. In a democracy, the middle order would have
the talents necessary to fulfil the role of a representative class in a society in
which the people are uneducated. In an aristocracy, the traditional model of a
hereditary nobility would be replaced by one based on virtue and merit. The
role of the middle order as an intermediary power in a monarchy, however,
is trickier and only becomes clearer if it is placed within the context of the
feudal debates.
Filangieri, in the Scienza della legislazione, had suggested that, instead of
a hereditary nobility which necessarily divides the sovereignty of government
Saggi (1791), Introduzione, p. LXIII.
Ibid.
42
Si devono adunque fare tali indiretti stabilimenti dal legislatore, che su quella
mezzana classe di cittadini venga a cadere lelezione alle cariche maggiori (ibid.)
43
Here Pagano was referring to the example of the civic requirements for the Roman
senate in ibid., p. LXIV.
40
41
74
75
76
For the play which followed, Pagano chose a theme from Neapolitan history
to educate the people directly from their own past.53 Corradino was based on
the life of the Swabian heir to the Neapolitan throne who was eventually
killed by the Angevins with the collusion of the Papacy. There were three other
plays with the same titled produced in Naples in this period testimony not
only to the power of the story itself but also to the power of a public which
would have recognised its historical and political significance.54 Reformers, in
fact, had worked hard to recover a Neapolitan past in the last decades of the
century. Giuseppe Maria Galanti, a student of Genovesis and an acquaintance
of Pagano, owned a typographical society which translated important French
works from the period in to Italian but also wrote and published a series of
historical works on Naples and the Kingdom, precisely to provide a wider public
with a greater historical awareness.55 As recent historical research has shown,
there was a lively print culture in the city of Naples (and, some have argued,
to a lesser extent in the provincial cities of the Kingdom).56 Local newspapers,
such as the Gazzetta civica napoletana which was printed twice a week between
1787 and 1793, with permission of the crown, attest to a readership which
was informed of the activities and movements of the royal family between the
palaces at Portici, Caserta, and Naples as well as international political news
nella mia Patria il sopito genio teatrale, cotanto giovevole a render colta, e polita la nazione
(ibid.) There is a new edition of Corradino, ed. G. Distazo (Cassano Murge, 1994).
53
Amaury Duval wrote of Pagano, Parmi plusieurs pices de thtre quil a
composes, on distinguait surtout une tragdie de Corradino (Conradin) quil offrait des
situations dautant plus intressants pour les Napolitains, quelle tait tire de lhistoire de
leur pays (Grgoire Orloff, Memoires historiques, politiques et littraires sur le Royaume de
Naples, ed. A. Duval (Paris, 1819), vol. I, p. 386, fn.1).
54
In his work on theatre, Pietro Napoli-Signorelli names four contemporary plays
entitled Corradino, including the one written in 1790 by Paganos friend, Francesco
Saverio Salfi (Napoli-Signorelli, Storia critica de teatri antichi e moderni (6 vols, Naples,
179790), VI, p. 219).
55
On Galanti, see Venturi, Riformatori napoletani, pp. 94185. On his editorial
activities, see the useful article by M.L. Perna, Giuseppe Maria Galanti Editore, in G.
Torcellan (ed.), Miscellanea Walter Maturi (Turin, 1966), pp. 22158. In the last fifteen
years, there has been more historiographical interest in Galanti whose life and writings
did not, until recently, play a major role in histories of the revolution because of, I would
argue, his ambivalent role in the revolution and during the restoration of the Bourbon
monarchy. See the recent editions of Galantis writings edited by Augusto Placanica. On
Galantis role in creating a Neapolitan intellectual tradition at the end of the century, see
M. Calaresu, Constructing an Intellectual Identity.
56
See Rao (ed.), Editoria e cultura, pp. 391401. For a summary of the Neapolitan
book trade in this period, see Calaresu, Coffee, Culture and Consumption, pp. 15061.
77
from courts across Europe. More importantly, they also reveal a reading public
in the city to which the announcement of books, the description of scientific
discoveries, and the advertisement of the availability of French tutors were
also addressed.57 The extent of this public can not be more accurately gauged
until more research is done on these more ephemeral but indicative sources
(only recently has there been an initiative to catalogue the eighteenth-century
newspapers in the State Archives in Naples). One could move beyond lawyers
and publishers as readers of such newspapers and widen our conception of
a middle order to include new professional categories and army officers,
as Anna Maria Rao has suggested recently.58 Alternatively, historians have
pointed to Masonic networks as the key to understanding the dissemination
of political ideas, especially in the provinces of the Kingdom.59 The vast
existing literature on Freemasonry in the Kingdom has been dominated by a
concern to establish links between Masonic lodges and the 1799 revolution.60
More recent research, however, has begun to investigate the social networks of
Freemasonry in the capital and the provinces.61 Other areas of research could
include an analysis of legal briefs (several by Pagano survive) which were the
mainstay of many Neapolitan publishers and which have proved such useful
and evocative sources for historians of the public sphere in France such as Sarah
For example, Paganos Considerazioni sul processo criminale (Naples, 1787) was
advertised along with announcements of recent military promotions, the selling of sheet
music for recent theatrical productions, and the arrival of merchant ships in the citys
port, in Gazzetta civica napoletana, 15 (14 April 1787): 10512. The Archivio di Stato in
Naples holds several runs of contemporary Neapolitan journals such as the Gazzetta civica
napoletana, the Gazzetta civica familiare, and the Gazzetta universale.
58
A.M. Rao, Esercito e societ a Napoli nelle riforme del secondo Settecento, Studi
storici, 28 (1987): 62377; also, Rivista italiana di studi napoleonici, XXV (1988): 93159,
and Organizzazione militare e modelli politici a Napoli fra Illuminismo e rivoluzione, in
V.I. Comparato (ed.), Modelli nella storia del pensiero politico: La rivoluzione francese e i
modelli politici (3 vols, Florence, 1989), II, pp. 3963.
59
Davis, Naples and Napoleon, p. 34. For a recent review, see E. Chiosi, Massoneria
e politica, in A.M. Rao (ed.), Napoli 1799 fra storia e storiografia (Naples, 2002),
pp. 21737.
60
For the former, see, for example, Vincenzo Ferrones analysis of Paganos writings
before 1799 in Ferrone, I profeti dellilluminismo, in which he describes Paganos Saggi as
uno dei capolavori della letteratura illuministico-massonica (p. 278).
61
Giarrizzo, for instance, has uncovered evidence that conversazioni were used
by Masons to meet in the provinces of the Kingdom. See G. Giarrizzo, Massoneria e
illuminismo nellEuropa del settecento (Venice, 1994), pp. 39092. On Masonic catechisms,
see P. Matarazzo, I catechismi degli stati di vita alla fine del Settecento, in Rao (ed.),
Editoria e cultura, pp. 50711.
57
78
Maza.62 In fact, taking Mazas most recent study of the French bourgeoisie
as a social imaginary as a model is one way through which one could argue
that, although the crown and reformers were unsuccessful in creating such a
public because of the economic and political problems in the Kingdom, they
did address one.63 Although Neapolitan reformers knew these problems very
well and had done much to disseminate knowledge of them, they continued
to give a role to a public and to public opinion in their political writings.64
While the public to which his writings were addressed might have only
been limited to fellow lawyers, administrators, and university teachers, Pagano
was aware of the limitations of his public but nonetheless gave a significant
role to what he called the ordine mezzana, or middle order, in balancing
power of government between the crown and the people in a constitutional
monarchy and against the powers of the feudal nobility. Although the Saggi
did not outline in any detail a specific reform programme for Naples, as it
was primarily a historical work, Paganos contribution, which was relevant to
the problems of contemporary Naples, was to understand and highlight the
destructive effect of feudal institutions, in particular, a hereditary nobility, for
the development of moderate government. While his political models were
conceived with his experience as a lawyer, the hindsight of a historian, and the
formation of a philosopher, Pagano (unlike Filangieri who died in 1788) was
given a unique chance to put his political ideas into practice in the Neapolitan
republic of 1799.65
On 8 January 1799, a few days before the liberty of Naples and Neapolitans
had yet been proclaimed, Carlo De Nicola wrote in his diary that, They even
say that our emigrant, former magistrate in the Admiralty, Francesco Mario
Extant legal briefs or allegazioni del foro written by Pagano include Contro di
Antonio Gioia [Naples, 1777] and Contro Sabato Totaro, reo dellomicidio di D.Giuseppe
Gensani [Naples, 1784] which have not been analysed even by Gioele Solari. On their
importance to the printing industry, see L. Giustianini, Saggio storico-critico sulla tipografia
del Regno di Napoli (Naples, 1793), p. 199. On France, see Sarah Maza, Private Lives and
Public Affairs: The Causes-clbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley, CA, 1993).
63
Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary
17501850 (Berkeley, CA, 2003).
64
Filangieri, for instance, had recognised the importance of public opinion in
curbing the power of the monarchy; see A.M. Rao, Lopinion publique en Italie au XVIIIe
sicle, The European Legacy, I (1996): 202. On the importance of encouraging literacy
for the development of civil society, see Galanti, Nuova descrizione storica e geografica delle
Sicilie (4 vols, Naples, 178690), I, pp. 3667.
65
For a further discussion of Paganos activities after his arrest and imprisonment
in 1794 and exile in 1796, which is relevant to my argument, see M. Calaresu, Political
Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples, pp. 23745.
62
79
Pagano, is coming with the constitution for the Vesuvian Republic.66 In the
chaos and uncertainty of those days before the establishment of the Neapolitan
Republic on 23 January 1799, Paganos name was already associated with the
new constitution. He came to play a central role in the government of the
new republic as president of the legislative committee for which he wrote the
Progetto di costituzione della repubblica napoletana, published in April 1799
and distributed to members of the provisional government for discussion.67
The projected constitution of over four hundred articles is preceded by a long
preamble, the Rapporto del Comitato di Legislazione al Governo Provvisorio,
which discussed the theoretical and historical foundations of the new
constitution.68 In this preamble, one sees many of the concerns and themes of
Paganos earlier works. For example, in his discussion of the right of the people
to overthrown an oppressive government, Pagano was careful in his definition
of the people (il popolo):
For when we say people what we mean is the people who have been enlightened as
to their own true interests and not indeed a plebian class dozy in their ignorance and
degraded by slavery, and not indeed the gangrenous aristocratic part.69
80
express in any modern language the notion of what we mean.70 One does
not to read much further to understand exactly what he meant. There were
obvious limits to the political equality of the new citizens of the Neapolitan
republic, for once again equality was related to ones faculties and political
equality did not mean that all citizens had the right to govern.71 For Pagano,
the limits of these rights were clear in a democracy such as Naples, writing
evocatively:
In democracies a man of the lowest class can arm himself with the consular fasces, when
he possesses the valour of a Marius or the intelligence of a Livy. An uneducated salami
vendor if elected to the government of Athens would inevitably lose the republic.72
The law must then predefine the moral qualities of citizens who can
be elected. Eligibility for public office would be established, above all, by
educational requirements.73 Echoing his words in the Saggi, Pagano wrote:
The right to elect can be more extensive than the right to be elected, requiring
less talent to discern talent in others than to administer the republic.74 This
also extended to the right to vote. Citizens would have to be able to read
and write, practise a profession or trade (this included agricultural workers),
and recite the Republican Catechism to acquire this right.75 In a language,
not completely dissimilar to the Preamble, the author of the preface to a
revolutionary catechism dedicated to Pagano, explains that it was meant for
those with less enlightened talents.76 Political equality in the republic was
then defined by literacy and limited by ones faculties until ones eventual and
expected enhancement through education.
This qualification of political participation in the 1799 republic, therefore,
explains the importance given to education in the preamble and the constitution
as well as in the activities of the revolutionaries such as the printing and teaching
Ibid.
Luguaglianza politica non deve far s, che venga promosso allesercizio delle
pubbliche funzioni colui, che non ne ha lingegno per adempirle. Il dritto passivo di ogni
Cittadino , secondo la nostra veduta, ipotetico, vale a dire che ogni Cittadino, posto che
rendasi abile, acquista il dritto alle pubbliche cariche (Progetto di costituzione, p. XII).
72
Ibid.
73
Progetto di costituzione, pp. XIIXIII.
74
Progetto di costituzione, p. XIII. See the corresponding passage in the Saggi (1792),
V, v, p. 96.
75
Progetto di costituzione, Article 13, p. 3.
76
C. Pisciotta, Al cittadino Mario Pagano, in F. Astore, Catechismo repubblicano
[Year I of the Neapolitan Republic], in Cattechismi repubblicani: Napoli 1799, ed.
P. Matarazzo (Naples, 1999), p. 5.
70
71
81
82
81
Chapter 7
Introduction
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the controversy over the New
World became one of the main issues in the philosophical debate of the
European Enlightenment. The most famous books related to this affair, written
by William Robertson, Cornelius de Pauw, and Guillaume Thomas-Franois
Raynal, coincided in their judgment that the American continents inferiority
in nature and population was explained by the destructive, degenerative effects
of the Spanish conquest and colonization. Antonello Gerbi summarized
the history of this dispute and unravelled the philosophical, political, and
cultural motivations of these theories of the inferiority of American nature.
More recently, David A. Brading and Jorge Caizares-Esguerra have,
respectively, emphasized the rise in Creole patriotism and the generation of
a patriotic epistemology among the Jesuits exiled in Italy that fomented this
controversy.
The negative vision of America held by thinkers of the European
Enlightenment in the second half of the Eighteenth century caused some
politicians of the Spanish monarchy to encourage an information counterAntonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 17501900
(Pittsburgh, 1973); David A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole
Patriots and the Liberal State, 14921867 (Cambridge, 1991); Jorge Caizares-Esguerra,
How to Write the History of the New World. Historiographies, Epistemologies, and Identities in
the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World (Stanford, 2001). For the Atlantic context, see John
H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America, 14921830 (New
Haven and London, 2006).
84
85
86
official in the Ministry of the Indies. Hypothetically, there can be little doubt
about the invisible hand of Jos de Glvez as patron of Varelas translation,
perhaps to compensate for the decision he made on the same date to prevent
the publication of Robertsons History of America.
For the Spanish government, the publication of the Reflexiones imparciales
was a favourable circumstance for putting Raynal and Robertson on the
same side of the scale as supposed philosophers who were attempting to
discredit the heroic and humanitarian character of the Spanish conquest
and colonization of America. In his Preliminary Discourse, Varela added to
what Nuix had said, that, even though violence undeniably conditioned the
conquest of America, these were not official orders but the fault of some
specific men. Varela also justified the incorporation of two variations with
regard to the Venetian edition. The first variation was the incorporation in the
notes of all the texts of Bartolom de las Casas quoted by Nuix, a measure that
was justified because Raynal and Robertson both based their reasoning on the
Dominican friars writings. The second modification was the inclusion of the
translators personal perceptions to clarify or correct Nuixs statements. There
are a few additions as well, but when they do occur their purpose is to correct
dates or information in order to complement the Catalan Jesuits statements.
One of the peculiarities of the publication in Spain of Nuixs Reflexiones
imparciales is that there were two officially authorized editions. The difference
between one and the other is that Varela y Ulloas translation was never
coordinated with the author. Jos Nuix y Perpi, lawyer of the royal
council and brother of the exiled Jesuit, clarified this. The Nuix brothers
coordinated the translation of the Reflexiones imparciales in order to present
it to the Council of Castile. But Jos found out, from the Gazette of Madrid,
on 29 January 1782, that don Pedro Varela of His Majestys Council had
recommended and decorated with his name the same Reflexiones, translating
them into Castilian and publishing them. At first, Jos Nuix abandoned
Pedro Varela y Ulloa, Discurso Preliminar, in Juan Nuix y Perpia, Reflexiones
imparciales sobre la humanidad de los espaoles en las Indias contra los pretendidos filsofos
y polticos. Para ilustrar las historias de M.M. Raynal y Robertson, escritas en italiano por
el abate don Juan Nuix y traducidas por D. Pedro Valera y Ulloa, del Consejo de S.M., su
secretario con ejercicios de decretos en la tercera mesa de la secretara de estado y del despacho
universal de Marina (Madrid, 1782), p. XXII.
Jos de Nuix y Perpia, El Traductor al que leyere, in Juan Nuix y Perpi,
Reflexiones imparciales sobre la humanidad de los espaoles en Indias, para servir de luz
a las historias de Raynal y Robertson, de Don Juan de Nuix de Perpi; aadidas por el
mismo autor; y traducidas del idioma italiano al espaol por su hermano Don Josef de Nuix
de Perpi, Bachiller en Leyes, Doctor en Sagrados Cnones y Abogado de los Reales Consejos
(Cervera, 1783), p. 1.
87
the project, considering it useless, but later he reconsidered his decision and
finished his work, mentioning that his version contained additions made by
his brother that distinguished it from the Venice and Madrid editions. In the
brief prologue by Jos Nuix, he explained this novelty by pointing out that,
when he revised his book, his brother had extended his criticisms to Mr. de
Pauw and Mr. Marmontel [who] have recently tried to darken the name of
Spain.10 The Royal Academy of History made the same statement when it
censored the Reflexiones imparciales. Jos de Guevara y Vasconcelos, a member
of the Academy, pointed out in his report that the new translator undertakes
this reflection in the prologue and says that it cannot and must not be seen as
a repetition [of Pedro Varela y Ulloas translation] due to the many additions
and corrections by the original author, which he intends to include in the
publication.11 In conformity with this approval, the printing license was given
on 5 July 1782.
In 1783, the University of Cervera undertook the publication of the
Reflexiones imparciales translated by Jos Nuix. But despite this being the
edition that synthesized Juan Nuixs thinking against the work of Raynal, de
Pauw, Robertson, and Marmontel the best, it could not compete with the
Madrid edition, considering all the copies that had been printed. Aware of
this limitation, Jos Nuix did not give up and he made a final effort to achieve
the fame and broad dissemination that the edition prepared by his brother
deserved. In June 1785, Jos Nuix went to the University of Salamanca in
order to propose a new edition of the Reflexiones imparciales, this time with a
prologue by a professor from the university. But the university staff answered
that, although they considered this work a worthy contribution to the defence
of Spaniards humanity in the Indies, they did not usually sponsor works that
were not books of kings and popes.12 This negative response put an end to the
Nuix brothers determination to try to disseminate the Reflexiones Imparciales
according to their own wishes.
Surprisingly, Reflexiones imparciales was hardly valued as the most
representative works of the official Spanish information counter-attack.
Pedro Varela y Ulloas translated version was hardly quoted by the Duke of
Almodvar in his adaptation of the Historia poltica de los establecimientos
ultramarinos de las naciones europeas by Raynal, despite coinciding in the main
Ibid., p. 1.
Archivo de la Real Academia de la Historia (henceforth ARAH), Censuras, Leg.
11/8018.
12
Angel Benito y Durn, La Universidad de Salamanca y la apologa de La
humanidad de los espaoles en las Indias del padre Juan Nuix y Perpi, Revista de Indias,
578 (1954): 53947.
10
11
88
critical arguments against this author of the French Enlightenment. But what
was most notorious was the absence of Nuix from the Historia del Nuevo
Mundo published by Muoz. The destiny of the Cervera edition of Reflexiones
imparciales was even worse. It was consulted by the jurist and politician
Juan Sempere y Guarinos and he used it to prepare the article related to this
Jesuit that he included in his bibliographic repertory of Spanish authors in
the time of Charles III. In this work, Sempere pointed out that Juan Nuix
was praiseworthy for his zeal and that his Reflexiones imparciales can serve to
repair, to some extent, the malignant way that some foreigners have spoken
of the Spaniards, regarding their conduct in the discovery and governing of
the Indies.13 But immediately afterward, he describes Nuixs defense of the
Spanish presence in America as excessive, when he should have acknowledged
that there were undisguisable deficiencies. These had already been pointed
out by Jos del Campillo y Coso in his Nuevo sistema de gobierno econmico
de Amrica, even before Robertson and Raynal mentioned them. Sempere
recalled that Campillo not only drew attention to these vices but proposed
a series of remedies that the government of Charles III had implemented
to correct them. Because of this, he concludes, in a disparaging tone, that
Mr. Nuix would have served the nation better and more honourably by
showing the foreigners the useful steps taken by the Spanish Ministry to
stop the abuses in governing America, rather than excusing them.14 Despite
being officially published, it is possible to conclude that Nuixs book was
not especially well received by the most influential politicians of the Spanish
monarchy.
Vicissitudes of Censure in the Works of Clavijero, Molina, and Velasco
The case of the publication in Madrid of the Storia Antica del Mexico by the
Mexican Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero, originally printed in Cesena in
1780, is an example of an edition failing due to the professional jealousy of
the multiple personalities involved in the case. This work, which criticizes
Buffon, Raynal, and Robertson, had wide repercussions in Europe, although
its impact on the court in Madrid is unknown. Clavijero himself undertook to
translate his two-volume work into Spanish and sent it to the Madrid publisher
Antonio de Sancha, intending for him to begin the paperwork for publishing
it. On 22 April 1784, Sancha initiated the process to obtain the license from
the Council of the Indies. The officials sent the work to the Royal Academy
Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Ensayo de una biblioteca espaola de los mejores
escritores del reynado de Carlos III (Madrid, 1787), vol. IV, p. 154.
14
Ibid., p. 155.
13
89
90
91
The first volume, covering the geographic and natural history of the
kingdom of Chile, was sent by Molina to Manuel de Lardizabal y Uribe,
a jurist from New Spain and at the time member of the Royal Spanish
Academy and very influential in Enlightenment circles thanks to his personal
friendship with Jovellanos. Lardizabal entrusted the translation of the volume
to Domingo Joseph de Arquellada Mendoza, a member of the Royal Academy
of Buenas Letras in Seville. Once this task was completed, the printing license
was applied for from the Council of the Indies on 25 July 1786. When this step
was completed, this organism gave Molinas Compendio to the Royal Academy
of History to be censored, a task that was entrusted to the Asturian academy
member and politician Melchor Gaspar de Jovellanos, who appraised it in a
concise sentence describing the work and its translation as a recommendable
work of public utility.20
Molinas first volume was published by Antonio de Sanchas press in
1788.21 One curious circumstance is that, in a footnote of the preface included
by Arquellada Mendoza, it was announced that the same publishing house
would soon be publishing the Cartas americanas of Count Juan Rinaldo Carli.
Molinas edition was a merit for minister Porlier. But the Spanish commissioner
in Rome, Luis Gneco, who from the start had mediated in the correspondence
between the Chilean priest and the minister of Grace and Justice of the Indies,
was also involved in this publication. Once he knew that the first volume
had been published, Gneco continued to coordinate the publication of the
second volume, devoted to the civil history of the kingdom of Chile, with
Molina. But this publication suffered unexpected delays and was practically
paralyzed when Porlier left his ministerial post in 1792 in order to take up
that of governor of the Council of the Indies. In addition to this circumstance,
the Spanish government failed to increase the Jesuits pension, which would
have been compensation for his labour. On 24 October 1792, Molina wrote
a letter to the new Spanish representative in Rome, Josef Capelletti, hoping
that he would transmit the failure to fulfill the pact that had been made with
him to the new minister of Grace and Justice of Spain and the Indies, Pedro
de Acua, because the excellent Seor don Antonio Porlier had deigned, at
the beginning of his administration, to communicate to him, by means of
the royal commissioner don Luis de Gneco, that His Majesty Charles III
(God rest his soul) had ordered him to be given a double pension as a reward
when the second volume saw the light of day. It has been five years since
that condition was fulfilled but the royal concession had not been put into
ARAH, Censuras, leg. II/8020.
Juan Ignacio Molina, Compendio de la historia geogrfica, natural y civil del reyno
de Chile (Madrid, 1788).
20
21
92
effect, despite the reclamations that had been made at different times.22 This
complaint had an immediate effect and the Spanish government admitted its
error and made the increase in the Chilean Jesuits pension official by a royal
order on 3 April 1793.
In 1795, the second part of Molinas work, dedicated to the civil history
of the kingdom of Chile, appeared in Madrid. This time, Nicols de la Cruz
y Bahamonde was in charge of the translation. In the note that precedes the
preface written by Molina, he explains that, in order to carry out this task with
precision, he had had a series of manuscripts related to the history and customs
of the Araucanians brought from Chile. This can be said to be an annotated
edition of Molinas history. In the prologue, the Chilean Jesuit laments the
delay of this edition, which appeared seven years after the first part had been
published, and blames the delay on human promises (which) are by their very
nature conditional.23 Similarly, Molina publicly acknowledged his ex-Jesuit
companion Miguel de Olivares and confessed that his Compendio took the
history written by Olivares as its reference to the middle of the seventeenth
century. This is how the only case in which Spain actually published the
historiographic work of an American Jesuit ended. The history prepared by
the Jesuit from Quito, Juan de Velasco, would not be as lucky.
In contrast to the works of Nuix, Clavijero, and Molina, La Historia del
Reino de Quito en la Amrica Meridional had not previously been published
in Italian, so its first edition was in Spanish. The intervention of both the
minister, Porlier, and the commissioner, Gneco, in the steps for publication
are similar in this case to those in the case of Molina, but that is where the
similarities end. Contact began on 23 November 1788, when a letter by
Velasco was given to Gneco, addressed to Porlier, requesting his mediation
to obtain royal favor for his three-volume manuscript on the history of the
kingdom of Quito. In this letter, Velasco authorized the Spanish minister to
make whatever corrections to his work that he considered necessary in order
to expedite its publication. It is surprising that in this letter Velasco did not
demand the reward that this involved, that is, an increase in his pension.
His only expectations were for the Spanish government to cover the costs
of printing his work, whether through the kings patronage or through the
eventual profits on its sale, and to receive two copies upon its publication.
The letter ended with an acknowledgement of the patronage of the Spanish
minister, to whom he offered to dedicate his work.24 On 4 January 1789,
Archivo Histrico Nacional (henceforth AHN), Diversos, leg. 29, no. 2.
Juan Ignacio Molina, Compendio de la historia civil del reyno de Chile (Madrid,
1795), p. v.
24
AHN, Diversos, leg. 29, no. 1.
22
23
93
the manuscript was ready and the General Directorate of the Ministry of
Grace and Justice of the Indies considered that the nation is enriched by these
works, while they are, at the same time, a monument that proves the integrity
and behavior that the Spaniards employed in their conquests.25 Porlier gave
the manuscript to the Council of the Indies. Following custom, the official
gave the work, in turn, to the Royal Academy of History for a first censoring.
The minister was so confident that his patronage would be successful that,
in a letter of 15 September 1789, he wrote to Velasco that King Charles IV
was aware of the merit of his work and that he would, in due time, receive
compensation for his contribution. But Porlier failed to count on the way
that the Royal Academy of History would come between this desire and its
fulfilment and frustrate the publication.
The first and second volumes of Velascos work, which treat, respectively,
the natural history and ancient history of Quito, arrived at the Royal Academy
of History in June 1789. The task of censoring them was entrusted to two
members of the academy with established Americanist credentials: Antonio
de Alcedo and Casimiro Gmez Ortega. They presented their report on 14
August 1789, judging the work worthy of coming into public view, as long
as the author corrected a series of errors in content and improved the general
method of his work. In reality, the sentence was unusually severe. Alcedo and
Ortega believed the volume devoted to natural history to be quite imperfect
because its classification followed the natives names and uses of plants;
therefore, they proposed it be excluded or, in the best case, published as an
appendix with the title Repertorio o manual de noticias y nombres vulgares
pertenecientes a las producciones naturales del reino de Quito.26 The two
members of the academy felt it to would be a good idea for Velasco to consult
Ignacio Molinas natural history of Chile as a model to follow. Regarding the
second volume devoted to the ancient history of Quito, which covered the
period from the year 1000 to 1550, the members of the Academy prepared
an extensive list of up to sixty observations that, according to their judgment,
diminished the value of the work. As a result, they concluded that Velasco
should rewrite his work in order for it to be considered publishable.
Surprisingly, on 15 September 1789, Porlier had written a letter to Velasco
to tell him that the first two volumes of his history had been approved by
the Royal Academy of History, although with some objections that could be
Seccin General al Ministro de Estado sobre las pretensiones del exjesuita para
que se imprima su obra, 4 de enero de 1789. Reproduced in Juan de Velasco, Historia del
reino de Quito en la Amrica Meridional (Quito, 1977), vol. 1, p. 25
26
Nota de la Secretara al Ministro remitiendo copia del dictamen de la Real
Academia de la Historia, 3 de octubre 1789, in Velasco, Historia del reino, p. 32.
25
94
28
95
the Atrevida and the Descubierta, on which he undertook his scientific and
political expedition throughout the dominions of the Spanish monarchy
between 1789 and 1794.29
Regarding Molinas role in the controversy about the New World generated
in Madrid, his understanding with a group of Jesuits ready to criticize the
Spanish information counter-attack remains to be pointed out. Molina
signed a petition to the court in Madrid that is not dated but is suspected to
have been written between 1786 and 1788, the same petition that was upheld
by the priests Francisco Iturri, Joaqun Caamao, and Miguel Castro. The four
Jesuits reported that, by means of the public papers that had arrived in Rome,
they had found out about the publication of Antonio de Alcedos Diccionario
geogrfico and that, considering this novelty, they requested the court to send
them a copy to review, in view of the practical knowledge that the undersigned
have of His Majestys important domains, having penetrated, in the missions,
into many unknown countries, examining their production, their geography,
the customs of their natives, and other circumstances necessary for history.30
The four signers then pointed out that they did not intend to criticize Alcedo,
but that they were not confident that a single person could possibly write
correctly about all subjects relating to America. That was why they, drawing
upon their experience and knowledge of America, offered to perfect the
aforesaid Diccionario geogrfico with a series of additions and corrections,
assuming Alcedos authorization of them. What the four requested, in short,
was for the Spanish government to allot them a stipend so that they could
devote themselves completely to the collective task of improving a book which
was thought to be of public importance. In other words, what the four Jesuit
historians wished was to join efforts with a member of the Royal Academy of
History, in this case Alcedo, to refute the myth of Americas inferiority. But
this chance for collaboration between the members of the academy and the
members of the Jesuit order was frustrated when the Madrid court did not
respond to this petition.
Of the four Jesuits who wrote to the court, the Rioplatense Iturri would, at
a later date, play a key role in the ultimate defeat of the Spanish information
counter-attack, becoming the author of the Carta crtica sobre la historia de
Amrica del Sr. Dn. Juan Bautista Muoz, in which he accused the author
of the Historia del Nuevo Mundo of servilely translating Robertson and
96
97
The third obstacle arose from the Spanish politicians themselves. The
case of the publication of the Reflexiones imparciales by the Mallorcan Jesuit
Juan Nuix shows that not even a work that was an absolute defense of Spains
actions in America won the sympathy of the members closest to the court.
The influential politician Juan Sempere y Guarinos criticism of Nuix focused
on Nuixs ignorance of the Bourbon reforms devoted to correcting the defects
of the old colonial pact that Roberston and Raynal had pointed out.
The fourth, and final, obstacle was that the Jesuits provoked the erosion of
the information counter-attack by criticizing some of its most emblematic
productions. This was the case with Alcedos Diccionario geogrfico as well as
with Muozs Historia del Nuevo Mundo. The Ro de Plata Jesuit Francisco
Iturri played an outstanding role in taking apart the Spanish discourse against
foreign Enlightenment thinkers because his criticism undercut the publication
of the second volume of the Historia del Nuevo Mundo. As a result of all of
this, the heterogeneity of the actors discursive positions, personal jealousies
and animosities, and internal discrepancy regarding the comprehension of
America were characteristics that (marred) the Spanish information counterattack and led, ultimately, to the failure of this discourse.
Translated by Nancy Konvalinka.
Chapter 8
For the study of cultural and political identity in late colonial Central America
(the Kingdom of Guatemala), the Gazeta de Guatemala (17971816)
is one of few published sources with which to study what a modern elite
such as that posited by Franois-Xavier Guerra might be up to in a public
sphere outside the metropolitan centres of Mexico and Peru, where scholars
including David Brading and Anthony Pagden have shown the steady rise
of a Creole patriotism in books and manuscripts produced, often in exile,
and for a primarily European audience. These scholars analysis tracked
development of a Creole cultural identity, or growing affective identification,
by American-born Spaniards with the colonies of their birth, their patrias
or homelands, which accelerated in the waning years of empire. Guerra also
highlighted the political nature of turn-of-the-century economic reform
* Thanks to Skidmore Colleges Office of the Dean of the Faculty Travel-To-Read
funds, and Harvard Universitys Seminar in the History of the Atlantic World for an
opportunity to present an earlier draft of this paper.
The Kingdom of Guatemala (15241821), a captaincy general, comprised the
territories of five countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa
Rica) divided in multiple districts, and of Chiapas, which became a Mexican state in
1823.
Franois-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias: ensayos sobre las revoluciones
hispnicas (Madrid, 1992), p. 105.
David Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the
Liberal State, 14921867 (New York, 1991) and Anthony Pagden, The Uncertainties of
Empire: Essays in Iberian and Ibero-American Intellectual History (Aldershot, 1994). For
discussion of the development of Creole identity, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991).
100
101
102
and other printed matter designed to reach an extended public that supported
my original finding of political ideas in Guatemalas Gazeta.
However, in revisiting the Gazeta from the perspective of its place within
the context of Bourbon empire, the emphasis on its development of a Creole
political culture and identity, rather than a Bourbon project, no longer seems
accurate. Returning to my sources and existing scholarship, the Gazeta seemed
not a Creole publishing project, but a joint effort that relied on interest
from royal officials, both Creole and Spanish, and from local elites born
in Central America. In other words, it seemed a quintessential product and
project of Bourbon reform not just Creole modernity, that is, a part of an
Enlightenment shift in political culture such as identified by Renn Silva.13
Second, the Gazeta did not seem to call into being a Creole identity in Central
America, nor seek to justify long-standing racial and socio-economic divisions
among inhabitants; nor did it fail to open rhetorical or potentially political
space for power-sharing with the Indian, African and mixed-race majority.14
On the contrary, following and adapting Spanish calls for uniformity and
progress through administrative reform, education, agriculture and industry,
the Gazeta in a very self-conscious, didactic way, seemed to call into being
Central America as a patria with a political history tied to its status as a
praetorian captaincy general within the Spanish imperial system, and also a
Central America with a public in which membership was gained by utility
to the community, not a pre-ordained status in society guaranteed by birth or
profession.15 In other words, rhetoric that attempted to construct one people
(or at least one public) and not just distinct classes and races appeared in the
Gazeta. However, the public called into being was not meant as a precursor
to revolution. Rather, the Central America conceived in the Gazeta would
be an ideal Bourbon state, developing the uniformity touted by imperial
reformers with a place for resident Spaniards and immigrant provincials who
contributed to the common good, as well as for the mixed-race majority.
The chapter that follows suggests how the Gazeta de Guatemala represented
a joint venture by the modern elite of Guatemala City, local and imperial in
Silva, La ilustracin.
McFarlane, Identity, Enlightenment and Political Dissent, pp. 313, 316.
15
See Sajid Herrera, Primary Education in Bourbon San Salvador and Sonsonate,
17501808, pp. 1745, in Jordana Dym and Christophe Belaubre, (eds), Politics, Economy
and Society in Bourbon Central America, 17591821 (Boulder, CO, 2007). The underlying
program to render uniform the government of the great empires can be seen in Article 1,
Instruccin e ordenanza de intendentes[Buenos Ayres (1782), Nueva Espana (1786)].
Uniformity meant replicable governmental systems with fixed rules and regulations,
producing predictable results, rather than based on tradition and shifting allegiances.
13
14
103
origin, to develop a political identity among the colonys elites that would
permit more effective transmission of Bourbon projects to improve agriculture
and industry by creating a public that linked all residents in a shared effort
to improve as individuals and as a community.16 The idea that splits among
Guatemala City elites occurred as often along network or kinship fault lines
or intellectual affinities as Creole and Spanish divides is not new; however, the
idea that newspapers such as the Gazeta served as agents of imperial as well
as Creole policy-making is less common.17 This is not to say that the Gazetas
program, in its conception of Central America as a territory with a history,
geography, culture, and people, provided a conceptual framework useful
only for Bourbon reformers; the generation of Creole leaders who engineered
independence in 1821 drew selectively from this rhetoric as well. However,
the reform program as presented reflects more the spirit of imperial reform
than revolution, and the commitment by both local and imperial elites to
diffuse las luces as far as possible into the multiple power centres within their
jurisdiction.
The Gazeta de Guatemala and the Modern Elite
The Gazeta de Guatemala was published weekly in Guatemala City from 1797 to
1816, across two different political moments. Up to 1807, a time of continuity
within imperial government and the period considered here, the newspapers
articles focused on fomenting a common project of political, economic and
social development and on the parameters of Central American identity. After
1808, a period of imperial crisis, the newspaper strongly supported Spains war
against Napoleon Bonaparte and constitutional monarchy. In both periods,
the Gazeta served as the first regular, public platform for engaging literate
Central American society in a discussion of local, regional and imperial reform
and development.
For my analysis of the Bourbon Reforms, see Introduction in Dym and Belaubre,
(eds), Politics, Economy and Society, pp. 115.
17
See Jordana Dym, El Poder en Nueva Guatemala: La disputa de los Alcaldes de
Barrio, 17611821, in Stephen Webre and Robinson Herrera (eds), Cultura y sociedad
en Guatemala colonial (Plumsock, VT, 2008); Jos Manuel Santos Prez, La prctica de
autogobierno en Centroamrica: conflictos entre la audiencia de Guatemala y el cabildo de
Santiago en el siglo XVIII, Mesoamrica, 40 (2002): 6994; Christophe Belaubre, In the
Shadow of the Great: Church Financiers Everyday Resistance to the Bourbon Reforms,
Guatemala City 17531808, and Michel Bertrand, The Social Elites of Guatemala on
the Eve of Independence: Internal Structures and Dynamics, in Dym and Belaubre (eds),
Politics, Economy and Society, pp. 4774, 23964.
16
104
105
106
107
issues of local concern. Such a result interested Guatemala Citys royal officials
and Creole elites, as both believed in the Bourbon mantra of the benefits of
uniformity, which facilitated government by the former and reinforced the
centrality of the latter. A more uniform society which adopted reformist goals
would be easier to govern and influence.
A Useful and Pedagogical Agenda
In Betetas 1797 prospectus, the Gazeta offered a quintessentially Bourbon
agenda, proposing to contribute to practical improvement of Central
American society by communicating Enlightenment ideas and ideals to a
public not confined to Guatemala City.32 News would be informative, aimed
at fomenting public instruction on Economy, Commerce, Industry, Politics,
the sciences and the fine arts.33 For the Gazetas sponsors, the paper would
be a university without walls bringing the latest ideas and techniques to the
provinces, a professor to convince both recalcitrant and willing students of
the new systems worth, a textbook to explain ideas and a training manual for
practical implementation. Despite supposedly little affection for reading in
the provinces,34 the newspaper would repeat in Guatemala the service it had
provided in Europe, serving as midwife to a commercial society:
The necessity and utility of the newspaper have been considered and repeated a thousand
times. It certainly has contributed importantly to the extension and propagation of the
Enlightenment in Europe ... In Guatemala, more than in any other place, a work of
this kind is necessary. Without it, the society aborning will not succeed in prospering,
or its progresses will be unknown to the rest of the world.35
108
109
110
Encyclopaedia reported that Guatemala was part of New Spain. Who told
this gentleman that the Kingdom of Guatemala recognizes as its Capital that
of Mexico, when the whole world knows that it has the necessary courts and
gymnasia to be what it is, independent of the other American Governments?
editors fumed.46 Ambitious bureaucrats and Creole merchants might differ on
why greater external, as well as internal, recognition of Guatemalas autonomy
mattered, but both might benefit from such awareness.
Finally, the Gazeta spread las luces by publishing literary works by
Guatemalan authors, letters from readers (and responses), news of Europe
and, occasionally, news from other colonies and the United States, all of
which indicated an understanding that Guatemala operated within the
confines and interests of an Atlantic system.47 However, the paper steered clear
of overtly controversial topics, such as discussion of the internal workings
of Spanish politics, the political ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, the
French Revolution and Declaration of Rights of Man, and the American
Continental Congress, claiming to publish nothing contrary to Religion or
the Government.48 In fact, the first issue explicitly noted that the paper would
cover politics (poltica), but not the great science of Government, or the rights
of war and peace, nature and nations.49 Its political section would instead
provide a general idea of the nations of Europe, particularly the belligerents,
with respect to the current war in order to satisfy public curiosity and
contribute to extending the Enlightenment (las luces) in the Kingdom.50
Throughout the period in question, the Gazeta stayed true to this promise.
Even after the Sociedad Econmicas suppression in 1799 and earning the
opprobrium of a conservative archbishop, it retained support from Spanish
officials and continued to publish.51
The Gazeta, then, explicitly stated its intention to transform society
through economics and education while steering clear of criticism of the
government, and, in effect, politics. Yet it is hard to believe that the elite behind
Ibid., No. 432, 13 April 1806, pp. 7867.
For example, in April and May 1801, Nos 202 and 204 reported economic
analyses for New Spain and Guayaquil, Thomas Jeffersons election as US president, and
the ousting of Britains prime minister.
48
Gazeta, Prospecto, p. 3.
49
Ibid., No. 1, 13 February 1797, p. 1.
50
Ibid., p. 4.
51
Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Guatemala 415, Consulta 7: Sociedad Econmica,
Real Cedula, 17 May 1802. Medina, La imprenta, p. 310. In 1806, Archbishop Casaus
y Torres denounced the Gazetas advocacy of schooling in Spanish instead of Latin. In
1810, Captain General Antonio Gonzlez wrote that the paper had acted as como cosa de
oficio, with credit and impartiality.
46
47
111
112
which can have an impact on the common good.57 Addressing a specific public,
defined in terms of the kingdom, communicated to the reader that there was a
Central American public made up of citizens whose contributions to public
life were useful and capable of improving the common good. The common
good was the responsibility and purview of all inhabitants; Indians who
participated in cacao-growing contests and artisans disturbed by cheap British
fabrics impact on their textile industry were part of the public.
For this inclusive redefinition of public, the Gazeta coined a new word
to encompass its broadened understanding of Central American community.
Before the newspaper, this colony lacked a standard adjective to denominate
a resident of the Kingdom of Guatemala, relying on caste and class categories
common to the Americas since the sixteenth century and still used in Central
American publications: Creole, Spaniard, Indian, Ladino, and American.58
None of these adjectives described the new public. For different reasons, Creole,
Indian, Ladino and Spaniard were too exclusive, denoting only segments of
Guatemalan society; American was too inclusive, failing to limit this public to
the colony. In the first issues, the authors couldnt decide whether their fellow
colonials were guatemalenses or guatemaltecos.59 Identifying this new public
as guatemaltecos (the name that stuck), in addition to shared identities as
Spaniards and Spanish Americans, Guatemala Citys Bourbon elite called into
existence a Central American public to inform, educate and galvanize. Other
categories of identity were not abandoned; Creoles still excluded Indians;
Spaniards and Spanish Americans maintained some distance. In 1797,
Guatemala Citys elite were far from conceiving their Guatemalan identity
as incompatible with a Spanish American, and even Spanish identity. What
it did say was that those who had a shared interest in the specific colony,
regardless of race or class, could share a sense of community.
This definition of extended public, or colonial community, that crossed
race, class and regional lines, was new to colonial discourse. In setting up
government institutions in the New World, the Spanish had devised the
two republic system, with one set of laws and institutions for Spaniards and
their descendants, and another for Indians. These laws, including required
Indian tribute, still existed. Many landholders, dependent on Indian labour,
still supported separation of the two classes, as well as limiting opportunities
for gentes de color (ladinos, mestizos, castas) and blacks: neither they nor
Indians could hold military or civil service office. Those who favoured keeping
Indians subordinate subscribed, at least in public, to the view that they were
Ibid., No. 20, 19 June 1797, p. 156.
Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzmn, Recordacin Florida (Guatemala, 1932).
59
Gazeta, Nos 1 and 2, 13 and 14 February 1797.
57
58
113
In fact, the Gazetas educational agenda is somewhat self-serving. The city elite didnt
produce the colonys export products, and were resented as middlemen. Correspondent
Manuel Agricola, insisted that non-hacienda-owning chapetones (Spaniards/cityslickers)
not meddle where they had no knowledge: a hacienda visit would prove that Indians were
canalla (animals). Gazeta, No. 25, 24 July 1797, p. 198.
61
Campillo, cited in Pagden Liberty, Honour, pp. 1617.
60
114
incorporate Central Americas sizable Indian and mestizo populations into the
commercial world for reform to succeed.
Thus, the Gazeta elite conceived a homogeneous population by challenging
the Spanish legal systems policy of providing different laws for different classes
and Enlightenment philosophers categorization of non-white races as inferior.
So, unlike Campillo, Guatemala Citys elite addressed how to bring all groups
into the commercial system, and identified structural problems complicating
creation of a commercial society in the Americas: Spanish legal system and
European prejudice. They agreed with Campillo that commerce was a partial
remedy to underclass ills and that Indian indolence could be attributed to lack
of private property. An Indian given land would show industry and increase
the markets reach by beginning to purchase Spanish goods for his wife
(vain like all women).62 Yet the Gazeta also identified changes needed from
the other contributors to economic prosperity: white elites and mixed-race
workers. At least one article proposed that change should come from white
men who, protected by their position and the law, had to be persuaded that
work (la ocupacin) was seemly and honourable in anyone, a lesson available
in Spanish reformer Padre Jernimo Feijoos Teatro Crtico (17261739).63
However, they disputed Spanish tradition and Encyclopaedic analysis that
stated that nature explained why castas also lacked ambition. Instead, the
Gazeta argued that failure to produce stemmed from lack of incentive and
pointed out that while, in the metropolis, the lower classes (the peasant) could
dream of equalling the upper classes, in Guatemala, as in all of America, the
people (el pueblo) meant only people of colour, prohibited to think that their
luck might improve by regular or easy means. In other words, the law made
certain achievements impossible for non-Creoles; the European solution of
encouraging commercial dreams alone could not work.64 Changing the laws
preventing full participation would provide incentive for the gente de color,
to become productive members of society.
Private property, the touchstone of the capitalist development that Spain
and its colonies were trying to implement, was thus used by Gazeta writers
to attack legal and philosophical racism. Without specific arguments for
natural and legal equality for non-whites, the Gazeta pictured a homogeneous
society, with all classes equal under the law and contributing to societys
positive development. Indians and those of mixed race were re-conceived as
industrializing peasants who should be allowed to dream of , or have legal
access to, means of improvement. The Gazeta perception of Indians and other
Gazeta, No. 9, 10 April 1797, pp. 7071.
Ibid., No. 253, 5 April 1802, pp. 8081.
64
Ibid., No. 33, 18 September 1797, p. 259.
62
63
115
116
117
Rebecca Earle, Creole Patriots and the Myth of the Loyal Indian, Past & Present,
172 (2001): 12545.
67
John Lynch, El reformismo borbnico e Hispanamrica, in Agustn Guimera
(ed.), El reformismo borbnico: Una visin interdisciplinar (Madrid, 1997), p. 56.
68
See for example, Dym and Belaubre (eds), Politics, Economy and Society; Charles
Walker (ed.), Entre la retrica y la insurgencia: las ideas y los movimientos sociales en los
Andes, siglo XVIII (Cuzco, 1996); and Anthony McFarlane, Colombia Before Independence:
Economy, Society and Politics under Bourbon Rule (New York, 1993).
69
Yale University Press seems to lead such efforts in intellectual and political history.
See, for example, Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, Lester D. Langley, The Americas in
the Age of Revolution (New Haven, 1996), and Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World:
Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500c. 1800 (New Haven, 1995).
70
See, nonetheless, Paul Saffords comments about Enlightened reform in Colombia
when reviewing Anninos edited collection, De los imperios a las naciones: Iberoamrica
(Zaragoza, 1994), Journal of Latin American Studies, 28:2 (1996): 5067.
66
118
Chapter 9
120
The aim of this essay is to analyze the reading practices linked to this novel
by drawing on evidence that can be gleaned from Portuguese Inquisition
documents, especially those referring to Portugal or to Brazil, as well as to
discuss how readers appropriated the ideas contained in these books. Of
course, other books were also read and appropriated by these readers and it
has to be recognized that their intellectual universe was far from typical of late
eighteenth-century Portugal and Brazil. Although their universe was small (in
terms of the number of people it included), it also was enlightened. We have
to consider both of these peculiar features: on the one hand, it is necessary to
avoid misleading generalizations; on the other hand, it is crucial to focus on
the other books that were cited in addition to Montesquieus novel. This essays
central thesis is that the act/process of reading philosophical books (especially
novels, but not limited to the Persian Letters mentioned above, and other
book genres as well) enabled Luso-Brazilian readers to make a philosophical
appropriation of them. Such appropriation, furthermore, usually expressed
the readers creativity.
Coimbra Readers
Among the readers of the Persian Letters were certain students and former
students of the University of Coimbra, who, in 17781779, belonged to a
wider group consisting of Antnio de Morais Silva, Francisco de Melo Franco,
Manuel Joaquim Henriques de Paiva, and Antnio Pereira de Caldas, from
Brazil; Joo Laureano Nunes Leger, Francisco Jos de Almeida, Jos Maria da
Fonseca, Jernimo Francisco Lobo, Vicente Jlio Fernandes, Nuno de Freitas,
Diogo Jos de Morais Calado, Jos Antnio de Melo and Antnio Caetano
de Freitas, born in Portugal; and also, Antnio da Silva Lisboa, from Luanda,
Angola.
These students from the University of Coimbra did not restrict themselves
to reading of Montesquieus novel. They also read other books: the Marquis
dArgenss Cabalistic Letters; an unspecified title by Locke (where Antnio de
Morais would have read that Man was imbued with a false idea of God),
Rousseaus Emile (the most read of them all and subject to translation and
manuscript circulation); Letters from Marquis dArgens; Baron dHolbachs The
System of Nature, erroneously attributed to Mirabeau; Voltaires The Maid of
Orleans; Bielfelds Political Institutions, Rousseaus Social Contract; and the
Crusoe e Cartas Persas: romances, viagens e devir histrico (17191806), in Clia Maia
Borges (ed.), Narrativas e Imagens (Juiz de Fora, 2006), pp. 10255.
Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais da Torre do Tombo (hereafter, IANTT), Lisbon
Inquisition, Trial record no. 2015, p. 31v.
121
great work (probably the Complete Works, in eight volumes, in which Lockes
ideas are appropriated), by Antonio Genovesi (also referred to as Genuense).
All of these authors were Enlightenment thinkers, except for Locke, their
precursor. Antnio de Morais Silva, in his confessions to the Inquisition,
added other authors and titles: the Enlightenment thinkers Monsieur de
Felice (perhaps Code de lhumanit ou la lgislation universelle, naturelle, civile
et politique), Adrien Helvetius (probably, Le vrai sens du systme de la nature)
and Marquis of Beccaria (certainly, Trait de dlits et des peines), all of them
prohibited, and the jus-naturalist Samuel Puffendorf (probably, Introduction
lhistoire gnral et politique de lunivers), the ecclesiastic historian Joanne
Laurentio Berti, the English theologian Samuel Clarke, Guillaume Alexandre
Mhgan (Tableau de lhistoire moderne, depuis la chute de lEmpire dOccident,
jusqu la Paix de Westphale), Nicolas Sylvestre Bergier (Le Disme refut par luimme ou examen des principes dincredulit) and Abb Millot (Elmens dhistoire
gnrale), allowed by the Portuguese censorship after 1768. The reading of the
Persian Letters in association with other writings of Enlightenment thinkers
or those that influenced or, on the contrary, authors who attacked them,
observed among this group of Coimbra students was common among other
readers, especially titles by Voltaire, Bielfeld and Rousseau. The Persian Letters
was mentioned in the confession of Antnio Caetano de Freitas, a student
from the island of Madeira, arrested by the Inquisition of Coimbra accused of
heresy and apostasy, on 30 July 1779, as well as in the confessions of Antnio
da Silva Lisboa and Nuno de Freitas, two law students who were subjected to
public autos-da-f in 1781.
The books were exchanged or sold by the Coimbra students. The Persian
Letters was subject to loan. Antnio de Morais Silva gave a copy to the student
Diogo Jos de Morais Calado, who then lent it to Antnio Caetano de Freitas.
Antnio Caetano confessed that for some time he had wondered if suicide
might be a natural right, as we find that it was justified in a book entitled
Persian Letters. In the novel, Roxana, one of the wives of the tyrannical
protagonist, lived in a harem under the control of eunuchs. After committing
adultery, she chose to commit suicide (apparently an alternative act used
to redress dishonour and the loss of social position, therefore constituting
an appropriate response to specific situations). In one of the editions of the
I am grateful to Diogo Lcio Vieira for this information.
IANTT, Lisbon Inquisition, Prosecutors Notebooks no. 130 (17501790), Book
319, pp. 6578 and Trial record no. 2015.
IANTT, Coimbra Inquisition, Trial record no. 8094, pp. 34v43.
IANTT, Lisbon Inquisition, Trial record no. 2015 and Trial record no. 1557, n/p.
IANTT, Lisbon Inquisition, Trial record no. 2015, p. 9.
122
123
passages were mere fable while in others it contained sinful and less licit permissible
lessons. The precepts of fasting and abstinence of meat on prohibited days were
unsubstantiated. The celebration of mass was an invention aimed at making money.
They denied the validity of indulgences, mocking them and their virtue, as well as
papal authority. From the instructor/priest Duros sermons they concluded that he
thought he had made a mistake in wanting to prove the purity of Our Lady by natural
reason, since it could only be proven by the Holy Scriptures, which they denied. They
were critical of friars and the ecclesiastical State.13
Moreover, these young men ate meat on forbidden days, cooked it at the
university laboratory and at the home of Manuel Joaquim Henriques de Paiva,
at the time a lecturer in chemistry.14 The attacks on the Inquisition, the Pope,
the ecclesiastical State and their understanding that religion served to repress
men in society, converged with positions defended in the Persian Letters,
although such positions were also present in other works examined by the
Coimbra students.15 At any rate, by reinforcing ideas from other books or even
those already defended by these readers or in suggesting new ways of thinking,
the Persian Letters were inserted in a setting of cultural enlightenment. Antnio
de Morais Silva was a particularly creative reader, as is shown in his readings
of permitted books in a heterodox way. For example, he approached Antonio
Genovesis work and the Bible by selecting, interpreting and confronting their
ideas with his own observations. Thus, upon observing a cat with labour
pains, Morais Silva was purported to have said: Here is Adams original sin,
everything is natural effects and there is no such sin,16 effectively questioning
IANTT, Inquisition of Coimbra. Trial record no. 8094, pp. 45v. On this, see:
Antnio Baio, Episdios dramticos da Inquisio portuguesa, 3rd edn (Lisboa, 1973),
vol. 2, pp. 11417.
14
IANTT, Lisbon Inquisition, Trial record no. 13369, n/p and Lisbon Inquisition,
Trial record no. 2015, pp. 8v9.
15
On religion as a societal restraint, see, for instance: Montesquieu, Do Esprito
das Leis, trans. Alex Marins (So Paulo, 2004), p. 454; [Anonymous], Tereza Filsofa ou
memrias, trans. Carlota Gomes (Porto Alegre, 1991), p. 101; and Marquis dArgens,
Le lgislateur moderne ou les mmoires du Chevalier de Meillcourt (Amsterdam, 1739),
pp. 3545. The Portuguese censorship itself defended this notion, although it could not
be construed as a reduction of religion. See: IANTT, Real Mesa Censria/ Real Mesa da
Comisso Geral, Edital de 24 de setembro de 1770, Caixa 1, pp. 12.
16
IANTT, Inquisition of Coimbra, Trial record no. 8094, p. 20v. In his own defence,
Morais Silva said that he arrived at this understanding of Genesis and womens labour
pains reading the heretical arguments in books written by the authors who defended the
Catholic faith, citing among them Samuel Clarke, Bergier and Genovesi. He also had
listened to the same arguments when he watched a presentation made by a Benedictine
friar in a Philosophy class in Rio de Janeiro (ibid., pp. 36v7). Books and orality would
13
124
the passage from Genesis, according to which Eves participation in the Fall
of Man caused women to suffer labour pains. Morais was also said to have
decried the Holy Office claiming that its practices contradicted the words
of Christ in the New Testament. Morais asserted that the Inquisition was
a tribunal devoid of authority since an Italian called Savedra had come to
Portugal establishing it by way of false decrees and with the help of Jesuit
priests. The Holy Office contradicted the Holy Scripture, for Christ demanded
that no one was obliged to believe in his law or his faith through the use of
violence, making it clear that the Holy Office should be condemned for doing
so. The only explanation for the Inquisition was political: to avoid differences
in beliefs in a single country.17
Involving the same network of libertine students, there is a confession
presented to the Inquisition in Coimbra in April 1778 by fellow student
Jernimo Francisco Lobo. In this accusation twenty-six students, three of
them born in Brazil, were accused of defending heretical propositions and
of reading prohibited books by Voltaire, Rousseau, Frederick II (the King of
Prussia), Mirabeau and other wicked men.18 Once again Voltaire is cited.
Jernimo confessed the bad ideas that he approved as his own, which he had
found in different wicked books in order to attack the Catholic Religion and
repudiate the true belief, exposing and teaching them to the foul coreligionists
who belonged to his wicked Society.19 In defending the proposition of the
mortality of the soul, he relied on arguments found in a certain book intending
to show that the soul does not survive the body given its dependence on the
body.20 In referring to the creation of the World, as Moses describes it, as
fabulous and an invention of the Human understanding, he again mentioned
a certain book which insisted upon the impossibility of God (a spirit) having
created the world a material reality and upon the notion that man did
not differ from animals in anything, except for his greater intelligence. Other
propositions extracted from the books were: that there was no Purgatory,
an invention of the clerics, nor was there a Hell; that the New and Old
Testament were the work of men; that the column of fire that preceded the
People of Israel was not something miraculous thing, but indeed a litter of
have led him, according to his words, to this heretical comprehension. He denied, in this
manner, his creativity.
17
Ibid., pp. 20v1.
18
IANTT, Lisbon Inquisition, Prosecutors Notebook no. 130 (17781790),
pp. 6578. Although it appears in a prosecutors notebook from the Lisbon Inquisition,
the confession took place at the tribunal of Coimbra.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
125
fire of common Oriental inspiration; that the end of the world by an all
engulfing fire originated in the thinking of Heraclitus and other philosophers
of Ancient Greece; that all fornication was freed, a heretical proposition
inferred from Saint Pauls words, Melius est nubere quam uri: which he said
jokingly, without really considering it as true.21
Lobo mentioned various other propositions learned with his comrades, but
regarding the one in which there was no God, he explained that he was simply
repeating an error based on the French verse la crainte fit les Dieux, laudace
a fait les Rois, that is, fear made the gods; audacity, the kings. Although
the author was not named, the verse is by Prosper Crbillon and appears
in the tragedy Xerxes.22 This shows how ideas probably emerged through an
articulation of oral exchanges such as in conversations and discussions with
other people and books that often must have served to legitimate, support or
lend an air of erudition to certain propositions. And it becomes quite clear
that works of Fine Art were used in this sense. The same reasoning is valid
in relation to the proposition in which Man could not be held accountable
for his bad acts, for he had no freedom to act a misconception [Lobo]
had imbibed from a certain book and hoped to prove with arguments.23 The
dialogue between oral culture and books, however, was complex. One of the
propositions, which clearly turns up in some of the books, was identified by
Lobo as derived from oral culture, or, in his words, from personal contact. Even
though he did not deny the existence of literary sources, Jernimo claimed
that the Revealed Religion was a political invention of man and in this
error he had been influenced by his comrades.24 There were still other cases for
which the origins of the propositions were not revealed, as can be seen in these
examples: it was not according to Gods Reasoning to send his Son to the
world for the salvation of men; that celibacy was not a more perfect state than
Matrimony; that all Saints had been hypocrites; that Saints only existed
among the ignorant; that the Inquisition was not a Legitimate Tribunal,
but disseminated ignorance; that the Marquis of Pombal had committed a
Ibid.
http://www.dicocitations.com/biographie/1181/Crebillon_pere.php [last accessed
21 October 2007].
23
A possible source is Thrse Philosophe, a book in which the protagonist refutes
mans freedom, perceiving him as an individual whose behaviour is determined by the
degrees of passion in which nature and sensations affect him, not being free to think, man
could not be free to act. [Anonymous], Tereza Filsofa ou memrias, pp. 379.
24
IANTT, Lisbon Inquisition, Prosecutors Notebook no. 130 (17781790),
pp. 6578.
21
22
126
127
the leaders of the protestant Reform, Luther. Teixeira denounced that Joo da
Costa e Souza, a law student at the University of Coimbra and then a boarder
in the home of Monsignor Perim in Lisbon, had lent him the book entitled
system of Nature, by Mirabeau (in fact, Le systme de la nature, by Holbach),31
which served as an inspiration for many of their erroneous ideas [...] he [da
Costa e Souza] had copied a summary of this work by Mirabeau in secret
code sending it from Lisbon to Coimbra hoping that this communication
would not be discovered.32 Although involved in this story, Joo da Costa e
Souza himself had not denounced anything to the Holy Office. One Tom
Barbosa, who had previously attended the University of Coimbra, was accused
of proffering the following the proposition: Saint Dominic was in Hell, for
having persecuted the Albigenses according to Voltaire.33
Other Readers from the Kingdom of Portugal: A Friar, a Magistrate and
an Apothecary
Another example of the circulation of the Persian Letters, although not as
steeped in detail about reading practices and the appropriation of ideas, shows
up in the case of Dr. Joaquim de Maria Santssima, a resident of Colgio de So
Bento and whom Friar Bento de Nossa Senhora denounced to the Inquisition
of Coimbra in 1801.34 Friar Bento claimed to have seen the Persian Letters,
which contain various wicked propositions,35 in the hands of Dr. Joaquim.
From this accusation we can conclude that Dr. Joaquim not only owned the
book, but also let others consult it and, probably, lent it to the denouncer.
Moreover, Friar Bento appears to have either read the book or was aware of
the inquisitional proscribing of Voltaires heretical ideas, equally condemned
by the Portuguese censorial courts. The Friars knowledge of Voltaires wicked
propositions may have originated from oral exchanges, but, whatever his
Jean de Viguerie, Histoire et dictionnaire du temps des Lumires, 17151789 (Paris,
1995), p. 1035.
32
IANTT, Lisbon Inquisition, Prosecutors Notebook no. 130 (17781790), pp. 65
78. Holbach is cited in other documents. For example, D. Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho,
who studied for a time at the University of Coimbra, borrowed Professor Jos Anastcio
da Cunha Le Systme de la nature, by Holbach, and lent him a book by Hume (Ferro,
pp. 656), both of them prohibited in Portugal. Years later he would become a minister
of the Prince D. Joo.
33
Ibid., p. 6578.
34
IANTT, Inquisition of Coimbra, Prosecutors Notebooks no. 124 and 125 (1798
1802), Books 416 and 417, p. 29.
35
Ibid.
31
128
36
37
129
He read uncensored authors and writings, such as Linnaeus book and the Old
Testament, in order to associate ideas they contained with those defended in
prohibited texts, such as Montesquieus and probably the writings of Voltaire.
He also perused obscene novels and orthodox writings. He used the texts
allowed by censorship to legitimate the heretical-libertine ideas picked up
in other writings. Among the many ideas defended by Jos Lus, the most
prominent was the principle of conservation of the species, essential in his
understanding of the world and an idea legitimated in Montesquieus writings,
including the Persian Letters, as well as in his monumental The Spirit of the
Laws, published in 1748.38
In a discussion about the human soul at the home of the widow D. Maria
Lusa, and in the presence of her ill sister-in-law, Jos Lus Pinto exclaimed,
that if it were not for Divine authority, he would not believe in such lies.39
As the discussion became agitated Pinto began to compare men with Brutes
or Puppets, apparently meaning that he doubted the existence of the human
soul, and made reference to authors, and books that shared the same belief .40
In response, he was told by those present there that he should burn these
books and stick to the catechism, to which he eventually replied that he
was neither a heretic nor were his books suspicious, and to prove it, he would
bring Linnaeus book in order to show them a Branch [presumably classified
by Linnaeus] figuring in a Psalm by David, from the Old Testament. As
the discussion continued, one of the denouncers ordered Pinto to burn the
heretical or suspicious books, but not the ones linked to his Profession or the
Catholic ones, and admonished that in front of women one should not talk
about such matters.41
On another occasion, when the surgeon Custdio Lus de Couto was
observing drills being practiced by militia soldiers, the apothecary showed
him an anonymous French book with the title Dialogue between two women,
requesting the denouncer to determine if its author was Voltaire. The surgeon
replied that he did not know and, after reading a few lines, realized that it was
wicked and libertine, and recommended that the surgeon should hide it, not
tell anyone, but the surgeon [that is, Jos Lus] replied that he had received it
from the hands of a wise man [...].42 Moreover, Custdio Lus recommended
that he should not publish the lesson that the aforesaid Book contained.
Montesquieu, Cartas Persas, p. 207.
IANTT, Inquisition of Coimbra, Prosecutors Notebooks no. 124 and 125 (1798
1802), Books 416 and 417, p. 39.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid., p. 33.
38
39
130
131
Pinto in resisting the ideas put forth in the books (that is, his own positions
were stronger than those found in the texts), or as a way to escape from the
accusations of heresy (after all, his position was unshakably in favour of the
Church and its dogmas).
Jos Lus went into some details regarding his discussions with a clergyman
of little literary knowledge.49 When he spoke of many natural things, he
confided only to the aforesaid clergyman that if it were not for our holy faith,
and the divine Authority that he respected so much, he certainly would doubt
the existence of our Soul after it was separated from the body. And he added:
Later, when discussing [in the company of D. Maria Lusa and her sister-inlaw] points contained in Linnaeus natural history, the system of nature, he
told me that it was a bad book, and in order for me not to give the ladies the
idea that I was a bad Christian, I got the book and showed it to him.50 The
apothecary went on to explain that he had a dispute about the souls of brutes.
He opined that there was no better manner to avoid the temptations of sin
than fasting because it weakened the forces and could lead to death.51 He
admitted having said, moreover, that some saints to which the church prayed
were in Hell because [their beatification had taken place] when the Criticism
was still in its cradle52 and this while others, who were true saints, remained
uncanonized. He confessed to having said that he had the faculty to advise
the infirm to eat meat on days of fasting and that, in case of doubt, it would
be better to eat, for God, our Lord, forgave this act of good will. Moreover, he
affirmed that Because I suffer [from certain aliments] and on the advice of my
doctor and confessor I used to eat meat almost always.53 From this it can be
concluded that the principle of conservation of life constituted a fundamental
basis for his beliefs.
He also said that he had a contention about sorcerers which natural
principles he felt showed that they did not exist.54 Pinto declared that he
used the book Elements of Ecclesiastical History to corroborate his ideas,
saying that it did not seem to him that in this book there were ideas defended
by heretics. In trying to defend himself from his accusers and, at the same
time, accuse them of ill faith, warped ideas and erroneous readings (given
that often they had read only parts of the books) he affirmed that since in
his library there were many authors to be read, it may be that [his accusers]
Ibid., pp. 182v3.
Ibid.
51
Ibid.
52
Ibid., p. 183.
53
Ibid., pp. 183183v.
54
Ibid., p. 183v.
49
50
132
133
based on the juggling of opposing ideas, the meaning of which is quite exactly
to reaffirm reason as the basis of judgment. The convergence between the
apothecary-surgeons ways of thinking and the Persian Letters could, in point
of fact, be found in relation to other books cited by Jos Lus. Indeed, what
appears here is the immersion of the reader Jos Lus and the better part of his
books into a single atmosphere, one constituted by Enlightenment ideas and
modes of thinking. A single atmosphere and, therefore, a philosophical reading
of the novel.
Upon reflecting on the circuit of communication evident in this case,
it should be observed that, among the denouncers, there was someone (the
surgeon Custdio) who had direct access to one of the works. And the accused
himself declared that many people had had access to his library and could have
read at least parts of the books found there, thus concluding that there were
wicked ideas there. One of the denouncers discovered (or so he said) that the
Persian Letters was a forbidden work more than a year after first coming across
it. Whether or not they had read forbidden books, the denouncers and those,
including women, who had witnessed some of the discussions which had
taken place clearly argued with the accused (notwithstanding his denials or his
claims to have been a mute, the records undoubtedly point to much public
discussion and Jos Luss own statements attest to the frequency of verbal
quarrels). In light of all of this, it is obvious that ideas considered heretical
or libertine ended up reaching a wide circle of people, extending through
orality even to women. This fact made one of the denouncers defend the
principle according to which reading should be differentiated in consonance
with readers status, it therefore being necessary to prevent women from
having access to the type of ideas the apothecary had espoused. This principle
was also present in the works of enlightened writers such as Montesquieu
(in The Spirit of the Laws), Voltaire, Rousseau and DArgens (if we consider
that he is the author of the novel Thres Philosophe), and was defended by
the Portuguese censorship under the Old Regime.58 Even the accused himself
did not drift far from this perspective, both in claiming to be mute and in
distinguishing between good and bad readers, or those who drew conclusions
from fragments of works and those who read whole books. By way of indirect
routes and however fragmentarily, the Enlightenment reached a wide circle of
people, switching from a written to an oral culture (and, we can presume, but
not affirm here, vice versa). Uncensored enlightened scientific writings, such
Luiz Carlos Villalta, Tereza Filsofa e o frei censor: notas sobre a circulao
cultural e as prticas de leitura em Portugal, 17481802, in Eduardo Frana Paiva (ed.),
Brasil-Portugal: sociedades, culturas e formas de governo no mundo portugus, sculo XVI
XVIII (So Paulo, 2006), pp. 1468.
58
134
135
Ribeiro, according to Dr. Brando, had praised a passage from one of Father
Antnio Vieiras sermons transcribed in Histoire philosophique et politique des
etablissements et du commerce des europens dans les Deux Indes (1770), by Abb
Raynal, specifically the Sermon for the success of the arms of Portugal against
Holland. It can be concluded on the basis of such evidence that Father Ribeiro
had effectively read the sermon and, moreover, did so within the analysis
model of political reality that, as suggested in an earlier study,63 was used by
the Inconfidentes,64 that is, associating Abb Raynals ideas to those of Father
Antnio Vieira.65
From the accusations we can infer two similarities in relation to situations
previously mentioned about the readings of Montesquieus novel: the access to
it by readers who did not own a copy and the fact that it was read along with
other prohibited enlightened works (including the Histoire Philosophique,
a work of revolutionary impact in the Americas) and books permitted by
the censors (Antnio Vieiras Sermons, despite Portuguese censorship
prohibiting all of his millennialist works). Moreover, other manners of
evasion allow for the exchange and circulation of prohibited works: if in
Coimbra, Antnio de Morais and his comrades relied on a manuscript copy,
from that same university city, a prohibited book disguised with a fake title
Villalta, Reformismo Ilustrado, Censura e Prticas de Leitura, pp. 50215.
The Inconfidentes were conspirators in the Inconfidncia Mineira (Minas Conspiracy)
of 1789, a political movement against the Portuguese Crown, taking place in the captaincy
of Minas Gerais, in Brazil.
65
Some Inconfidentes, when explaining how to carry out the insurrections, explained
that it was by cutting off the Governors head and said that this was in Raynals work. In
the latter, in the part about the Independence of English America, there is no reference
to the idea, which does appear to exist in the tome on Portuguese America. Following
transcribing a sermon by Father Antnio Vieira and saluting the Portuguese Restoration in
1640 with enthusiasm, Raynal briefly describes the Philippine dominion and narrates how
the Portuguese freed themselves from Spanish oppression, without shedding a single drop
of blood, with the exception of Miguel de Vasconcelos, Secretary of State, an instrument
of tyranny. G.T. [Guillaume-Thomas Franois] Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique
des etablissements et du commerce des europens dans les Deux Indes. nouvelle edition, corrige
et augmente daprs les manuscrits autographs de lauteur ... par M. Peuchet (Paris, 1820),
vol. 5, p. 47. Other history books, circulating in Portugal and its domains in the late
eighteenth century, narrate the episode in more detail. The Portuguese books show an
influence of Second Scholastic corporative theories of power, relating the Restoration to
the resistance to tyranny. On this subject, see Luiz Carlos Villalta, As origens intelectuais
e polticas da Inconfidncia Mineira, in Maria Efignia Lage de Resende and Luiz Carlos
Villalta (eds), Histria de Minas Gerais: As Minas Setecentistas (2 vols, Belo Horizonte,
2007), v. 2, pp. 579607.
63
64
136
page arrived in Mariana. As Paulo Gomes Leite has demonstrated, Dr. Jos
Pereira Ribeiro managed to bring Montesquieus Persian Letters from Coimbra
to Mariana, deceiving the customs officials and the censorial apparatus through
a mechanism much used by book smugglers.66 These accusations also offer
another example of how reading practices accompanied heterodox behaviour:
in Coimbra, Antnio de Morais and his comrades ate meat on fasting days and
went on to defend simple fornication (that is, with a non-virgin, single woman
who was not a nun); in Mariana, Father Antnio Ribeiro read The Temple
of Gnide, Montesquieus novel published in 1725, and used it to enhance
the enjoyment of solitary pleasures. Besides sex, there are indications that the
books were used for political purposes, as seen mingling Raynal and Vieira,
a connection which fuelled Inconfidentes from Minas Gerais, particularly the
martyr Tiradentes, to criticize the Colonial System (even if their inspiration
did not come from the previously cited sermon), which was discussed in the
study mentioned earlier.67
Conclusion
Montesquieus novel seems to have been used in the Luso-Brazilian world by
a restricted group of readers, enforcing and nourishing typically Enlightened
critical thought with its methodological principles and its values. This assured
reason and observation as starting points and criteria in forming critical
judgments that, at different times, focused on sexual mores, on the sacred
history, dogmas and rules of the Catholic Church, and, perhaps, political
order.
In the situations examined regarding book titles, the principles defended
by the accused (reflecting their opposition to the Inquisition and the papacy)
and their professional profile (lawyers, magistrates, clergymen, surgeons,
merchants and officers), certain common features emerge, such as the repetition
of Enlightenment texts and authors or others valued by them (Voltaire,
Montesquieu, Rousseau, Bielfeld, Frederick II, Holbach, Locke, Ovid), ideas
and social types. This enlightened setting combined printed, manuscript and
oral cultures; books, manuscripts and oral and collective readings, disputes,
and conversations.
The objection could be raised that the cases examined here are too few
in number and that they were induced by an Inquisition anxious to fill up
its registers. The documentation, however, is replete with numerous other
Leite, pp. 2245.
The inconfidente priest Lus Vieira da Silva had Montesquieus complete works
and, consequently, the Persian Letters.
66
67
137
138
139
140
involved in the debate were mostly clerics, professors, students and recent
graduates of Coimbra, although others were lawyers, doctors, magistrates,
surgeons and military men.74 Even craftsmen and women took part in the
discussions.75 The debates gave incentive to and, simultaneously, promoted
the circulation of publications and manuscripts both those permitted and
prohibited by censors. Texts became available to people by way of selling,
buying, and borrowing or by way of access to acquaintances libraries. Some
of the individuals focused on here relied on letter writing and, in attempting
to cover up prohibited ideas and books, they used secret codes and false book
covers. They also relied on an intense oral transmission of ideas, whether taken
from texts or not: at times texts were cited to substantiate their talks, at other
times oral traditions were used to back up those same texts. Social networks
fed on and fuelled discussions. It should be noted that books and other
publications may have played a smaller role than in other parts of Europe and
the Americas during the same period. Debates, publications, manuscripts,
and oral transmissions were present in diverse spaces: homes, pharmacies,
bookstores, libraries, the laboratory and other parts of the University of
Coimbra.
Luso-Brazilian world, given the force of restrictions placed on political discussion. In the
Inquisition documentation it is not hard to find signs of the interweaving of heresies and
political reflection or literary debates.
74
Habermas associates the emergence of a public sphere of power with the
bourgeoisie. James Melton insists that in England nobles also took part, while in both
France and Germany the middle classes were involved; in Germany that entailed the
participation of university professors, territorial officials and pastors, a pattern somewhat
similar to what has been seen in Brazil and Portugal (Melton, p. 11).
75
According to Munck, men and women participated in the public sphere in different
ways which is to say that during the eighteenth century the public sphere expanded much
more for men than it did for women (Munck, pp. 1617). In Portugal there were few
women who played an important role in private debates or in those happening in the
public sphere. Among them was the Marquise of Alorna, who wrote poems and letters,
keeping intellectual relationships with Portuguese thinkers, for eighteen years, while lived
in a monastery in Lisbon (Tefilo Braga, Histria da Literatura Portuguesa Os rcades,
3rd edn (Lisboa:, 2005), pp. 2324). Another was D. Isabel Forjaz, who organized literary
meetings in her house in Lisbon (Arajo, p. 91). Maria Madalena Salvada, a married
woman, for only a month in 1803, was Jos Joaquim Vieira Coutos concubine, having
French private classes paid by him, reading and debating libertine novels and books with
her lover. When the Inquisition arrested her and Jos Joaquim, a student at University of
Coimbra who belonged to one of the most eminent families of Minas Gerais, she decided
to confess her crimes to the Lisbon Inquisition (IANTT, Lisbon Inquisition, Trial record
no 9275, pp. 15v).
141
The somewhat schematic distinction between public power and the private
domain has been nuanced in recent studies. First, it has to be recognized that the State
was composite in nature, uniting elements which, today, are considered as part of both
the public and the private domain: the King, a symbol of public power, was a private
magnate; around him a court was established with its network of aristocrats, professional
bureaucrats, venal office holders and private financiers (who, in the Luso-Brazilian case,
often leased the right to collects taxes and other public fees); moreover, public authority
itself was exercised by distinct and sometimes rival interests. Second, the different groups,
styles and networks of debate cannot be separated into fixed categories such as public and
private: such a division would have been alien to contemporaries who simply did not
take it into account; each individual, moreover, at the same time belonged to different
interest groups, operating under distinct norms of reference (Munck, pp. 1517). Another
important aspect is Habermas insistence on the inevitability of conflict arising among
varying instances of the public sphere, society and bourgeois institutions. James Melton
correctly defines this perspective as teleological when observing that by focusing solely
on the subversive dimensions of the Enlightened public sphere overlooks the resistance
and adaptability of Old Regime society and institutions, which were quite capable of
recognizing the communicative potential of the public sphere (Melton, p. 12).
77
On the role of print in Brazil in 18201822, see Lcia Maria Bastos Pereira das
Neves, Corcundas e constitucionais: a cultura poltica da Independncia, 18201822 (Rio de
Janeiro, 2003).
76
PART III
The State as an Incubator of
Enlightenment and an
Engine of Reform
Chapter 10
Then, once the king had left the palace to go hunting, Townsend continues,
146
The company retires; and as the corps diplomatique is here remarkable for hospitality,
a person well recommended is never at a loss for the most genteel society at all hours
of the day.
147
148
149
God was not a God of toleration and reform. The Enlightenment, it is now
understood, was a broad church or a great series of congregations, with some
common doctrines but numerous paths to salvation. Enlightenment varied
significantly from region to region, even from one city to another, always best
seen as a product of its particular social, cultural and political context. Finally,
most historians would also now agree that it would be a mistake to identify
the Enlightenment with any one social class. Enlightenment was at least as
likely to come to the sons of pastors or noble landowners as to the offspring
of merchants or artisans. Thus, the Enlightenment has ceased to appear a
bourgeois triumph, or the victory of any social class at all. This, and the other
recently revealed characteristics of enlightenment allow us to accept, now,
that there were, indeed, enlightened Spaniards. And that there is no reason to
believe an enlightened court was not possible.
The reality of enlightenment in Spain becomes even clearer when we add
another attribute to the list: a seriousness of purpose. It may be found in
the thinking and experiences of a host of committed reformers, from Benito
Feijoo in the 1720s to Jovellanos in the early 1800s and in a wide spread of
programmes, from reform of the theatre to penal reform. In matters of taste,
it is especially associated with the rise of neo-classicism. As suggested some
years ago, the varied tendencies in the neo-classical movement across Europe
included some common traits high-mindedness, gravity, sobriety, simplicity
and truthfulness and many similar ones. It encouraged a new moralizing
fervour the energies of which were directed toward what Robert Rosenblum
called new reformatory and propagandistic purposes. No wonder neoclassicism, especially in architecture, became the virtual house style of Spanish
enlightened reformers. Under Campomanes, the Council of Castile, which
he dominated for many years, enforced classicized baroque and neo-classical
taste in scores of ecclesiastical, municipal and government building projects
For recent suggestive studies see D. Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge,
1995); T. Munck, The Enlightenment. A Comparative Social History 17211794 (London,
2000), Introduction, and ch. 1; T.C.W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power
of Culture. Old Regime Europe 16601789 (Oxford, 2002); J. van H. Melton, The Rise of
the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2001); R. Porter and M. Teich (eds), The
Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge, 1981); H.F. May, The Enlightenment in
America (New York, 1976) which examines the relationships between Protestantism and
enlightenment; R. Porter, Enlightenment. Britain and the Creation of the Modern World
(London, 2000); and J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination. English Culture in the
Eighteenth Century (London, 1997).
R. Rosenblum, Transformations in Late Eighteenth-Century Art (Princeton, 1967),
pp. 2850.
150
designed by the architect Ventura Rodrguez from the 1760s to the 1780s.10
But typically, even before he was taken up by Campomanes and the Council,
Ventura Rodrguez had been supported by Charles IIIs younger brother, the
infante Luis an early sign of the Bourbons enthusiasm for the neo-classical
with at least some of its moral and intellectual implications.
That taste should be both an expression of moral earnestness, and an
encouragement to it, was no surprise to enlightened men and women. Like
Jovellanos, they would agree that good taste was a question of virtue, a gateway
to the avenue of truth and uprightness. Most would have agreed with the
count of Teba in his Discourse of 1796. Teba, a translator of Voltaire, was
the son and heir of the well-known salon hostess and enlightened reformer,
Mara Francisca de Sales Portocarrero, countess of Montijo. Both were
eminent grandees and popular at court. In his essay, Teba insisted that the
purpose of the arts was to attain for man his true, solid happiness, for they
make virtue agreeable and, by means of beauty, excite us to follow [virtue]
opening the way to the sublime principles of philosophy, promoting the good
of the state, inspiring its members to heroic deeds which promote private
and public happiness.11 The ilustrados enlightened men and women
therefore sought poets, painters and architects who were philosophers, who
spoke a neo-classical, or at least a classicized baroque, language. Fortunately,
the intellectuals found in the Bourbon court and government a virtual fever
of artistic devotion. It was a devotion which, after its baroque and rococo
enthusiasms of the first half of the century, embraced the classicized taste
required of a philosopher.
Philosophers, however, were not always glum. The seriousness of purpose
they espoused could often be found, most obviously, when mixed with the
apparently frivolous or, as in the Beggars Benison, the erotic. When, in 1770 or
1771, the neo-classical dramatist and minor court official, Nicols Fernndez
de Moratn, described by his son, Leandro, as a man committed to the
happiness of his nation established a salon with a number of intellectual
friends, they claimed, playfully, to limit their talk to poetry, whores and bull
fights. In fact, their serious discussion of literature, and their resolve to reform
culture, made their tertulia, in the Inn of San Sebastin, one of the most
T.F. Reese, The Architecture of Ventura Rodrguez (2 vols, New York, 1976), vol. I,
pp. 141323.
11
La Farga, pp. 1534 and Ignacio Luis Henares Cuellar, La teora de las artes en
la Academia de San Fernando durante la segunda mitad del siglo xviii, Actas del XXIII
Congreso Internacional de Historia del Arte. Espaa entre el Mediterraneo y el Atlntico, III
(1978), pp. 4079.
10
151
influential of the age.12 The mixture may be found, too, in the enthusiasms
of the XIVth duke of Medina Sidonia, a rich grandee. The duke, Pedro Prez
de Guzmn el Bueno, was a Francophile protector and admirer of several
leading reformist thinkers, including Nicols Moratn and the Benedictine
Martn Sarmiento. He hosted an important salon attended by Campomanes,
amongst others, and was an enthusiastic supporter of theatre and its reform,
and of the masked balls, founded in Madrid and a few other large cities in
1767. Their patron was Medina Sidonias friend and fellow grandee, the count
of Aranda, one of Charles IIIs leading ministers. Aranda, a gentleman of the
kings bedchamber, intended the masquerades to be polite entertainment
for the respectable, a civilized diversion, and they quickly became popular
and fashionable especially among women. Many were attracted by their
promiscuous confusion of social ranks, of the dangerous with the good, and
of both genders, including sexual cross-dressers. They were inevitably attacked
by the clergy as dangerous and immoral. Medina Sidonia defended them as a
weapon. As he wrote to a friend, With this and other things, the black power
[of the clergy] is ever diminished, and later, as he said, the masquerades had
brought liberty without inconvenience. Medina Sidonia, a senior courtier
and Master of the Horse to Charles III, and Aranda and their supporters, saw
these occasions for what they were, deliberate provocations of the clergy.13
Other provocative frivolities could be found across Spains cities in, for
example, the newly gained freedoms of wives in aristocratic and bourgeois
households, as examined by Carmen Martn Gaite. She demonstrates how
women, some of whom would certainly have made it to Arandas masked
balls, flirted with the attractions and dangers of adultery its appearance or
reality. For them, as for Medina Sidonia and other enlightened men, flirtation
with what had been prohibited entailed a sense of triumph over tradition and
a sharing in cosmopolitan modernity.14
N. Fernndez de Moratn, La Petimetra. Desengaos al Teatro espaol. Stiras,
eds D.T. Gies and A.M. Lama (Madrid, 1996) and P. Alvarez de Miranda, Nicols
Fernndez de Moratn en la Sociedad Econmica Matritense, Revista de Literatura, XLII
(1980): 221 for Leandros words.
13
L. Coloma, Retratos de Antao (Madrid, 1895), pp. 22021 for the quotation
and pp. 2445; A. Morel-Fatio, Etudes sur lEspagne, 2nd ser. (Paris, 1890) pp. 434;
M. Sarmiento, Cartas al Duque de Medina Sidonia (17471770) ed. J. Santos Puesto
(Ponferrada, 1995), pp. 1822; A. Domnguez Ortiz, Un episodio de la lucha por el
teatro en el siglo xviii espaol, Nueva Revista de Filologa hispnica, XXXIII:1 (1984):
21317.
14
C. Martn Gaites Usos amorosos del dieciocho en Espaa (Barcelona, 1972) makes
an invaluable contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century society. Its English
translation is Love Customs in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley, 1991).
12
152
Perhaps the best-known face of seriousness at the time, however, was not
that of Jovellanos or any other intellectual, but of the king, Charles III. He is
represented in his well-known portraits, by Goya and Anton Mengs a founder
of neo-classical painting with the benevolent smile of a loving father of his
family and nation, and there is much evidence of his amiability. But he was
also a man of iron dedication to duty and discipline. He displayed his brand
of seriousness when, within weeks of ascending the throne, he dismissed and
exiled the famous Italian castrato, Farinelli, master of court ceremonies during
years of extravagant rococo splendour under his predecessor, Ferdinand VI
and his queen, Barbara of Braganza. Ferdinand, who once stated he was king
in order to secure the happiness of his people, was too self-indulgent and lazy
to work hard at his metier. Instead, he, Barbara and Farinelli had presided over
what has been called a spectacle state where concerts, illuminations, elaborate
picnics and costly Italian opera had flourished. Charles dismissal of the singer
was popular with taxpayers and demonstrated how he would transform his
court.15 He would emulate, then outdo the household of his father, Philip V,
with its respectability and decency, avoiding profligacy. He imparted to his
ministers and courtiers some of his own sense of order, serenity, and dedication
to hard work; he imposed on them his belief in his mission and much of the
personal austerity he displayed in his most private spaces. His prudishness
caused him to order a number of important pictures of nudes in the royal
collection to be burned. Fortunately, Mengs, his favourite artist, intervened
quietly to save these Rubenses and Titians. At the various royal residences,
including Madrid and Aranjuez, there were now few major diversions and
this scarcely changed under Charles IV: no theatrical amusements, no public
games, no grand assemblies except on gala [birth and anniversary] days,
and everyone restricted by the severe discipline of etiquette, according to
the French diplomat, Franois Bourgoing. As Manuel Godoy later admitted
(probably accurately) in his memoirs of the 1790s and 1800s, there was
nothing of parties, of balls, of receptions, nor of spectacles; no suppers;
the royal family lived hidden and quietly, contenting itself with a private
J. Varela, La muerte del rey. El ceremonial funerario de la monarqua espaola
(Madrid, 1990), p. 159; for the spectacle state; F.R. de la Flor, El canto catrtico: el teatro
msico como utopa de la obra de arte total en la Ilustracin espaola, in R. Kleinertz
(ed.), Teatro y msica en Espaa (siglo xviii). Actas del Simposio Internacional Salamanca,
1994 (Kassel, 1996), p. 17; C. Morales Borrero, Fiestas Reales en el Reinado de Fernando VI
(Madrid, 1972); M. Torrione, La sociedad de Corte en el ritual de la pera, in Un reinado
bajo el signo de la paz. Fernando VI y Brbara de Braganza 17461759 (Madrid, 2002),
pp. 16595; and J. Baretti, A Journey from London to Genoa Through England, Portugal,
Spain and France (Fontwell, 1970), vol. II, pp. 9091.
15
153
154
Thus, for the academicians, the court comprised the higher levels of
government; the royal household, its administration and service of all kinds;
and courtiers and servants of all ranks. This may seem an overly broad
definition. In fact, it reflects well the ways in which Spaniards of the time
used the word corte: royal household, central government, and the capital
city. Here, court includes the royal household with its two or three thousand
officials, courtiers and servants; noblemen and others who often present
themselves for ceremonial or social occasions; and ranking royal employees
civil, ecclesiastical and military who do likewise. It is a mixed bag which
comprises even the illustrious Jovellanos who, as minister of Justice in 1798,
fell, fatally, into disfavour partly because he failed to attend important court
ceremonies and for alienating certain of the queens ladies.19 The occupational
catchment area is wide, including many salaried professionals from physicians
and accountants to silversmiths, violinists, painters, architects, embroiderers
and ceramicists.
The Spanish court, like other early modern European courts, served a
multitude of functions which varied as circumstances and princely personalities
changed. A court could be anything from the historian Geoffrey Eltons point
of contact to the anthropologist Clifford Geertzs exemplary centre, and much
else in between. They were chapels of private and public religiosity; marriage
bureaus for the beautiful, rich, well-connected and talented; classrooms of
virtue and of courtly manners; academies of the good taste which mattered so
much to Capmany or the count of Teba; exchanges where courtiers engaged
in the lucrative pursuit of brokerage; and studios where craftsmen and artists
could realize notable successes. A well-ordered court, rich and elegant, was
thought to both reflect and encourage a disciplined state, its prosperity and
power.20 The Spanish Bourbon court fulfilled these purposes, in various ways
J.M. Caso Gonzlez, Jovellanos (Barcelona, 1998), pp. 1957.
Starting points for any study of early modern courts include: R.G. Asch and A.M.
Birke (eds), Princes, Patronage and the Nobility. The Court at the Beginning of the Modern
Age c. 14501650 (Oxford, 1991); J. Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe 1500
1750 (London, 1999); and the older A.G. Dickens (ed.), The Courts of Europe. Politics,
Patronage and Royalty 14001800 (London, 1977). There are invaluable essays on the
sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish court in all three, by M. Rodrguez Salgado;
19
20
155
at its different locales the old Alczar, new Royal Palace and the Buen Retiro
in Madrid, and the royal residences (reales sitios) at Aranjuez, the Escorial,
etc. and, as we have seen, its character changed as successive monarchs
impressed their personality upon it. But, even in the new unitary monarchy
of the eighteenth century, perhaps its principal aim was to integrate social,
political, clerical and cultural elites under the prince to ensure the loyalty of
provincial notables to his central government. Thus, as elsewhere, the court
existed, ultimately, to reconcile the kings subjects to his policies; to persuade
them of his authority and power; to impress them with his standing across
Europe and the globe; and to enhance his reputation among fellow princes.
The Bourbons, like their Habsburg predecessors, expected to accomplish these
aims above all by their manipulation of patronage; they controlled access to
tens of thousands of commissions, benefices, bureaucratic posts, scholarships
and professorships, grants, pensions, and other jobs as well as rewards like
knighthoods in the military orders, titles of nobility and grandeeships. A close
second in significance was their manipulation of image. For this, they and their
advisers used royal patronage of journalists and writers, musicians, architects,
painters and decorative artists. All the Bourbon monarchs and most of the
various infantes in particular Charles IIIs brother, Luis, and a younger son,
Gabriel with their genuine artistic and musical enthusiasms, combined
their personal pleasure with political duty to help make this century one of
magnificent royal patronage. In this sense, if no other, they made of the court
a most convincing exemplary centre.
Unlike the court of the Spanish Habsburgs, that of the Bourbons has
scarcely begun to be systematically studied by historians.21 It is possible,
however, to make a few basic points about it. Like the Habsburg court, it was
G. Redworth and F. Checa; and J.H. Elliott, respectively. See also J.H. Elliotts suggestive
The Court of the Spanish Habsburgs: A Peculiar Institution?, in his Spain and Its World
15001700. Selected Essays (New Haven, 1989) who cites Geertz. See also the essays in
C. Gmez-Centurin (ed.), Monarqua y Corte en la Espaa Moderna, a special number
(Anejo II, 2003) of Cuadernos de Historia Moderna. Anejos, including the illuminating
essay and bibliography by P. Vazquez Gestal, La corte en la historiografa modernista
espaola. Estado de la cuestin y bibliografa.
21
C. Gmez-Centurin Jimnez and J.A. Snchez Beln are almost alone. See
their La herencia de Borgoa. La hacienda de las Reales Casas durante el reinado de Felipe
V (Madrid, 1998) and especially their fine introduction to the court, La Casa Real en el
siglo xviii: perspectivas para su estudio, in J.L. Castellanos (ed.), Sociedad, administracin
y poder en la Espaa del Antiguo Rgimen (Granada, 1996). See also Gmez-Centurins
introduction to his volume, above, fn. 20 and P. Vazquez Gestal, Non dialettica, non
metafisica la corte y la cultura cortesana en la Espaa del siglo xviii, Reales Sitios,
XLIII: 169 (2006).
156
peripatetic with the attractions of the hunt, the vagaries of royal health and
the demands of the liturgical calendar all crucial in determining the direction
and timing of its movements. It was divided into several households and
departments kings household, queens household; kings chamber, queens
chamber; household of the prince of Asturias, etc, etc, plus the chapel, stables,
works and woods, and so forth. Almost all these were dominated by wellconnected aristocrats, usually grandees. The chief of the entire royal household
was the kings mayordomo mayor or Lord Steward. It was the kings sumiller
de corps or Groom of the Stool, however, who enjoyed unlimited, direct, 24hour access to the monarch whenever he was indoors and this afforded
enviable opportunities to influence royal opinion. Both officers handled large
amounts of patronage in the kings name, and enjoyed all the prestige and
influence that inevitably meant. The court was also surprisingly cosmopolitan,
at least until the 1760s and 1770s brought the chill winds of xenophobia
into court and cultural life. Before then, Italians and Frenchmen had made
an outstanding impression on the culture of the court and monarchy, above
all as musicians, artists and architects.22 The structure and etiquette of the
court were also cosmopolitan, at least historically, defined primarily by the late
medieval Franco-Burgundian system imported by the first Habsburgs. In fact,
the so-called Burgundian etiquette was, by the mid-eighteenth century, an
amalgam of many Iberian and other traditions. Its complex character and long
history did not prevent monarchs from tweaking the etiquette at its edges and
revising or ignoring its sometimes uncongenial requirements. Consequently,
there was little to prevent the court reflecting the personality and political
sense of successive princes. If the court was stiff and overly regimented it
was because the king or those close to him wished it so. But fundamental
structural reform threatening the interests of so many powerful courtiers
was unlikely.23
After 1720, only the marquess of Ensenada Zenn de Somodevilla,
Ferdinand VIs energetic chief minister contemplated serious reform of
the court. But he was sufficiently wise to try and avoid threatening greedy
courtiers, and his reforms of 1749 had a limited impact. Elsewhere, though,
Among important studies of the courts artistic culture are: Y. Bottineau, Lart de
cour dans lEspagne de Philippe V 17001746 (Bordeaux, 1962) and his Lart de cour dans
lEspagne des Lumires 17461808 (Paris, 1986). The last quarter century has seen the
publication of many helpful studies of the arts at court and of royal patronage. See the
bibliographies in, e.g., Un reinado bajo el signo de la paz, above, and El arte en la corte de
Felipe V (Madrid, 2002).
23
C. Gmez-Centurin Jimnez, La reforma de las Casas Reales del Marqus de la
Ensenada, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, 20 (1998): 5983.
22
157
his reformist programmes were highly significant. While the court continued
its lavish rococo ways, Ensenada implemented imaginative and thoughtful
cultural and educational innovation. His fall after eight years in power,
nevertheless, left royal taste and court culture unreconciled to serious reform.
The latter only began to transform the court in the 1760s when Charles III
and his ministers mobilized enlightened reformers inside the royal household
and out.24
Before explaining the ways in which the court enhanced enlightened
reform, the question must be asked: why did the Spanish court, in contrast
to those of Britain or France, play such a prominent role? In fact, the courts
of the Tudors, Stuarts, Valois and seventeenth-century Bourbons had enjoyed
powerful cultural vitality. In that sense the Spanish court was following along
in the path blazed by its Renaissance and Baroque predecessors. But why did it
still continue to have such authority in the eighteenth century? One reason is
that so many of Spains men of letters lived in Madrid about half during the
later decades of the century, according to one estimate where they and the
court influenced each other, and where intellectuals could find jobs. Compared
to her imperial rivals, Spain, around mid-century, lacked the vitality of their
very numerous coffee houses, assembly rooms, clubs and other similar venues.
Such spaces were needed to support a really vibrant Enlightenment culture;
even when they emerged after the 1750s in Spain, they were relatively few.
Nor did Spaniards have access to the plethora of circulating or commercial
libraries, book clubs and reading rooms which began to thrive in Britain and
France.25 The paucity of such venues threw many thinkers into the hospitable
embrace of Bourbon princes, ministers and cultivated courtiers. Moreover, the
underdeveloped print culture afforded writers almost no opportunity to free
themselves from this private or state patronage. Spains low rates of literacy
revealed by patchy but suggestive studies; her woefully limited network of
booksellers; and her often under-skilled, neglectful and unimaginative printers
and publishers all hindered the growth of a lively commercial market for most
kinds of literature.26 In addition, Spanish writers failed to develop the literary
A. Rodrguez Villa, Don Zenn de Somodevilla, marqus de la Ensenada. Ensayo
biogrfico (Madrid, 1878) remains a starting point; see also the recent Jos Luis Gmez
Urdez, Fernando VI (Madrid, 2001).
25
L. Domergue, Frenos a la difusin de nuevas ideas, in B. Bennassar, et al. (eds),
Orgenes del atraso econmico espaol (Barcelona, 1985), pp. 1689; Brewer, pp. 17683;
D. Roche, France in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA, 1998), pp. 4413.
26
Domergue, Frenos a la difusin de nuevas ideas, p. 172; D. Gonzlez Cruz,
Enseanza y alfabetizacin en el siglo de las reformas, Coloquio Internacional Carlos III y
su siglo. Actas (3 vols, Madrid, 1990), vol. II, pp. 71735; J. Saugnieux, Alphabetisation
24
158
genres which could have created and satisfied a larger readership. Specifically,
the relative scarcity of fashionable novels, compared, for example, with Britain,
held back the emergence of a female market and of women writers.27 For all
these reasons ambitious reformist thinkers who sought venues for discussion
and support, on the one hand, and an adequate living on the other, had to
resort to wealthy patrons. Neither sympathetic prelates nor court aristocrats
proved sufficiently numerous, nor congenial, nor generous at least not for
the large number of the needy.
There were clearly a number of exceptions. Among them were the hosts
and hostesses of some of the most influential salons.28 Most were effectively
extensions of the court, where the urbanity of mid-century court culture
was made available to a slightly wider public. Hosts and many participants,
especially before the last couple of decades of the century, tended to be
courtiers, ministers and royal officials, or the most fortunate intellectuals,
recipients of royal largesse. One of the earliest of these, with any claim to
promote enlightened values, was the well-known Academia del Buen Gusto
(17491751). Hosted by the marchioness of Sarria a lady in the queens
household it included primarily titled noblemen and grandees, both men
and women, as well as more humble men of letters. Especially active were the
count of Torrepalma, mayordomo mayor to Ferdinand VI; the latters future
sumiller de corps, the duke of Bjar; and the ubiquitous Francophile duke of
Medina Sidonia.29 A somewhat different salon was run in the 1750s and 1760s
by Martn Sarmiento in his monastic cell. Sarmiento was close to Ferdinand
VI, an accomplished and privileged royal adviser, outstanding cultural and
educational critic and keen enthusiast of up-to-date natural sciences. He
received guests, including his friend the duke of Medina Sidonia, amidst his
et enseignement lmentaire dans lEspagne du xviiie sicle, in his Les mots et les livres.
Etudes dhistoire culturelle (Lyon, 1986), pp. 113237, esp. pp. 17080, 2236; A. Mestre,
Libreros y difusin de las ideas ilustradas, in Estudios dieciochistas en homenaje al profesor
Jos Miguel Caso Gonzlez (Oviedo, 1995), pp. 14761; F. Lpez, La librairie madrilne
du xvii au xviii sicle, in Livres et libraires en Espagne et au Portugal (xviexxe sicles) (Paris,
1989), pp. 3959; M.L. Lpez Vidriero, La imprenta en el siglo xviii, in H. Escolar
(ed.), Historia ilustrada del libro espaol. De los incunables al siglo xviii (Madrid, 1994),
pp. 20169.
27
A.K. Mellor, British Romanticism, Gender and three Women Artists, in
A. Bermingham and J. Brewer (eds), Consumption of Culture 16001800. Image, Object,
Text (London, 1995), pp. 12142.
28
Tertulia was the word used for an afternoon or evening party, whether purely social
or intellectual and artistic. Here I usually translate tertulia as salon to indicate the latter.
29
M.D. Tortosa Linde, La Academia del Buen Gusto de Madrid (17491751)
(Granada, 1988).
159
160
161
sort of royal tutor, unlike the usual cautious worthies. Among them were
Vicente Blasco, later rector and reformer of Valencia University and Jos
de Yeregui, a friend and supporter of the countess of Montijo. Another was
Antonio Zacagnini, a Frenchman who taught modern experimental physics.
Together, they brought an up-to-date, international curriculum into the
royal household in which Lockean methods and Newtonian science were
fundamental, pillars of a secularized, enlightened education. Bayer and his
team probably achieved their most notable success in their star pupil, infante
Gabriel, Charles favourite son. Gabriel, a fine classicist, displayed his skills in
a famous oral examination attended by many courtiers and scholars and his
Castilian translation of Sallusts two monographs, Conspiracin de Catilina y la
Guerra de Yugurta was published in 1772. Charles had this volume printed by
Joaqun Ibarra, Spains foremost printer, and it was soon well known in Europe
for its exquisite beauty. Its superb physical qualities paper, ink, type fonts
and engravings guaranteed it a place in the firmament of fine collections.
It was an outstanding achievement of the eighteenth-century European
printing industry and proof that the Spanish governments encouragement of
printing had begun to reap its harvest. It symbolized precisely that admiration
of scholarship combined with beauty and useful skills that characterized the
Enlightenment.34
The publication of the infantes book embedded the reformist palace
classroom in the wider cultivated public, a rare achievement of its kind. More
enduring was another, created by the advisers of Philip V in 1712 the public
Royal Library (Real Biblioteca). The Library was a pioneer most capitals had
no court library open to the general public until at least mid-century. Housed
in a huge, many-galleried annex of the Madrid palace, its staff officially
members of the royal household from 1761, its mainly high salaries attracted
prominent men of letters. By the 1730s and 1740s its librarians and habitus
including Mayans and influential reformist writers such as Juan de Iriarte,
Ignacio Luzn and Sarmiento were so impressive that the latter proposed it
be made the centre of a kind of literary union, a carefully protected republic
of letters whose members work disinterestedly for the public benefit. Its
golden age arrived with the accession of Charles III, his reform of its statutes,
enlargement and updating of its holdings and the directorship, from the 1760s
Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, Epistolario. VI: Mayans y Prez Bayer, ed. A. Mestre
(Valencia, 1977), p. 110 for the quote. Much information regarding Bayers career may
be found in Mestres introduction. See also, M.L. Lpez Vidrieros outstanding Speculum
principum. Nuevas lecturas curriculares, nuevos usos de la librera del Prncipe en el setecientos
(Madrid, 2002), pp. 35100; D.B. Updike, Printing Types. Their History, Forms, and Use.
A Study in Survivals (2 vols, Cambridge, MA, 1937), vol. II, pp. 4986.
34
162
163
164
165
cultural debate and exchange. Ilustrados also used such contacts to exchange
books and manuscripts, to gather news from the republic of letters, to reinforce
the friendships they valued as part of a largely secularized but worthy, virtuous
existence. They cherished sociability for its own sake, too, and made much
of sharing meals, music, amateur theatricals and other entertainments. But
their gatherings were also occasions for personal and professional rivalries
and displays of intense ambition as anyone studying the careers of Mayans
or Prez Bayer, for example, could show. They competed for the jobs and
commissions doled out by Charles III, Charles IV, their ministers and senior
courtiers. They manifested, publicly, their adherence to a new sort of court
culture. It is at this nexus, where talent and ambition met money and security,
that the court played its key role, offering ilustrados what they needed to survive
and produce. The fact that so many of them accepted court or public office
encouraged an important transformation analyzed by the historian Joaqun
Alvarez Barrientos: the emergence of the Enlightenment man or woman of
letters as a public being.39 Enlightened reformers now acted on a public stage,
so often provided like the literal stages at the theatres of the Reales Sitios
by the king or by courtiers near the royal household. If enlightened cultural
reformers were at all successful and they must have had some successes, or
where did Jos Blanco White, Juan Melndez Valds and other radicals and
liberals of the 1790s and afterward come from it was partly because of the
support and encouragement of the Bourbon court and government and the
personal patronage offered by two or three generations of kings, infantes and,
at least, a few grandees.
Chapter 11
On 27 December 1753, after two months and twenty-one days at sea, the
Chevalier de Mirabeau arrived at Basseterre to take up governorship of
Guadeloupe. Having left Toulon on 6 October, he entered the capital of
Martinique on 1 December to receive instructions from M. de Bompar,
governor general of the les du Vent, before crossing over to Guadeloupe.
Listing these details in a report to the Minister of the Marine, Antoine-Louis
Rouill, Mirabeau concluded by expressing his commitment to serve his
government: I beg you, Monseigneur, to trust that I will not forget to serve
well here and be of good use and that I desire nothing more than to fulfil
my commission, merit your kindness and the grace of the King. Four months
later, Mirabeau penned a letter to his older brother back in Paris, the political
economist and future physiocrat, the Marquis de Mirabeau, in which he sought
to portray his life as governor: here I am bishop, commander-in-chief,
half-intendant, half-president, even fully. On the surface, [I am] honoured
as a God and a half, feared like six provosts, and maybe hated for not taking
mistresses; what a devilish job! The Chevalier had accepted the governorship
of Guadeloupe in the hope that a successful administration in the Americas
would lead him to the highest post in the Ministry of the Marine. A few
Chevalier de Mirabeau to Minister of the Marine, 31 December 1753, Archives
nationals doutre-mer (hereinafter A.N), Aix-en-Provence, Col C7 A17, pice 13. All
translations are my own.
168
months into his governorship this callow optimism was tapering off. In a selfmocking tone, Mirabeau continued his letter: If you find on your way a man
of honour, who knows his duty and wishes to fulfil it, and who wishes to be
Prince, send him here to be governor in this part of the world, and he will cure
himself of his desire for authority.
Mirabeaus earnest admission to his brother and his duty-bound statement
to Rouill provide an interesting picture of the distressing reality with which
an ambitious colonial official was faced during the ancien rgime. Sent
abroad as an extension of royal authority and equipped with an explicit set
of directives, only to be plunged into a world of unfamiliar racial and socioeconomic hierarchies, an aspiring governor or intendant would soon realise
that improvement or reform in the colonies was a Sisyphean challenge and
often a slippery slope to despotic rule.
It is this tension between the pursuit of reform and the difficulty of
implementation I wish to examine in this essay. By studying the colonial
administration of the Chevalier de Mirabeau, functioning governor of
Guadeloupe from December 1753 to June 1755, and the administration of
Mercier de la Rivire, intendant of Martinique from 1759 to 1764, I will
survey possibilities for, and obstacles to, reform in ancien rgime France.
Alongside this study, I will also explore the ways in which the colonial
administrations of Mirabeau and Rivire served as the historical backdrop
for physiocratic theories on despotism and reform. Franois Quesnay, the
Marquis de Mirabeau, and Mercier de la Rivire himself devised the concept
of legal despotism as a legitimate vehicle for reform in the aftermath of the
Chevalier de Mirabeau and Rivires fruitless attempts to improve upon the
colonial system. Yet this is a link that is little explored. While the physiocratic
concept of legal despotism has received scholarly attention with respect to its
theoretical form and its impact on European monarchs, examinations of the
geo-political and socio-economic contexts from which it emerged have scarcely
appeared, other than in the works of L.P. May. Building on Mays efforts,
Chevalier de Mirabeau (CM) to Marquis de Mirabeau (MM), 22 March 1754.
Muse Arbaud, Aix-en-Provence, Fonds Mirabeau (hereinafter F.M), vol. 23.
On the semantic changes of the word despotism see Melvin Richter, The Concept
of Despotism and labus des mots, Contributions to the History of Concepts, 3:1 (2007):
522.
On the physiocratic idea of legal despotism, see Philippe Steiner, La science
nouvelle de lconomie politique (Paris, 1998), pp. 96116. On legal despotism and Europe,
see H.M. Scott, Introduction: The Problem of Enlightened Absolutism, in H.M. Scott
(ed.), Enlightened Absolutism Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe
(London, 1990), pp. 135; and Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth
169
I seek in this essay to bring into view the colonial context of physiocratic
theories on despotism and reform by teasing out historical and theoretical
implications of Mirabeau and Rivires colonial administrations.
Administrative and Socio-economic Features of the les du Vent
The posts that the Chevalier de Mirabeau and Mercier de la Rivire were to
occupy formed part of an established colonial administration dating back to the
seventeenth century. When Louis XIV acquired Saint-Christophe, Martinique,
Guadeloupe and Tortuga from the Compagnie des Indes occidentales in 1674,
his entrepreneurial minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, clothed the islands in an
administration modelled on the metropolitan provinces, each island coming
under the shared responsibility of a governor and an intendant. Additionally
for the les du Vent, a governor-general was put in charge of the entire cluster
and Martinique made its administrative and commercial centre. The governorgeneral resided at Fort Royal, the capital, together with the Conseil Souverain
(a juridical institution similar to the French Parlements), while St. Pierre, at
the northwestern tip of Martinique, became the commercial centre.
The central role of Martinique placed the remaining islands of the les du
Vent in an undesirable position. Not only did Martinique enjoy a privileged
status at Versailles, it also held a favourable position with French commerce,
receiving the majority of slaves and supplies. After 1715, when Saint-Domingue
obtained commercial priority, Martinique still remained better served than
Guadeloupe and the other islands. In the period 16691864, the French
slave trade supplied Saint-Domingue with 674,145 slaves, while Martinique
received 117,151, Guadeloupe 22,357 and Guyana 14,960. In percentage
terms, this comes to 81.3, 14.1, 2.7 and 1.8 per cent respectively. For the
Century Europe (London, 2005). The works of L.P. May I refer to are Despotisme lgale et
despotisme clair daprs Le Mercier de La Rivire, Bulletin of the International Committee
of Historical Sciences, 9 (1937): 5667; and Le Mercier de la Rivire (17191801) aux
origines de la science conomique (Paris, 1975). See also Florence Gauthier, lorigine
de la thorie physiocratique du capitalisme, la plantation esclavagiste. Lexprience de Le
Mercier de la Rivire, intendant de la Martinique, Actuel Marx, 32 (2002): 5172.
Christian Boyer, Au temps des isles Les Antilles franaises de Louis XIII Napolon
III (Paris, 2005), pp. 457. Michel Verg-Franceschi, La marine franaise au XVIIIe sicle
(Paris, 1996), pp. 367.
David Geggus, The French Slave Trade: An Overview, The William and Mary
Quarterly, 58:1 (2001): 11938, esp. 121, 1267 and Table IV.
170
years 1749, 1750 and 1751, 419 French ships arrived at Saint-Domingue,
338 arrived at Martinique, and only 15 at Guadeloupe.
Such political and economic discrepancies had an impact on Martiniques
and Guadeloupes disparate social and demographic features. By the mideighteenth century, Guadeloupe was in the hands of a few grands colons who
presided over a large population of slaves with only a small population of
petits blancs and free coloured. In contrast, greater economic opportunities
at Martinique had paved the way for a more diversified society. A veritable
aristocratie galitaire emerged amongst the white Creole population. The
island also had a larger population of free coloured, and its slave population
outnumbered by one third that of Guadeloupe.
Another consequence of the political and economic imbalances between
Martinique and Guadeloupe, and these islands and Saint-Domingue, was
the high level of fraud around the les du Vent. France held an exclusive
right to trade with its colonies, yet failed to supply them with any reliability.
Privation led the colons to conclude that, if the metropole did not live up to
its responsibilities, the prerogative of the Exclusif as the French commercial
regime regulating trade between the colonies and the metropole was called
was rendered nugatory. The Exclusif thus created a spirit of autonomy
amongst the Creole population, and made illicit trade a permanent feature of
the colonial system.
An essential part of the commission of colonial officials was to prevent
contraband trade. Nevertheless, many merely turned a blind eye in recognition
of the locals plight. Several became personally implicated in corruption, thus
muddling the intended structure of power. Upon their arrival in the colonies,
Mirabeau and Rivire were, therefore, charged to govern within a culture
where violations of authority were commonplace and where Versailles utterly
failed to comprehend the complex reality it sought to rule.
The Governorship of Chevalier de Mirabeau at Guadeloupe
It was precisely the challenge of good government and the erosion of official
power structures which were at the forefront of Mirabeaus concerns during
his governorship at Guadeloupe. Part of the provincial nobility, the Chevalier
had been raised within a military and disciplinary tradition. At the age of 12,
Lucien Abnon, La Guadeloupe de 1671 1759 tude politique, conomique et
sociale (2 vols, Paris, 1987), vol. 1, p. 107.
Lo Elisabeth, La socit martiniquaise aux XVIIe et XVIIIe sicles 16641789 (Paris,
2003), pp. 50, 310.
Boyer, Au temps des isles, p. 47.
171
he was a member of the Knights of Malta and had enrolled in the Marine.
When appointed governor, he had thus served the Marine for fifteen years,
most recently as Capitaine de Vaisseau.
Despite the many experiences such a life would bring with it, it does not
seem to have prepared Mirabeau for Guadeloupe. The new governor was
stunned to discover the reality of colonial government. As he wrote to his
brother:
Guadeloupe in the hands of a rogue is a Peru; in the hands of an honest man there is
nothing to live by. This is a great evil because one has to be extremely competent in
ones affairs to resist temptation. I know that one returns to France a rich man, that
roguery is equivocal, that it is taken as cunning, that it is even considered to be the
fulfilment of rights; all of France will still take me for an honest man, but God and I
know better, and I recognise as judges only those two.10
172
other goods, each transaction taking place at one of the more secluded parts
of Guadeloupe or on the small surrounding islands.13
In explaining the causes of this problem, Mirabeau refrained from blaming
solely the local population. He acknowledged that contraband trade is the
essential vice of the inhabitants, yet he stressed the difficulty of uprooting an
evil which was grounded in the basic needs of the inhabitants.14 The problem,
he believed, was anchored as much in the metropole as in the colonies: I
begin to notice that French commerce causes the illicit trade, that it furnishes
the means to do so, and that French commerce at St. Pierre will cause the
final loss of these colonies.15 To Mirabeau, French commerce did not provide
an adequate market [dbouch] for the colonial goods. Canada might one day
become un bon dbouch, but currently ships from the islands arming for
Canada only used it as a pretext for trading with the more plentiful New
England.16 The meagreness of export markets was repeated with respect to
import. In July 1754, Mirabeau informed the minister that the colony would
soon lack food: We are close to lacking flour, manioc we have some cod
and other foodstuff for the Negroes, almost all of which has been furnished
by contraband trade.17 Likewise, there was an alarming shortage of slaves
(in 1754, there were 41,140 slaves on Guadeloupe and 65,323 slaves on
Martinique). Mirabeau asserted that an additional thirty thousand Negroes
will find work in my government, and they can triple its value (and augment
Mirabeaus salary).18 Furthermore, Mirabeau informed Versailles, although
French merchants protested against foreign trade, it participated in such
enterprise on a regular basis. At St. Pierre, captains from France would receive
foreign boats at night to get a better price than the one offered by French
colonialists. And after this, Mirabeau said, they cry out against a commerce,
the motivations of which they know better than any.19 To Mirabeau, however,
the most odious cause of contraband trade was the commissionaires residing
at St. Pierre. The historian Kenneth Banks describes these men as a powerful
Mirabeau to Minister, 7 June 1754, A.N. Col C7 A17, pice 58.
Ibid, and Mirabeau to Minister, 30 July 1754, A.N. Col C7 A17, pice 63.
15
Mirabeau to Minister, 7 June 1754, A.N. Col C7 A17, pice 58.
16
On the French colonies trade with New England, see Dorothy Burne Goebel,
The New England Trade and the French West Indies, 17631774: A Study in Trade
Policies, The William and Mary Quarterly, 20:3 (1963): 33172.
17
Mirabeau to Minister, 30 July 1754, A.N. Col C7 A17, pice 63.
18
Ibid. For numbers of slaves, see Lucien Abnon, vol. 1, p. 24. In his correspondence
with his brother, Mirabeau criticised the harsh treatment of slaves. The Marquis, in turn,
took a more radical view and wished for its gradual abolition. Lomnie, Les Mirabeau,
vol. I, pp. 2023.
19
Mirabeau to Minister, 7 June 1754, A.N. Col C7 A17, pice 58.
13
14
173
Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire Across the sea Communications and the State in
the French Atlantic, 17131763 (Ithaca, 2003), p. 157.
21
Mirabeau to Minister, 7 June 1754, A.N. Col C7 A17, pice 58.
22
Mirabeau to Minister, 30 July 1754, A.N. Col C7 A17, pice 63.
23
Guadeloupe was made up of the two islands, Grande-Terre and Basse-Terre. The
town of Petit Bourg was situated on the eastern side of Basse-Terre facing Grand-Terre as
opposed to the city of Basse-Terre situated on the Western side facing towards the island
Dominique, declared neutral with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.
20
174
Avidity and greed had trickled down from the very top and spread out
into every branch of society. As the governor wrote: Versailles, Versailles, the
source of our evils.26
Mirabeau, in fact, conveyed to his brother the abuses of Versailles
as thoroughly as he did the flaws of the colonial system in his official
correspondence. In January 1754, he wrote: remember that it is Versailles
who commands here, it wants to know everything about everything, and for
this reason has spies who spend their time filling their poor little heads with
uncertainties and who influence the Court in every way they want.27 In May
it was the laziness of Versailles Mirabeau attacked: The Court rarely responds
to our dispatches we write ten letters about the same thing, rarely having
even a single response.28 In June, it was the bureaucrats at Versailles the culte
des plumes as he called them who suffered his anger (Mirabeaus loathing
for the Versailles bureaucrats was only rivalled by his antipathies towards the
commissionaires at St. Pierre). These men, Mirabeau claimed, were jealous
creatures who served only their own interests, seeking to disgrace honest
servants of the State who got in their way.29
The lack of communication with Versailles made the governor feel isolated.
His brother, who often visited Versailles, therefore, came to serve not only as
a friendly council, but also as the governors most efficient contact at Court.
The Marquis, in turn, was happy to communicate his brothers memoranda
to the upper echelons of Versailles, for instance, to M. Gaudin, premier
commis and advisor to the Minister of the Marine. Gaudin, however, showed
displeasure with the frank statements contained in the governors memoranda.
He informed the Marquis that the governor of Guadeloupe was too rigorous
and conscientious, neither of which was to his own good. Urging the Marquis
CM to MM, 10 January 1754, F.M. vol. 23.
Ibid.
26
CM to MM, 24 January 1754, F.M. vol. 23.
27
Ibid.
28
CM to MM, 7 May 1754, F.M. vol. 23.
29
CM to MM, 8 June 1754, F.M. vol. 23.
24
25
175
176
he retired from the Marine in 1761 to serve instead under the Knights of
Malta. Prior to his departure from Guadeloupe, Mirabeau seemed to have
already accepted the impossibility of implementing change. As he told his
brother: Unfortunately I see only too well that everything will remain the
same and we shall always be crushed by the gens de plume.33 To this man of
the sword, who yearned for a bygone world of aristocratic military service and
virtuous conduct, the bulwark against reform and good government was the
ever-growing bureaucracy the Crown employed to serve its centralised and
absolute powers.
The Administration of Mercier de la Rivire, Intendant of Martinique
In his role as intendant of Martinique, Mercier de la Rivire was no less keen
to prove his worth to Versailles than Mirabeau. Born in 1719, in the town
of Saumur in the Loire valley, Rivire had moved to Paris to pursue a career
as a lawyer of the Parlement de Paris. In late 1757, he presented himself as
a candidate to the intendancy of Martinique, after the then intendant, De
Givry, was recalled. At that time, Rivire had already earned himself a fine
reputation at Court. A report to the Minister of the Marine classified Rivire
as very capable of managing this administration because of his character, his
spirit, and his knowledge of commerce, which he has studied while fulfilling
his duties as a magistrate 34
As this quotation implies, the future physiocrat was already interested
in the science of commerce prior to his crossover to Martinique. May,
moreover, has suggested that Rivire was familiar with the ideas of Quesnay
and Mirabeau at this point.35 Christine Thr and Loc Charles have noted
that it was the Chevalier de Mirabeau who paved the way for the Marquis
encounter with Rivire sometime in 1758.36 The correspondence between the
Mirabeau brothers confirms this encounter, though not Rivires familiarity
with Mirabeaus and Quesnays writings. When the Chevalier de Mirabeau
learnt of Rivires appointment, he commissioned his brother to seek Rivires
assistance in completing his unfinished affairs at Guadeloupe. Writing to his
brother from Brest in August 1758, the Chevalier explained how to get in
touch with Rivire: The Monsieur is lodging at the Hotel du Petit St. Antoine
on Rue Traversire. I have passed him a note describing the things I had to
CM to MM, 26 May 1755, F.M. vol. 23.
Report December 1757, Dossier Mercier de la Rivire, A.N. Col E 276, pice 3.
35
May, Le Mercier de la Rivire, p. 20.
36
Christine Thr and Loc Charles, The Writing Workshop of Franois Quesnay
and the Making of Physiocracy, History of Political Economy, 40:1 (2008): 142.
33
34
177
do in the Americas. I would like you to talk to him about that and see with
him what there is to do and what he would like to do 37 The Marquis de
Mirabeau reported back to his brother on 30 August: Mercier de la Rivire
claims that you have to set up a power of attorney from where you are, in
order to allow him to complete your affairs there 38 It is impossible to
know what the governors note to Rivire said as well as the content of the
Marquis and Rivires subsequent conversation. One can only wonder whether
Martiniques new intendant discussed the difficulties of colonial government
with the Marquis (by then famous author of LAmi des hommes) or inquired
into the Marquis recently begun collaboration with Franois Quesnay.
A few months after this encounter, Rivire arrived at Martinique. This was
the year the Seven Years War shifted from its Canadian theatre to the Antilles.
Soon the badly provisioned Guadeloupe surrendered to the British (Spring
1759). To save Martinique from a similar fate, the government temporarily
suspended the Exclusif and permitted provisioning by means of foreign trade.
Nevertheless, Martinique failed to hold out and surrendered in 1762. Rivire,
who had fought to keep the British at bay, returned to France, but the Minister
of the Marine, the Duc de Choiseul, sent Rivire back to Martinique once
peace was declared. Arriving in June 1763, Rivire was recalled eight months
later, on 30 March 1764, charged with abusive use of authority. Rivire left
Martinique in May 1764 due to illness, learning only of his disgrace upon his
return to France. It is these events and the consequences of Rivires second
intendancy of Martinique that are of interest here.
When Rivire returned to Martinique in 1763, the island was in a
deplorable state. The governor of Martinique, M. de Fnlon, explained to his
superiors, in June 1764, the sight with which he and Rivire were met: We
found Martinique in agony, crushed by the English imposition, depopulated
of Negroes and beasts, devastated in all quarters, touched by the fury of
war, lacking everything. It was necessary to reanimate it and prevent it from
perishing.39 To give the colonies a boost after the war, the government had
issued a memorandum on 18 April 1763, which ordered colonial officials,
transferring to the les du Vent, to open admiralty ports to foreign vessels. As
of 1 January 1764, the colonies could import from foreigners items which
French commerce could not yet supply: livestock, lumber of all sorts, bricks
and other requisites for the sugar mills, carriages, chests and bureaus, fruits,
corn, oats, bran, and a limited list of other provisions Not included were
CM to MM, 4 August 1758, F.M. vol. 24.
MM to CM, 30 August 1758, F.M. vol. 24.
39
Mmoire 9 June 1764, Col. F3 159, fo. 22132, pices justificatives. Cited in
May, Le Mercier de la Rivire, pp. 467.
37
38
178
the essential plantation staples salt beef, salt fish, and flour40 The order,
however, was met with strong opposition from French merchants and the
government therefore forwarded a new memorandum on 16 August 1763,
ordering that only Carnage on the island of St. Lucie should be open to
foreign trade.41
Acting in accordance with the memorandum of 18 April 1763, Rivire
opened Martinique to foreign trade but when news of his enterprise reached
merchants back in France, a universal alarm spread in all ports of the
monarchy.42 As a consequence, the King recalled Rivire.43 In the letter carrying
this message to Rivire, the Duc de Choiseul made no attempt to conceal his
distress: I am infuriated to announce that the King has judged it indispensable
to recall you from your Intendancy. The complaints of French commerce have
multiplied against you to such an extent that it has not been in my power to
support you any longer. And what hurts me no less is that these complaints
are only too well founded.44 Fnlon, who had given full backing to Rivires
enterprise, was also reprimanded by the Minister for Rivires transgressions:
His Majesty has painfully observed the tone of authority which has been
applied to execute, without orders, vast operations which go against the good
of the metropole and the colony, such as open and unrestricted liaisons with
foreign merchants45 While French merchants objected to Rivires turn
to foreign trade, complaints about the tone of authority probably stemmed
from the colons of Martinique. In a report written 16 January 1765 on the
Ministers request, the Chambre dagriculture of Martinique presented its views
on Rivire. Dividing Rivires administration into two periods, the Chambre
explained that Rivire had been popular during the first period when he only
attended to needs; and imperious in the second where he felt all-powerful.46
Rivires attempt to keep trade with foreigners under control while aiming
to rebuild the colony thus caused members of the Chambre, who had been
on the receiving end of Rivires commercial activities, to discredit him as an
imperious despot.
Goebel, The New England trade and the French West Indies, p. 336.
Ibid., p. 348.
42
Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des tablissemens et du commerce des
europens dans les deux Indes (6 vols, Amsterdam, 1770), vol. 5, p. 168.
43
King to Rivire, 30 March 1764, A.N. Col F3 28, pice 368.
44
Choiseul to Rivire, 30 March 1764, A.N. Col F3 28, pice 369.
45
Choiseul to M. de Fnlon, 30 March 1764, A.N. Col F3 28, pice 370.
46
Chambre dagriculture en lIsle Martinique, Prcis sur lAdministration de M. de
la Rivire, pendant la guerre, et depuis la paix 16 January 1765, A.N. Col E 276, pice
124.
40
41
179
180
181
generals (Bompar, Beauharnais de Beaumont, Levassor de La Touche, LamotteFnelon, and de Bourlamaque) and three different Intendants (Hurson, Givry
and Rivire). Back in Versailles, the Ministry of the Marine saw no less than six
different heads (Rouill, Machault dArnouville, Peirenc de Moras, Marquis
de Massiac, de Berryer, and Choiseul). In such a climate, where plus a change,
plus cest la mme chose, it is understandable that enlightened colonial officials
felt tempted to avail themselves of the absolute power they temporarily
enjoyed when attempting reform. It was the only way to succeed. In this
volume, John Shovlin argues that during the latter half of the eighteenth
century the Crown had its reformist moment during which it was willing to
tap the dynamic qualities of loyal servants of the Crown and of civil society.
For Mirabeau and Rivire, such willingness happened neither soon enough
nor fast enough. To them, what good would it be if reformist ideas first had
to penetrate several layers of bureaucratic dead weight before reaching the
ear of a reformist minister or monarch? And how certain could they be that a
Ministers willingness to reform would be anything but transient?
For all these reasons, Rivire seems to have drawn the same conclusion
that the Marquis de Mirabeau had advocated to his brother in 1754. In
the aftermath of his disgrace Rivire joined the Marquis de Mirabeau and
Franois Quesnay in developing the doctrine of Physiocracy and the concept
of legal despotism. Rivires highly praised Lordre naturel et essentiel des
socits politiques, published in 1767, presented the concept in the chapter
La Thorie de lOrdre Mise en Pratique in these words: where an evident
and public awareness of the natural and essential order reigns, such a form of
government is the most advantageous to the people because it is established
on a veritable legal despotism55 To repeat what May has suggested with
reference to Rivires preference for an authoritarian regime, it was Rivire
the intendant, not Rivire the jurist, who spoke.56 The lesson of Rivires
experience had been directly incorporated into his political economy.
Between the Marquis de Mirabeaus philosophical advice to his brother in
1754 and Rivires fully elaborated version of legal despotism in 1767 can be
located many hours of intellectual labour in the writing workshop of Franois
Quesnay.57 In this period, Quesnay, the Marquis de Mirabeau, Rivire, and
others endeavoured to perfect and spread the physiocratic doctrine, which its
Le Mercier de la Rivire, Lordre naturel et essentiel des socits politiques (1767), ed.
Edgard Depitre (Paris, 1910), p. 51.
56
May, Despotisme lgale et despotisme clair daprs Le Mercier de La Rivire,
p. 59.
57
Thr and Charles, The Writing Workshop of Franois Quesnay and the Making
of Physiocracy, p. 2.
55
182
Chapter 12
184
to the secular clergy. This attempt to limit the wealth and social prestige of
the religious orders was prompted by a series of letters written in 1746 by Jos
Manso de Velsco (Viceroy of Peru, 17451761) decrying the overabundance
of regular clergy in Peru and calling for removing the orders from parish
work. After determining that the process was proceeding without any strong
popular protests in support of the orders, the crown issued a further edict
on 1 February 1753 extending the process of secularization to doctrinas in
all dioceses of Spanish America. With these land-mark edicts, the Bourbon
dynasty began the process of stripping the religious orders of parishes that they
had administered, in some cases, since the spiritual conquest in the sixteenth
century. Moreover, these measures limited not only the orders wealth but
also their social prestige in the Viceroyalty of Peru. In the end, removing the
orders from their parishes had immense financial consequences, leading to
the gradual impoverishment of the regular clergy, by the end of the century,
in Peru.
This attack on the power of the regular clergy altered significantly the
traditional partnership between Church and state in the Spanish Atlantic
Empire. Spain and its overseas empire had formed a composite monarchy,
Archivo General de Indias (hereinafter AGI) Lima, 1596, Cdula real to Virrey del
Per, Buen Retiro, 4 Octubre de 1749, and a second edict sent to the Archbishop of Lima,
AGI, Lima, 1596, Cdula real to Arzobispo de Lima, Buen Retiro, 4 October 1749.
AGI, Lima, 415, Manso de Velsco to crown, Lima, 12 October 1746.
The process of secularization in New Spain has been studied by D.A. Brading,
Church and State in Bourbon Mexico: The Diocese of Michoacn, 17491818 (Cambridge,
1994), pp. 6281; D.A. Brading, Tridentine Catholicism and Enlightened Despotism in
Bourbon Mexico, Journal of Latin American Studies, 15:1 (1983): 122; William B. Taylor,
Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford,
CA, 1996), pp. 836, 50610; Dorothy Tanck de Estrada, Pueblos de Indios y educacin en
el Mxico colonial, 17501821 (Mxico, 1999), pp. 1619; Brian Belanger, Secularization
and the Laity in Colonial Mexico: Quertaro, 15981821, (Unpublished Ph.D. diss.,
Tulane University, 1990); Francisco Morales, Secularizacin de doctrinas: fin de un
modelo evangelizador en la Nueva Espaa?, Archivo Ibero-Americano: Revista Franciscana
e Estudios Histricos, 52:2058 (1992): 46595; Ernest Snchez Santir, El Nuevo orden
parroquial de la ciudad de Mxico: poblacin, etnia, y territorio (17681777), Estudios de
Historia Novohispana, 30 (2004): 6392; Virve Piho, La secularizacin de las parroquias en
la Nueva Espaa y su repercusin en San Andrs Calpan (Mxico, 1981), passim.
According to Antonine Tibesar, by 1800 most Lima Franciscans were living by
their wits and no longer maintained their convento. Antonine S. Tibesar, The Suppression
of the Religious Orders in Peru, 18261830 or the King Versus the Peruvian Friars: The
King Won, The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, XXIX:
2 (1982): 217.
185
51.
J.H. Elliott, A Europe of Composite Monarchies, Past & Present, 137 (1992):
Nancy Farriss, Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 17591781: The Crisis of
Ecclesiastical Privilege (London, 1968), pp. 1067, 170.
The Marqus de la Ensenada held the positions of Secretary of War, Finance,
Marine, and the Indies, and he was, arguably, the most powerful politician in Spain.
See, John Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 17001808 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1989),
pp. 15795; Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and
America in the Making of Early Modern Europe (Baltimore, MD, and London, 2000),
pp. 23159.
186
miserable and so wretched that even though they have no food for sustenance, they
labour for the enrichment of others.10
187
Ibid.
Even their strong endorsement of the Jesuits reflected views commonly held in
Madrid. The Society had provided the personal confessors of all the Bourbon monarchs
and the Marqus de la Ensenada, Jos de Crvajal y Lancaster, and Francisco de Rvago (the
Jesuit confessor of Ferdinand VI) were the three most powerful ministers, and collectively,
they were known as the Jesuit Party. Adrian J. Pierce, Early Bourbon Government in the
Viceroyalty of Peru, 17001759 (Ph.D. diss., University of Liverpool, 1998), p. 14.
15
For a discussion of how these diverse groups influenced Juan and Ulloa and their
ideas expressed in the Noticias secretas, see Kenneth J. Andrien, The Noticias Secretas de
Amrica and the Construction of a Governing Ideology for the Spanish American Empire,
Colonial Latin American Review, 7:2 (1998): 17592.
13
14
188
189
changes to ease the burdens on property owners and to aid recovery in the city
and its hinterland.
The man entrusted with governing Peru in this time of crisis, Jos Manso
de Velsco, was a self-confident, energetic military man from modest hidalgo
origins in La Rioja, who had served eight successful years as Captain-General
in Chile before his promotion to Viceroy of Peru in 1745. Like his counterparts
in New Spain (the first Count of Revillagigedo) and Santa F (Domingo Ortiz
de Rosas), Manso de Velsco was a protg and close friend of the powerful
Marqus de la Ensenada (a fellow riojano). Ensenada also gave the new
viceroy unprecedented fiscal powers by naming him Superintendente de Real
Hacienda. Although Manso de Velsco ran afoul of Limas upper classes by
trying to promote safer construction methods and modernize the citys street
design, he was chiefly remembered for getting food and water to survivors of
the quake. He also received much credit for rebuilding the city (especially its
cathedral), and for constructing the Real Felipe fortress and the new port city
of Bellavista to replace Callao.19 In fact, the crown rewarded him, in 1748,
with the title, Conde de Superunda (on the crest of the wave), and his portrait
still hangs in Limas cathedral against the backdrop of the city cathedral in the
midst of its reconstruction.20
Viceroy Manso de Velsco used the problem of homeless clergy in Lima
to propose a major reform of the orders in two strong letters to his friend
and patron, the Marqus de la Ensenada. The viceroy called for reducing
the numbers of religious to levels that could be supported from the orders
incomes, and he also recommended secularization of the doctrinas of the
regular clergy. He averred that, without the income from their parishes, the
orders would have to curtail their numbers to a level appropriate to their other
rents.21 The viceroy wanted to curb the power of the Church, particularly the
religious orders, giving them a diminished, less-visible role as he planned the
reconstruction of Lima and its economy.
two per cent on censos that were limited in time (and could be redeemed) and 1 per cent
on permanent liens or loans.
19
Ibid., passim. See also, Charles F. Walker, The Upper Classes and Their Upper
Stories: Architecture and the Aftermath of the Lima Earthquake of 1746, Hispanic
American Historical Review, 83:1 (2003): 5382.
20
A copy of the original portrait (painted by Cristbal Lozano) composed by
Lozanos student, Jos Joaqun Bermejo, shows the Conde de Superunda against the
backdrop of the Bay of Callao. See, Joseph Rishel and Suzanne Straton-Pruitt, The Arts in
Latin America, 14921820 (Philadelphia, 2006), p. 462.
21
Pearce, Early Bourbon Government, p. 196; AGI Lima, 643, Conde de Superunda
to crown, Lima, 18 December 1748.
190
191
Alfredo Moreno (ed.), Relacin y documentos de Gobierno del Virrey del Per, Jos
Manso de Velasco, Conde de Superunda (17451761) (Madrid, 1983), p. 270.
26
AGI Lima, 1596, Cdula real to Virrey del Per, Buen Retiro, 4 October 1749,
and AGI, Lima, 1596, Cdula real to Arzobispo de Lima, Buen Retiro, 4 October 1749.
27
AGI Lima, 1596, Conde de Superunda to crown, Lima, 1 November 1751.
28
Archivo de San Francisco de Lima (hereinafter ASF), Registro II, No. 2:24,
f. 236.
25
192
193
Provincial argued that the Franciscans received these parishes not because of
any shortage of secular priests, but because of the secular clergys defects.
The mendicants simply did a better job of converting and ministering to
the indigenous peoples, and replacing their beloved friars with mere secular
priests would compromise the spiritual welfare of neophytes in the parishes.
Secondly, there were not enough qualified secular clergy to serve in the doctrinas
de indios, since so few priests had adequate language training. Thirdly, the
unexpected edict to replace the orders with secular clergy had caused untold
mischief in Lima, particularly among common folk. Rumours circulated that
friars had robbed poor Indians to enrich themselves, engaged in immoral and
licentious behaviour, and routinely disobeyed crown laws. These scandalous
lies were compounded by the viceroys refusal to publish the royal edict on
secularization and to give the heads of each order a public audience to discuss
the issues.33 This unfortunate situation led to the unjust infamy heaped on
the orders by rumour mongers in Lima, leaving the mendicants isolated and
disgraced throughout the archdiocese.34 Finally, the conflict over the parishes
also had enflamed traditional tensions between regular and secular clergy,
unnecessarily undermining peace in the kingdom.35
The Franciscan Provincial then argued that his order would suffer serious
financial losses by forfeiting its parishes, particularly after the earthquake
and tsunami of 1746. The mendicants all depended on tithes and snodos
from parishes to support a variety of projects hospitals, missions in frontier
provinces, and even food for friars in the conventos. The earthquake had damaged
buildings on their rural estates and rendered the land sterile, while epidemics
had taken the lives of workers and slaves. Income from loans and liens on
rural estates and urban real estate also had plummeted, particularly when the
viceroy cut the principal and interest rates on all censos. Moreover, bequests
for pious works (obras pas), for religious confraternities (cofradas) sponsored
by the friars, and alms had declined markedly. Under these circumstances, the
memorial argued that Provincials would not have the funds to visit conventos
under their jurisdiction, to support missionary activities, or even to transport
friars to and from Spain. In short, the devastation of the 1746 earthquake,
coupled with losing their parishes, had undermined the religious mission of
the mendicant order.36
In truth, the religious orders risked suffering huge financial losses by
forfeiting rural parishes. According to a study commissioned by the Manso
Ibid., ff. 45860.
Ibid.
35
Ibid., ff. 494.
36
Ibid., 48599.
33
34
194
de Velsco in 1748, the viceregal treasury paid out 442,587 pesos annually
in salaries (snodos) to regular clergymen working in parishes throughout the
realm.37 Moreover, members of the orders customarily charged fees (obvenciones)
for performing duties, such as baptisms, marriages, or burials. According to
the viceroy some parish priests made between 4,000 and 8,000 pesos annually
in salaries and fees.38 The religious orders only allowed their members to keep
a portion of these benefits, with the remainder going to the order to support
its various religious houses, missions, and charitable activities. It is no small
wonder that the Provincials of the Franciscan and Mercedarian orders went
to Madrid in a futile effort to convince the King himself to rescind the edict
of secularization.39
The strong opposition of the orders made it difficult for Manso de Velsco
to implement the edict of secularization. In a letter of 1 November 1751
the viceroy lamented that the regulars considered themselves the absolute
owners of the doctrinas, and that they felt free to use snodos and tithes from
these parishes for routine expenses at the conventos or to reinvest the money in
rural estates. The Franciscans proved particularly recalcitrant in handing over
parishes when a vacancy arose. Instead, the Provincial named an interim friar,
calling him a guardian of the parish. By making such interim appointments,
the Franciscans managed to keep control over lucrative parishes, delaying
the time when the order would cede them to secular clergyman.40 Manso de
Velsco also complained of the orders insistence on seeing the text of the edict
of 4 October 1749, which he had denied them in accordance with the Kings
wishes.
Despite opposition from the orders, the viceroy assured the monarch
that he would continue to enforce the law, which represented the longterm best interests of the crown, the Amerindian parishioners, and even
the orders themselves. Losing their parishes would force the orders to trim
their excessive numbers and keep them living in conventos, where it would
be easier for the leadership to enforce the rules of each order.41 The only
regular order exempted from the edict was the Jesuits, who had only one small
AGI, Lima, 1596, Resumen general de las Pensiones consignados en las reales
cajas y provincias Del distrito del tribunal y audiencia rl de quentas de este reyno, con
Separacion de sus repectivas aplicacines, Lima, 30 June1748.
38
AGI, Lima 1596, Marqus de Regalia to Marqus de la Ensenada, Madrid, 20 July
1751; AGI, Lima, 1596, Junta Particular de Ministros, Madrid, 20 July 1751.
39
AGI, Lima 1596, Marqus de Regalia to Marqus de la Ensenada, Madrid,
20 July 1751.
40
AGI, Lima, 1596, Conde de Superunda to crown, Lima, 1 November 1751.
41
Ibid.
37
195
parish in Santiago del Cercado in Lima, where they maintained a school for
the children of indigenous leaders (caciques). The viceroy thought depriving
the Society of this small parish might force them to close an important school
unnecessarily.42
Within a few weeks the Archbishop of Lima wrote his own letter about
the problems resulting from secularization, and he offered some possible
grounds for a compromise to end the political imbroglio in Lima. Archbishop
Barroeta explained that the regulars saw the parishes as a reward for service
in the spiritual conquest of Peru, ceded by the Catholic Kings and verified
by succeeding monarchs. The regular orders viewed the viceroys actions as
illegal and arbitrary. Orders controlled 61 doctrinas in 1751 (while the secular
clergy held 90), and they provided a great deal of wealth to the regular clergy
amidst the economic problems following the earthquake of 1746. To ease
these rising tensions, the Archbishop suggested allowing the orders to keep
a few parishes, to enjoy a temporary exemption from tithes on their rural
properties where the land had been rendered sterile by the earthquake, and
to extend the time that the orders could enjoy the benefits of their parishes.
Nonetheless, Archbishop Barroeta believed that the orders should be removed
from parishes over time. He also argued that they should not reconstruct all
of their conventos, and the prelate suggested an inspection (visita) to determine
how to curb the excessive numbers of regular clergy in the city. In short, the
Archbishop wanted to limit the size of the orders, to curtail their freedom in
the city, and to ensure that they adhered strictly to the disciplinary rules of
their orders over the long term.43
On 17 November 1752, the reforming Pope Benedict XIV dealt a serious
blow to the regular orders in Peru, when he issued a bull supporting Ferdinand
VI and his edicts of 1749 ordering secularization of the parishes. According
to Pope Benedict, his predecessor, Pius V, had granted regulars the right to
administer doctrinas in the Indies on 24 March 1567, but this concession was
a temporary measure to deal with shortages of qualified secular priests. The
Pope made clear that the Real Patronato granted King Ferdinand the power
to reverse this concession, particularly given the numbers of secular clergy
capable of administering parishes. Finally, Pope Benedict stated that in all
pastoral matters (such as administering doctrinas) regular clergymen were
under the jurisdiction of the bishops and archbishops.44
196
After receiving confirmation of its powers from the papacy, the crown
issued a new cdula on 1 February 1753 extending the policy of replacing
regular clergy with secular priests to every bishopric in the Indies. According
to the crown, the original law of 1749 (which applied only to the large
Archbishoprics of Lima, Mexico City, and Santa F de Bogot) were extremely
successful and universally approved, even by the religious orders themselves.
The crown extended the power of bishops to reform the regulars and to end
unrest and upheavals, which had disrupted conventos in the Indies over many
years.45
Accompanying this new royal edict was a letter from the Marqus de la
Ensenada to his friend and protg, Manso de Velsco, which reiterated the
Kings strong desire to have this new policy rigorously enforced. The Marqus
de la Ensenada did not want to compromise with the orders, which he argued
should not be given: a pension nor a division of the profits from the parishes.46
The long memorial from the Franciscan Provincial had no effect on changing
the royal will, and the crown would not consider extending any benefits to
the regular orders to compensate for losing doctrinas. The Marqus de la
Ensenada reminded the viceroy that his counterpart in Mexico, the Conde
de Revillagigedo admitted no resistance to enforcing the royal order. As he
made clear: the express and absolute resolution of the King is the complete
divestment of the regulars from the parishes.47
Table 12.1 Doctrinas in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 22 June 1754
Bishopric Dominicans Franciscans Augustinians Mercedarians
30
13
0
15
Lima
Chuquisaca
7
0
6
6
0
2
0
0
Misque
7
1
7
9
Cusco
3
2
3
2
La Paz
9
1
0
1
Arequipa
11
0
0
1
Huamanga
3
17
12
9
Trujillo
70
36
28
43
Total
Jesuits
1
0
8
0
4
0
0
0
13
Seculars
102
116
6
107
68
47
68
50
564
Source: Alfredo Moreno (ed.), Relacin y documentos de Gobierno del Virrey del Per, Jos A.
Manso de Velsco, Conde de Superunda (17451761) (Madrid, 1983), pp. 2416.
197
198
thought that a district was a civil unit (such as a corregimiento), while the
viceroy and bishops contended that a district meant a province of the orders,
which roughly corresponded to a bishopric. These conflicting interpretations
of the 1757 edict made a considerable difference in the number of parishes in
dispute by both sides.
The viceroy wrote the crown on 12 August 1760 about his slow but
steady progress in transferring parishes to secular control. Manso de Velsco
explained that the 1753 edict of secularization had called for implementing
the order with the utmost gentleness, so he worked to ease tensions in the
viceroyalty. He ordered that parishes be transferred to secular clergymen only
after a vacancy occurred, naming a suitable candidate with language skills to
administer each doctrina. If no qualified secular priest could be found, then
the authorities appointed a suitable member of the religious orders. Moreover,
according to the edict of 1757, Manso de Velsco and Archbishop Barroeta
had designated one or two of the choicest doctrinas in each bishopric for the
regular orders to support missionary activities in the viceroyalty. The viceroy
pointed out, however, that the Dominicans and Mercedarians had no ongoing
missions, the Augustinians maintained only a few remote outposts, and the
Franciscans had been driven from their largest missions along the Tarma-Jauja
frontier over a decade earlier by the rebel, Juan Santos Atahualpa. Although
the orders still resisted losing their parishes, the viceroy assured authorities in
Madrid that secularization continued apace.51
By 1760 each of the prelates in the viceroyalty presented a report to the
crown about the process of secularization, indicating which parishes in their
districts the orders would retain, according to the provisions of the cdula
of 1757. Archbishop Barroeta began his memorial by denying vigorously
rumours spread by the orders that their members had been deprived of parishes
before a vacancy had occurred, leaving groups of unemployed vagabond
friars to roam the countryside. He further argued that no legitimate rural
conventillos existed in the archbishopric, denying Franciscan claims that many
of their parishes were annexed to missions.52 The Bishop of La Paz reported
that regular clergymen still held thirteen parishes, but all would eventually be
secularized, except four Jesuit parishes supporting their missions in Juli.53 The
Bishops of Arequipa and Huamanga reported no parishes tied to missions or
199
to rural conventillos (with at least eight resident friars).54 The Bishop of Trujillo
wrote that he had not been in his district long enough to give a thorough
report, but he listed only seven parishes linked to rural conventillos.55 Finally,
the Bishop of Cusco reported no parishes tied to conventillos, while the Bishop
of La Plata listed seventeen parishes under the control of the orders, but he
acknowledged that none were tied to formal conventillos, making all subject to
secularization as vacancies occurred.56
The process of secularization continued its slow inexorable path as vacant
parishes controlled by regular orders went to secular clergymen. According
to Manso de Velscos successor, Manuel de Amat y Junient, the religious
orders continued to lobby for parishes in each civil district, forcing the crown
to resolve once and for all the ambiguous language in the edict of 1757. In
a royal cdula issued from Aranjuez on 3 July 1766, the crown commanded
that one or two choice parishes be reserved for each religious province of the
orders, not for each corregimiento as the orders had demanded.57 This edict
effectively deprived the religious orders of any legal grounds for resisting the
overall process of secularization in the Viceroyalty of Peru. The final blow
to the orders, however, came with a royal cdula of 10 July 1773 ordering
the corregidor and treasury officials of Conchucos to pay the salary of a local
doctrinero directly to him, instead of sending the money to the Provincial of
his order, La Merced. This new policy caused an uproar, as the orders argued
that only Provincials should receive these snodos. The orders would then pay
only a portion of the salary to the doctrinero, keeping the rest for the needs
of the community. Paying salaries directly treated the few remaining regulars
serving in parishes just like members of the secular clergy, effectively denying
the orders any claim to snodos.58 The edict of 1773 essentially completed the
process of depriving the orders of financial support from rural parishes.
200
Conclusion
Secularization of the rural parishes constituted a forceful, direct attack on
the considerable wealth and power of the regular clergy in the eighteenth
century. By 1754 the orders had controlled 190 parishes and received nearly
450,000 pesos annually in snodos from the Peruvian treasuries. Moreover,
their imposing religious houses dominated the urban landscape in Lima and
played a central role in religious, political, and social life in the capital city. The
secularization policy undermined the entrenched regular orders, particularly
the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Mercedarians, who slowly
lost their lucrative parishes over the course of several decades. These orders
were vulnerable because of reports about their corruption, moral laxity, and
abuse of their Amerindian parishioners in Peru. The devastating earthquake
of 1746 provided the occasion to reform the orders and limit their wealth
and power. The missionary activities of the regular orders, which had been
long used to justify their administration of the doctrinas, had also diminished
considerably by the eighteenth century, particularly after the Franciscans were
expelled from the Tarma-Jauja frontier in 1742. Losing their doctrinas led
to a gradual decline in income for the orders, and their poverty and lack of
political influence made it relatively easy for the new republican government
to expel the regulars from Peru in 1830.59
The edicts of secularization succeeded over time because they had divided
the church, leaving the regular orders exposed on one side, while the secular
clergy gained control over rich parishes formerly held by regular clergymen.
The Jesuits were the one religious order less directly affected by the edicts
of secularization, since they administered few parishes outside of missionary
areas, exempting them from the edicts of 1749 and 1753. Moreover, the
Jesuits were largely protected from these crown policies by the three most
powerful ministers during King Ferdinands rule, Jos de Carvajal y Lancaster,
the Marqus de la Ensenada, and Francisco de Rvago, who were known
collectively as the Jesuit Party because of their well-known support for the
Society.60 The Jesuits would only later fall victim to the advance of regalism,
when King Charles III and a new group of enlightened ministers expelled
them from Spain and the Empire in 1767. The real winner in the struggle
over the doctrinas, however, was the crown, which dramatically extended its
power over the Church by replacing the more independent regular orders
with secular clergy, over whom the crown had considerably more control.
Tibesar, The Suppression of the Religious Orders in Peru, pp. 22034.
Prez Mallaina Bueno, Retrato de una ciudad en crisis, p. 322; Pierce, Early
Bourbon Government, p. 14.
59
60
201
By depriving the regular clergy of their parishes, reformers in Spain and Peru
extended the states power over the orders, altering in fundamental ways the
traditional partnership between Church and state in Spains Atlantic Empire.
As the political struggles over secularization in Bourbon Peru indicate,
enlightened reform emerged after a long, complicated political process in
which the crown, colonial interest groups, and the church competed for
power. The successful edicts of secularization also prove that serious efforts
to reform and renovate the imperial relationship began a generation before
the more well-known policies during the reign of King Charles III (1759
1788). Although the Enlightenment in Southern Europe provided the broad
intellectual context for reform, these ideas fused with a variety of reformist
proposals sent from the Indies by Juan and Ulloa and others, all addressing
the supposed political, social, and economic ills of the empire. Many of these
concerns went back to the Habsburg era, including efforts to remove the regular
orders from parish work, which crown authorities, reformers (arbitristas), and
some churchmen had discussed since the seventeenth century. Bishop Juan
de Palafox y Mendoza, for example, expelled the regulars from parishes in
his diocese in Puebla, Mexico, although the effort ultimately ended when
the crown recalled him in 1649.61 Even though Palafox was a favourite of
King Philip IV and the Conde-Duque de Olivares, the Madrid government
ultimately proved unable to mount a consistent challenge to the entrenched
power of the religious orders in the Indies during this earlier period.62 By
the reign of Ferdinand VI, however, reformers, crown ministers, and the
progressive Pope Benedict XIV, remained committed to removing the regulars
from parish work in the Indies, marking a clear and permanent shift in crown
policy towards the Church.63 Moreover, the astute political manoeuvring of the
viceroy, Jos Manso de Velsco, allowed him to accumulate the political clout
needed to remove the religious orders from their parishes, rebuild city of Lima
after the earthquake, and outwit his political rivals. Although the Marqus de
la Ensenada dominated the political arena in Spain, his policies also always
had powerful opponents, which contributed to his precipitous fall from
power in 1754. With the downfall of Ensenada, followed by the removal of
Rvago from court in 1757 and the mental breakdown of King Ferdinand VI,
enlightened reform lost momentum until the reign of Charles III. These
ebbs and flows of royal policy made the whole process of imperial reform
J.I. Israel, Race, Class, and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 16101670 (Oxford, 1975),
pp. 199247.
62
J.H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New
Haven, CT, and London, 1986), p. 489.
63
Snchez Bella, Iglesia y estado, pp. 1323.
61
202
Chapter 13
Introduction
Merely to suggest that the Savoyard state might have exemplified Enlightened
Despotism, in the generation before the French Revolution, might seem
perverse since all previous historians of Enlightened Despotism, including
Gagliardo, Krieger and Hartung have ignored it. This is not to deny the
impressive eighteenth-century reforms which transformed that state, i.e.
the territories ruled by the House of Savoy. These reforms included the
reduction of ecclesiastical and feudal autonomy, an overhaul of central and
local government, radical changes to the fiscal system, codification of the laws,
and a transformation of key cultural, educational and intellectual institutions
including the university of Turin. However, this fundamental reorganisation
of the Savoyard state occurred before the age of Enlightened Despotism,
* I should like to thank Gabriel Paquette and Nicola Cowmeadow for their
comments on an earlier version of this chapter. I should also like to thank Professor Derek
Beales for his great generosity in providing me with a transcript of his notes on a report
of c. 1785 on the kingdom of Sardinia, from the Haus-, Hof und Staatsarchiv, Vienna,
Italien, Diplomatische Correspondenz, 37, Sardinien.
J.G. Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism (London, 1967).
L. Krieger, An Essay on the Theory of Enlightened Despotism (Chicago and London,
1975).
F. Hartung, Enlightened Despotism (London, 1957).
From 1720 these territories comprised the principality of Piedmont the largest,
most populous and wealthiest component of the state the Duchy of Savoy, the Duchy of
Aosta, the County of Nice, and the small, rather poor island realm of Sardinia which gave
the ruling family its royal status.
In general, cf. G. Quazza, Le riforme in Piemonte nella prima met del Settecento
(2 vols, Modena, 1957); G. Symcox, Victor Amadeus II, Absolutism in the Savoyard State
204
i.e. 1690-1713 and 1748. In addition, those responsible for reform, Victor
Amadeus II (16751730) and his son and successor, Charles Emmanuel III
(17301773), are not generally thought of as enlightened. Indicative of their
attitude was their treatment of the radical Piedmontese thinker, Radicati
di Passerano, who died in exile in 1737, and of the Neapolitan, Pietro
Giannone, who died incarcerated in Turin in 1748. As for the period after
1748, the prevailing view has long been that there was little by way of either
Enlightenment or reform in the Savoyard state. Emblematic here was the
experience of Carlo Denina (17311813), one of the subjects of the king of
Sardinia most likely to be thought an Enlightenment figure. Having published
abroad (at Florence, 1777), in breach of Savoyard law, his DellImpiego delle
Persone, he was dismissed from his post at the university of Turin and briefly
incarcerated. In 1782 he abandoned Piedmont for Berlin, where he was
welcomed (as had been the Piedmontese scientist Luigi Lagrange) by Frederick
the Great. Rejected by the unenlightened Charles Emmanuel III, an event
which shocked Enlightenment Italy, Denina thus found refuge with a true
Enlightened Despot.
Drawing in part on Deninas accounts, nineteenth-century Italian historians,
especially those influenced by the Risorgimento tradition, were critical of the
successors of Victor Amadeus II,10 and above all of Victor Amadeus III (1773
1796), whom they regarded as largely responsible for a decline of the Savoyard
state which culminated in its collapse and incorporation into the French state
between 1800 and 18141815.11 This negative image of the late eighteenth16751730 (London, 1983); C. Storrs, War, Diplomacy and the Rise of Savoy, 16901720
(Cambridge, 1999).
Cf. D. Carpanetto and G. Ricuperati, Italy in the Age of Reason 16851789
(Harlow, 1987), p. 204ff.
Cf. F. Venturi, Alberto Radicati di Passerano (Turin, 1954; reissued, ed. S. Berti,
2005); and Alberto Radicati, conte di Passerano e Cocconato, Discorsi Morali, Istorici e
Politici, ed. G. Ricuperati and D. Canestri (Turin, 2007).
Cf. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, (Rome, 1960) [henceforth DBI] Denina,
L. Braida; Laffermazione della censura di stato in Piemonte dalleditto di 1648 alle
Costituzioni del 1772, Rivista Storica Italiana [henceforth RSI], 3 (1990), p. 781ff.
Pietro Verro observed to his brother, Alessandro, commenting on the Viennese
index of prohibited books and the condemnation of Denina, Here you have the eighteenth
century, the age of philosophy, Braida, LAffermazione, p. 789
10
Cf. G. Ricuperati, Limage de Victor Amde III et de son temps dans
lhistoriographie: attentes, vellits, rformes et crise de lAncien Rgime, in Btir une
ville au sicle des lumires. Carouge: modle et ralits (Turin, 1986), pp. 1533.
11
N. Bianchi, Storia della Monarchia Piemontese dal 1773 sino al 1861 (4 vols,
Turin, 187785), passim; M.; Broers, Napoleonic Imperialism and the Savoyard Monarchy
205
206
207
contrast with developments after 1773. This brings us to the work of Vincenzo
Ferrone, whose focus is the reign of Victor Amadeus III. Against those who
have dismissed the period as sterile, Ferrone, instead, emphasises that monarchs
credentials as an Enlightened Despot. The Savoyard experiment in Enlightened
Despotism may ultimately have failed, and triggered the emergence of local
Jacobinism,24 but the experiment was a reality, claims Ferrone, and with
important implications for our understanding of subsequent Italian history.
This revisionism has been influential: in her chapter on Enlightenment and
Reform in the Short Oxford History of Italy series devoted to Early Modern
Italy, Anna Maria Rao includes the Savoyard state as a full member of the
band of reforming states and princes of the second half of the eighteenth
century.25
The foregoing means that we have to address a number of questions,
most of which are obvious and have been long familiar to those interested
in the problem of Enlightened Despotism. Was there (an) Enlightenment
in the Savoyard State? If so, what were its essential features, and was it, for
example, narrowly parochial (or national) or more broadly cosmopolitan?
Was there a reform movement? If so, when did it occur, and what moved it?
Was it inspired by a blueprint and was it a coherent, integrated programme
of change? Was it about the good or happiness of the ruled or another stage
of state formation? And do we need to revisit these categories and the implicit
opposition between them? Was reform aimed at shoring up that distinctive
political and social structure we know as the ancien rgime? What do we mean
by reform anyway? As to the men behind the reforms, what was the relative
importance of, on the one hand, the monarch and on the other hand of
ministers, officials and opinion? Was the monarch absolute, even a despot?
Finally, what was the impact of reform? We still need far more research into
the real impact, rather than the mere ordering of reform, in all of the states
under discussion.
What follows seeks to answer some of these questions and to show that there
was reform in the second half of the eighteenth century in the Savoyard state.
It also attempts to demonstrate that, although not necessarily or invariably
inspired by the king, individual reforms were often the brainchild of state
officials and their implementation dependent on the existence of a powerful
state, such that the use of the term Enlightened Despotism is appropriate,
V. Ferrone, Tecnocrati militari e scienziati nel piemonte dellAntico Regime, RSI
(1984): 414509 (at 468); reprinted in La nuova Atlantide. Scienza e politica nel Piemonte
di Vittorio Amedeo III (Turin, 1988).
25
A.M. Rao, Enlightenment and Reform, in J.A. Marino (ed.), Early Modern Italy
15501796 (Oxford, 2002), p. 229ff.
24
208
particularly given our new understanding of that label. As to its origins, reform
did, in part, arise out of a discernible cultural renewal, what we might call
Enlightenment, although this is a complex historical phenomenon, one whose
definition is matter of debate. Some historians have seen the Enlightenment
as, in the words of John Pocock (describing the vision of Franco Venturi),
the presence of philosophes self-appointed secular intellectuals, offering
a criticism of society and putting themselves forward as its guides towards
modernity and reform. Other historians, including Pocock, are less sure
that the Enlightenment hinges on the existence of philosophes, and identify
multiple Enlightenments rather than a single monolith, whose relationship to
projects of reform and modernisation is not always straightforward.26 Having
said that, reform in the Savoyard state was also inspired by practical, and
pressing, contemporary and local concerns, including economic and financial
problems which were in part the legacy of half a century of war (to 1748)
and to perceived weaknesses in the economic structure of the state. We also
need to recognise that while we speak of Enlightened Despotism as a single
phase, there was change over time development. The Savoyard state shows
nothing comparable to the change of pace and scope evident in the Austrian
Habsburg Monarchy following Joseph IIs achievement of sole direction of
affairs in 1780 but in Piedmont and the other Savoyard territories the men
and conditions of 1787 were not those of 1777 or 1767, or those of 1797.
Inevitably there was opposition to reform, but equally there was real change by
1789. Having said that, and while recognising that far more dramatic changes
followed the subjection of the territories of erstwhile ancien rgime states and
sovereigns to revolutionary France, as were Savoy and Nice from 1792 and
Piedmont from 1802, we may underestimate the extent of further change
before incorporation into that expanding polity, triggered above all by the
pressure of war against France. In this sense, in the Savoyard state, and others,
notably Spain,27 the ancien rgime state achieved some of the programme of
a bolder, more radical Enlightened Despotism before the establishment of
francophile Jacobin regimes sometimes thought to be the precondition for
final realisation of the programme of Enlightened Despotism.
209
210
in Turin was another source of these and other Enlightenment texts, at least
for the elite.32 Not all readers responded positively to this reading, including,
for example, count Luigi Malabaila di Canale, the Savoyard minister in
Vienna for many years, who recorded and commented on his reading.33
Nor was France the only foreign source of new ideas: indeed, a strong antiFrench tradition in Piedmont and the years of alliance with England from
1690 underpinned a great interest there in English (or British) culture.34 Also
available to the subjects of the king of Sardinia were the works of the leading
lights of the reform movements in neighbouring Milan and in Naples: Carlo
Amedeo Corte, a member of the Turin Accademia delle Scienze, intendant of
Asti, and the author of an important report on that province in 1786 which
demonstrated his own reforming inclinations, had read Genovesi, Verri,
Beccaria, Filangieri, and Smith.35
Few of the king of Sardinias subjects made significant contributions to
the European Enlightenment, but some wrote on recognisable Enlightenment
themes and with a more than local impact. Count Ugo Vincenzo Botton di
Castellamontes Saggio sopra la politica e la legislazione (Florence, 1772) was
critical of Roman law traditions, echoing Muratoris celebrated and influential
Difetti della Gurisprudenza (1742). The Saggio was widely reviewed and seen as
part of the Lombard Enlightenment with which Botton identified himself; it
was also critical of entails and the way they underpinned an inactive, oppressive,
and useless hereditary nobility.36 There were even plans for a Piedmontese,
or Savoyard Encyclopedia or Dictionary, which however proved abortive.37
The British envoy, Lord Mountstuart, apparently lent books from his library: when
he left Turin in 1783 he still had not recovered from count della Marmora Robertsons
History of America; cf. the instructions given Mountstuarts secretary, Robert Liston, who
remained as charge, 23 Nov. 1782, National Library of Scotland [NLS], MSS 5525 f. 46.
For the diplomatic corps in Turin, cf. C. Storrs, Savoyard Diplomacy in the Eighteenth
Century (16841798), in D. Frigo (ed.), Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy. The
Structure of Diplomatic Practice, 14501800 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 215.
33
A. Ruata, Luigi Malabaila di Canale: riflessi della cultura illuministica in un
diplomatico piemontese (Turin, 1968), pp. 1369.
34
G.P. Romagnani, Prospero Balbo, intellettuale e uomo di Stato (17621837)
(2 vols, Turin, 198890), Vol. 1: Il tramonto dellantico regime in Piemonte (17621800),
pp. 22ff., 79.
35
Ricuperati, Gli Strumenti, pp. 8234.
36
G. Vaccarino, Ugo Vincenzo Botton di Castellamonte. Lesperienza giacobina
di un illuminista piemontese, Bollettino Storico Bibliografico Subalpino [BSBS], (1965),
p. 162ff.
37
G.P. Romagnani, Un secolo di progetti e tentative: il Dizionario StoricoGeografico degli Stati Sardi da Carena a Casalis (17651856), RSI (1983): 451502.
32
211
But the flourishing press included besides almanacs38 a number of homegrown periodicals. Among the first of these was Deninas Parlamento Ottaviano
(1763).39 This type of publication really took off, however, in the 1780s, with
Piemontesi Illustri (17811787),40 the Spettatoreitaliano-piemontese (1786),41
the Biblioteca oltremontana (1787?),42 the Giornale Scientifico, Letterario
e delle Arti (1789)43 and other journals. The contents of these publications
were among the topics considered in a flourishing salon culture in Turin44
and other provincial centres. In the capital, the works of French and other
Enlightenment authors were discussed in private assemblies of this sort in the
palazzo of the marquises Falletti di Barolo from the late 1760s,45 in palazzo San
Germano,46 and in that of Fanny Gerbet in the 1780s.47 Earlier, in 1757, the
Societa Privata was founded in Turin by count Angelo Saluzzo di Monesiglio,
the doctor, Gianfrancesco Cigna, and Luigi Lagrange.
Contrary to prevailing views about the negative cultural and intellectual
consequences of Savoyard reform in the first half of the eighteenth century,
it contributed to this intellectual flowering. The Turin Arsenal (refounded
c. 1735), for example, was an important centre of scientific investigation.
The Societa Privata had the support of the heir to the throne, the future
Victor Amadeus III and the seed continued to grow, particularly in the
later phase, that of the Scientific Enlightenment. Following the accession
of Victor Amadeus III, the Societa Privata became (1783) the Accademia
Reale delle Scienze.48 Other royal bodies followed, including the Accademia
212
Ibid., p. 420.
Romagnani, Un Secolo di Progetti, p. 467.
51
Ferrone, Tecnocrati Militari, pp. 435, 508; Braida, I mestieri, p. 102.
52
Nicolas, La Savoie, pp. 80810, 10889; F.A. and C. Duboin, Raccolta delle leggi
emanate negli stati di terraferma sino all8 dicembre 1798 dai sovrani della Real Casa di
Savoia, (23 vols, Turin, 181869), XI, p. 27ff.
53
Maruzzi, P., Notizie e documenti sui liberi muratori in Torino nel secolo XVIII,
BSBS, 3032 (192830); Ricuperati, Il Settecento, pp. 57374; Nicolas, La Savoie,
p. 1035ff.; Ferrone, The Accademia Reale, pp. 53031.
54
Ferrone, Tecnocrati Militari, p. 506
55
Mountstuart to Hillsborough, 3 July 1780, National Archives, Kew [NA]/ State
Papers [SP]/92/83/22 (on reaction to the destruction of the chapel of the Sardinian
embassy in London during the Gordon riots); Trevor to Carmarthen, 17 June 1786, NA/
Foreign Office [FO]/67/5/21.
56
Ferrone, Tecnocrati Militari, pp. 476, 4812.
49
50
213
214
H. Costamagna, Pour une histoire de lintendenza dans les tats de terre ferme de
la Maison de Savoye lpoque moderne, BSBS, 83 (1985), p. 373ff.
65
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, p. 757.
66
Ibid., p. 622.
64
215
Ibid., p. 682.
Ferrone, The Accademia Reale, p. 525.
69
Vaccarino, Ugo Botton di Castellamonte, p. 164.
70
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, p. 581ff. In 1747, a copy of the plan of Victor Amadeus
IIIs education was sent to Vienna at the request of Maria Theresa,who was planning the
education of Joseph II.
71
Edict, 15 Mar. 1773, Duboin, Raccolta, VI, p. 639.
72
Trevor to Carmarthen, 12 Jan. 1786, chapter 12, NA/FO/67/5, noted the kings
honesty, humanity and affability but also his want of judgement and firmness.
73
Cf. the letters patent in favour of the Agricultural Society of Chambery (1774),
note 44 above.
67
68
216
217
of this work.
83
Romagnani, Un Secolo di Progetti, p. 488.
84
Ibid., p. 476.
85
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, p. 657.
86
G. Prato, La vita economica del Piemonte a mezzo il secolo XVIII (Turin, 1908);
S. Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy. Benefactors and Their Motives in Turin
15411789 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 225ff.
87
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, p. 535ff.
218
219
220
developments elsewhere in Italy and Europe, and one aspect that has been
largely ignored by historians.106
One very striking area of government intervention in the Savoyard state
was that aimed at stimulating economic development. The coinage was
reformed in 1755, a necessary measure following the manipulations of the
War of the Austrian Succession, and again in 1786.107 Great energy was also
put into the development of Nice as a commercial centre. It was declared
a free port in 1749 and a Consolato created there in 1750.108 Foreign states
were allowed to buy out the duties hitherto imposed on foreign vessels at
Villefranche109 while the so-called droit daubaine was abolished.110 A trade
treaty with Russia was considered c. 1783 although nothing came of it.111
Also abortive was earlier talk of getting into the colonial trade, either directly
by acquisition of the Danish island (St. Croix)112 or indirectly via trade with
Portugal. Efforts to improve the basic infrastructure included enhancing the
road network,113 a Directorate General of Bridges and Roads being created in
1761 (but abolished in 1783 when its responsibilities passed to the Ufficio
Generale delle Finanze).114 Perhaps the most ambitious of these roadbuilding
The study of the trend towards open air cemeteries by G. Tomasi, Per salvare
i viventi. Le origini settecentesche del cimitero extraurbano (Bologna, 2001) omits the
Savoyard state.
107
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, p. 5267; G. Felloni, Il Mercato Monetario in Piemonte
nel Secolo XVIII (Milan, 1968), p. 96ff. and passim.
108
Royal orders of 12 Mar. 1749 and 15 July 1750, Duboin, Raccolta, XV, p. 393
and III, p. 840.
109
Cf. redemption by France (1753) and Great Britain (1754), Dagna, Un
diplomatico, pp. 223, Sclopis, Delle Relazioni, p. 99; and agreements with Denmark
(summer 1785), Solar de la Marguerite, Traits publics de la Maison Royale de Savoye
... depuis la paix de Cateau Cambrsis jusqua nos jours (8 vols, Turin, 183644), vol. 3,
p. 484ff.; Two Sicilies, Mar. 1786, ibid., p. 489ff; Portugal, Sept. 1786, ibid., 496ff.
110
Cf. agreements with Maria Theresa, Aug. 1763, Solar de la Marguerite, Traits
publics, vol. 3, p. 251ff.; Bavaria, Sept. 1772, ibid., p. 279ff; Spain, Nov. 1782, ibid.,
p. 480ffn.
111
Cf. Projet dun Trait de Commerce entre SM le Roy de Sardaigne et SM
lImperatrice de toutes les Russies, sent by Liston in March 1783, copies in BL Add.
36,805 f. 10736, and NLS, MS 5524 f. 6788.
112
Dutens to Halifax, 18 May 1765, NA/SP 92/71.
113
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, pp. 653, 657. Sturani, Inerzia e flessibilit, passim.
For Savoy, cf. Nicolas, La Savoie, p. 661ff.
114
Sturani, Inerzia e flessibilita, p. 492.
106
221
projects was that ordered, in 1780, to link Piedmont with Nice.115 In 1783,
Victor Amadeus III imposed new taxation116 to fund these and other public
works, including a canal for irrigation purposes.117 Other measures which
had as their objective economic development include the development from
1786 of the new town of Carouge, adjacent to Geneva;118 the diffusion of new
agricultural techniques, in part via the new academies and other societies and
their prize essay competitions; the stimulation of domestic production, for
example of porcelain (1765),119 gilded bronze buttons (1783),120 and vitriol
(1786);121 the creation of a silk manufacturing and export company (1752);122
abortive efforts to stimulate the export of Piedmonts celebrated wines one
of the main reasons for the road connecting Piedmont and Nice123 and the
development of Sardinia (which is discussed below). Nobles were allowed to
engage in trade indirectly (for example, as shareholders in the silk company,
above) and even directly without derogating their status.124
In many respects these measures represented state building or consolidation.
The new roads, for example, integrated the new territories and held out
the prospect of enlarged state revenues consequent on economic growth.
Administration and government constituted another important area of reform.
Measures taken in this respect were aimed primarily at the incorporation of
the recent acquisitions (above) and included the revised Constitutions (or legal
Royal patents, 23 May 1780, Duboin, Raccolta, XXIV, p. 1799. The progress of
the road can be charted in the correspondence of successive British ministers in Turin.
116
Royal order, 11 Feb. 1783, NLS, MS 5224 f. 103; Duboin, Raccolta, XXI,
p. 1209.
117
Royal letter, 21 Jan. 1783, Duboin, Raccolta, XXIV, p. 1577; Liston to Grantham,
23 Mar. 1783, NLS MS 5524 f.
118
Cf. the essays in the catalogue of the exhibition celebrating the bicentenary of the
towns creation, Batir une ville au sicle des lumires.
119
Manifesto camerale, 17 Aug. 1765, Duboin, Raccolta, XXVII, p. 556.
120
Manifesto camerale, 1783, Duboin, Raccolta, XVII, p. 161.
121
Trevor to Carmarthen, 12 May 1786, NA/FO/67/5/17.
122
Edict, 3 May 1752, Duboin, Raccolta, XV, p. 215ff; Rochford to Holdernesse, 22
Apr. 1752, NA/SP/92/60.
123
Cf. C. Rosso, Un altro Portogallo? I tentativi settecenteschi di esportare i vini
piemontesi in Inghilterra, in R. Comba, ed., Vigne e Vini nel Piemonte Moderno (Alba
and Cuneo, 1992), pp. 50746; Storrs, Savoyard Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century,
pp. 2423; Dagna, Un diplomatico, pp. 289. The progress of these efforts, too, can be
followed in the correspondence of successive British ministers in Turin: cf. Sherdley to
Shelburne, 22 Aug. and 14 Oct. 1767, NA/SP/92/72, and Lynch to Weymouth, 23 Sept.
and 2 Dec. 1769, NA/SP 92/74.
124
Dutens to Halifax, 30 Mar. 1765, NA/SP 92/71.
115
222
223
to reform was Sardinia.134 The island had attracted little attention hitherto
(as mentioned above), but Bogino, as minister with special responsibility for
the territory from 1759, initiated the overhaul of its institutions.135 Feudal
jurisdictions were limited as part of a programme aimed at improving the
system of both local government and justice, steps were taken to improve
the quality of the clergy, and measures introduced to stimulate economic
development. Educational improvement was exemplified by the foundation of
the university of Cagliari (1764).136 The Duchy of Aosta, too, was singled out.
It lost its de facto autonomy137 and, like the new territories, was subjected to
the reform of its tax burden, the so-called perequazione.138 The capital, Turin,
also received attention. More effective police, for example, was aimed at with
the introduction of illumination there (1782)139 while the layout of the citys
streets was improved in accordance with contemporary thinking.
Mention has already been made of some of the cultural aspects of reform,
including the foundation of the Reale Accademia delle Scienze. Other, earlier
measures included the university constitutions (1772)140 and the suppression
(1781) of the (formerly Jesuit) Collegio dei Nobili.141 Efforts were also made
to eradicate what were increasingly regarded as negative aspects of popular
culture and practices, including gambling.142 This and many of the measures
just described represented efforts at social reform, attempts to improve the
lot of the least well off. The attempt to stimulate economic growth would
also, if successful, have benefitted the most vulnerable. In the meantime,
monarchs and ministers implemented measures which were more obviously
about welfare. These included the consolidation of existing and creation of
new charitable foundations to cater for the poor and others.143
The range of measures just identified was not coherent or integrated in the
sense of being part of a blueprint for all-embracing overhaul of the institutions
of Savoyard state and society. Most reforms were self-contained, although
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, pp. 569, 572, 732ff.
DBI, Bogino; Dutens to Halifax, 3 Jul. and same to Conway, 3 Aug. 1765,
NA/SP/92/71.
136
Loriga, LIstituzione militare, p. 179.
137
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, p. 599; M.A. Benedetto, Ricerche sul Conseil des
Commis del ducato dAosta (Turin, 1956), passim.
138
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, p. 554.
139
Cf. royal order, 19 Mar. 1782, AST/Editti, m. 42/44.
140
M. Roggero, Scuola e riforme nello Stato sabaudo. Listruzione secondaria dalla
Ratio studiorum alle Costituzioni del 1772 (Turin, 1981).
141
Loriga, LIstituzione militare, p. 180.
142
Trevor to Carmarthen, 16 Aug. 1786, NA/FO/67/5/27.
143
Cavallo, Charity and Power, pp. 225ff, 233ff.
134
135
224
some had further implications and some broad patterns are discernible:
economic growth, greater centralisation, increased uniformity and even
Piedmontisation. How did reform in the Savoyard state compare with that
elsewhere in Europe? In many respects, the measures do fit the pattern or
programme of things done or rather attempted by other Enlightened Despots.
Where the Savoyard state differs is in the omissions. Striking, for example,
is the fact that there was no abolition of the use of torture or of the death
penalty.144
The Impact of Reform to 1789
It was one thing to decree reform another to implement it. This is a fairly
banal observation but we still tend to pay more attention, in considering
Enlightened Despotism, to what was attempted rather than what was achieved.
As elsewhere, reform in the Savoyard State faced hostility from various groups.
In Sardinia, the feudal barons opposed measures aimed at reducing their
jurisdictions on the grounds that they breached the terms of cession of 1720
(above).145 In Savoy, affranchisement provoked opposition from seigneurs who
thought it went too far, including the enlightened agrarian improver, Costa
de Beauregard,146 but it was also resented by peasants/communities for whom
it did not go far enough.147 As for the clergy, in 1786 the archbishop of Turin
refused to implement a bull obtained from Rome for the dissolution of certain
religious houses.148 Last, but by no means least, there was opposition to some
of the road-building programme on security grounds: the road to Nice, it was
argued, would make Piedmont more vulnerable to (French) invasion.149
Opposition could have an effect, if only in delaying or modifying reform,
but reform did go ahead. On his accession Victor Amadeus III suspended
the Savoy affranchisement edict but, in 1776, appointed a commission which
decided on implementation.150 More than 3,000 contracts of affranchisement
For continued use of torture, cf. Nicolas, La Savoie, 2, p. 1030, Vaccarino,
Ugo Botton di Castellamonte, p. 191, and R. Codebo, La Tortura nel Piemonte del
Settecento. Immobilismo e riforme nel confronto con gli altri ordinamenti europei, BSBS,
101 (2003), pp. 185215.
145
A. Mattone, La Cessione del Regno di Sardegna dal Trattato di Utrecht alla presa
di possesso sabauda (17131720), RSI, 102 (1990), p. 56ff.
146
Ricuperati, Il Settecento, p. 605.
147
Nicolas, La Savoie, pp. 2, 64041.
148
Trevor to Carmarthen, 24 July 1784, FO/67/4/33.
149
Sturani, Inerzia e flessibilit p. 516.
150
Vaccarino, Ugo Botton di Castellamonte, pp. 18081.
144
225
were passed between 1754 and 1792, the vast majority between 1772 and
1789. As for the roads, those who sought to transform the Piedmontese
economy won the argument, although the military were bought off with the
development of Saorgio as a new lynchpin of defence.151 As for the Sardinian
barons, Bogino declared their objections groundless and asserted Charles
Emmanuel IIIs full (absolute) sovereignty there.152
By 1789, in consequence, the Savoyard state had undergone considerable
changes. Perhaps inevitably again as elsewhere some felt more could and
should be done. Inevitably, too, some disappointed reformers become radicals
and collaborators with the French after 1789.153 Certainly, the essential
structure of the state remained, in 1789, much as it had been in 1748 or 1763.
It was still a dynastic state: indeed it was, arguably, more of one in the sense
that there was a larger royal family absorbing more of the total budget at the
later than at the former date. It was also still, in many respects, a composite
state: indeed tensions between Savoy and Piedmont may have been growing
over the period as a whole. However, we need to acknowledge the changes still
in process in 1789 and those achieved by that date. The Nice road fits into the
former category; as for the latter, the Savoyard state was, at least superficially
and institutionally more integrated and centralised in 1789 than a generation
earlier. One of the problems in evaluating Enlightened Despotism surely
lies in where to put the emphasis, on achievement, or aspiration or attempt:
according to one study, by 1791 of 206 communities in Savoy only 11 were
completely freed,154 complete emancipation having to wait for the French
invasion of the duchy. Yet the process drawn out and contested as it was
was underway before 1792. The affranchisement episode also reveals another
facet of the complicated consequences of reform: that in a Tocquevillian
manner reform may have created new difficulties, or exacerbated existing
tensions, weakening as well as strengthening the state.155 However, while
recognising these qualifications, we should not lose sight of the real progress
made since 1748, or 1763. This advance was not only measurable in terms of
institutional and infrastructural changes but also in the further development
of the political culture of the Savoyard state.156
226
227
the debates of preceding decades,165 but war and growing domestic unrest were
surely decisive in their implementation at this juncture.
Conclusion
In August 1786, after visiting the road being built to link Piedmont with
Nice, the British minister in Turin observed It seems to be the privilege of the
House of Savoy to immortalise its name by great public works of this kind.166
This was not something that could have been said of the reform programme
of Victor Amadeus IIIs grandfather, Victor Amadeus II. Victor Amadeus III
was not entirely effective, nevertheless his reign, like the latter part of that
of Charles Emmanuel III, did witness measures which allow his reign to be
labelled Enlightened Despotism as it has been redefined in recent decades.
If we draw up a checklist of measures all of which must be implemented to
qualify for that status, then the Savoyard state probably fails: the absence of
any significant humanitarian penal reform or of markedly greater religious
freedom is telling here. However, the revision of our understanding of
Enlightened Despotism has emphasised the danger of being too dogmatic and
rigid in our assessment. The case for the Savoyard state could certainly have
been stronger. Nevertheless, state, society and culture were not, in 1789, what
they were in 1748 or 1763, and were, in some respects, more open; and the
changes were, in part, the consequence of government acting to implement
change in response to changing perceptions, inside and outside government
the state of the needs of state and society and the role of government. If the
Savoyard state is not thought fit to include within the looser, revised framework
of Enlightened Despotism achieved in recent decades then, perhaps, that
concept, remarkably flexible and adaptable as it has proved to be, must be
abandoned as having finally outlived its usefulness.
Ibid., p. 810.
Trevor to Carmarthen, 9 Aug. 1786, NA/FO/67/5/26.
165
166
Chapter 14
For the law to be in essence law, it has to be honest, just, possible, appropriate to
the time and place, necessary, useful, and clear, so as not to induce error for its
obscurity, and made not for private convenience but for the common good of all.
Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae, book V, chapter XXI; seventh century AD)
Introduction
In 1761 the Madrid publisher Joaqun Ibarra printed the Comentarios a las
Ordenanzas de Minas, an analysis of the mining laws of New Spain written
by a 43-year old Mexican lawyer, Francisco Xavier de Gamboa. The author,
* The author would like to express his gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada for funding to undertake archival research in Spain. He would
also like to thank the following readers who made helpful comments on previous versions
of this chapter: John H. Elliott, Jeremy Adelman, Carla Rahn Phillips, Brian Owensby,
Anthony McFarlane, Susan Deans-Smith, Ann Twinam, Jorge Caizares-Esguerra, James
Sidbury and Gabriel Paquette.
Quoted in Victor Tau Anzotegui, La Ley en Amrica Hispana del Descubrimiento
a la Emancipacin (Buenos Aires, 1992), pp. 4345. All quotations translated from the
Spanish by the author of this chapter, unless otherwise noted.
Francisco Xavier de Gamboa, Comentarios a las Ordenanzas de Minas (Madrid,
1761). On Gamboa (171794) see Toribio Esquivel Obregn, Biografa de Don Francisco
Javier Gamboa, Ideario Politco y Jurdico de Nueva Espaa en el Siglo XVIII (Mexico City,
1941); Elas Trabulse, Francisco Xavier Gamboa: un poltico criollo en la Ilustracin mexicana
(17171794) (Mexico City, 1985); Jos Antonio de Alzate y Ramrez, Elogio histrico del
Seor D. Francisco Xavier de Gamboa, Regente que fue de esta Real Audiencia de Mxico,
in Gacetas de literatura de Mxico (Puebla, 1831), pp. 37384; Mariano Otero, Apuntes
230
who represented the consulado [merchants guild] of Mexico City at the royal
court from 1755 to 1764, hoped his study would help reinvigorate the New
Spanish silver mining industry, the anchor of the economy and, after two
hundred years, still indispensable to the health of royal finances. Having spent
almost fifteen years litigating mining cases in the courts of Mexico City in the
1740s and 1750s, Gamboa knew intimately the governing statute, the Mining
Ordinances of 1584. He was certain that if miners, lawyers and judges simply
understood the law better, silver production would increase dramatically.
Included with his learned commentary on the law was a great deal of technical
information, which brought to the attention of Mexican miners and Spanish
government officials recent and little-known studies on metallurgy, mining
engineering, and subterranean surveying. Gamboa also appended a glossary
of Mexican mining terms and a description of all the mining districts of the
country. Finally, he proposed a number of concrete economic measures to
help the industry, from relaxing the crown mercury monopoly to setting up
a mining bank under the auspices of the consulado. The Comentarios a las
Ordenanzas de Minas impressed the councillors of the Indies enough for them
to appoint Gamboa, in 1764, as an alcalde del crimen [criminal division judge]
on the audiencia [high court] of Mexico, an exceptional honour for a creole
in the 1760s.
Jos de Glvez, the visitor-general sent to New Spain in 1765 to inspect
and reform the system of administration, carried Gamboas treatise on mining
law with him. It gave him the information he needed to launch a major
para la biografa de Don Francisco Javier Gamboa, in Jess Reyes Heroles (ed.), Mariano
Otero Obras (Mexico City, 1967), vol. II, pp. 44162.
These ordinances, enacted by Philip II, applied to all Castilian lands, including
America but with the exception of Peru, which had its own 1572 code. The 1584 law
replaced the ordinances of 1563, and came to be known as the Nuevo Cuaderno.
The non-legal information it contained justified its translation into English in
1830 for British miners arriving in newly-independent Mexico. Francisco Xavier Gamboa,
Commentaries on the Mining Ordinances of Spain, trans. Richard Heathfield (2 vols,
London, 1830).
Gamboa served on the audiencia of Mexico from 1764 until his death in 1794,
with the exception of two periods when the crown appointed him to judicial positions
outside of New Spain, first to Spain from 1769 to 1773 and then to Santo Domingo from
1783 to 1788. He was only the second Mexican appointed directly to the audiencia of
Mexico since 1711 and the first since 1751. See Mark A. Burkholder and D.S. Chandler,
From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 16871808
(Columbia, MO, 1977), pp. 16276.
Abril 20 de 1765, Inventorio de los bienes, crditos y alhajas pertenecientes al
Seor Don Joseph de Glvez Gallardo, in Francisco Rodas de Coss (ed.), Mexico en el Siglo
231
232
the jurists political significance, noted that, despite the legal and technical
brilliance of his commentaries, Gamboa emerged as the political advocate of
the great import houses and silver banks of Mexico City. Precisely at the time
when the statesmen of the Bourbon dynasty were moving to undercut the
position of the colonial merchant-monopolists, Gamboa wished to subject
the entire Mexican silver mining industry to the control of the consulado and
the mercantile oligarchy.11 Stanley and Barbara Stein recently updated this
picture, suggesting that in the Comentarios, Gamboas hidden agenda (on
instructions from the Mexico City Consulado) was to enhance the image of
Mexico Citys merchant magnates and promote the continued insulation of
their economic space from the flotistas of the comercio de Espaa at Jalapa, both
during and after the ferias.12 The dominant view therefore holds that Gamboa
resisted the Bourbon reforms in order to shield the economic interests of his
clients and friends, the merchants of Mexico City. He opposed the Mining
Tribunal because he wanted to deliver the mining industry to the consulado.
This essay proposes an alternative explanation, based on a close reading
of the Comentarios. It argues that Gamboa believed the Bourbon reform
program threatened the legal system that buttressed Spanish sovereignty in
the Indies. In the same text that promoted Enlightenment ideas of scientific
progress and political economy, the jurist defended the old legal and
institutional architecture of mining in New Spain, which embodied the values
of Derecho Indiano, the traditional legality of the Indies.13 This complex of
Brading, Miners and Merchants, p. 162.
Stein and Stein, Apogee of Empire, p. 229.
13
There is a large Spanish historiography on Derecho Indiano. See especially
Alfonso Garca Gallo, Estudios de historia del derecho indiano (Madrid, 1972); Miguel
Luque Talavn, Un universo de opiniones: La literatura jurdica indiana (Madrid, 2003);
Ismael Snchez Bella, Alberto de la Hera, and Carlos Daz Rementera, Historia del derecho
indiano (Madrid, 1992); Tau Anzotegui, Ley en Amrica; Victor Tau Anzotegui, Casuismo
y Sistema: Indagacin histrica sobre el espritu del Derecho Indiano (Buenos Aires, 1992);
Vctor Tau Anzotegui, Nuevos Horizontes en el Estudio del Derecho Indiano (Buenos Aires,
1997); Feliciano Barrios Pintado, (ed.), Derecho y administracin pblica en las Indias
hispnicas: Actas del XII Congreso Internacional de Historia de Derecho Indiano (Cuenca,
2002). Of the more limited English-language historiography, see Woodrow Borah, Justice
by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the HalfReal (Berkeley, 1983); Charles R. Cutter, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700
1810 (Albuquerque, NM, 1995); Tamar Herzog, Upholding Justice: Society, State, and
the Penal System in Quito (16501750) (Ann Arbor, MI, 2004); Matthew Mirow, Latin
American Law: A History of Private Law and Institutions in Spanish America (Austin, TX,
2004); Brian P. Owensby, Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico (Stanford,
CA, 2008).
11
12
233
rules, practices and institutions had evolved from Castilian models to adapt to
the diverse and difficult environment of Spanish America. Its main innovation
was to treat written law, the decrees and statutes issued by the crown, as more
exhortatory than absolute. Viceroys and audiencias exercised discretion not to
enforce a law to the letter if it would cause manifest harm or inconvenience
in a particular case or locale. Gamboa believed this system, upheld by the
powerful and autonomous audiencias, fulfilled as well as possible the kings
promise of justice to his American subjects.14 It recognized that lawmakers
in Madrid did not have all the information necessary to legislate wisely for
the Indies. Negotiations with local officials and interest groups were essential.
To uproot the legal structure of the mining industry, the engine of the
novohispano economy, by revoking the established ordinances of 1584 and
removing jurisdiction over mining cases from the audiencias of Mexico and
Guadalajara, would endanger the administration of justice in New Spain and
thus perhaps the Spanish crowns best claim for sovereignty in America.15
The Flexible Legality of Colonial Spanish America
The legal order of Spanish America was rooted in the Roman legal tradition,
embraced formally by Castile through the thirteenth-century law code, the
Siete Partidas.16 As a law student in the 1730s at the University of Mexico,
On how Spanish law and institutions dispensed justice to Indians in seventeenth
century New Spain, see Owensby, Empire of Law.
15
Gamboas opposition to the policies of Glvez was shared by many Spanish-born
officials, notably Toms Ortiz de Landzuri, accountant-general of the Council of the
Indies; Antonio Maria de Bucareli, viceroy of New Spain in the 1770s; Antonio de Ulloa,
naval commander and co-author of the Noticias secretas de Amrica; and Antonio de Porlier,
successor of Glvez as minister of the Indies. Ortiz de Landzuri recorded his doubts in
opinions filed on Council of the Indies matters. See his opinions on mining in Archivo
General de Indias [hereafter AGI], Mexico, 2235. Bucareli and Ulloa, friends from Seville,
criticized Glvez, especially his planned Intendancy system, in their private correspondance
of 1777 when Ulloa visited New Spain. See Francisco de Solano, Antonio de Ulloa y la
Nueva Espaa (Mexico City, 1987). Porlier, responsible for Gamboas appointment to the
regency of the audiencia of Mexico in 1788, voiced strong support for the the traditional
legal order, again in the context of criticizing the Intendancy system. See AGI, Indiferent
General, 886, Dictamen, 2 Dec. 1801.
16
Robert I. Burns, (ed.), Las Siete Partidas (Philadelphia, PA, 2001). One of the
most widely-distributed legal texts in Colonial Spanish America was the 1555 edition of
the Partidas prepared and glossed by Gregorio Lopez. See Mario Gngora, Studies in the
Colonial History of Spanish America, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge, 1975), p. 73;
Luque Talavn, Universo de opiniones, p. 133.
14
234
235
236
and served as an advisory council for the viceroy. In the event of the death of
a viceroy, it assumed full governmental powers until a successor arrived.27 But
as the central judicial institution in the viceroyalty, the audiencia also took on
responsibilities not contemplated by royal statutes. For example, the audiencia
nominated police captains in the city of Puebla, despite express wording in
its own constitution limiting such powers to the capital.28 The court also
exercised jurisdiction over mining disputes, overriding a prohibition in the
1584 Ordinances. As Gamboa pointed out when he defended the audiencia in
both cases, there had been no feasible alternative when these practices began
and they had long been embedded into the legal order.
The flexible legality of the Indies ultimately derived from a medieval notion
of kingship. Law was an instrument to fulfil the princes higher moral duty
to protect the welfare of his subjects. If law did not advance this objective, it
could lose its validity.29 This understanding of law, articulated as early as the
seventh century by Isidore of Seville and brought to maturity by the Thomist
theologians of sixteenth-century Salamanca, remained pervasive in eighteenthcentury New Spain.30 In the Comentarios, Gamboa referred to it by quoting a
1727 viceregal report criticizing the mercury monopoly:
The prince is always beholden to what is honest, just, possible, convenient, necessary,
and useful in the welfare of his vassals, which are the constitutive requisites of Law:
although the prince can do everything, he can only do what is just; although much
might be licit to his power, not everything that is licit is honest, decent, or decorous
to his Sovereignty: although he can abrogate Law, he cannot take away rights already
acquired by his vassals, without proven cause, sanctioned by justice, and for no reason
less powerful, necessary, and advantageous than the universal welfare and prosperity of
his subjects, the true object of kingship.31
237
of local circumstances, they could invoke the ancient formula of Obedecer pero
no cumplir [To obey but not to enforce]. Recognized in the Siete Partidas, this
device allowed lower authorities to bypass a particular legal directive, while
still acknowledging the kings right to issue it. The requirement to file with the
king written reasons for the opt-out limited its abuse. Rather than exemplifying
colonial disregard for the law, Obedecer pero no cumplir upheld the ideal of the
king as the defender of the welfare and prosperity of his subjects. It screened
out inappropriate or poorly designed laws that could bring disrepute to the
administration of justice.32
The Bourbon Challenge to Derecho Indiano
In the eighteenth century, assertive regalism threatened the survival of the old
legal order of Spanish America. From his arrival in Spain, the new Bourbon
king Philip V promoted the extension of Castilian royal law as a means to
solidify the new dynastys power and fiscal base.33 He ordered the suppression
of the distinct laws of Valencia, Aragon, Mallorca and Catalonia, the provinces
of the old crown of Aragon that had remained loyal to the Habsburgs in the
war of succession. To make Castilian public law applicable throughout Spain
had been in the minds of Spanish kings since at least the early seventeenth
century, when the Count-Duke of Olivares recommended it to Philip IV.34
The Bourbons finally carried out Olivaress policy, only sparing the Basque
region, in recognition of its support during the succession struggles. The
crown continued to respect Basque fueros, the charters that guaranteed the
provinces legal autonomy vis--vis the rest of Spain.
It did not apply to either judicial rulings or laws of general application, such as the
1584 mining ordinances. See Caeque, The Kings Living Image, p. 56; Gngora, Colonial
History of Spanish America, pp. 748; Vctor Tau Anzotegui, La ley se obedece pero no
se cumple. En torno a la suplicacin de las leyes en el Derecho indiano, in La Ley en
Amrica hispana del Descubrimiento a la Emancipacin (Buenos Aires, 1992), pp. 67143;
Hoberman, Hispanic American Political Theory as a Distinct Tradition, pp. 21214;
John Leddy Phelan, Authority and Flexibility in the Spanish Imperial Bureaucracy,
Administrative Science Quarterly, 5:1 (1960): 4765.
33
Jos Snchez-Arcilla Bernal, Manual de Historia del Derecho (Madrid, 2004),
pp. 487501.
34
J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 14691716 (London, 1963), p. 329; Ricardo Garca
Crcel, Felipe V y los espaoles: Una visin perifrica del problema de Espaa (Barcelona,
2002), pp. 86119.
32
238
After another disruptive military contest, the Seven Years War, the crown
pushed the fight against legal pluralism to American shores.35 The instructions
given to Jos de Glvez when he set off for New Spain in 1765 included an
order to establish a system of royal intendants, patterned on the Castilian
model. Standardizing regional administration on both sides of the Atlantic had
been on the drawing board since the 1740s, when government minister Jos
del Campillo recommended it in his Nuevo sistema de gobierno econmico para
Amrica.36 Glvez, however, ran up against stiff opposition when he presented
his intendancy plan in 1768. He lambasted unnamed critics who included
Gamboa and Toms Ortiz de Landzuri, the accountant-general of the Council
of the Indies as persons who profited from anarchy and disorderor had
not done the work of examining abuses, which they venerate in the name of
the so-called ancient system.37 Glvez conceived his mandate, first as visitorgeneral to New Spain and then as secretary of state for the Indies, to finish
what Philip V had started in the lands of the old crown of Aragon: the rooting
out of autonomous tendencies and the assertion of the unconditional force of
royal law throughout the empire.38 The intendancy plan was just one of several
measures intended to further this goal.
It was not only the distinct laws and institutions in the composite parts of
the Spanish monarchy that offended the supremacy of the kings law, it was
also competing normative sources, such as the ius commune and custom.39
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos expressed a common late eighteenth-century
attitude towards the common law in a speech to the Real Academia de Historia
in 1780. He claimed that since the time of the Siete Partidas, the opinions of
the jurisconsults of Bologna began to be respected as law, introducing amongst
us a body of law that was many times different, and even occasionally contrary
to our national laws.40 The main charge against the ius commune was that it
Benton focuses on the challenge to colonial legal pluralism in the nineteenth
century. Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, pp. 21016.
36
The manuscript circulated in government offices for decades before finally being
published in 1789. For a recent edition see Jos del Campillo y Cosso, Nuevo sistema de
gobierno econmico para Amrica, ed. Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois (Oviedo, 1993). There
lingers some doubt, however, whether Campillo was the real author. See Luis Navarro
Garcia, Campillo y el Nuevo sistema: Una atribucin dudosa, Temas americanistas,
2 (1983): 229.
37
AGI, Indiferente General, 1713, Plan of Intendancies, 15 Jan. 1768.
38
Snchez-Arcilla Bernal, Manual de Historia del Derecho, pp. 48791.
39
See Luque Talavn, Universo de opiniones, pp. 96101; Toms y Valiente, Derecho
Espaol, pp. 3859.
40
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Discurso Acadmico en su recepcin a la Real
Academia de la Historia (1780), in Jos Caso Gonzlez (ed.), Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos:
35
239
undermined the respect owing to national laws.41 As early as 1713, the crown
ordered Spanish universities to incorporate the teaching of Castilian law into
the legal curriculum.42 In America, the revival of custom as a source of legal
norms posed another threat to the theoretical supremacy of the directives and
statutes of the king. The Bourbon monarchy was determined to subordinate
both common law and custom to its written legislation.
The larger European movement in the eighteenth century to make law
more rational added impetus to Spanish legal reform. This campaign began
with the flowering in the seventeenth century of natural law philosophy,
which held that there was an orderly normative structure in nature that could
be discerned through human reason. Positive law, the rules made by men,
should conform to this underlying framework. Because Protestant thinkers
such as Hugo de Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and Samuel Pufendorf developed
the philosophy in the seventeenth century, it received a cool reception at first
in Spain, even though it was originally formulated by Thomist theologians
in Salamanca, notably Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Surez. Yet even
watered down, natural law offered a powerful critique of the messy, casuistic
legality of Spain and Spanish America.43
The ideas of natural law inspired Spanish legal reformers such as
Juan Francisco de Castro and Juan Pablo Forner to call for the rational
codification of Spanish law.44 Written law, they declared, should be consistent,
determinative and easy to understand. A code would also undercut the role
of lawyers and judges, whose interpretations reformers considered hindrances
to the execution of law. The crown in fact began to prohibit the publication
of commentaries on its laws, starting with the new military ordinances of
1772. The king wanted the courts to enforce this statute strictly, according
to its plain meaning, rather than be swayed by the clever interpretations of
jurists. In 1776, when Glvez convened a committee to draft a new, more
rational law code for the Indies, to replace the Recopilacin of 1681, the crown
Obras en Prosa (Madrid, 1987), p. 95.
41
Barrientos Grandn, Cultura Jurdica, p. 241; John Henry Merryman, The Civil
Law Tradition, 2nd edn (Stanford, CA, 1985), pp. 1820.
42
Santos M. Coronas Gonzlez, Manual de Historia del Derecho Espaol (Valencia,
1996), p. 392.
43
Ian McLeod, Legal Theory, 4th ed. (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 4260; Tau Anzotegui,
Casuismo y sistema, pp. 18393; Toms y Valiente, Derecho Espaol, pp. 3224.
44
Tau Anzotegui, Casuismo y sistema, pp. 14856; Victor Tau Anzotegui, El
pensamiento espaol en el proceso de la codificacin hispanoamericana: los Discursos
crticos de Juan Francisco de Castro, Revista de Estudios Histrico-Jurdicos, 5 (1980):
37598.
240
241
242
243
a mining bank under the control of the merchants of the consulado of Mexico.
Gamboa claimed the consulado was the only entity with the experience,
expertise and capital to manage such an enterprise in New Spain. These
measures, he believed, would energize silver mining and increase the crowns
overall fiscal revenues, without the need for new taxes.
Gamboas Support for the 1584 Ordinances
For the crown, the most important service performed by Gamboa in the
Comentarios was to untangle the extremely complicated body of law pertaining
to the mines of New Spain. The 1584 Ordinances did not even revoke the
earlier ones of 1563, except in cases of direct conflict. Lawyers had to read
both bodies of law together to determine the rule in any given situation.57 Even
then, the letter of the law did not necessarily represent how courts applied
it. Like almost all royal legislation in the Indies, the mining law had been
stretched and pulled to cover the situation on the ground. In fact, Philip III
in 1602 expressly authorized viceroys to consult with local experts about the
applicability of the Ordinances, and if these persons find the laws suited to
such kingdoms, especially in that they do not conflict with particular measures
already taken in these provinces, the viceroys should conserve, practice and
enforce the laws, but if the experts found the laws unsuited, the viceroys had
the discretion not to apply them.58 Gamboas many years as a lawyer practicing
at the Audiencia of Mexico, handling the most bitterly-fought lawsuits over
mines of the main districts of that kingdom, gave him the experience to know
how the courts had interpreted the law.59 He also had access to a collection
of cdulas [royal decrees] saved from the 1692 fire that nearly destroyed the
viceregal palace in Mexico City.60 They set out royal amendments to the law
throughout the seventeenth century. Gamboa was thus uniquely equipped to
bring order and coherence to a confusing legislative field.
Ord. 1. Gamboa, Comentarios, pp. 17. This was the normal situation in Spanish
legislation, with old laws remaining on the books unless expressly revoked.
58
Quoted in ibid., 4. The direction read in full: Que los Virreyes comuniquen
con personas inteligentes, y experimentadas las Leyes de Castilla, tocantes a Minas; y
si se hallaren convenientes, las hagan guardar, practicar, y executar en las Indias, como
no sean contrarias a lo especialmente prevenido para cada Provincia: y hagan la relacion
conveniente de las que se dexan de cumplir, y por qu causa, y las razones que huviere, para
mandar que se guarden las que tuvieren por necessarias.
59
Ibid., Prologue, unpaginated.
60
Ibid., p. 84.
57
244
Gamboa was confident that with his Comentarios at hand both miners
and justices would show greater respect for the estimable purpose of the 1584
Ordinances: the encouragement of private initiative in the discovery and
exploitation of mineral resources. The spirit of these Ordinances, the jurist
remarked, accredits the absolute liberty of vassals, and even foreigners to
look for mines in whatever public or private place, without impediment by
the lands owner.61 He regarded the rules governing property rights in the
statute sound and well drafted. Ownership of subsoil minerals lay with the
crown, which delegated exploitation to private individuals in exchange for the
payment of royalties and other taxes. One could enter anothers land to look
for gold or silver on the principle that the crown, not the surface property
owner, controlled underground metal.62 To protect its property rights, the
crown required all miners to register their claims at a local treasury office.63 To
keep claims valid, miners had to begin operations within ten days, staking out
the mine and digging the main shaft.64 If registered owners failed to keep a
minimum of four workers on site with no more than a four-month interruption,
another person could claim the property.65 The ordinances even contemplated
fiscal exemptions to encourage individuals to undertake expensive mine
restoration projects.66 What was needed to boost silver production, Gamboa
believed, was simply respect for the existing legal framework, not the radical
reworking of mining law and institutions demanded by Glvez.
As a lawyer steeped in Derecho Indiano, Gamboa was untroubled by
discrepancies between what law said and how it was enforced. He recognized
that in many cases strict application of laws drafted in Spain was simply
impossible in the Indies. The Mining Ordinances, for instance, prescribed
measures that required a governmental presence lacking in the distant mining
districts of New Spain. The law set out a complicated royalty system based
on ore grade, which only a corps of crown mine inspectors could enforce.67
Since the crown had failed to earmark funds for these agents, Spanish officials
Ord. 16. Ibid., p. 93.
Ord. 2. Ibid., pp. 1025. While seeming to slight private property owners, the
likely effect of this broad right was to provide incentives to owners to develop their own
lands before an interloper arrived. It conformed with a traditional notion that ownership
entailed the responsibility to use land productively for the good of the community. For a
perceptive analysis of this idea of ownership, see Owensby, Empire of Law, pp. 90129.
63
Ords. 79. Gamboa, Comentarios, pp. 6591.
64
Ord. 22. Ibid., pp. 18292.
65
Ord. 37. Ibid., pp. 32240.
66
Ord. 79. Ibid., pp. 47389.
67
Ords. 315. Ibid., pp. 8390.
61
62
245
on the ground simplified the system by charging uniform rates to all miners.
The Ordinances also foresaw government-managed refining facilities. Instead,
in New Spain private individuals gained the freedom to process their own
ore.68 The weakness of the government was such that private individuals even
operated the royal mint in Mexico City until 1733.69 The crown did devise
one effective way to monitor silver production: it monopolized the supply of
mercury, essential in refining New Spains low-grade ore. Gamboa argued in
the Comentarios that this monopoly contravened the spirit of the Ordinances
since it restricted the individual freedom to mine.70 The crown, however, was
reluctant to surrender this lever over the industry, having failed to put into
practice so many mechanisms authorized by law.
The most significant incongruity between the law as written and as
enforced concerned the adjudication of mining suits. The Ordinances
envisioned a specialized court system. Local mine administrators would hear
cases at the first instance, with appeals made to a general administrator in
Mexico City. These administrators would exercise exclusive jurisdiction over
mining lawsuits, with the king commanding through Ordinance 77 that all
other justices whatsoever in these our kingdoms shall not interfere with the
cognizance of such cases touching or concerning the aforesaid mines.71 In other
words, the law expressly prohibited the ordinary civil courts, headed by the
audiencias, from hearing mining disputes. To which Gamboa dryly remarked,
This Ordinance is not in practice in the Indies.72 Instead, ordinary justices,
the alcaldes mayores, handled lawsuits at the local level and the audiencias of
Mexico City and Guadalajara heard appeals. Again, the reason was that the
crown never established the separate court system for miners.
The possibility remained, however, that the government could set up a
distinct adjudicative mechanism for miners. Gamboa sensed growing support
for the idea amongst miners and tried in the Comentarios to contain it. He
pointed out, first, that the cash-strapped miners themselves would have to
bear the cost of a specialized tribunal. Secondly, he defended the role of the
audiencias, claiming that were the right of appeal to the audiencias abolished,
the remedy for injustice would be cut off, and the parties robbed of a right
Ords. 6075. Ibid., pp. 38494.
See Victor Manuel Soria Murillo, La Casa de Moneda de Mxico bajo la
administracin borbnica 17331821 (Mexico City, 1994).
70
Gamboa, Comentarios, pp. 2543. On the mercury monopoly, see Richard L.
Garner, Economic Growth and Change in Bourbon Mexico (Gainesville, FL, 1993),
pp. 1329.
71
Ord. 77. Ibid., p. 465.
72
Ibid., p. 467.
68
69
246
of defence to which they are entitled.73 From his own experience handling
cases before the audiencia of Mexico, Gamboa could vouch for its expertise
and dispatch in administering justice in mining suits. He blamed the miners
themselves for the slow and complicated judicial proceedings that often kept
mines idle. He claimed miners sued too easily and refused to settle intractable
disputes. Long before the crown authorized the Mining Tribunal in 1776,
Gamboa had made clear he considered the audiencias indispensable for the
proper administration of justice for miners. To entrust adjudication to the
miners themselves, Gamboa thought both dangerous and absurd.74
Before the creation of the Tribunal, the viceroy posed the biggest threat
to the audiencias jurisdiction over mining justice. When Gamboa defended
the authority of the audiencias in the Comentarios, he had in mind the recent
intervention by the first count of Revillagigedo, Juan Francisco Gemes
y Horcasitas, who put the bonanza district of Bolaos under his personal
jurisdiction in 1752. Revillagigedo, viceroy from 1746 to 1755, claimed the
camp was too important, as both the gateway to northern New Spain and a
font of government revenue, to be left in the hands of an allegedly corrupt
local magistrate and negligent audiencia of Guadalajara.75 The viceroy had
made a habit of infringing on the turf of other authorities. Part of Gamboas
mission to Madrid on behalf of the consulado was to seek a declaration from
the crown condemning his interference in commercial disputes.76 Gamboa
admonished Revillagigedo in the Comentarios for his rampant jurisdictional
trespassing:
As the supreme head of the kingdom, and representing the majesty of our
sovereign, it is his duty to allow the other members of the body politic, and the
tribunals appointed for the determination of questions of justice, to perform their
functions without restraint. And he must not, by transgressing the proper limits of
his jurisdiction, and assuming authorities which belong to other ministers, disturb
the harmony and subordination which ought to exist in the functions of the different
officers of the state, at the same time, in so doing, violating the laws (which are supreme
above all), and working great injustice to the parties concerned.77
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 46872.
75
Count of Revillagigedo, Decree of 7 Nov. 1754, in Instrucciones y memorias de los
virreyes novohispanos, ed. Ernesto De la Torre Villar (Mexico, 1991), pp. 84751.
76
Archivo General de la Nacin, Archivo Histrico de Hacienda, pp. 6358.
77
Gamboa, Comentarios, p. 471.
73
74
247
This succinctly states Gamboas belief that it was a fundamental duty of the
viceroy, and indeed any executive official, to respect the autonomy of the
courts in order to assure the proper administration of justice.
To be sure, Gamboa had personal interests at stake in the survival of
Derecho Indiano. Before he left for Madrid in 1755 to serve as the deputy
of the consulado, he had risen to the pinnacle of the legal profession in New
Spain. He had represented miners, merchants and religious orders in court
and provided confidential advice to viceroys, the Mexico city council and the
metropolitan cathedral chapter.78 As the Comentarios attest, he could discern
coherence beneath the surface chaos of the law, which gave him an advantage
over less incisive letrados. He also went to Madrid with the hopes of securing
a seat on the audiencia of Mexico, and thus had a strong motive to praise the
judiciary.
To attribute his defence of the old legal order solely to material interests,
however, ignores the depth and consistency of his convictions. As an audiencia
judge from 1764 to 1794, he wrote dozens of submissions to the crown,
applying the ideas he first expressed in the Comentarios to the real events that
came his way, from the abuses of prisoners in the bakeries of Mexico City in
1765, to the riots at the mines of Real del Monte in 1766, to the rise and fall
of the Mining Tribunal from the mid-1770s to 1790. He did not waver in his
advocacy for a strong independent audiencia, the only institution he believed
that could curb the excesses of executive power. He defended the practice of
reading royal statutes in light of local customs and circumstances.
His defence of the ideas and practices of Derecho Indiano cost him dearly on
two occasions. In 1769 the crown recalled him to Spain, acting on allegations
by the viceroy, the marquis of Croix, that Gamboa had impeded the reforms of
Glvez.79 Only after Croix and Glvez had left New Spain at the end of 1771
did the crown allow Gamboa to return, cleared of all charges and restored to
his old position on the bench.80 In 1783, largely due to his opposition to the
Mining Tribunal, Glvez engineered the judges removal from New Spain again,
this time to Santo Domingo, where he took over as regent, or chief justice, of
its audiencia. He had to wait until the death of Glvez in 1787 before he could
return to New Spain, appointed by the crown as the first creole regent of the
audiencia of Mexico. Until his death in 1794, at the age of 76, the old judge
continued to fight against any attempt to limit the jurisdiction and autonomy
of the audiencia. It was his defence of the values, practices and institutions of
AGI, Indiferente General, 159, no. 35, Relacin de servicios, 1759.
See Luis Navarro Garca, Destruccin de la oposicin poltica en Mxico por
Carlos III, Anales de la Universidad Hispalense, XXIV (1964): 1346.
80
AGI, Mexico, 2778, Opinion of Special Council, April 7, 1772.
78
79
248
Derecho Indiano, more than his advocacy of the consulados economic interests,
that explains his resolve in opposing the Bourbon reforms.
Conclusion
This essay has argued that Francisco Xavier de Gamboa, the author of the
Comentarios a las Ordenanzas de Minas and a judge on the audiencia of Mexico,
opposed the so-called Bourbon reforms because he believed they threatened
the legal order that had sustained Spanish sovereignty in the Indies since the
conquest. In particular, he feared that the assertive regalism personified by Jos
de Glvez, first visitor-general to New Spain and then secretary of state for the
Indies, would undermine judicial authority and independence. He expressed
his legal philosophy in his 1761 commentary on the mining law, making clear
then, while he was still a private lawyer working on behalf of the consulado of
Mexico, that he believed the jurisdiction of the audiencias, the high courts of
civil jurisdiction, should be broad and unfettered. His main objection against
Glvezs plan to create a self-governing organization for miners was that it
would strip jurisdiction from the ordinary courts and invest it with the miners
themselves, whom he considered unqualified for the task. It was law more
than economics that mattered to the Mexican jurist.
Scholars are reexamining the culture and institutions of colonial law. They
are clearing the ground of misplaced and anachronistic assumptions about the
rule of law, legal pluralism, the colonial state and even the role of ceremony.81
For example, Alejandro Caeque argues that the fixation on the state as an
analytical category prevents a clear understanding of how viceregal power
was expressed and deployed in colonial Mexico.82 In regard to colonial law, a
large part of the problem in comprehending how it functioned is simply how
strange it now looks to eyes accustomed to the light of state-centered legal
systems. It is easy to caricature, for instance, the notion of Obedecer pero no
cumplir as a symbol of colonial indifference to law. Yet the device had its logic
in a system where the enforcement of royal legislation was always conditioned
by local realities. It is easier now to see the flaws and absurdities of the colonial
249
legal regime than the qualities that allowed it to mediate power tolerably well
in a difficult social and physical environment.
The argument of this essay raises important questions about how
historians have treated the Bourbon reforms. This ambitious program has
rarely been analysed in the context of the larger pattern of legal change in
the Spanish world in the eighteenth century. Yet to a large extent the reforms
attempted under Charles III represented the transfer to America of a project
to apotheosize the kings written law, which began when Philip V imposed
Castilian public law and institutions on the provinces of the old crown of
Aragon. Although associated with the Bourbons, this project had been in the
works since at least the early seventeenth century. This focus on law suggests
that we should downplay the importance of the Enlightenment as an influence
on the colonial reforms of Charles III. To be sure, the Enlightenment concern
for rationalizing law helped to shape the thinking of officials such as Jos
de Glvez, but the destruction of local legal autonomy and the weakening
of judicial institutions the reforms entailed did not appear particularly
enlightened to many well-informed subjects of the Spanish monarchy.
Equating Bourbon colonial reform with enlightened reform therefore tends
to undercut the validity of the arguments of opponents, who are treated as
reactionaries protecting economic or political privileges. In addition, it betrays
a degree of Eurocentricism, privileging metropolitan over colonial concerns.
Looking at the Bourbon reform process from the perspective of law can help
avoid both of these analytical pitfalls of the conventional view.
PART IV
Political Economy and the Reform of
Society and the State
Chapter 15
254
p. 170. For an important description of Doria and his world, though emphasising religion
and philosophy rather than political economy, see Francesco Maria Spinelli, Vita, e studj
scritta da lui medesimo in una lettera [1753], ed. Fabrizio Lomonaco (Genoa, 2007). I am
indebted to Antonio Trampus for this reference.
On which see Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the
Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA, 2005).
Sophus A. Reinert, Blaming the Medici: Footnotes, Falsification, and the Fate of
the English Model in Eighteenth-Century Italy, Journal of the History of European Ideas,
32:4 (2006): 43055; idem., Traduzione ed emulazione: La genealogia occulta della Storia
del Commercio, in Bruno Jossa, Rosario Patalano, and Eugenio Zagari (eds), Genovesi
Economista; Nel 250 anniversario dellistituzione della cattedra di Commercio e Meccanica;
Atti del convegno di Studi di Napoli del 5 e 6 maggio 2005 (Naples, 2007), pp. 15592.
On Naples in the period, see Girolamo Imbruglia (ed.), Naples in the Eighteenth
Century: The Birth and Death of a Nation State (Cambridge, 2000); Robertson, The Case
for the Enlightenment; Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore, vol. I: Da Muratori a Beccaria
(Turin, 1969) remains a significant point of reference.
Archivio di Stato di Torino, Materie di Commercio, 3 Categoria, Mazzo 2, n23,
Progetto di Gi. Nicola Morena di stabilire un Commercio tra il Regno di Napoli, ed il
Piemonte , 1749, 1r. On this trope generally, as well as for a succinct history of the
region, see Tommaso Astarita, Between Salt Water and Holy Water: A History of Southern
Italy (New York, 2005), pp. 242, 250.
255
grief rather than joy, for whereas their barren and inhospitable lands drove the
Dutch and the Venetians to better their condition, favoured people like the
Neapolitans still suffered from their initial complacency in the face of natural
abundance. And though its enormous Parthenopean capital ranked among
the worlds most populous, the Kingdom had never achieved what thriving
and independent commercial societies like Florence, Genoa, and Milan had
in the preceding centuries. It had, as its astute observer Ferdinando Galiani
wrote, not breathed the air of liberty for two millennia and had changed
dominion more often than any other city on earth; it was a depressed,
sprawling metropolis-kingdom, plagued by resilient feudal structures and
unequal economic relations both with the Northern Italian states and with the
great powers of the time, and it was precisely this material and institutional
backwardness which laid the foundations for the increasingly negative image
of southern Italian life in Europe. The city, as a famous saying went in Europe,
was a paradise inhabited by devils. When Charles of Bourbon routed the
The locus classicus for this opinion is Antonio Serra, Breve trattato delle cause
che possono far abbondare li regni doro & argento dove non sono miniere (Naples, 1613).
The same general argument was later made by Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, eds
Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold S. Stone (Cambridge, 1989), p. 341 and
David Hume, Political Essays, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge, 1994), p. 161 before it
appeared again in Trojano Spinelli, Riflessioni politiche sopra alcuni punti della scienza della
moneta (Naples, 1759), p. 25 and then Antonio Genovesi, Discorso sopra il vero fine delle
lettere e delle scienze, in ibid. Autobiografia e lettere, ed. Gennaro Savarese (Milan, 1962),
p. 251 and idem., Storia del commercio della Gran Brettagna scritta da John Cary ... Tradotta
in nostra volgar lingua da Pietro Genovesi ... con un ragionamento ... di Antonio Genovesi (3
vols, Naples, 17571758), vol. I, p. 228n.
Ferdinando Galiani to Antonio Cocchi, 20 February 1753, in Franco Venturi, Alle
origini dellilluminismo napoletano (dal carteggio di Bartolomeo Intieri), Rivista storica
italiana, 71:2 (1959): 41656, esp. 4524. See, for a historical selection of such writings
on Naples, Jeanne Chenault Porter (ed.), Baroque Naples: A Documentary History, 1600
1800 (New York, 2000). On Spanish economic mismanagement of Naples particularly, see
the essays in Antonio Calabria and John A. Marino (trans. and eds), Good Government in
Spanish Naples (New York, 1990) and Antonio Calabria, The Cost of Empire: The Finances
of the Kingdom of Naples in the Time of Spanish Rule (Cambridge, 1991), and more broadly
Spain in Italy: Politics, Society, and Religion 15001700, eds Thomas James Dandelet and
John A. Marino (Leiden, 2007). For the consequences of this for political thought there,
see Anthony Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European
and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory, 15131830 (New Haven, 1990),
pp. 6589. For the connection between backwardness and its image, see Nelson Moe, The
View from the Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley, 2002), p. 52.
Benedetto Croce, Uomini e cose della vecchia Italia (2 vols, Bari 1927), vol. I,
pp. 6886, discussed in Melissa T. Calaresu, The End of the Grand Tour and the
256
257
258
and coercion by the state; more cautiously if opaquely, Paola Zambelli argued
that Doria had a confused, but original and advanced vision of politics and
economics; while Giuseppe Ricuperati and Maria Luisa Pesante have both
detected constrained mercantilist elements in his writings.16 Though all these
analyses have elements going for them, there were intellectual traditions in
Naples at the time through which Dorias later writings become less confusing,
and particularly so in relation to a growing preoccupation with commercial
competition in Europe. For while he wrote volumes against the corruption of
ragion di Stato, which, as he maintained, with virtuous politics in everything
does not well align, and repeatedly emphasized the continuing importance
of faith, classical virtue, and even Hermetic magic in the modern world, he
could, like Giovanni Botero and Trajano Boccalini before him, not wholly
escape the seductive realism of its vision.17
As Doria had written in his 1739 Politico alla moda, the political order
of the modern state system, in which Naples was embedded as a decidedly
junior partner, was a vile aberration, a mercantile, natural, and practical
politics sustained by force of armies. It was natural and practical because
it ignored the transcendent metaphysics of ancient philosophy, it depended
on armies because politicians took to heart the Machiavellian maxim that
rulers should be feared rather than loved, and it was mercantile because
the maxims with which modern politicians govern men are the same as
those with which merchants regulate their commerce.18 This was based on
the Epicurean teachings of Macchiavello and Obbes.19 Yet these two were
not the worst sinners in Dorias eyes; Machiavelli, for example, had at least
realized the importance of virt for the health of individuals and the body
Assessing the Democratic Legitimacy of Governance Practices (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 6177,
esp. 66.
16
Paola Zambelli, La formazione filosofica di Antonio Genovesi (Naples, 1972),
p. 300; Ricuperati, A proposito di Paolo Mattia Doria, p. 284; Maria Luisa Pesante, Il
commercio nella repubblica, Quaderni storici, 35:3 (2000): 65596, esp. 687.
17
Paolo Mattia Doria, Relazione dello stato politico, economico, e civile del Regno
di Napoli, in Manoscritti napoletani di Paolo Mattia Doria (5 vols, Lecce, 19791982),
vol. I, p. 49. On his Hermeticism see Zambelli, Il rogo postumo; Ferrone, Seneca e
Christo. See also Zambellis 176 statement that Doria sta in realt svolgendo una difesa
del realismo politico machiavelliano assai pi spinta di quella di Traiano Boccalini.
18
Paolo Mattia Doria, Il Politico alla moda di mente adequata e prattico,
Lettera nella quale si fanno alcune Considerazioni intorno al Ministerio del Sig.
Cardinale di Fleury, in Manoscritti napoletani di Paolo Mattia Doria, vol. V, pp. 278.
This manuscript was also published as an appendix to Conti, Paolo Mattia Doria,
pp. 129259.
19
Doria, Il Politico alla moda, pp. 3033.
259
politic alike, and Dorias references to the Florentine secretary, both in praise
and in criticism, bordered on the obsessive. The root of all this evil was rather
Cardinal Richelieu, amoral heir of Cyrus and Croesus, first author of this sweet
poison of tyranny, which now is practiced by our modern politicians. It was a
lecherous and luxurious political order, embarked on fully by Cardinal Fleury
and Louis XIV, which undermined the foundations of civil society, defined
elsewhere by Doria as mutual assistance, the same phrase by which he also
described commerce.20 Mistakenly, the acolytes of Richelieu thought money
is the sinew of war against which Doria quoted no less an authority than
Machiavelli, whom he also followed in utterly dismissing the strategic value
of cowardly military innovations like gunpowder and set out to introduce
commerce rather than virtue in France.21 What now awaited Europe, as others
had been forced to follow the examples of the great powers by reorganizing
their policies for the exigencies of commercial warfare, was either a dramatic
turn towards the apogee of virtue or a further descent into apocalypse, for its
furious love of commerce was destroying all law and ultimately civil society
itself.22
But while Dorias Del Commercio del Regno di Napoli, like his earlier
Commercio mercantile, continued to bewail the deviant order of Europe, his
actual proposals for policy are paradoxically difficult to differentiate from
those of reason-of-state authors such as Giovanni Botero and Antonio Serra.
Doria repeatedly quoted the latter, and was the earliest known commentator
of Serras legendary 1613 Breve trattato.23 It was true that sterile lands like
England and Holland presently carried the worlds trade, Doria thought, but
fertile Naples could surpass them by adapting their industries and policies
to its naturally richer soil. Agricultural abundance would be followed by
flourishing manufactures and from this foundation Naples could become a
key player in global commerce, abounding in far more money than their
current competitors.24 He realized, however, that the economic situation of
Doria, Il Politico alla moda, pp. 367; Paolo Mattia Doria, La vita civile e
leducazione del principe (Frankfurt, n.d. [1709]), vol. I, p. 183; Doria, Del commercio,
p. 142.
21
Paolo Mattia Doria, Del commercio del Regno di Napoli, in Manoscritti
napoletani di Paolo Mattia Doria, vol. I, p. 185. On his dismissal of riflery, see Rotta, P.M.
Doria rivisitato, p. 429n.
22
Doria, Il Politico alla moda, pp. 40, 51; Paolo Mattia Doria, Il commercio
mercantile, in Manoscritti napoletani di Paolo Mattia Doria, vol. IV, pp. 2778.
23
Doria, Relazione dello stato politico, pp. 119, 146. On Dorias reliance on Serra
see Rotta, P.M. Doria rivisitato, p. 391; Zambelli, Il rogo postumo, p. 170.
24
Doria, Del commercio, pp. 1467.
20
260
the Kingdom had become even more dire since the time of Serra, for not only
were the Turks now exporting grain freely, but France had industrialized and
even England had come to export its agricultural surplus, rendering this future
outside immediate reach. Worse, even if Naples could somehow manage to
become economically competitive, its place in the sun would never be more
than transitory. Any attempt to steal foreign markets from the maritime
powers of England, France, and Holland would namely rouse their notorious
jealousy, forcing the two Sicilies into a war with countries the power of
which they could never equal. Made jealous [Ingelositi], the foreign powers
would burn Neapolitan ships and forcibly break their commerce.25
As recent history had painfully and abundantly documented, resistance
to the great powers was a futile endeavour. The English were champions of
the new world order, who, conducting cruel wars for what Doria dubbed
gelosia di Commercio, had not only wreaked havoc on Swedish and Danish
economic interests when those nations sought a place in the sun, but also
aggressively laid waste to the once glorious Dutch and Portuguese empires.
Grotius could preach law and order all he wanted, yet it offered nothing but
vain words against the Royal Navy and the patterns of trade they secured and
sustained.26 Were Naples to seek new markets abroad, it would only follow
in the footsteps of Dorias homeland of Genoa, economically castrated by
English prohibitions, or of Algerian and Tunisian freebooters, who, when they
claimed the ship of a foreign power at sea, had their own cities and civilian
populations bombarded into submission. But these were not abstract musings
on Dorias part. He had personally experienced and been changed by the
tremendous 3-day bombardment of Genoa by a fleet of 160 French ships in
1684. An event of uncommon brutality even by the canons of the time, it
was triggered largely by jealousy of the citys salt trade and its refusal to join
France in waging war on Spain. The ensuing blaze, remembered by Doria
simply as horrible, laid waste not only to large parts of the city but also to its
dreams of a prosperous neutrality.27 Since the great powers had prohibited all
other nations the commerce of the sea, he would write nearly sixty years later,
261
262
263
But towards what political constellation should Naples look for inspiration
in the execution of such an economic project? Although Doria recognized
the unrivalled capacity for reform offered by absolutist political solutions in
his Vita civile, he consistently distinguished between this and baser forms
of tyranny. Believing, it would seem, that the only difference between an
absolute monarch and a despot lay in his intentions, Doria nonetheless
insisted on the ultimate superiority of hereditary monarchy as late as in
his now lost 1741 Idea di una perfetta repubblica.38 Yet throughout most of
his works he emphasized the need for institutions and social groups able to
demarcate the range of just actions permissible to the sovereign to ensure
that he did not inadvertently slip from enlightened despotism into tyranny.
Doria, therefore, praised the lessons of an idealized ancient Sparta above all,
finding the unlikely modern incarnation of the ephors in the English House of
Commons, and, similarly, admired the Mandarin executors of Confucianism
for rendering Chinese absolutism something less than tyrannical.39 That is to
say that while he often spoke in terms hinting at a division of powers to the
extent that Robert Shackleton pondered a possible influence on Montesquieu40
and indeed was staunchly republican, as the historiography would have
it, his interest never lingered on rigorous constitutionalism or the merits of
Paolo Mattia Doria, Dall Idea di una perfetta repubblica, in Ajello et al. (eds),
Dal Muratori al Cesarotti, pp. 92847; on which see Zambelli, Il rogo postumo. See
also Ferdinando Galianis caustic recollection of the event, Galiani to Lorenzo Mehus,
13 March 1753, in Ferdinando Galiani and Lorenzo Mehus, Carteggio (17531786), ed.
Giuseppe Niccoletti (Naples, 2002), p. 48.
39
Paolo Mattia Doria, Dall Idea di una perfetta repubblica, pp. 9389 and n. See
also p. 940n. For his praise of the Mandarins see Doria, Il politico alla moda, pp. 10715.
On Doria and China see Michele Fatica, Il canto funebre in caratteri cinesi per la morte di
Gaetano Argeno e la sinofilia di Paolo Mattia Doria, in Bernardo Razzotti (ed.) Filosofia,
storiografia, letteratura: Studi in onore di Mario Agrimi (Lanciano, 2001), pp. 71854.
See also Conti, Paolo Mattia Doria, pp. 289 and in passim; Raffaele Ajello, Diritto ed
economia in P.M. Doria, in Papuli (ed.), Paolo Mattia Doria, pp. 93126. Dorias writings
on Sparta are selective, in that he for example never notes there were two kings rather than
one, but his ambivalence regarding the nature of Spartan politics nicely reflects Plato,
Laws, 4.712de. Giuseppe Galasso has in fact called Doria un storico impreciso, Doria:
cultura e filosofia delle riforme, in La filosofia in soccorso, pp. 23356, esp. 233. For a
sketch of the uses of Sparta in eighteenth-century Italy see still Elizabeth Rawson, The
Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford, 1969), pp. 3015.
40
Robert Shackleton, Montesquieu et Doria, Revue de littrature compare, 29
(1955): 17383; on Montesquieus possible influence on Doria see Giulia Belgioioso,
Doria inedito lettore delle Considerazioni?, in idem., Cultura a Napoli e cartesianesimo:
Scritti su G. Gimma, P.M. Doria, C. Cominale (Lecce, 1992), pp. 32352.
38
264
Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998) and Hobbes and
Republican Liberty (Cambridge, 2008); Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom
and Government (Oxford, 1999).
42
See similarly Ludovico Antonio Muratoris statement that republicanism in
practice entailed princedom in Eluggero Pii, Republicanism and Commercial Society
in Eighteenth-Century Italy, in Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (eds),
Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, vol. II: The Values of Republicanism in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 24974, esp. 252. For a most illuminating
discussion of the historical vicissitudes of the term republic, see David Wootton, The True
Origins of Republicanism: The Disciples of Baron and the Counter-Example of Venturi,
in Manuela Albertone (ed.), Il repubblicanesimo moderno: lidea di repubblica nella riflessione
storica di Franco Venturi (Naples, 2006), pp. 271304. On the republican elements in
Dorias thought see particularly Franco Venturi, Utopia e riforma nellilluminismo (Turin,
2001), p. 44n, Ferrone, Seneca e Cristo and La societ giusta ed equa: Repubblicanesimo
e diritto delluomo in Gaetano Filangieri (Rome-Bari, 2003), pp. 13031, Pagden, Spanish
Imperialism, pp. 6589 and Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity,
and the Emancipation of Man (Oxford, 2006), pp. 52052, 610.
43
Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, translated
and with an introduction by Keith Tribe (New York, 2004), p. 273.
44
Paolo Mattia Doria, La vita civile, in Raffaele Ajello et al. (eds), Dal Muratori al
Cesarotti, pp. 87397, esp. 875; Doria, Il politico alla moda, 93103. Discussed in Rotta,
Nota introduttiva, pp. 8546.
41
265
Why? Because the wise Sultan realized he could not compete with the great
powers directly and thus relegated the carrying trade to the English, Dutch,
and French. This, Doria continued, pledges those Powerful Nations to his
conservation, because, tempted by profits, they would not permit any Prince
to expel the Turk from Europe; and as a consequence of this, the Christian
Powers are becoming, because of vile tributary interest, servants of the Turk.
Having understood the healthy maxim of prudence better than anyone, he
had made his country moderate, wealthy, and selectively isolationist. He had
learned that one must live and let live to assure ones own life and ones own
dominion, and so, an exponent of cultural and religious toleration, he lived
well off the taxes levied on Christians in his lands and on the tariffs he placed
on trade with them. The Sultans politics towards Christians was worthy of
great consideration, for he placed them in servitude by luring them with
profits from Commerce,48 a mechanism Doria might have known to be at
See, for different centuries, Gregory Hanlon, Early Modern Italy, 15501800
(Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 18190; Astarita, Between Salt Water and Holy Water, pp. 969;
Charles Verlinden, La prsence turque Otrante (14801481) et lesclavage,Bulletin
de lInstitut historique belge de Rome, 534(19831984):16575; Francesco Morosini to
the Doge and Senate, 8 April 1614, and Domenico Dominici to the Doge and Senate,
11 October 1614, both in Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English
Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice vol. XIII. 16131615, ed. Allen
B. Hinds (London, 1907), pp. 109 and 213 respectively; Adele Cliento and Alessandro
Vanoli, Arabs and Normans in Sicily and the South of Italy (New York, 2008).
46
Doria, Politico alla moda, pp. 1023.
47
Doria, Politico alla moda, p. 103; Doria, Del commercio, p. 175.
48
Doria, Del commercio, pp. 1756.
45
266
work even in his ardently republican homeland. For a 1712 treatise between
republican Genoa and the Ottoman Empire indeed promised not only
commercio but also amicitia, not only trade but also friendship.49 So, though
Ottoman policies were an aberration, they were so in a complex way that
invited not only fear and loathing but also, like those of England, discerning
emulation. Naples too, after all, desperately needed a protective niche in an
otherwise rather unsympathetic world economy.
In the substance of his proposals, as well as the terminology in which he
presented it, Dorias political economy was mercantilist Ragion di stato in all
but name. The essence of successful statecraft, for Dorias political economy as
well as for Serras reason of state, was importing raw materials and exporting
manufactured goods while avoiding untimely confrontations with competitors,
and, unequivocally, neither agrarian cosmopolitanism nor perpetual selfsufficiency.50 His differentiation between real and abstract commerce was
not about domestic or international trade. It was about what kind of domestic
and international trades a country should pursue. Rather than referring
to Botero (though he repeatedly did refer to Serra and Boccalini, perhaps
because their works bore less onerous titles), however, Doria referred to the
examples he had listed in his earlier Vita civile, purportedly the antithesis of
the entire tradition.51 Though he certainly aligned with Fnelon and the later
Physiocrats in his aversion to jealousy of trade, Doria was, nonetheless, one
of their greatest adversaries on the crucial issue of economic policy. But what
does Dorias dual resort to Ragion di stato and to the Grand Turk entail for
our understanding of his political economy in particular and the political
consequences of jealousy of trade in general?
Absolutist, enlightened reforms were, for Doria, an explicit response to
Naples place in the international economy and the jealousy of trade suffered
Archivio di Stato di Genova, Archivio Segreto, Busta 2736, Materie Politiche,
Mazzo 17, n34, 23 September 1712, Trattato di Commercio concluso tra il Sultano Haemet
Han, Imperatore degli Ottomani, e la Serenissima Repubblica di Genova, p. 12.
50
Doria, La vita civile, p. 897. On Dorias aversion to war, in spite of his numerous
writings on the subject and evident awe of it, see Mario Proto, Guerra e politica nel Mezzogiorno
moderno: Doria, Vico, Genovesi (Manduria, 2004), pp. 75188; on the Christian Agrarian
movement with which he often is grouped, see still Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis
XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton, 1965).
51
Doria, Del commercio, p. 183, for Boccalini see p. 191. For another reference to
Boccalini as an authority see Dorias Il commercio mercantile, in Manoscritti napoletani di
Paolo Mattia Doria, vol. IV, p. 292. He would not have disproved of Boccalinis statement
that it was the usual custom of Spaniards to visit people more to injure them, than honour
them, I ragguagli di Parnasso: Or Advertisements from Parnassus Now put into English
(London, 1656), p. 400.
49
267
268
arguing that the true despot threatening Western virtues and liberties was not
the Grand Turk after all: it was the Gelosia di commercio of the great powers
themselves. Just as the pecuniary interests of core nations represented an
absolutist imperative in peripheral politics, so the core was in turn enslaved by
the tyrannical system it sustained. Where Montaigne had followed Plutarch
in arguing that the inhabitants of Asia served one single man because they
could not pronounce one single syllable, which is No,55 Doria reversed the
relationship. It was the great Western powers which were enslaved by their
inability to say No, to lucre; to ambition; and, thus, ultimately to injustice.
In his earlier Vita civile, Doria had noted how in our days conquests are
equally hurtful for the conquering kingdoms as for the conquered provinces,
and indeed that a conquering people become equally miserable and perhaps
more so than the conquered provinces.56 Trade, he maintained two decades
before David Humes seminal Jealousy of Trade, had run amok in the modern
world and taken on the very same guise as conquest. Commerce was rather
aigre than doux on the great palate of civilization, a bitter cause of strife rather
than a sweet source of peace, but it was within these parameters that Doria
sought his most pertinent economic lessons.57
All this leads one to wonder whether the Homeric tradition might not
contain more appropriate exemplars for making sense of Dorias political
economy than Telemachus. During one of the Aeneids many fateful storms,
for example, a delegation of weather-beaten Trojans was barred entry to
Carthage. To their grievances, Dido responded Severe conditions and the
kingdoms youth Constrain me to these measures, to protect Our long
frontiers with guards. The moral of Virgils anecdote was simple and of a
perennial quality: extreme tribulations demand extreme measures in less
than consolidated realms. Machiavelli might have been one of Virgils most
ardent acolytes, quoting this very passage favourably when he decreed that
Fortuna put new princes in contexts where they could not escape being called
269
Chapter 16
272
273
imagined foreign tax systems merely rhetorical devices. As we shall see, many of
them were based on careful, and laboriously detailed, study of the conditions
abroad and reflect a genuine and widespread preoccupation with international
comparison, competition and imitation. Transnational arguments became
central in French fiscal debates in this period as a result of three separate
developments. First, the fiscal crisis that had to be solved was largely the result
of international events, namely European warfare, and finding successful fiscal
solutions was the key to supremacy in the international competition for power,
prestige and trade monopolies. Second, the ability to borrow arguments and
evidence from other fiscal contexts hints at the similarities of the challenges
and the fiscal development across Europe. Mutual observation only made
sense because issues such as the cost of warfare, competition between crown
and estates for fiscal revenue, conflicts over the intrusive nature of taxation
and lacking administrative capabilities were, essentially, the same across
Europe. In particular the fact that the lines of conflict between individuals
and states were drawn in very similar manner facilitated the transnational
borrowing of arguments and evidence. A pan-European commentary emerged
in which contemporaries discussed fiscal change as a development that was
seen, in many respects, as a European issue rather than as a national one.
Third, the widespread use of foreign examples and experiences in domestic
fiscal debates was the result of shifting epistemological standards. The almost
obsessive empiricism of the Enlightenment saw commentators struggle to
back their arguments with facts based on observation. With laboratories
unsuitable to test economic hypotheses, foreign lands or the historical past
had to stand in to provide empirical evidence. To this end existing accounts
were plundered, comprehensive surveys commissioned and, occasionally,
fiscal experiences invented. Accounts from fictional lands and their fiscal
systems were not uncommon in eighteenth-century debate. Often this kind
of fictional evidence was simply fabricated evidence but it also took on more
complex functions as rhetorical device and precursor of economic modelling.
Together the different forms of accounts about fiscal experiences were part of
the international commerce of ideas of the Enlightenment.
The public debate about taxation exploded in France in the aftermath of
the War of Austrian Succession (17401748). The number of new publications
about public finance increased more than five fold in the early 1750s. A second
spike in the statistic of fiscal publications coincides with the end of the Seven
Years War. Taxes, one anonymous pamphleteer complained in the 1760s in his
274
tract about taxes, had becomes le sujet de toutes les conversations. It was in
this climate, of heightened interest in fiscal matters, that mutual international
observation thrived. The following discussion is organised around three main
foci in the fiscal debates of the time: first, the commissioning and publication
of a large and comprehensive survey of European fiscal practices by the French
ministry of finances in 1763; second, the rise of the Physiocratic school from
the 1750s; third, the conflict surrounding the Parlement de Maupeou in the
early 1770s.
In 1763 the Contrleur Gnral, Bertin, charged his Intendant de Finances,
Moreau de Beaumont, with the compilation of a broad survey of fiscal
systems of all major European states. The result of this ambitious project was
published in 1768 (and reprinted in 1786) under the title Mmoires concernant
les impositions et droits en Europe. The work remains the only comprehensive
comparative study of fiscal systems in eighteenth century Europe. However,
the Mmoires will not be approached here as a source for the fiscal history of
Europe, but rather as one for the French history of political and economic
thought. What were the motives and circumstances that led Bertin to devote
an extraordinary amount of time and effort to introduce knowledge about
foreign fiscal arrangements into the domestic French debate? Bertin decided
to commission the Mmoire in the midst of a political crisis of the kind that
had become a recurring feature of the Bourbon polity in the eighteenth
century. In the course of the Seven Years War the deficit had grown rapidly
and had reached threatening levels. When Bertin had taken office in 1760
he had found that the state was 200 million livres short on a budget of 318
million livres. Bertin sought to resolve the crisis by a mix of new debts and
taxes. Although, in principle, opposed to attacks on the fiscal privileges of the
nobility and the clergy, financial needs forced the minister to increase taxes on
these privileged groups. Enraged, the parlements issued a flood of complaints.
In this conflict with the magistrates the position of the crown was precarious.
On the one hand, Bertin had no choice but to increase revenue. With fiscal
pressure already high on ordinary citizens, the only way to significantly raise
additional revenue was to increase the universality of taxation, i.e. to reduce
fiscal privileges. Tapping into the large untaxed incomes of Frances wealthiest
inhabitants was not only the only viable way to raise the required sums; it was
also what many ordinary tax payers and much of the writing public asked for.
Anonymous, Doutes proposes lauteur de la thorie de limpt (n. p., 1761), p. ii.
The Mmoires and files associated with them have been studied as sources for
European fiscal history among others by Gabriel Ardant, Histore de limpt (2 vols, Paris,
1971) and Peter Claus Hartmann, Das Steuersystem der europischen Staaten am Ende des
Ancien Rgime (Munich, 1979).
275
Other publications from the period include Baudeaus Ides dun citoyen (Amsterdam,
1763), Darigrands Antifinancier (Amsterdam, 1763), Lefebvre de la Bellandes Trait
gnral des droits daides (Paris, 1760) and Mirabeaus Thorie de limpt (n. p., 1760).
276
277
13
278
279
avoient appartenu ltat. While the current dynasty was forced to tolerate
such abuses by the feudal lords, Beaumont leaves no doubt where legitimacy
lay in fiscal matters. Dues and taxes collected by lords, or exemptions from
taxation that they enjoyed, are either rights usurped by the lords or granted by
the king. The thse royale was thus defended and the accusation of despotism
that the parlements frequently levelled against the crown was turned against
them: la seigneurie devint une espce de despotisme.14 The second objective
of the survey was to render the possibility of reform less frightening through
European comparison. By unfolding a European panorama of different forms
of taxes and tax collection, which were all the outcome of specific historical
developments and local conditions, Beaumont proposed to the reader that
there was no natural or immutable way to tax. Europes fiscal systems were
presented as a vast toolkit from which one could choose through examen
and discussion what was plus convenable pour la meilleure administration
des finances & pour le plus grand avantage des peuples.15 Here, Beaumont
combines European comparison with an invitation to let reasonable and
informed decision take precedence over historical development. It is worth
remembering that it is not an enlightened public that he invites to examine and
discuss, but rather an administrative elite. Nevertheless, it is not tradition but
empirically backed reasoning that is to determine the course in fiscal matters
in this view. In this sense, the Mmoires fit into an enlightened tradition of
surveys through which the French monarchy in the eighteenth century tried
to know the present state of the kingdom.16
The Mmoires compiled reliable and comprehensive information about
the reality of Frances system of taxation and placed this information in a
European context thus providing the monarchy and its administrations with
the empirical basis and the tools to solve the fiscal crisis. Beaumont was
preparing an enlightened reform, or, in the words of the editor of the second
edition of the Mmoires: Mr de Beaumont does not limit himself to describe
the formal order of things but he also explains their inner organisation.
Instead of creating a system which is always prone to objections he establishes
the facts and you find yourself convinced of all the truths which he leads you
to discover. The administrator who at first thinks that he is looking at a mere
table or a description is suddenly filled with ideas and insight by this work.17
Jean-Louis Moreau de Beaumont, Mmoires concernant les impositions et droits en
Europe (4 vols, Paris, 1768), vol. 2, p. vi.
15
Ibid., vol. 1, p. viii.
16
Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA, 1998), p. 34.
17
M. de Beaumont ne se contente pas de prsenter la constitution des choses, il
dveloppe encore leur organisation intrieure. Au lieu dtablir un systme, toujours sujet
14
280
Two of the most important verites that Beaumont had in store for his
readers to discover were that France needed a more universal and uniform
system of taxation. The first sentence of the Mmoires set the tone: In order
to uphold and preserve a state it is necessary that all members of whom it is
composed contribute towards it. Indeed, this quality is inherent in the idea of
being a citizen. Further down Beaumont continues: Every individual ought
to contribute to the common cause of the nation by his works, talents and in
proportion of his abilities.18 Although some degree of universality of taxation
seems implied the language used is vague. Contributions made through
travaux and talens do not, a priori, exclude the old justification of fiscal
privilege whereby the aristocracy fought for the nation, the clergy prayed for
it and the rest paid taxes. And yet, the language of proportion, nation and
citoyen suggests at least some intention to limit fiscal privilege and increase
horizontal equality. This position reflects a widespread rejection among
administrators of radical calls for the end of all fiscal privileges in the public.
At the time when the Mmoires were commissioned, Bertin summarised the
compromise position which took into consideration the need for increased
revenue but also the fear of political instability associated with attempts to
reduce privilege: The contribution must be universal because there is no one
who does not have an obligation to support the state but the proportion which
determines the share of this support can very according to the person and the
nature and the object that originally gave rise to the tax.19 The Mmoires,
therefore, remained far more cautious in their attack on fiscal privilege than
many of the public commentators, but confronted the issue nonetheless.
More radical is Beaumonts rhetoric with regard to the uniformity of taxation.
contradiction, il tablit des faits, et vous vous trouvez convaincu de toutes les vrits quil
vous a laiss dcouvrir. LAdministrateur qui croit navoir vu quun tableau ou un rcit,
se sent tout coup rempli dides et de prvoyance. Jean-Louis Moreau de Beaumont,
Mmoires concernant les impositions et droits en Europe. ed. Nicolas-Juste Poullin de Viville
(4 vols, Paris, 1787), vol. 1, pp. ivv.
18
Le mantien & la conservation de tout tat exigent de chacun des Membres qui
le composent des secours que lon peut regarder comme une contribution inhrente
la qualit de citoyen. Chaque individu est tenu de contribuer la cause commune &
nationale par ses travaux, par ses talens & dans la proportion de ses facults. Beaumont,
Mmoires (1768), vol. 1, p. iii.
19
La contribution doit tre universelle parce quil ny a personne qui ne soit oblig
de venir au secours de ltat, mais la proportion qui fixe la quotit de ce secours peut varier
suivant les personnes et la nature des objets contribuables. Cited in Franois Bayard, Jol
Felix et al., Dictionnaire des surintendants et des contrleurs gnraux des finances (Paris,
2000), pp. 15962.
281
Indeed, the lack of uniformit is nothing less, in his view, than the origin of
all crimes and evils that affect French commerce.20
One specific reform project that received great attention in Beaumonts
survey, and one that was discussed by many contemporaries as a way to achieve
greater universality and uniformity, was the cadastre. Beaumont describes the
advantages of such systems which avoided the arbitrariness and privileges
associated with the French taille and which were successfully used in Milan,
Venice, Piedmont, Prussia, Bohemia and also other Habsburg lands. In theory,
the cadastre may have been compatible with fiscal privileges of the nobility
and other groups. But the underlying principle, and the tendency in practice,
was to establish a system under which taxes were levied according to the yield
of landholdings. The fiscal pressure on noble landholders was also likely to
increase because informal privileges, that were mostly the result of collusion
between tax collectors and influential landowners, became easier to prevent.
The firmer grip of the tax administration that was associated with land registers
was, therefore, feared by the French magistrates.21 They were seconded in their
view by a number of political economists, notably Smith, who warned that the
legions of administrators necessary for the implementations of such projects
were too costly and invasive and that taxation according to production would
dissuade owners from improving their land.22 Even Beaumont admitted that
the introduction of cadastres was a long and difficult process. In Bohemia,
he writes, it took almost a hundred years. But he also cites examples of faster
change such as Silesia. The territory had only been acquired by Prussia in
the 1740s but, by the time of the survey, a cadastre had been successfully
established on the orders of Frederick II. The Prussian land registers were,
in general, described in a favourable light by Beaumont who praised their
precision. No doubt his favourable views were also associated with the tax
rates that he could report for Prussia. Noble lands were taxed at 38.5 per cent,
church lands, even, at 50 per cent and the land of non nobles at 35 per cent.
As is specifically pointed out, the rates were set freely by the Prussian king
without consultation. However, Beaumont also goes into great detail about
the process by which the quality of land is assessed, and at regular intervals, by
commissions composed jointly of local nobles and people who are charged to
Tous les crimes & tous les maux. Beaumont, Mmoires (1768), vol. 1, p. v. See
also Lebeau, Regional exchanges and patterns of taxation in eighteenth century Europe:
the case of the Italian cadastres, in Nehring and Schui, Global debates, pp. 2535.
21
Kwass, Privileges, p. 184.
22
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Oxford, 1976), p. 869.
20
282
defend the sovereigns interests.23 This may have been a bid to allay the fears
of French magistrates. Laverdy had used a similar approach in his municipal
reform which conferred some powers to the magistrates while affirming royal
authority in other areas.24
As may be seen from these examples, Beaumont used European comparison
to bolster the arguments of the ministry. However, public commentators, too,
used foreign examples to make their case. The quality and originality of their
evidence could not match that compiled by the ministerial machinery in most
cases. But they still felt compelled to include material of this type or make their
own attempts at comparison, most frequently with England.25 This is true of
both sides in the public debate: on one side those close to the parlements, who
defended every inch of the fiscal status quo, and on the other side those who
asked for reforms far more radical than the ministerial bureaucracy could ever
have accepted. Due to restrictions of space, the use of foreign evidence on both
sides can only be discussed here based on a limited number of examples.
Among the proponents of reform the Physiocrats take up a special place
by virtue of their radicalism and the volume of their publications in the
1750s, 1760s and 1770s. As is well known, the principal fiscal demand of
the Physiocracy was the introduction of a single tax on land rents. This tax
was to affect all landowners without regard to their rank and, thus, do away
with all privileges.26 While the project was popular among the public in the
1760s, administrators, like Bertin, had no sympathy for it. According to his
calculations, the introduction of the single tax in 1763 would have burdened
land owners with the equivalent of 18 vingtmes. Given that already the second
and third vingtmes were causing deep political rifts, 18 vingtmes seemed like
a sure way to bring about the collapse of the Bourbon polity. Nevertheless, the
Physiocrats advocated their fiscal reform project in countless publications and
used foreign examples, widely, to convince their readers. Hardly any edition of
the phmrides du Citoyen, the mouthpiece of Quesnays sect, passed without
extensive reporting about foreign lands and fiscal experiences there. The articles
roughly fall into two categories: first, articles about specific countries or regions
in Europe that often stretch over more than one issue. The cases discussed
Gens qui sont chargs des interest du souverain. Beaumont, Mmoires (1768),
vol. 1, p. 83, 115.
24
Maurice Bordes, La rforme municipale du contrleur gnrale Laverdy (Toulouse,
1968); Jol Flix, Finances et politique au sicle des Lumires: Le ministre Laverdy (Paris,
1999).
25
See for example Anonymous, Comparaison de limpot de France avec celui dAngleterre
(London, 1766). Rilliet de Saussure, Lettres sur lemprunt et limpt (n.p., 1779).
26
See among others Mirabeau, Thorie de limpt.
23
283
include Ireland, Poland, Geneva and Tuscany.27 Such articles provided detailed
accounts that support Physiocratic arguments and lauded governments that
followed Physiocratic recommendations. This is most explicit in the rubric
actions louables which begins to appear in 1771 and praises political reform
along Physiocratic lines in France, Spain, Germany and Bohemia. A special
place, in this context, is held for a report about the efforts made by the Margrave
of Baden. This minor German prince had corresponded with some of the
leading Physiocrats and, enthused by their ideas, tried to create model villages
in his realm. This devotion earned him a visit by DuPont de Nemours and a
praising article in the phmrides where he was held up as a model monarch
for princes across Europe to emulate.28 A second group of articles described
countries outside Europe. Here available information is often liberally mixed
with imagination. Most of these articles are concerned with China. The long
piece Despotisme de la Chine which spreads over all editions of 1767, and
many others, describe China as a model of government in the Physiocratic
spirit.29 Together the accounts about taxation and governance in Europe and
the world often made up as much as half of the pages of the phmrides.
The remarkable space and effort that the Physiocrats devoted to prove their
theories with arguments from outside France, derives directly from their
theoretical paradigm. For the Physiocrats the laws governing economics, in
particular the fact that only agriculture produced wealth, were the result of
a god given eternal and immutable ordre naturel. Parallel to this existed the
ordre positif , the man-made rules and institutions. These included, perhaps
most importantly, the fiscal system. Given the immutable nature of the
ordre naturel, the prosperity and economic success of any society ultimately
depended on whether the ordre positif was adapted to the natural order.
The role of government was limited to understanding the natural order and
adjusting its laws accordingly, in particular introducing a single tax and free
trade. Unlike Montesquieus much more subtle notion of a dialogue between
the laws and local natural conditions, the Physiocratic ordre naturel did not
Paradoxe politique adress aux Irlandois, phmrides du Citoyen, I, 1967. Lettre
sur ltat actuel de la Pologne, ibid., IV, 1770 and following editions. De la Republique de
Genve, ibid. and following editions. Libert du commerce des subsistences en Toscane,
ibid., I, 1770 and following editions.
28
Jochen Schlobach, Les physiocrates et une tentative de ralisation de leur doctrine
en Allemagne, SVEC, 216 (Oxford, 1983): 2936.
29
Analyse du gouvernement des Yncas a Prou, phmrides du citoyen, I, 1767. Yu
le Grand & Confucius, ibid., II, 1767. Eloge de la ville de Moukden & de ses environs,
par Kien-Long, Empereur de la Chine actuellement rgnant, ibid., III, 1770 and following
editions. Despotisme de la Chine, ibid., III, 1767 and following editions.
27
284
allow for any regional variations. It was the same in China, Peru and Baden.30
This not only meant that Physiocratic policy advice could travel with great
ease. It also meant that greater economic success was an indicator for greater
congruency of natural and positive order. International comparison was,
therefore, crucial to hold up successful examples and denounce deviations
from the right path. The observation of other countries served a crucial
purpose within the logic of the Physiocratic argument and that of enlightened
scientific universalism in general.
However, not only the ministry of finance and the Physiocrats observed the
neighbours. The parlements, too, in their defence of fiscal privileges and legal
prerogatives made wide use of examples and evidence from outside France.
While the crown had backed down in its conflict with the parlements in 1763,
the chancellor Maupeou dissolved the parlements in 1771 and substituted
them with more docile assemblies. Maupeous coup lasted only until 1774
when the death of Louis XV led to his fall. But, despite its short duration,
the conflict prompted an avalanche of remonstrances by the magistrates.
Embedded in wider political discourses, fiscal matters were at the heart of this
conflict. The magistrates defended their right to prevent any fiscal legislation
prejudicial to their privileges. In pamphlets filled with references to the works
of Montesquieu, the parlements tried to depict Maupeous coup as an act of
tyranny and Louis XV as a monarch in danger of sliding down the slippery
slope to despotism.
While this was a conflict over the distribution of revenue between the
notables and the crown, its language was not that of political economy but
of legal history. The Physiocrats case for reform was presented in economic
terms and much of Beaumonts survey focused more on the present and
future than on the past. In contrast to this, the principal form of evidence
used by the parlements was historical. As mentioned earlier in this essay, the
Mmoires reacted to this by including a history of French taxation which
stressed evolution and royal authority. However, despite the concentration of
the parlements on the past, the magistrates also used international comparison
in this publicity battle. Unlike the administration and the Physiocrats, their
interest focused mainly on the attitudes of foreign monarchs and less on the
specifics of taxation. Perhaps it was feared that a detailed discussion of fiscal
matters could have damaged the parlementss claim to be the defender of the
fiscal interests of the whole nation.31 Rather than taxes the magistrates argued
Most authoritatively in Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, La Physiocratie
(n. p., 1767).
31
Anon., Le parlement justifi par lImperatrice Reine de Hongrie, par le Roi de
Prusse et par le Roi de Sardaigne, in Les efforts de la libert (4 vols, London, 17723),
30
285
286
Chapter 17
Between 1759 and 1769 Galiani had been the Neapolitan charg daffaires and
secretary of the Neapolitan ambassador in Paris. For the diplomatic indiscretion used by
Choiseul to remove Galiani, Giuseppe Ferraioli, Un fallo diplomatico dellabate Galiani,
Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane (1880): 69098.
288
that one pursues the exchange of giving with the whip for the rupees one receives; that
is, the commerce of the strongest. This would be my book.
289
290
other states and the English more natural and supposedly long-term viable
strategy, which combined overseas agricultural commerce with the financial
regime advocated by Child (that was inspired by the Dutch example).12 The
argument served as a response to supporters of the then dominant view that
colonies robbed the mother-country of its population, were expensive and
were a main factor in the demise of empires.13 Instead, the future of the English
Empire would not be threatened, but secured by colonies. The only risk lay
in the success of the strategy: cultivation of new grounds in the colonies
generated new trade, increased population and industry and could become
a platform for setting up new manufacturing industries in the colonies rather
than in the mother-country, as a result of which colonies might be able to
emancipate themselves rather more than was envisaged. Thus the economic
portfolio of colonies had to be closely guarded in order to retain unity within
the Empire.14
France Emulating England: Melon on Colonies
When Melon, in his Essai politique, took up the argument that commerce
and conquest were mutually exclusive within a state,15 his message, to a
French audience, differed from Lockes and Childs. Melon denied that the
English were in a markedly superior position compared with other states.
Melon started his Essai politique by showing how, in the modern world,
self-sufficiency in food was a necessary condition for a state to maintain its
power.16 Here he recognised the emphasis on agriculture in English colonial
policy, as a distinctive and early response to balance the mercantile, trade-led,
system of political economy. Protected imports of colonial agricultural goods
neutralised damaging effects arising from aggressive balance of trade politics.
Because the English had developed colonies relatively quickly and supported
them with the right laws, the English colonies outperformed the French as
suppliers of agricultural goods. The English colonies were older, better formed
and more populated.17
291
292
same quantity of Land to his Country. But the glory of doing so, would not
appear, with so great a Lustre, to vulgar Eyes. It would be acquired, without
Dangers of War, without the Loss of a Citizen, and without attracting the
Jealousy of Neighbours.21 The last aspect was essential. Melon argued in his
chapter on colonies, referring to the Dutch and Portuguese struggles over
territorial possessions in both the Indies, that any state regardless of its form
of government was easily tempted to attack or could, just as easily, be forced
to defend overseas possessions against a rival power: The Republican Spirit
sheweth, with Pleasure, the Faults of the Monarchies; the Monarchical, those
of Republicks: and the Faults, are made pretty equal on both sides.22 Truly
modern government was able to detach itself from previous habits. It could
recognise this disadvantage of colonies and see its true nature as a remnant of
the spirit of conquest, religious prejudice and lust for aggrandisement. Besides,
although relocating Superfluous labour to external territory was in all
Respects useful, the Growth of Colonies was slow.23 Therefore, Melon held,
the English strategy was not the optimal one for boosting economic growth.
By placing the corrective of agricultural neglect in colonial cultivation, the
English were not dissociating themselves entirely from the logic of conquest
and continued to be exposed to its hazards.
The political message of Melons observations was reinforced by its
presentation. The style of Melons observations was not that of a theoretical
exposition inspired by an all-encompassing vision of modern politics, but
was often satirical. Melon pointed to a number of common prejudices that
hampered economic growth in France, and in other states, and ridiculed the
impact that rigid moral notions, of equality for example, had on possibilities for
modernising political reforms. In the chapter on slavery, for example, he took
the line that slavery was a species of inequality. While EQUALITY amongst
men, is a chimera, which can scarce bring forth an ideal Commonwealth []
there are an infinite number of Subordinations, of which Slavery will always
hold the lowest degree.24 It was true that the idea of Barbarity, hath always
been annexed to that of Slavery, because the Slave was originally a Prisoner of
War, over whose life the Conqueror always retained the Right he had acquired
by having preserved it for him.25 However, with the right kind of legal reform,
Ibid., p. 76.
Ibid., p. 68.
23
Ibid., p. 72.
24
Ibid., p. 80.
25
Ibid., p. 83.
21
22
293
like the Code Noir, slavery would become a sort of Servitude, not altogether
dissimilar from regular forms of employment or even matrimony.26
Just as the Irish translator of Melons Essai politique noticed the critical
liberal tone of the work and judged that its provocative messages and
paradoxical inversions27 might be more suitable for England to reconsider
its economic relations with Ireland than they were applicable to absolutist
France,28 so the book was hailed by Intieri in Naples as a blueprint for
Neapolitan commercial politics.
The Neapolitan Debate on Commercial Reform
Melon in Naples: Intieri, Doria
Melons opposition to commerce and conquest, as a rechanneling of earlier
political economic views in Naples, was picked up as a particularly exciting
vision about the enduring errors committed by dominant states in European
history and the problems these witnessed in reforming their own economic
structures. Naples did not have to come such a long way to catch up, Intieri
suggested to Celestino Galiani in his letters. It was also unnecessary to have
overseas territories or colonies, the defense of which would be too great a
challenge to Neapolitan military prowess.29 But Melons Essai politique provided
a new outlook on the future of Neapolitan commerce, mainly, in another way.
Intieri recognised the book as presenting a full-blown perspective on the dual
challenge to Neapolitan politicians to develop a strategy for avoiding threats
to the fragile new state in the European arena of military and commercial
competition and destroy the remnants of the abusive politics of the Spanish
viceroy and Southern-Italian aristocracies. The key to both issues was luxury.
Intieri transcribed the chapter on luxury from Melons book and sent it to
Celestino Galiani.30 Rather than confront all the layers of bad government,
neo-feudal legal and political institutions, unequal land distributions and
ecclesiastical claims, these remnants of the inglorious past would crumble and
collapse once the industrious and creative Neapolitan population started to
Ibid., pp. 835.
Melon provocatively called colonies a species of luxury since that was where
superfluous labour force could be sent to cultivate Sugar, Silk, Coffee, Tobacco, once the
national territory was all used for tilling necessary products; ibid., p. 175.
28
Ibid., ixxxiv.
29
Although Sicily was often considered a colony, at least in terms of economic
relations.
30
30 December 1738, BSNSP, xxxi.a.7, ff. 23r4v.
26
27
294
find ways to set up new manufacturing industries, cultivate the fertile lands
and grow wealthy.
Like Melon, Intieri argued for liberalising the grain trade. Following the
first part of chapter II of the Essai politique, he explained to Celestino Galiani
that abundance of grain that could not be sold abroad led to lower prices,
lower production and vulnerability to dearths: Mr. Melon wisely writes that
[...] abundance is more frightening than famine.31 If the grain trade were
to be freed from the many obstacles that it has and the prince facilitated
transportation to the sea by building safe and comfortable roads, Naples
would not only stop importing grain from Poland and England, but be able
to supply the whole of Italy.32 The antiquated grain tax system was the main
disorder that blocked the modernisation of Neapolitan agriculture.33
Intieri rejected development projects initiated by the state and protection
of the domestic economy and made a clear choice about how the Neapolitan
commercial potential, which he believed was huge,34 could be realised. Instead
of opting for protecting the national economy, he arrived at the opposite
conclusion, a result of, consequently, following through the logic of Melons
views, that one could not live comfortably [...] without mixing with the other
nations.35
In all this, Bartolomeo Intieri and Celestino Galiani were in complete
opposition to Paolo Mattia Doria, whose reform proposals, outlined in a
manuscript, Del commercio del regno di Napoli,36 entailed a systematic
closure of the Neapolitan economy from the exterior world. The three main
ports of Taranto, Naples and Brindisi, he recommended, had to become centres
from which foreign trade could be tightly regulated. Agriculture should be
promoted, while domestic trade had to be liberalised. Doria proposed reforms
to limit the growth of inequality, stimulate the regeneration of the countryside,
while luxury consumption in the capital, Naples, was to be thwarted.37
32
295
39
296
43
297
preservation,46 was absorbed by a higher level of love that made men extend
the aim of their economic activities to include the care of others in society.
Broggias Anti-Melon: Naples as a Virtuous Commercial Monarchy
Dorias ideas were a major inspiration for Carlantonio Broggia, who published
a book on taxes and money in 1743 and a Memoria on monetary problems
in 1754.47 From the moment Melons Essai politique sur le commerce first
appeared Broggia started working on an anti-luxury treatise.48 Melons work
was also the prime motive and the occasion for Broggia to expose all the
misconceptions and lies about the advantages of luxury in a work entitled
Della vita civil economica49 (the title paraphrased Dorias main work). Broggias
anti-Melon started with a definition of luxury as the abuse of riches.50 The
phrase would recur over and over again in Broggias oeuvre and after handing
over a copy in 1754 of his Memoria to a French abbot, who gave it to his
friend Mirabeau, he was quick to accuse the latter of plagiarising his ideas in
Lami des hommes of 1756, where the same definition of luxury appeared, after
which it spread across Europe.51
In the first pages of his attack on Melon, Broggia wondered how it was
possible that the entire human tradition since antiquity, of managing human
industry and equality by means of sumptuary laws and eternally wise measures,
Dorias amor proprio thus did not have the same analytical status as Rousseaus
amour propre.
47
Carlantonio Broggia, Trattato dei tributi, delle monete e del governo politico della
sanit (Milan 1803, [1743]) and Memoria ad oggetto di varie politiche ed economiche ragioni
e temi di utili raccordi che in causa del monetaggio di Napoli sespongono e propongono (Naples,
1754) [partially republished in: Politici ed economisti del primo settecento, dal Muratori
al Cesarotti, ed. R. Ajello (Naples-Milan, 1978), pp. 9711059]. See Franco Venturi,
Broggia e Vico, in W.H. Barber (ed.), The Age of the Enlightenment: Studies Presented to
Theodore Besterman (Edinburgh, 1967), pp. 298307.
48
Broggia, Il banco e il monte de pegni. Del lusso, ed. Rosario Patalano (Naples,
2004). In 1747 Broggia had prepared a frontispiece and seemed ready to publish the
work, (p. 48).
49
Broggia published an outline of his ideas in his Memoria, pp. 101516,
104159.
50
Broggia, Del lusso, p. 59.
51
Broggia, Del lusso, pp. 5051. See Mirabeau, LAmi des hommes (Avignon, 1756),
p. 269. Broggia was quick to find himself plagiarised. He saw Trojano Spinellis Riflessioni
politiche (Naples, n.d., probably 1748) as copying directly (and often even misinterpreting)
his 1743 Trattato dei tributi. See Venturi, Tre note su Carlantonio Broggia, Rivista Storica
Italiana, 80:4 (1986): 83053.
46
298
53
299
to heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.55 What was
impossible, from Broggias point of view, was to combine national wealth with
luxury spending and inequality. No compromises were possible. Without a
major land property reform, inequality remained and the five landowners
would still only be inclined to spend their income abroad. Precisely the
morally corrective effects of luxury consumption in a weak national economy
meant that inequality always led to poverty. In that case, the only solution
was to completely shut off the borders from commerce with other nations
and accept the impossibility of population increase and national wealth. It
was, thus, crucial that the provinces of the Kingdom were reformed first to
allow the cities to fulfil their natural functions.56 It might be objected, Broggia
pre-empted the obvious critique, by some people that this is perhaps how
republics can work, but not monarchies. To this objection Broggia responded
that monarchies had even more need of virtue than republics.57 The key words
of the title of Broggias later attack on Galianis Della moneta, therefore, were
also Del pubblico interesse, as opposed to private interest, which was an affront
to the unbeatable logic of sustainable economic growth and perfection.58
Neapolitan Commerce in Galianis Della Moneta
In 1751 Ferdinando Galiani published his first work, Della moneta, which was
heavily indebted to French debates of the preceding decades and a response
to Neapolitan economic reform debates. Originally, the work was a spinoff from Galianis overwhelmingly ambitious attempt to develop a cultural
and political overview of the history of modern government through the
development of human commerce since the time of the earliest navigation
and trade in the Mediterranean. Della moneta also started with a chapter on
the history of money and commerce since antiquity in order to show how
international trade, as it existed in the eighteenth century, had come about
historically. Galiani described how Rome once wallowed in deep pools of
gold and silver, which caused such changes of its ancient customs that its
political culture collapsed: born poor [...] and grown by arms, Rome became
oppressed by its own wealth and luxury.59 Galiani described the decline of
Broggia, Memoria, p. 1042.
Broggia, Del lusso, pp. 75, 1956.
57
Ibid., p. 74. Doria had in his Vita civile distinguished the moral principles of
monarchical real commerce from the truer communitarian virtues of republican patriotic
defence of the state and its commerce.
58
Ibid., pp. 72, 189
59
Galiani, Della moneta, pp. 279.
55
56
300
301
for different states under these circumstances. Galiani judged that of those
who have dealt with the subject of money, only the author of the Saggio sul
commercio, believed to be signor Melon, a man of great genius and a truly
honest and virtuous mind, has distinguished himself .66 Galiani set out to
show how most of what Melon had argued as a set of observations could be
subsumed under a general theory of the laws of commerce and, thereby, to
disentangle the various dimensions of modern political history that had led to
the present situation.67
Galianis basic argument connected his ideas of human nature and
sociability to the value of money. He defined amor proprio as an innocent
product of human nature: if the feeling of pleasure derived from the reverence
and esteem in which others hold us were to be ridiculed this would constitute
a reproach against our nature, which created this disposition of mind, not us
ourselves.68 According to Galiani the good moral order of the universe was
completely maintained by money and the Author of nature guarded over
it.69 These statements, particularly the association with providence, reflected
Galianis ambition to discern, in the history of humankind, the realisation of
a pre-determined plan of the progress of humankind based on self-interested
human drives. Galiani had developed an intricate moral philosophy, to this
end, that explained human self-seeking and selfless motives as deriving from
the same principles.70
However, history since the fall of Rome had taken a peculiar course at the
end of which European governments found themselves guarding the balance
of trade while their national economies had failed to develop a proper basis for
foreign trade in agricultural productivity. Yet Naples, in this regard, was not
France: the challenge for the backward state of eighteenth-century Naples was
to develop its agriculture while side-by-side interpreting the natural increase
of price levels, the emergence of luxury and inequality due to new commercial
dynamics as signs of a bright future.
Although commerce and agriculture may be linked together in such a manner that
each is an effect together with a cause of the other, agriculture [...] is always found
prior to trade. For flourishing trade arises out of an abundance of superfluous goods.
And this comes from agriculture which is, in turn, made by population. Population
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 55.
68
Ibid., p. 41.
69
Ibid., pp. 7980.
70
See Stapelbroek, Love, Self-Deceit and Money, pp. 12764.
66
67
302
arises from liberty, and liberty, finally, arises from just government. We already have
the last two and, in part, even our population has grown.71
Galiani felt that Naples should protect its freedom in modern Europe
through modernising its agriculture, finding new fishing grounds in the
Mediterranean and exploring the possibility of extending trade by cutting
through the isthmus of Suez. While the most advanced states of Europe failed
to form a clear view and adequate policies for using the opportunities for
boosting their commercial potential and protecting their leading role in the
world, this opened up space for Naples to fill the gaps that were left. Here,
Galiani followed the lead of his teacher, Intieri. It was precisely by mixing
with the other states and riding the waves of luxury and inequality, rather
than by filtering the reality of interstate commercial competition, that Naples
could best protect its own independence.
Conclusion: The Proud Epithet of Enlightened
It was in this context the Neapolitan debate about commercial politics that
absorbed French and English analyses about the long-term prospects and
requirements of monarchical reform that Galiani developed the backbone of
his political theory. Through the moral philosophy and history of commerce
and modern government he simultaneously constructed, Galiani arrived at a
position from which he launched predictions about the future of international
trade and shifts within international relations. In 1770 Galiani criticised
the physiocrats economic reform programme of the 1760s.72 Privately, he
explained to his Parisian friends his opinion that politics based on foresight
[prvoyance] was the cause both of the actual wars in Europe and of the
dysfunctional enlightened moralising about preventing them, which together
suffocated the providential mechanisms of commerce to such an extent that
Galiani predicted that in the future there will be very little trade.73
What the eighteenth century meant for Galiani was the spectacle of an
irreversible transition from a political constellation dominated by the isolated
principle that war is the luxury of the monarchy74 to a configuration in which
economic competition between dominant states had made luxury itself a
necessary source of survival. Galiani, already in Della moneta, did not reject
Galiani, Della moneta, pp. 2823.
Ferdinando Galiani, Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds (Paris, 1770).
73
Galiani, Correspondance, to Mme dpinay 1 August 1778 and 4 May 1771.
74
The only phrase to feature both in Galiani, Della moneta, p. 219 and in Galiani,
Dialogues, pp. 107, 113.
71
72
303
luxury, devaluations and public debts, but observed that even Melon still had
not sufficiently thought through their proper political use.75 Likewise, the
English economy had not grown as much as it could have, had its policies been
better developed.76 In 1751, Galiani saw the imperfect transition by France
and England to the age of commercial societies as leaving opportunities for
Naples to establish itself on the international scene. In the aftermath of the
Seven Years War, during his stay in Paris, Galiani witnessed how this transition
process in France became paralysed through the rise of physiocracy (the roots
of which Galiani located in Montesquieu77) and its politics of enlightened
despotism,78 while the English mercantile system failed to evolve and instead
generated its own international tensions. By 1780, amidst the War of the
American Independence, Galiani placed his hopes on Catherine the Greats
scheme of Armed Neutrality as the only feasible way to correct Europes
political economy and restore the possibilities for commercial exchange
between nations. At this stage he sarcastically applied the proud epithet of
Enlightened to disqualify the bulk of political thought of the age as unable to
provide absolute rulers with any helpful perspective on how to solve the most
pressing challenges of the time.79 It may be argued that Galiani was quite an
idiosyncratic thinker. However, if his ideas about foresight are anything to
go by, the question arises whether currently established connotations of the
concept of enlightened absolutism, as developed with the hindsight of the
eighteenth century, can at all be reconciled with how political thinkers at the
time looked at the problems of civilized monarchies.
76
PART V
The Limits of Enlightened Reform
Chapter 18
Introduction
On 24 September 1781, the first intendant of Venezuela, Jos de balos, an
experienced bureaucrat from La Mancha who had served in Cuba during the
crucial years after the Seven Years War, sent a representation to the king
Charles III of Spain and the Indies. No doubt affected by the contemporary
Tpac Amaru revolt in Peru, and other similar revolutions that erupted
throughout the Andean World at that time, he proposed to the king what he
described as a prudent and quick division of many of these provinces, erecting
in them particular monarchies divided among the glorious branches of the
august family of His Majesty.
Hardly two years after this bizarre proposal was made, the powerful
count of Aranda wrote a Secret Judgement on the consequences of the
independence of the British colonies in North America for the Spanish
monarchy, and especially for the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Arandas views
had to be taken seriously. An experienced diplomat and military officer
Aranda had been ambassador in Lisbon and Paris he was deeply worried
about the declining opportunities for the Spanish American creoles, rather
paradoxically, in an updated and reformed Spanish Atlantic monarchy. As late
as 1792, Aranda was promoting the creation of a Royal College of American
Nobles in Granada. According to the projected regulations, it would admit
* I would like to express my gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
(HUM 200763267/FISO Visiting Grant, 20092010) and the National Research Council
of Canada (Hispanic Baroque Project) for their assistance and financial support.
Jos de balos, Representacin del intendente de Venezuela dirigida a Carlos III en
la que pronostica la independencia de Amrica y sugiere la creacin de varias monarquas
en Amrica y Filipinas, in Manuel Lucena Giraldo (ed.), Premoniciones de la independencia
de Iberoamrica. Las reflexiones de Jos de balos y el conde de Aranda sobre la situacin de la
Amrica espaola a finales del siglo XVIII (Madrid, 2003), p. 59.
308
309
1783. After many humiliations at the hands of the British, he was more
than happy to celebrate the victory of Spain and France and their muchdesired revenge on Britain after what would come to be known as the War
of American Independence. At that time, however, he was clever enough to
be deeply worried about the survival of the Spanish monarchy under intense
international pressure, providing there was a new constitution, centralized and
in many senses authoritarian, if compared with the old traditional liberties of
the kingdoms and cities of the Indies.
balos reacted against a situation which reminded him of the decadence of
empires, as taught by the experiences of Greece and Rome, and so proposed a
wise measure, or so he believed. That is, he sought to delay the inevitable demise
of the Spanish empire for as long as possible. Aranda, far from displaying the
attitude of triumphalism somewhat expected in a minister serving a monarchy
that had just won a war against a much-hated enemy, took lessons from the
international balance of power and reached many of the same conclusions
at which balos had arrived. Ultimately, balos and Aranda shared a great
deal: a reliable knowledge and a personal vision of Spanish America as the
true centre of Spains power, and a position of contemporary criticism of the
worst effects of what is now known in the historiography of the period as the
Bourbon reforms.
Towards a New Chronology
The relationship between the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 and the
beginning of the reforms is commonly accepted. But, in the case of the Spanish
monarchy from 1700 onwards, everything was, by definition, Bourbon
(related to the government of the dynasty) and the reforms were put into
practice, depending on the geographical space in question, in Europe, America
or even the Philippines in Asia, from 1714 until 1792, at least, or perhaps even
until 1808, according to some historians. In fact, within an Atlantic context,
it is possible to relate the political changes in the government of the peninsular
kingdoms to that of the American viceroyalties and territories. Some of the
changes implemented in Spanish America were put into practice earlier in the
peninsula, and the responses to the new measures, rules of government and
administration can be better understood in an Atlantic context as well.
For an outstanding example of the traditional creole point of view at the beginning
of the reforms, Representacin vindicatoria que en el ao de 1771 hizo a su majestad
la ciudad de Mxico, in Salvador Bernabu Albert (ed.), El criollo como voluntad y
representacin (Madrid, 2006), pp. 7992.
310
Dictamen del marqus de Piedras Albas, presidente del Consejo de Indias, sobre
el plan de intendencias para Nueva Espaa de Jos de Glvez, Madrid, 24 May 1768,
in Guillermo Cspedes del Castillo (ed.), Textos y documentos de la Amrica Hispnica
(Barcelona, 1986), p. 310.
311
taken into account. In 1741, Jos del Campillo y Cosso, an experienced officer
who served the intendancies of the Navy, Italy and Aragon, was appointed
secretary of War, Navy and the Indies. In the following year, he wrote one
of the most influential books of the century in Spain, even if circulated in
manuscript before 1789, when it was published to provide some income for
his neglected widow. The New System of the Economic Government for America,
with an important subtitle which is not usually quoted (with the evils and pains
caused by the system there are today influencing Spain harshly, and universal
remedies for the advantages of Spain and bigger interest for the Americas),
considered the Spanish to be merely the Indians of other Europeans as a
consequence of the decadence of the American trade. Campillo, imbued with
the spirit of a thinker (or arbitrista), called for the construction of roads and
canals, the increase of population, and free trade. In his magna opera, he
identified some policies for European peasants that could be implemented in
the indigenous communities of the New World. His other works had titles
reflecting a reformist position and the spirit of reform: Spain, wake up, and
an amazing dictionary of Spanish pros and cons, entitled What is for more and
for less in Spain, for Spain to be what must be and not what currently is. Even
more significant, as a new Spanish spirit was slowly emerging from defeat and
criticism, deeply rooted in the idea of restoration of Spain and the Indies to
the ancient happiness and opulence, Campillo planned a great design for
Spanish America. It would be a visita in the same tradition as that ordered
by Philip II in 1570 for the reorganization of the council of the Indies, the
population and fortification of new strategic posts in the navigation routes
and the Eastern shores of the New World, and the search of historical and
scientific information through Geographical Reports.
Campillo died in 1743, but the emerging figures of the period, the
marquis of Ensenada and Jos de Carvajal, sustained much of the reformist
program sketched in the previous years, not only for Spain, but also for the
New World. In 1749, both ministers organized a direct collection of taxes,
tried to impose in Castile a single contribution nica contribucin and
established intendancies in all of the peninsular kingdoms. Ensenada ordered
the famous cadastre, which is known by his name. In 1750, as a minister
of State, Carvajal who had been secretary to Campillo and was one of his
political creatures or hechuras signed, in the name of King Ferdinand VI,
the treaty of Madrid between Spain and Portugal, to settle the boundaries in
the New World and Asia. It was the true beginning of reform on a massive
scale. It necessitated the political intervention of new agents with new agendas.
John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America, 1492
1830 (New Haven, 2006), p. 232.
312
Naval officers, military engineers, botanists and astronomers were sent, in two
expeditions, to the American frontiers with a clear mandate. There would be
no more intermediate powers negotiating with the authorities taking their best
from middle grounds, but a new centralizing, abstract and unified power.
Although the border expeditions from Venezuela to Paraguay failed in
their main objective and did not establish obelisks and marks which would
demarcate the dominions of the Iberian monarchies, it was a regional success
in the sense that, for the first time, there would be a permanent presence of
the authority of the crown in the American frontiers. In Brazil, Francisco de
Mendona Furtado, half brother of the marquis of Pombal, was appointed
captain-general of the recently founded Capitana de San Jos de Ro Negro.
Moreover, the Venezuelan governors had, for the first time, a clear idea of what
the interior of the continent looked like; in Paraguay, the Guaran war marked
the beginning of the end of the presence of the Jesuits in the dominions of
Charles III. To summarize, after the defeat of Spain in the Seven Years War
in 1763, nothing came as a surprise, although for the first time there was a
clamour for reforms in Spanish America. The long reformist tradition already
in motion simply exploded, giving shape to new measures and related to the
demands of the moment. The so-called Glvez era, which lasted until that
ministers death in 1787, had begun.
A Second Empire
During the decade of the 1760s, it became clear to several important ministers
in Spain with experience in American affairs that reform, not only in the
frontiers or provinces but in the viceregal capitals and second-rank cities from
the old kingdoms of the Indies, could not wait any longer. In this sense, if
the Spanish monarchy was trying to return to a glorious past, changes had to
be grounded in tradition in order to be understood by societies completely
unfamiliar with the idea of novelty. But as Campillo had pointed out two
decades earlier, there was presumably an important difference regarding
policies between Spain and the Indies: information about the New World
was scarce, biased and prejudiced. The margin for error and the possibility for
mismanagement was high.
If this was the situation during an enlightened century, what could be
said about the past? Even if the statue of Atahualpa was located at one of
the corners of the new Royal Palace in Madrid, Spanish American realities
constituted a particular challenge for the genealogy of an empire to reform
because it was related to the Atlantic constitution and ideas on justice, virtues
and the rule of law. During the crucial first half of the 1760s, the drive for
313
reforms in Spanish America was not guided by the spirit of the 1750s, about
the restoration of Spain based mainly on historical arguments, but rather by
the realities of an Atlantic empire governed by misguided rules. Due to its
existence, Spain was the envy of other European monarchies, but Spanish
America often proved to be more of a problem than a benefit. As an Irishman
in the service of the Spanish monarchy, Bernardo Ward, put it in 1762, it was
necessary to introduce a new method, so that these rich possessions give us
advantages in some proportion to their size and with the precious value of
their products.
Yet it would not be easy for the reformers of the 1760s to preserve the
precious legacy of the past while, at the same time, also introducing reforms.
It was impossible to criticize the conquerors of the New World. But it was
possible to praise the virtues of educational, scientific and moral advances
of humanity, the values of the age. Campillo left it perfectly explained for
the future. It was necessary to do justice to the illustrious men who founded
the American government without criticism this may be a reference to the
apostle of the Indians, Bartolom de Las Casas, an unpopular figure at that
time because in the old times they did what was necessary with much
knowledge. The fighting spirit dominated in the days of Charles V and they
followed this impulse because being few the Spaniards in America and having
to govern millions of Indians with their caciques, people who defended their
freedom with natural ferocity, it was indispensable to use all the rigor of the
war. The problem was the persistence of the spirit of conquest, to prefer
dominion to the advantages and utility of commerce and friendly relations
with the barbarian nations. That spoiled the conquests already achieved and
served to prevent others not less important.
The impulse for reforms could refer to history because, by the seventeenth
century, the character of the Spaniards of the glorious times of the Catholic
Kings, a prodigy of intrepidity and accuracy in their navigations, value in
its conquests, wisdom in its laws and constitutions, was lost in decadence,
general lethargy and fatal misfortunes. In the final analysis, however, even
if historical arguments and the narration on restoration of the values of the
Spanish monarchy proved important the publication of the History of the
New World by Juan Bautista Muoz in 1793 or the foundation of the Archive
of the Indies in 1785 were key elements of this historical construction
Guillermo Cspedes del Castillo, Ensayos sobre los reinos castellanos de Indias
(Madrid, 1999), p. 205.
Jos del Campillo, Nuevo sistema econmico para Amrica, ed. Manuel Ballesteros
Gaibrois (Oviedo, 1993), p. 68.
314
315
316
died, in 1775, his ministry was divided into Marine and Indies. Pedro de
Castejn and Glvez, until his death in 1787, would handle these affairs. It
is obvious that his appointment was recognition of Glvezs work as visitador
in New Spain. In fact, many of his contemporaries realized the government
of the metropolis had changed many traditional ideas about the New World,
although some of the episodes related to the visita explained some of the surge
of Glvezs popularity. First of all, his attitude to the expulsion of the Jesuits
gained him a great reputation as a royal officer hostile to any compromise. On
25 June 1767, Jesuit churches, haciendas and other buildings were assaulted
by troops commanded by Glvez himself. Up to this point he obeyed his
royal orders. But there was nothing comparable in Spanish America to the
so-called punishment expedition he ordered against some local reactions in
San Luis de la Paz, San Luis Potos, Guanajuato, Valladolid, Ptzcuaro and
Uruapan which opposed the expulsion of the Society of Jesus. The tough
application of law 85 persons condemned to death along with 854 receiving
other punishments or exile was, in the very sense of the word, something
new, not only on the frontiers, but in some of the most important cities of
New Spain, an important representation of Creole power.
Glvezs ability to interfere in local networks was out of the question, even
if this organizing talent was for the benefit of the royal property and his own
benefit as well. In the 1780s, due to the top-rank positions and the wealth
amassed by members of his family, there were rumours of corruption. What
matters most, however, is his style in the repression of the riots, scarcely a year
after the great Esquilache mutiny in Madrid. With the support of the Flemish
marquis of Croix, a viceroy as distant to Spanish America as himself, Glvez
introduced an innovation in political language as well. The idea of deserved
punishments, which serves as a public example matched perfectly well with an
aspect of his behaviour and personality not so commonly taken into account.
Glvez was a militant anti-creole. He did not have much interest in utopian,
unpractical traditions. In the debate concerning reform in Spanish America,
he frankly explained that the spirit of disobedience and rebellion resulted from
the misconduct of rules, lack of government and corruption.11 The cruelty in
the repression of the pro-Jesuit revolts seemed to herald a bleak period, but in
the peninsula, after 1766, the reformers were winning the match to build up
a Spanish Second Empire in the Americas. No doubt his lethal effectiveness,
his unwillingness to negotiate, was valued highly: severe examples against the
custom of the revolts were needed.
John R. Fisher, Allan J. Kuethe and Anthony McFarlane (eds), Reform and
Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru (Baton Rouge, LA, 1990), p. 5.
11
317
318
319
lack of silver, excessive ambition of the new merchants from the periphery
(mostly Catalans and Basques), smuggling, and the saturation of the markets
were destroying the kingdom.
What was important concerning the long-term reforms coming from the
1740s and the acceleration from the 1760s was the response of a new generation
of ministers with Antonio Valds as the most important figure serving during
the first period of Charles IVs reign, that is, until 1792. Far from the excesses of
the Glvez period, the search for a new balance between Spain, the metropolis
(or the matriz), and Spanish America constituted an intelligent adaptation to
the new circumstances and, to a certain extent, it implied a return to the old
and effective mechanisms of the ancient Habsburg constitution.
Some ministers like Valds or Francisco de Saavedra, who had significant
experience in Spanish America, denounced the state of anarchy caused by
nepotism and the excesses of unwise ministers. The worst anti-creole and
anti-American features from the reforms in the previous decade tended to
disappear. In accordance with this reform of the reform, it was necessary to
introduce new features to articulate a feeling of a common Spanish community
throughout the Atlantic. Projects like those of balos and Arandas federal
monarchy expressed more than individual positions, but rather represented
a general effort to improve a deteriorated constitutional relationship. Aranda
firmly believed the problems of the Indies had to be discussed and solved
together with those of the government of Spain. That was the case of the
famous Junta de estado from 1787. The ministries of Navy and Indies were
unified until 1792; Justice was in the same period.
On the other hand, some of the new regulations put into practice in this
period including the extension of free trade, the liberalization of slave trade,
and the foundation of new consulates had been asked for by Spanish America
for some time.14 There is no doubt that the measures implemented during this
period, the foundation of new consulates of commerce in Caracas, Cartagena,
Buenos Aires, Havana, Veracruz and Santiago de Chile, had long lasting effects.
They became not only technocratic institutions, but also platforms for political
action in the hands of landowners and merchants, patriotic bodies of good
citizens, and a laboratory for the political, social and scientific innovation in
Spanish America.
While this new reform of the old reform or, more precisely, this counterreform was put into practice, the most important scientific expedition under
the command of Alejandro Malaspina was travelling, from 1789 to 1794,
around the world, from Cdiz to Buenos Aires, Valparaso, Lima, Panama,
Gabriel B. Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and its
Empire, 17591808 (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 12742.
14
320
Acapulco, the Northwest (Alaska), the Philippines and even Australia. The
objective was to write an Encyclopaedia of the dominions of the Spanish
monarchy, their natural and human elements, in order to ascertain good
and enlightened principles of government. Ten Political Axioms About the
Americas, written by Malaspina in 1789, were supposedly tested during the
expedition, displaying privately the program of a new and updated reformism,
a new style of government based on simple and immutable principles to fulfil
public happiness, unite morality and economy, and fuse virtue and production.
They were expressed in a different political language. A national community of
interests would replace an empire based on force and conquest. The Axioms
written by Malaspina were clear: The Spanish monarchy cannot be compared
in any way with others from Europe; the conservation of America is more
the effect of the religious system than the military or political; the Spanish
monarchy is composed of Spanish from Europe, Spanish from America and
Indians, and reacting against each other they all weaken themselves; The
system of trade is organized for mutual destruction; Foreigners must have a
part in the trade of America; Our Pacific colonies are at risk.15
An End and a Beginning
In 1795, the same year Malaspina was imprisoned after a poorly-organized,
failed plot against Godoy, Valds resigned and the group of ministers with a
broad imperial vision for the Spanish monarchy was replaced by another cohort
with a more limited vision, whether this is defined as Spanish nationalist or
strictly corrupt. Spanish America was, more than ever, seen as booty or a source
of finance for private businesses owned by Godoy and his friends. The age of
reforms was over. Some of the old constitutional mechanisms were put back
into practice, as seen between the British invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806 and
the implosion of empire, the crisis spread from the centre to the periphery in
1810, when it seemed that Cdiz, the last free port and city in peninsular Spain,
was going to fall in the hands of the French invaders. That is how, it seems,
the real limit of the reforms became visible: without imperial elites, substituted
by private and national Spanish interests during Godoyismo, and even to some
extent before, no reforms were possible. Yet that problem began in, and was
related to, peninsular Spain, not to Spanish America, which remained loyal
until the end to the idea of a Spanish imperial and Atlantic nation.
Manuel Lucena Giraldo and Juan Pimentel, Los Axiomas polticos sobre la
Amrica de Alejandro Malaspina (Aranjuez, 1991), pp. 1535; Juan Pimentel, La fsica de
la monarqua. Ciencia y poltica en el pensamiento colonial de Alejandro Malaspina (1754
1810) (Aranjuez, 1998), pp. 14660.
15
Chapter 19
Pombals Government:
Between Seventeenth-Century Valido and
Enlightened Models
Nuno Gonalo Monteiro
Introduction
The Marquis of Pombal (16991782) has a particular place in the panel
of the greatest reformers of eighteenth-century Europe. Nevertheless,
comprehending his characteristics raises uneasily answered questions. In his
renowned biography of Pombal, Kenneth Maxwell pointed out the difficulty
of a single approach towards the Marquis by adding the subtitle: a Paradox
of Enlightenment. Amongst various aspects, it recalls the violent methods of
repression adopted by Pombal, which seem incongruous in the environment of
tolerance often associated with the European Enlightenment. Up to a certain
point, paradox is an appropriate description if historians expect Pombal to
have acted as an enlightened politician.
The issue depends, partially, on historiographical aprioristic definitions.
Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, European governments
undertook reform policies that have been recognized for a long time as
enlightened despotism or enlightened absolutism. However, the interplay
between Enlightenment and reform should be considered more carefully.
It has been suggested that the relationship between despotic monarchs and
enlightened thinkers, a few of whom were acquainted with and corresponded
with kings, was somewhat cynical since les monarques clairs du XVIIIe
sicle songent () une imitation pratique de Louis XIV. That is,
See Kenneth Maxwell, Pombal: Paradox of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995).
See Hamish M. Scott (ed.), Enlightened Absolutism. Reform and Reformers in Later
Eighteenth-Century Europe (London, 1990).
Franois Bluche, Le despotisme clair (1st edn 1969, Paris, 2000), p. 352.
322
Cf. Jeremy Black, Kings, Nobles & Commoners. States & Societies in Early Modern
History. A Revisionist History (London, 2004), p. 134.
H. M. Scott, Introduction: The Problem of Enlightened Absolutism, in Scott
(ed.), Enlightened Absolutism, p. 18
In this text I will revisit some of the arguments already made in Nuno Gonalo
Monteiro, D. Jos. Na sombra de Pombal (Lisbon, 2006).
Quoted by Jos Esteves Pereira, Opensamento poltico em Portugal no sculo
XVIII:Antnio Ribeiro dos Santos (Lisbon, 1983), p. 119.
Pombals Government
323
politics, the mitigation of censorship is still one of its features, and, in fact,
this was missing in Pombals government.
The Portuguese monarchy encompassed a single kingdom in Europe and
large imperial offshoots. In the European context, it was not a composite
monarchy and did not suffer the tensions common to such political
structures. In the administrative core of the monarchy, the traditional,
complex equilibrium of councils remained, though three state secretariats had
already been founded (1736) during the reign of D. Joo V (17061750).
Nonetheless, they lacked centrality in the process of decision-making. When
D. Jos ascended to the throne (1750), Carvalho (as Pombal was known then)
was unexpectedly appointed to a position in one of those secretariats, that of
foreign affairs.
In this essay, the paradox previously referred to is reappraised. The analysis
of Pombals policy and of the political models that would have guided his
government will be overshadowed by considerations of what Pombal had
in common with several seventeenth-century minister-favourites, such as
Richelieu and Mazarin. Comparisons made by his contemporaries, and which
he himself did not reject, add important insights into the characterization of
his policy.
Pombal and Richelieu
The promotion of Pombal to the post of prime minister is often thought of
as having occurred after the 1755 earthquake. Up to a certain point, this
is an accurate observation. But it also dilutes basic aspects of the problem:
in Portugal, as happened in other European monarchies, there was no such
institution as that of a prime minister who was deeply indebted to the figure
of the seventeenth-century valido.
Diplomatic correspondence, the best source for the study of this subject,
is somewhat ambivalent for this purpose. In the first years of D. Joss reign,
the French ambassador claimed, in November 1751, that M. de Carvalho,
Secrtaire dEtat ds Affaires Etrangres et de la Guerre, qui na pas encore
cinquante ans, peut tre regard comme le Ministre Principal () il est parvenu
au suprme degr de la confiance du Roy son Matre. Such an impression
about Pombals position was widespread when he was appointed for a post in
the Secretariat of Internal Affairs in 1756. It was generally acknowledged at
Cf. Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London,
2005), p. 254.
Quoted by Miguel Maia do Vale, Le Marquis de Pombal vu para la Diplomatie
Franaise (17501777) (Mmoire de matrise, Paris, 20012002), p. 12.
324
that time that he was acting as a prime minister, an impression that remained
unchanged throughout the following two decades. English diplomatic
correspondence is rather precocious on references about Pombals influence
upon the government, but not until 1756 does it offer information on his
role as prime minister, when it was said that Mr. Carvalho is an effective
prime minister, though not declared so, for nothing is done without him.10
This would turn into a common topic in further references, usually associated
with significant comparisons. As a French diplomat recalled in his memoirs
on his years spent in Portugal (17641766), le Portugal tait gouvern par le
marquis de Pombal, sous le rgne de Joseph Ier, avec plus dautorit quaucun
ministre en ait eu dans aucun pays. Richelieu, en son temps, eut lutter contre
beaucoup dobstacles et dintrigues de Cour, et il disait que le petit coucher
de Louis XIII le gnait plus que les affaires de lEurope. Il nen tait pas ainsi
de Pombal () Il faut observer () que quoique Pombal fut bien, de fait,
premier ministre, il nen portait pas le titre et navait que le dpartement de
lIntrieur.11
In January 1759, when members of the aristocracy were imprisoned for
being accused of attempted regicide, the Nuncio, the agent of the Pope in
Lisbon, noted that Carvalho was escorted by a regiment of soldiers given by
the King, as Louis XIII did with the Cardinal Richelieu.12 The comparison
became common thereafter. On the eve of Pombals political defeat, in 1777,
still another French diplomat wrote that Le Marquis de Pombal () aussi
ambitieux, aussi turbulent que ces Maires du Palais qui aspiroient aux trne de
leurs foibles souverains, il ne luy a peut tre manqu pour jouer leur rle que
de natre dans des sicles plus reculs. Mais plac dans celui cy, il sest vu forc,
sur le petit thatre o`yu le sort la fix, de se contenter de suivre la route fraye
par les cardinaux de Richelieu, Mazarin, Alberoni, avec lesquels il y a quelque
ressemblance.13 And a few months after the fall of Pombal, in 1778, an Italian
journal, translating a French author, stated that we have seen him governing
for twenty years () as a most potent monarch. His vigorous but dark and
bloody administration was quite similar to that of our Cardinal Richelieu.14
Charles Boxer (ed.), Descriptive List of the State papers Portugal 16611780 in the
Public Record Office London (3 vols, Lisbon, 1979), vol. II, p. 331.
11
Comte de Saint-Priest, Mmoires, ed. Baron de Barante (Paris, 1929), pp. 8081,
84.
12
Quoted by Samuel J. Miller, Portugal and Rome c. 17481830. An Aspect of the
Catholic Enlightenment (Rome, 1978), p. 68.
13
Quoted by Vale, Le Marquis de Pombal, p. 96.
14
Quoted by Franco Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 17761789.
I: The Great States of the West (Italian edn 1984) (Princeton, 1991) p. 206.
10
Pombals Government
325
Two testimonies after Pombals death should also be recalled. They were
given by remarkable personalities who had contrasting levels of affection for
the minister. In memoirs attributed to the sixth Count of S. Loureno who
had been kept imprisoned by Pombal for quite a long time it is said that
the Marquis had choleric manners and was prone to violence; during his
government he intended to emulate Cardinal Richelieus policy by trying all
means to hide from the Public the real reasons for his fierce methods () The
Marquis of Pombal lived very unhappily, which was due to his affection for
Cardinal Richelieus policy driving his tough genius () On many occasions it
seemed he did not forget to take revenge on his political adversaries, following
the example of his master Richelieu.15 However, an identical view comes from
D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho who, since his youth, unlike the Count of
S. Lourenco, had been a protg of Pombal, later holding a ministerial position
during the reign of Queen D. Maria, daughter of D. Jos. He expressed his
judgement on Pombals government, considering it an eloquent example of
perfect politics: a well disciplined army, a severe and impartial justice that
safeguards property and protects the very existence of the people, grant strength
to an absolute government; () this is the well being that both Richelieu and
Pombal provided to their kings and nations.16
Pombal wrote about his own career after his fall from power. He sought to
defend himself from the hostile environment made up of multiple accusations
against his actions while a minister. Although in his writings from London he
did refer to Robert Walpole and to his heart of Prime Minister,17 he avoided
possible comparisons to the English minister. He addressed a petition to
Queen D. Maria in March 1777 presenting several arguments in his defence,
later included in his Apologias, and cited in Libello de Leza Enormissina by
Medanha. In the first petition, it is contended that he had no intention to
compare himself to the Duke of Sully on his merits, although he certainly
might be compared to him in his misfortune. To refute the accusation of
having enriched himself through politics, he contended that his Majesty
[D. Jos] considered proper of his decorous royal character that his prime
minister, to whom he trusted the most important political affairs, received
a house similar to the greatest houses of Portugal; following the example of
Manuscript of Arquivo da Casa dos Condes de S. Loureno (Lisbon), Livraria,
A-4-3.
16
Quoted by Andre Mansuy-Diniz Silva, Portrait dun homme dtat: D.Rodrigo de
Sousa Coutinho, Comte de Linhares 17551812, I Les annes de formation (Lisbon and
Paris, 2002), p. 279.
17
Quoted by J. S. da Silva Dias, Pombalismo e projecto poltico, Cultura- Histria
e Filosofia (1983), vol. II, p. 280.
15
326
kings such as Henry IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV in the way they dealt
with the previously-mentioned Duke of Sully, Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal
Mazarin and many other Great Monarchs regarding similar cases.18
These and many other arguments were cited once again during a judicial
dispute on the fraudulent exchange of estates. The affair provided the occasion
for Pombal to write a Contrariedade to the Libello presented by Francisco J.
Caldeira S. G. Medanha. Aiming to refute every accusation, the Contrariedade
is, above all, Pombals account of D. Joss reign. Thus this work is also a
political autobiography. The common opposition to prime ministers is
an overwhelming theme in Pombals essay. It claims there has been a long
experience of the hate and greed caused by prime ministers, or by every
Minister honoured with Sovereigns trust, who distinguish themselves by the
trustfulness and the care they put into serving.19
The exceeding self-praising tone of the Contrariedade, deserving seven
copies, ended up by justifying the marquis trial in September 1778.20 He
was exiled to Pombal, south of Coimbra, and submitted to a judicial inquiry
there lasting more than one year. He was asked about his intentions of
being entitled Prime Minister. The question was a means of incrimination
for practices during his government. In fact, the insidious question, if ever
answered affirmatively, enabled his accusers to charge him with usurpation of
royal functions and make him responsible for every policy in D. Joss reign.
The marquis denied the accusation, asserting that he had never had either
the idea or the practice of a Prime Minister (considering) the ample meaning
attributed to the position: the prime minister in France or Spain was a post
similar to Escrivo da Puridade in Portugal and these sorts of Prime Ministers
or Escrives da Puridade gave orders according to their own determination
without listening, previously to the kings they were supposed to serve. He, the
defendant, was only a secretary of State, which implies that he received orders
from the king and forwarded them to courts and magistrates, there being no
difference at all with what his two colleagues did. It is further stated that
the defendant (Pombal) considered himself as the first amongst ministers and
secretaries of State, acting as if he were a dean. It was customary to call the
elder secretary of State, or the secretary of Internal Affairs, prime minister.
Finally, he claimed that from everything that was stated it is to conclude
that in the case that such a designation of Prime Minister appears on a paper
Manuscript of Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa (BNL), Pombalina, Cdice n695;
idem, cdice n668
19
Manuscript of BNL, FG, cdice n 8530; idem, FG, cdice n9100; idem., FG,
cdice n2635; idem, Pombalina, cdice n680.
20
Cf. Rocha Martins, O Marqus de Pombal desterrado 17771782 (Lisbon, 1938).
18
Pombals Government
327
328
Pombals Government
329
the prime minister is also true for valido, which are synonyms, both harming
the State. And he concluded that in one word, every power that a prime
minister or valido claims for himself is just a mere usurpation, not to mention
an awful robbery to the holy authority of the Prince.29 Immediately after
Carvalhos appointment, the Duke Teles da Silva, a personal friend of Pombal,
also censured the possible rise of a prime minister.30 As it turned out, against
the odds and contrary to the predictions of D. Luis da Cunha, Telles da Silva
and the queen D. Mariana Vitria, Pombal soon would be seen as D. Joss
prime minister.
Pombal as a Valido
According to traditional patterns that guided validos practices, Pombal always
related the government of the kingdom with the increasing opulence of his
own House to a clear association between political authority and social and
economic ascendancy. As happened with all the others who took the dubious
legitimacy reserved for validos, Pombal was accused of growing rich illicitly,
mainly after the earthquake and through his plans to rebuild Lisbon. Like
his seventeenth-century predecessors, Pombal wove his personal network of
clients. As stated above, he indeed found, in politicians of the seventeenth
century, plenty of inspiration for his actions.
Accusations of illicit wealth came as early as 1756. They appear again
in many later writings, when Carvalho came under pressure at the Court.
Insinuations about the destination of money, raised with a tax of four per
cent to rebuild Lisbon, can be read in those writings. It is no wonder that
Carvalho needed to tackle, carefully, the issue in his Apologia, written in 1777,
justifying the means of his patrimony increase. Recent research asserts that,
when he left the government, his aristocratic house was amongst the four most
opulent. Furthermore, he invested large amounts of capital in the rebuilding
of Lisbon. This is one of the reasons for the unique structure of his wealth.
In contrast to what featured in the income of the nobility, Pombals income
was more than half afforded by rent estates in Lisbon.31 He tried to justify all
D. Lus da Cunha, Testamento Poltico ou Carta Escrita ao Senhor Rei D. JosI antes
do Seu Governo [1748] (Lisbon, 1820), pp. 46
30
Cf. Carlos da Silva Tarouca, Correspondncia entre o Duque Manuel Teles da
Silva e Sebastio Jos de Carvalho e Melo, 1 Marqus de Pombal., sep. Anais da Academia
Portuguesa de Histria, 1955, pp. 31213.
31
Cf. Maria Teresa Sena, A casa de Oeiras e Pombal: Estado, senhorio e patrimnio
(mimeo. Lisbon, 1987); Jorge Pedreira, Leclat des affaires. Les ngociants et la rdification
de Lisbonne (17551800), LEspace Marchand (mimeo. IUE., Florence, 1988);
29
330
this in 1777, saying that he did not intend to compare himself to the Duke of
Sully, although he was suffering from a similar misfortune due to accusations
forged by the opposition to the Government of the King his lord and by all
his enemies that envied his wealth.32
However, long before his fall, Carvalho had come to enjoy remarkable
social distinctions. By the decree of June 1759, he was graced with the title of
Count as a payment for his uncles services and for his own, while a diplomat,
both at the Court of Austria and in London, and while a Secretary of State.
Prior to him, other Secretariats of State received commendaries or seigneuries,
but only Pombal garnered the honour and grandeur of the title of Count. This
is the impressive innovation of the decree. For the first time, a Secretary of
State was raised to the highest rank of the nobility in a period when there were
just fifty houses in Portugal with titles of nobility. The act was meant to stress
the political and institutional supremacy of the government (the Secretaries
of State) over the aristocracy and the councils, which, in turn, was being
juxtaposed to an individual, Sebastio Jos, and to his house. A few years later
he would be honoured with the title of Marquis of Pombal, the peak of his
climb through the ranks of social distinction.
Like minister-favourites before him, Pombal sought to build up his own
network of clients, spreading graces among families and individuals supposedly
faithful to him. The network also embraced other secretaries of state, several
families of the nobility whose members were in diplomatic missions and in the
colonial government, a significant group of intellectuals and magistrates, and
a large number of businessmen-financiers, holders of capital of the chartered
Companies. The house of Pombal borrowed significant amounts from these
businessmen. The extent of his circle of clients, however, was less than that
of previous validos. This is because he was a secretary of State, a formal
institution that was at the core of political decision-making. As it is stated in a
manuscript memoir dated from 1803, full of criticism and presumably written
by the sixth count of So Loureno, the sharp increase in the number of
secretaries of State had altered governance, and instead of its improvement, it
had only become more numerous and much less effective. Before the Marquis
of Pombal, secretaries of State were channels through which business reached
the sovereign. At the moment, they are everything, at the point of diplomatic
parlance ignoring a simple form of addressing to the King, always referring
the king and his minister () With such a trench of creatures invested with
authority, everything happens: honours and riches are attained, the courts have
Nuno Gonalo Monteiro, O crepsculo dos Grandes. A casa e o patrimnio da aristocracia em
Portugal (17501832) (Lisboa, 1998).
32
Cf. note (18).
Pombals Government
331
their jurisdiction limited, new laws despise the ancient ones, every formalities
are changed () Then comes the despotic power of the ministries, which is
the major calamity of the People.33 In conclusion, if the prime minister had
never been invested of a formal authority, since the institution of the post
had not been acknowledged, the same did not occur with the secretaries of
state/ ministers who were at the core of political decision making. To a large
extent, one may find here the answer to the question raised earlier in this
essay. Pombal did not need to establish his power mainly on a large and firm
clientele because, during his period as minister-favourite, secretaries of State
had an effective authority over their particular fields of the administration.
Contrary to more traditional aspects of his political performance, this was
perhaps one of the most modern elements of Pombals government. Thus,
Pombal did not depend only on personal ties, inherent in a network of clients,
to make his power effective.
Another field for comparison deserves special attention. Many years
ago, the Portuguese historian Joo Lcio de Azevedo noted that Pombal
searched his models dated from a hundred years earlier. For economic
matters he saw a master in Sully; for political ones he followed Richelieu.34
This statement is an accurate interpretation, although its implications have
not been fully explored. In the first place, the idea of Pombals following a
paradigmatic model, provided by the minister-favourites of the seventeenth
century, should be carefully considered. It leads to a better understanding
of Pombals character, his relationship with the king and the period known
by his title (Pombaline). In fact, French seventeenth-century models inspired
him, more than any other, as he himself stated. Carvalho read and quoted
Sullys memoirs,35 and kept in his library the political testament of Richelieu.36
There is no solid argument to support the thesis that these readings would
have been less important than other works, by more modern authors, also
kept in his library. Moreover, the legislation and the institutional changes
Memorias politicas, Arquivo Distrital de Braga, Fundo Barca Oliveira, pasta
n35, identified by Joaquim Pintassilgo, Diplomacia, Poltica e Economia na transio do
sculo XVIII para o sculo XIX. O pensamento e aco de Antnio de Arajo de Azevedo
(Conde da Barca) (mimeo., Lisbon, UNL, 1987) pp. 1702, 212.
34
Joo Lcio de Azevedo O Marqus de Pombal e a Sua poca, 2nd edn (Oporto,
1990), p. 75.
35
Mmoires de Maximilien de Bethune, Duc de Sully, Principal Ministre de Henri le
Grand (8 vols, London, 1763).
36
J.S. da Silva Dias, Pombalismo e projecto poltico, Cultura- Histria e Filosofia,
vol. III (1984), pp. 2245; Franoise Hildesheimer (ed.), Testament Politique de Richelieu
(Paris, 1995).
33
332
undertaken during his government were actually less innovative and enduring
than it is generally thought, except with regard to the increasing importance of
Secretariats of State within the political core. In fact, in order to face concrete
challenges, later legislation would have counted on the work of magistrates
included in Pombals personal network. However, such ideas were not actually
his. Pombal was born in 1699 and became one of the first reformers of the
middle of the eighteenth century. What is known about his political concepts,
before being appointed to the government in 1750, is focused on mercantilist
postulates rooted in seventeenth-century theoreticians, whether for economic
or political purposes, deserving particularly attention are those concerning
Royal power and the Raison dtat. Apart from foreign affairs, only long
after his pre-eminence in the government did he come under the influence of
Natural Law. On the other hand, the anti-Jesuitism of Pombal, which turned
into an original feature of his policy, was the result of constraints felt in earlier
years of government and not a program previously drawn up. Actually, when
he was appointed secretary of State, Pombal was seen by the opposition as
aligned with the Jesuits.37 Obsessed with putting Portugal on track with the
most polite nations of Europe and living in enlightened Europe, Pombal
would have to comply with such polite nations regarding common enemies.
Jesuit issues, and the intromission of the Church in civil spheres, were under
that category. He might also have found in the most polite nations the
sources of his later legislation. But Pombal was not a creature of enlightened
Europe.
Public Sphere and the Government of Pombal
In recent research on the political and cultural history of eighteenth-century
Europe, the public sphere has merited the increasing attention of historians.
More attention is drawn to flows of ideas and spaces of socialization, or to
consumption of cultural goods distinct from that common in royal courts.
In countries that may be considered the cultural core of Europe, apart from
parliamentary England, such a process of the making a public sphere became
an overwhelming fact throughout the century. Even clashing with the logic of
dynastic states, it could hardly be avoided. Thus enlightened despotism was
somewhat constrained, as well as influenced, by these cultural innovations. The
making of a public sphere, although being a rising socio-cultural phenomenon
in which printing (whether or not legalized) played an important part, also
37
Pombals Government
333
334
from the royal throne, which are heard with veneration because all the vassals
of the King are gathered under the same faith, trusting only that his majesty
knows what is best for them because he loves and cares for all as if they were
his children rather than his subjects.41 This is why any disagreement, publicly
expressed, about any legislation and governmental decisions was denounced
as a crime against his majestys integrity (crime de lse-majest).
Such an attitude, considered by many individuals as despotic, was actually
new and disrupted traditional political practices. An example of this change
may be found in the sixth Count of S. Lourenos arguments dated from 1762,
after his imprisonment. When questioned by the lawyer, he evoked the political
experiences of the reign of D. Joo V, when many royal resolutions were not
fully realized because they did not generate consensus, notwithstanding the
deep love of the vassals for their king. From the Count of S. Lourenos point of
view, there was a new political doctrine in D. Joss reign that would turn into
traitors many noble ancestors who everybody knows disapproved of public
policies but still considered honourable subjects. The judge in charge of the
processing of Count of S. Loureno acted accordingly since he reminded the
defendant that preaching against ministers of state, in what concerned serious
matters, and after legislation being published, was a crime. The defendant
made use of History in his defence. Indeed, while the government had been
supported by a traditional equilibrium among councils, juridical and political
procedures required the public expression of opinions, and, thus, there was an
opportunity for different statements about different subjects. The Count of
S. Loureno recalled this historical experience in his defence.42
So, the executive and expeditious power of ministers, pushed to its limits in
the reign of D. Jos, clashed against traditional forms of government. The king
chose his ministers, who, in turn, made decisions in the privacy of their own
office (as Pombal would say) for the king to sign their dispatches afterwards.
There was no space for expressing opinions, even less for disagreement. This
is the new concept of government that triumphed in D. Joss reign, getting
plenty of practical demonstration.
Testimonies are numerous. It is worth noting a letter of Italian voyager,
Giuseppe Baretti, written around 1760, in the aftermath of one of the most
turbulent events of the reign, when diplomatic relations with the Papacy were
disrupted. Baretti declared that he had made all efforts to have true information
about what was happening, since the event had drawn the attention of all the
Sebastio Jos de Carvalho e Melo, Cartas e outras obras selectas do Marqus de
Pombal, 4th edn (Lisbon, 1861), p. 22.
42
Antnio Ferro, O Marqus de Pombal e os meninos de Palhav (Coimbra, 1923)
p. 89.
41
Pombals Government
335
powers in Europe: my efforts (to search for information) were in vain. The
government has forbidden any talk about these and other matters. Sanctions
for those who do not respect the interdiction are so severe that many have
been imprisoned and these misfortunate creatures get scared before the simple
mention of a few names. It is not easy to make any individual express his
opinion about anything that may remind one of political matters, although
rush in making decisions and the pleasure of talking are two of the major
features of the Portuguese character.43
In Europe it was still common that politicians who fell into disgrace were
sent to the country, fixing residence in one of their estates, as was the case of
Ensenada in Spain. But incarceration or deportation (to Africa in the Portuguese
case), an even worse punishment, was no longer a standard punishment.
Although only fragments of documentation have been preserved, there is
evidence that any criticism, mainly if stated in Lisbon, triggered prosecution
procedures (inconfidencia), immediately precipitating the imprisonment of the
author. Although lacking the efficiency it achieved afterwards in the reign of
D. Maria, the institution of a general department of police (Intendncia Geral
da Polcia), in 1760, afforded to the government a controlling device which
proved to be rather effective in watching political suspects. Notwithstanding
the reinforcement of means of social control in general, and of those over
potential political rivals in particular, nothing could stop either the spreading
of gossip or the dissemination of manuscript newspapers.
Since printed periodicals were banned, the Real Mesa Censria, founded
in 1768, substituted new censorship schemes for traditional Inquisition
procedures and the actions of bishops. The functions of this new institution
were somewhat ambivalent: it suppressed books siding with Jesuits or the Pope
as much as those reputed as being enlightened or libertine; moreover, the
very censorship activity carried on by the institution may be considered also a
device to create a particular kind of culture, something similar to a prescribed
culture to serve the regime. This last effect stems from declared preferences
for works that were aesthetically following the standards of Classicism and
conceptually close to the French culture of Louis XIVs reign. However, it
seems certain, as far as it is known from records of the censorship activity,
that it caused a harsh decrease in the licit importation of foreign books. In
short, if there has been a redefinition of the censorship activity and respective
parameters during D. Joss reign, it is inaccurate to talk about censorship
mitigation. Besides, the Inquisition was not yet extinct; it had been merely
Giuseppe Baretti, Cartas de Portugal, ed. M.E. Ponce de Leo (Coimbra, 1970),
p. 156.
43
336
See, among others, Ana Cristina Arajo (ed.), O Marqus de Pombal e a Universidade
(Coimbra, 2000).
44
Pombals Government
337
338
Brazil were entitled to be addressed as viceroys, they did not have any actual
authority over the other captaincies, besides that of Rio de Janeiro.48
Generally speaking, the government of Brazil did not undergo any
remarkable change. It kept its previous features based on several captaincies
jurisdiction in the face of the governors authority (usually a high-ranking
aristocrat), the judicial power and the municipal councils being controlled
by the local elite. All these powers sustained an equilibrium supported by
the general political communication with Lisbon. One cannot find in Brazil
anything comparable to the global reforms prompted by Carlos III in Spanish
America, namely those carried on by Jos de Glvez to target the creoles
(American-born Spaniards) control over local institutions.49
Conclusions
This essay explored the analytical potentials of comparisons made by
contemporaries of Pombal, which he himself reproduced in his writings,
stressing prime ministers resemblances to minister-favourites of the
seventeenth century. In fact, contrary to what happened in the seventeenth
century, European reformers of the second half of the eighteenth century were
mainly kings, not ministers. Pombal was, thus, the most notable exception.
His political and economic postulations were taken from previous times, but
the results of his action were seen to a great extent by European contemporaries
as responses to challenges of his own time. Pombals most important legacy
was, in fact, an enduring intervention of the State in public life and a clear
supremacy of the executive power (represented by the Secretaries of State) over
the nobility and the councils in the administrative core. It is, indeed, Pombal
who started in Portugal the authoritarian, although reformist, intervention of
the state. It is a legacy which continues to be felt today.
Dauril Alden, Royal Governement in Colonial Brazil with Special Reference to the
Administration of Marquis de Lavradio, 17691779 (Berkeley, CA, 1968), pp. 44, 472.
For recent views on Brazilian administration, see Francisco Bethencourt, A Amrica
Portuguesa, in Francisco Bethencourt and Kirti Chauduri (eds), Histria da Expanso
Portuguesa (Lisbon, 1998), vol. 3, p. 421; J. Fragozo; M.F. Bicalho, and M. Ftima Gouva
(eds), O Antigo Regime nos Trpicos: a dinmica imperial portuguesa (sculos XVXVIII) (Rio
de Janeiro, 2001); Laura de Mello e Souza, O Sol e a Sombra. Poltica e administrao na
Amrica no sculo XVIII (So Paulo, 2006).
49
John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America 1492
1830, (New Haven, CT, and London, 2006), pp. 3045.
48
Chapter 20
340
allies, Daniel OLeary and Jos Mara Crdoba. Crdoba had been one of
Bolvars most loyal officers but the rumours that Bolvar and his allies wanted
to reintroduce monarchy to Colombia, either with Bolvar as King or by
installing a European prince, catalysed his political rebellion and led to his
death. The final part of the essay looks at the consequences of the monarchy
project for all three protagonists in summary these were disillusion for
OLeary, death for Crdoba, and both disillusion and death for Bolvar.
This essay argues that the Bolivian Constitution can be usefully understood
within the paradigm of enlightened reform, even if this does result in stretching
the chronological boundaries of the subject beyond what is considered
acceptable by most of its leading practitioners. Bolvars project was inspired
by and drew on the important thinkers and writers of the Enlightenment,
and he proposed and enacted reforms on this basis, in contrast to his more
explicitly liberal and utilitarian enemies and successors. This essay is part of
a wider cultural and social history project which explores the relationships
between Europe and Colombia in the first half century after independence.
Its methodology is a study of the personal and political trajectories of the
protagonists (including Daniel OLeary and Jos Mara Crdoba) of the
more-or-less-randomly chosen battle of El Santuario, which took place on 17
October 1829.
What Place for Enlightened Reform After the Independence of Spanish
America?
In much of the historiography on nineteenth-century Colombia, monarchism
only appears as a force which opposed the patriotism and republicanism of
liberators such as Simn Bolvar. As Mark Van Aken observed, historians have
generally shied away from studying the sin of monarchism in favour of the
As part of this project, research trips to Bogot, Medelln, Rionegro and Caracas
have been funded by JISLAC (Joint Initiative for the Study of Latin America and the
Caribbean), SILAS (Society for Irish Latin American Studies) and the University of Bristol
Research Fund.
In the analysis that follows, I follow the lead of historians such as Clment Thibaud
and Hendrick Kraay who have combined the study of military rebellions and campaigns
with the social and political formations that underpinned them. Clment Thibaud,
Repblicas en armas. Los ejrcitos bolivarianos en la Guerra de Independencia (ColombiaVenezuela, 18101821) (Bogot, 2003); Hendrick Kraay, Race, State, and Armed Force in
Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790s1840s (Stanford, CA, 2001).
341
taking the forces of freedom and revolution as their subjects. Recently there
has been much study of the, hitherto neglected, Royalist forces in Spanish
America, most notably the work of Julio Albi, Rebecca Earle and Toms
Straka.
Yet the revival of monarchist sentiment amongst previously devoted
republicans can offer a useful comparative counterpoint, I hope, to the study
of Enlightened Reform in this volume. Bolvar was not the first or the only
Spanish American to glory in the age of reason, tutored by Simn Rodriguez in
the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu, references to whom litter
his writings. He was a committed republican inspired by the Enlightenment
thinking he encountered in his schooling and during his travels in Europe in
1800, 18051806, and in 1810. Yet, like other enlightened reformers in the
Hispanic world after 1750, he was not an uncritical disciple of Enlightenment
thinkers who had never seen a colony at first hand. He pragmatically adopted
and adapted Enlightenment thought for Hispanic American realities.
In 1825 with Independence from Spain achieved and assured, Bolvar
retreated to a house on the outskirts of Lima where he drafted a constitution
for the new republic in Upper Peru which would bear his name, Bolivia.
After fifteen years of fighting against King and madre patria, Bolvar realised
that Napoleon Bonapartes decapitation of the Spanish Empire in 1808 (by
replacing Fernando VII on the throne with his own brother Joseph) had
created a vacuum of legitimacy in the Hispanic world. By 1825 Bolvar, trying
to keep himself at the centre of a political maelstrom in the midst of the
claims of indigenous peoples, pardos, and Liberals, had come back to the idea
of monarchy an enlightened monarchy, of course in order to keep the
unrestrained multitudes at bay.
Van Aken was following Richard Morses interpretation that cultural differences
meant that Latin Americans were especially receptive to monarchism. Cited in
Mark J. Van Aken, King of the Night: Juan Jose Flores and Ecuador, 18241864 (Berkeley,
CA, 1989), p. 6.
Julio Albi, Banderas olvidadas: el ejrcito realista en Amrica (Madrid, 1990), Rebecca
Earle, Spain and the Independence of Colombia (Exeter, 2000), and Toms Straka, La voz de
los vencidos. Ideas del partido realista de Caracas 18101821 (Caracas, 2000).
John Lynch, Simn Bolvar: A Life (New Haven and London, 2006), pp. 28,
318.
Lynch, Simn Bolvar, pp. 33, 35. On emulation of Enlightened Reform amongst
Hispanic thinkers in the late eighteenth-century see Gabriel Paquette, Enlightenment,
Governance, and Reform in Spain and its Empire, 17591808 (Basingstoke, 2008).
In using this term I am citing from Bolvar to Flores, 9 November 1830, in Bushnell
(ed.), Simn Bolvar: El Libertador: Writings of Simn Bolvar, translated by Frederick
Fornoff (Oxford, 2003), p. 146.
342
The problem that Bolvar faced in 18251826 (he delivered the finished
work after nine months, on 25 May 1826) was this: the destruction of the
prestige of the Spanish Crown by the devastation committed in its name in
the Wars of Independence (atrocities, of course, which were largely publicised
within and outside of the Americas by the pen of Bolvar himself ) meant that
subjection to an absolute monarch was increasingly felt by many in Colombia
to be demeaning, dishonourable, and an offence against masculinity and
national autonomy. The republics legal and political courts, and their ability
to call to account the behaviour of state employees and statesmen, became a
touchstone of nascent national self-definition in the absence of the divinelyanointed authority of the King.10
In addition, the restoration of Fernando VII in 1814, his rejection of the
Constitution of Cdiz, and, ultimately, unsuccessful use of force to regain
control over Spains American colonies tarnished the image of monarchy
in Hispanic America. The contemporary ascendance of Pedro I in Brazil,
and Agustn I (de Iturbide) in Mexico encouraged supporters of monarchy
in Colombia. Iturbides widely publicised fall from grace (he reigned only
from May 1822 to March 1823 and was executed in July 1824) provided the
immediate context for criticisms of Bolvars own alleged intention to crown
himself King or Emperor in Colombia.11 Whilst republicanism spread, the
instability caused by Royalist attempts at reconquest softened anti-monarchical
views, as in Europe after 1814. In this way the examples of Iturbide in Mexico
and Bonaparte in France cast long dark shadows over Colombia in the 1820s.
Beyond the shadows, Bolvars enemies saw real links between el Libertador
and the two self-made emperors. Bolvar had himself witnessed Napoleons
For contemporary documents making this claim, see Matthew Brown, Adventurers,
Foreign Women and Masculinity in the Wars of Independence in Colombia, Feminist
Review, 79 (2005): 3651.
10
On courts, corruption and national identity in Venezuela see Reuben Zahler,
Honor, Corruption, and Legitimacy: Liberal Projects in the Early Venezuelan Republic,
18211850, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 2005, and Elas Pino
Iturrieta, Fueros, civilisacin y ciudadana (Caracas, 2000), p. 46. For Colombia see Aline
Helg, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia 17701835 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004)
and Matthew Brown, Not Forging Nations but Foraging for Them: Uncertain Collective
identities in Gran Colombia, Nations and Nationalism, 12:2 (2006): 22340.
11
The British Consul in Caracas reported as much in his diary on 14 December
1826. The newspapers arrive from Bogot they are full of attacks on Bolvar, criticising
his Bolivarian Code and citing the examples of republican ambition in Napoleon and
Iturbide, and insinuating similar intentions in the Liberator. Ker Porter, Diario de un
diplomtico britnicos en Venezuela, translated by Teodosio Leal (and translated back in to
English here, by me), (Caracas, 1997), p. 164.
343
344
was twenty-five and who dedicated his life to unshackling Spanish America
from colonial rule, and subsequently to establishing stable political order in
the liberated territories. Daniel Florence OLeary (18001854) was an Irish
Catholic, born in Cork in 1800, who travelled to Venezuela in 1818, serving as
Bolvars aide-de-camp and later as a general, a historian and a diplomat. Jos
Mara Crdoba (17991829) was born in Antioquia in the Viceroyalty of New
Granada, also to a slave and land-owning family, where in his teens he enlisted
in the armies fighting against Spanish colonialism, rising rapidly through the
ranks to distinguish himself as a general at the battle of Ayacucho in 1824,
the encounter which was widely held to have sealed the independence of Peru,
and South America more generally, from Spanish colonial rule.16 OLeary and
Crdoba both owed all of their early career trajectories to Bolvars patronage,
and in most accounts of the period they appear as instruments or accessories
of Bolvars power.
When Daniel OLeary crossed the Atlantic in 1818 he had no military
experience whatsoever and had never before left Ireland.17 In 1819 Simn
Bolvar became the first President of the Republic of [Gran] Colombia, and in
his Angostura Address that year he set out the challenges facing the new state.
Bolvar was the architect of the Colombian military strategy, and OLeary
was at his side for much of the 1820s.18 When the momentum of his military
victories took him south to Peru, one of Bolvars most dynamic generals was
Jos Mara Crdoba, and when victory was assured (in Bolvars absence) by
the battle of Ayacucho in 1824, Crdoba became celebrated because of the
Andrs Lpez Bermdez, Jos Mara Crdoba en la tradicin historiogrfica
colombiana. La imagen del hroe y la invencin del mito, 18581993, Historia y Sociedad,
6 (1999): 179208 provides an excellent account of the development of Crdobas myth
after the mid-nineteenth century. I defer to Lpez Bermdezs account on this later period,
and concentrate my analysis on the three decades immediately after Cordobas death. I
also follow Lpez Bermdez in spelling Crdoba with a b rather than a v, which is still
an issue of contention, but which is consistent with Crdobas own signature and most
scholarship since the mid-nineteenth century, with important exceptions.
17
For the other mercenaries and the history of their encounter with Colombian
society see Matthew Brown, Adventuring Through Spanish Colonies: Simn Bolvar, Foreign
Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (Liverpool, 2006). The book is accompanied by
a database containing information on over 3,000 of the foreign mercenaries. The database
is available online for consultation at http://www.bris.ac.uk/hispanic/latin/research.html
[last accessed 12 January 2009].
18
There is a considerable historiography on OLeary. Manuel Prez Vila, Vida de
Daniel Florencio OLeary: Primer Edecn del Libertador (Caracas, 1957) is still the standard
text, synthesised in English by Robert F. McNerney, Daniel Florencio OLeary: Soldier,
Diplomat and Historian, The Americas, 22 (1966): 292312.
16
345
patriotic and manly courage he displayed at this key battle. The young general
became known popularly as the lion of Ayacucho.19
In the four years after Ayacucho, the paths of these three protagonists
diverged. Bolvar initially remained in Peru, dedicating nine months to
drafting the Constitution for Upper Peru, the new republic re-named Bolivia
in his honour. This Bolivian Constitution was publicised and promoted
across Hispanic America but had a very mixed reception (which is discussed
below) and was, in fact, only adopted for a very short time by Bolivia itself.
During this period, as Bolvars trusted confidant, Daniel OLeary took on
many important missions and negotiated difficult compromises with Bolvars
enemies. Bolvar retained the Presidency of Colombia throughout the 1820s.
Crdoba remained loyal to Bolvars leadership, and served in various civil and
military positions across Colombia, until 1829 when he launched a rebellion
against what he saw as Bolvars dictatorship. On Bolvars orders, Daniel
OLeary commanded the army that marched to Antioquia and defeated Jos
Mara Crdobas rebellion at the battle of El Santuario on 17 October 1829.
After the battle, Crdoba lay mortally wounded when he was attacked by
Rupert Hand, an Irish mercenary in the service of the Colombian government.20
Crdobas assassination by Hand, apparently on Daniel OLearys explicit
orders, taking place in such close proximity to the battlefield, established
Crdobas image for posterity as a brave and heroic fighter, always ready to
risk his life for his principles, whose great potential for service to the patria
had been tragically thwarted by a cowardly foreign murderer.21 Crdobas
rebellion, although unsuccessful in the short term, dealt a fatal blow to the
Bolivarian regime, and within a year Bolvar had left power, declaring that
he who serves the revolution ploughs the sea, and sick, disenchanted and
disillusioned he prepared to go into exile. Bolvar died before he could leave
Colombia, on 17 December 1830.22
Joaquin Posada Gutierrez, Memorias histricas polticas del General Joaquin Posada
Gutierrez, (Bogot, 1863), quotations taken from the 1929 Bogot edition, vol. 2,
pp. 297301.
20
For the much-debated death of Crdoba see the witness statements collected in
Miguel Aguilera, Clave poltica de un ruidoso proceso; Asesinato del General J. M. Crdoba,
(Bogot, 1965).
21
The Jos Mara Crdoba museum at El Santuario has buttressed this image with new
illustrations and murals depicting Crdobas death see images posted online at http://www.
elsantuario-antioquia.gov.co/sitio.shtml?apc=m-g1--&m=G&cmd%5B161%5D=c-1MUSEOS [last accessed 22 July 2009].
22
The quote comes from Bolvar to Juan Jos Flores, Barranquilla, 9 November
1830, in Bushnell, Simn Bolvar: El Libertador, p. 146. Bolvars legacy and cult continue
to shape Hispanic America; on the roots of the cult of Bolvar see Germn Carrera Damas,
19
346
OLeary outlived Crdoba and Bolvar by over two decades and as such was
able to shape the historical memory of their interwoven lives. When OLeary
received the news of Bolvars death he lamented the loss of a chief, a father, a
guide and a friend.23 Within six months he was forced into exile in Jamaica.
He returned to Caracas (his wifes home) in 1833, and from then until 1840
he represented Venezuela as a diplomat in Europe, shuttling between London,
Paris and Rome. From 1840 to 1845 OLeary worked as a British consular
representative in Venezuela, and from 1845 until his death in 1854 he was
the British consular representative in Bogot. The Memorias de OLeary, upon
which his posthumous reputation is largely based, were published by his eldest
son in Caracas between 18791888. It could be argued that the evidence of
Daniel OLearys editorial scissors are apparent in the lack of any surviving
documents incriminating Bolvar in any potentially unpatriotic activity, and
least of all in the plans to reintroduce monarchy to Colombia.
The Bolivian Constitution of 1826
In the middle section of this essay, I analyse the sections of the published text
of the Bolivian Constitution of 1826 in which Simn Bolvar took on the
charge of monarchism head on. As Toms Polanco Alcntara observed, the
Bolivian Constitution has been converted into a symbol of Bolvars political
life and is a determining factor in almost every interpretation of his political
thought.24
There are three broad strands of opinion in the historiography regarding
this document. The first, most recently elaborated by John Lynch who stresses
that Bolvar was not dictatorial by nature25 sees the Bolivian Constitution as
evidence of the realistic Bolvar his democratic deals tempered by experience
of popular protest, race conflict, and elite factionalism the man who declared
Spanish America to be ungovernable.26 Robert Harvey agrees that the Bolivian
Constitution is a compromise document containing elements of radicalism
El culto a Bolvar: esbozo para un estudio de la historia de las ideas en Venezuela (Caracas,
1973), and on its twenty-first century manifestations see Richard Gott, In the Shadow of
the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution (London, 2005).
23
Prez Vila, Vida de Daniel Florencio OLeary, p. 469.
24
Toms Polanco Alcntara, Simn Bolvar: Ensayo de interpretacin biogrfica a
travs de sus documentos (Caracas, 1994), p. 551
25
Lynch, Simn Bolvar, p. 240.
26
John Lynch, Latin American Revolutions 18081826 (Norman, OK, 1994),
p. 376.
347
348
349
I dont know who will suffer more in this horrible conflict: you, for the harm you
should fear concerning the laws you requested of me, or I, for the opprobrium to
which your trust condemns me.36
350
Our wealth was insignificant in the past, even more so in the present. Although
the Church enjoys a certain prestige, it is far from aspiring to domination, content
to maintain the power it has. Without these supports, tyrants cannot survive, and
if certain ambitious men insist on establishing empires, Dessalines, Cristbal and
Iturbide can tell them what awaits them. There is no power more difficult to maintain
than that of a new prince. Bonaparte, vanquisher of every army he encountered,
was unable to transcend this principle, which is stronger than empires. And if the
great Napoleon could not prevail against the combined forces of republicans and
aristocrats, who will ever be able to found a monarchy in America, a land on fire with
the brilliant flames of freedom that devour the planks used to build daises for kings?
No, Legislators, you need not fear pretenders to a crown that will hang over their
heads like the sword of Damocles. The fledgling princes who delude themselves to the
point of erecting thrones over the rubble of freedom will be erecting tombs for their
ashes, which will proclaim to future generations how they preferred vain ambition to
freedom and glory.41
One of the constitutions final clauses asserted the supremacy of the ideals
that Bolvar had spent his life fighting for: civil liberty, individual security,
351
property, and equality before the law are guaranteed to the citizens by the
Constitution.45
In the light of the extracts cited it may seem strange that Bolvars Bolivian
Constitution has been viewed as the beginnings of a project to reintroduce
monarchy into Colombia. But did Bolvar protest too much? In the following
section I trace the contemporary reaction to the document, and argue
that Bolvars private correspondence with Daniel OLeary can allow us to
give more weight to the idea that Bolvar did support the idea of a return
to a monarchical system. Such an interpretation would mean seeing the
Introduction to the Bolivian Constitution, studied above, as a smokescreen
for his true intentions, or as a thinly-veiled attempt to pull the wool over his
contemporaries (or even his own) eyes.
Bolvars political rivals considered any plans for strong central government
or constitutional monarchy as the first step away from reform and towards
absolutism. For this reason they clung to representative republicanism with
passion and portrayed Bolvars plans for a Life Presidency as pure dissimulation
to disguise the installation of a monarchy. The Vice-President of Colombia,
Francisco de Paula Santander, argued that the Bolivian Constitution gave even
more power to the President of Bolivia than that possessed by the monarchs of
England or France.46 Even Bolvars successor as Bolivian President, Antonio
Jos de Sucre, commented after he left office in early 1828 that for my own
part I must confess that I am not a partisan of the Bolivian constitution: it
affords, on paper, stability to the government, whilst in fact it deprives it of
the means of making itself respected.47 Sucres analysis cut to the heart of the
problem the idea of a strong enlightened government based on virtue rather
than on representative government, only undermined its own legitimacy to
provide the stability required by the state.48 Republican principles had been
etched into the heart of the Hispanic American republics through years of
warfare in the Andes, and they had to be respected.
The business community was also guarded in its praise of the Bolivian
Constitution. The Bogot newspaper El Constitucional, which published a
weekly bilingual edition and was generally favourable to Bolvars continued
rule, observed in its editorial that the idea of a President for Life casts to some
Article 144 in Bolvar, Address, p. 84.
Santander, Al respectable pblico, pamphlet 12 February 1828, reproduced in
Escritos autobiogrficos 18201840 (Bogot, 1988), p. 26.
47
Sucre, Resignation Speech, Chuiquisaca, 2 August 1828, from an English
translation by the British Minister in Peru, preserved in TNA FO 97/114/.
48
See also the comments of Francisco Burdett OConnor on the Bolivian
Constitution, in his Independencia american (La Paz, 1915), p. 217.
45
46
352
degree into the shade the Sovereignty of the People and would be protected
by the mantle of irresponsibility. El Constitucional continued what it felt to
be a realistic opposition to Bolvars utopian formulation: Two motives can
actuate a man in this dangerous position [occupying the Life Presidency]:
either an inordinate and unshaken love of country, or the ambition of
supreme command. The first is not to be supposed so frequent as to allow of
its being made a necessary ingredient in the formation of a government; this
must be calculated upon the interests, not upon the sacrifices of mankind. It
warned that the same motives which have influenced the man of ages past will
continue to influence the man of ages to come.49
Bolvars political rivals in the 1820s saw constitutional monarchy as a
harbinger of absolutism and for this reason held tenaciously to representative
republicanism. One example was the Irish journalist Francis Hall, editor of
El Quiteo Libre in Quito, Ecuador, who in 1826 wrote what he claimed was
a dispassionate critique of Bolvars proposals (on the first page he described
it as a triple monster of legislation, so it is nevertheless easy to see where his
sympathies lay).50 Hall accused Bolvar of establishing in the new world the
errors and prejudices of the old, and of imitating the worst practices of
Spanish governance.51 The Bolivian Constitution was cast by contemporaries
like Hall as seeking to continue and emulate the reforms of the former colonial
rulers.
Talking About a Prince the Correspondence of Simn Bolvar and
Daniel OLeary
Daniel OLeary and Simn Bolvar corresponded frequently between 1822
and 1830 many of their letters were safeguarded by OLeary and published
in the 1880s in his Memorias de OLeary. Bolvar was non-committal, in what
survives of his written correspondence from 1828 and 1829, regarding the
potential monarchy project that was being hatched by his supporters in Bogot.
This has meant that his many biographers have been able to get him off the
hook when considering the extent to which he was implicated.52 Previously
unpublished letters from Daniel OLeary to Simn Bolvar, which I located
in Caracas in 2002 and edited and published in Bogot in 2005, demonstrate
El Constitucional, 24 August 1826.
Colombia in 1826, by an Anglo-Colombian, [probably Francis Hall], The
Pamphleteer, 63 (1828): 485506, held in the British Library, reference PP.3557.W,
p. 494.
51
[Hall], Colombia in 1826, by an Anglo-Colombian, p. 496.
52
Most recently see Lynch, Simn Bolvar, p. 266.
49
50
353
that Bolvar was very much up to date with the plans and probably agreed
with them as being in keeping with his own principles.53
It is clear from OLearys comments throughout 1829 that Bolvars ill
health was leading his supporters away from the idea of a Life President and
towards installing a European prince in order to allay the fears of European
investors about instability in Colombia. OLeary was one of the protagonists
attempting to convince Bolvar of their plan. OLeary wrote to Bolvar in May
1829, from Bogot, that:
Vergara and Castillo have decided in favour of a constitutional monarchy. They do
not foresee difficulties. They are thinking of bestowing the throne, although with the
modest but glorious name of Liberator, upon yourself. There is one obstacle, and
they are thinking deeply in order to overcome it. Seeing as in your family there is no
outstandingly merited individual who could succeed you, we still dont know how we
will work this one out. It is felt that you should name your successor yourself. It is
also felt that you should name a foreign prince as your successor. They speak of the
House of Brunswick, [but] the age of the individuals concerned, and their religion,
counts against them. The House of Saxony is Catholic, but if we can judge them by
individuals then this family is distinguished only by its notorious stupidity. Be that
as it may, Monarchy is the main topic of conversation here. My opinion is this:
We should conserve republican forms as far as is possible. We should fight over reality
rather than squabbling over shadows. If we can get a strong and eminently vigorous
government, it doesnt matter in the slightest what it is called. The Executive Power
will pose, of course, a big problem. I believe that we should conserve the name
of President, and that the term should be for ten years, with re-election possible.
These reforms should be made gradually but with substance.54
OLearys letters from this period were omitted from the original publication of the
Memorias de OLeary and as such are absent from subsequent re-editions. They were located
in Caracas by Manuel Prez Vila just before his death, and they are in the Fundacin John
Boulton in Caracas in the Seccin Manuel Antonio Matos and the Seccin Navarro. I have
published extracts from these letters in Matthew Brown and Martn Alonso Roa Celis,
(eds), Militares extranjeros en la independencia de Colombia. Nuevas perspectivas (Bogot,
2005), pp. 14159.
54
OLeary to Bolvar, 7 May 1829, Bogot, in Fundacin John Boulton, Archivo
OLeary, Seccin Manuel Antonio Mattos, M21-A02-E1-C513, reproduced in the original
Spanish in Matthew Brown and Martn Alonso Roa Celis (eds), Militares extranjeros,
pp. 1435. Translation here is my own. I have translated use of espantajo as the big
problem rather than literally its literal meaning as scarecrow I am presuming that
OLeary was referring to the Constitution as making Bolvars critics fly up and flap
around, rather than as a bit of wood dressed up in old clothes.
53
354
355
early 1829 had been one of Simn Bolvars most loyal generals. He accepted
difficult assignments without complaint, and regularly argued for the
importance of Bolvars leadership to maintaining the integrity and honour of
the Colombian nation. Crdobas reputation as a heroic patriot meant that his
voice was listened to, and he became a valuable member of the post-war elite
that attempted to steer Colombia towards peace and prosperity in the second
half of the 1820s.58
In September 1829 Jos Mara Crdoba launched his political rebellion
with the publication of a manifesto that made a forceful attack on Bolvars
centralised tyranny. Historians have not been kind to the ideology behind the
manifesto. Jo Ann Rayfield described it as poorly conceived, badly prepared
and bringing terrible consequences.59 John Lynch called it rambling.60 For
Fernando Botero Herrero it was a mistimed and misjudged attempt to awaken
a regionalist rebellion, an attempt to oppose centralist rule from Bogot.61 In
it, Crdoba demanded to be ruled by laws and not by men.62 Describing
Bolvars conduct since 1826, he asked, is it not time that we shook off the
ignomious yoke with which he binds us? Is it not just that we detain the
progress of absolutism?63
News of Crdobas proclamation reached the capital, Bogot, on 25
September 1829. This was exactly one year after an unsuccessful assassination
attempt on Bolvar that had triggered the moves towards increasingly centralised
power that Crdoba now denounced as dictatorship. The atmosphere in
Bogot that evening as the news spread was strangely sombre and quiet.64
Bolvar was determined to resist the rebellion of one of his best and closest
men; and an army was sent to Antioquia under the command of another of
his young protgs, Daniel OLeary. Just over a month after the proclamation,
the two armies lined up on a plain at El Santuario, near Medelln.
Lynch, Simn Bolvar, pp. 25052, 266.
Jo Ann Rayfield, OLeary y Crdoba: Un resumen historiogrfico y nuevos
documentos, Boletn de historia e antigedades, 57:6635 (1970): 165.
60
Lynch, Simn Bolvar, pp. 2646.
61
Fernando Botero Herrera, Estado, nacin y provincia de Antioquia. Guerras civiles e
invencin de la regin, 18291863 (Medelln, 2003), pp. 445.
62
All quotes are from Jos Mara Crdoba, Manifiesto que el general Crdoba
presenta a los colombianos para informarlos de los motives, y objeto de su pronunciamiento,
16 September 1829, Medelln, reproduced in Daniel OLeary, Memorias de OLeary
Narracin (Caracas, 1952), pp. 4625.
63
Crdoba, Manifiesto, pp. 4625. The Manifesto was a personal pledge to regain
national pride for the people and from an absolutist dictator; this interpretation also
emerges from reading Crdobas private correspondence (cited below).
64
Pilar Moreno de Angel, Jos Mara Crdoba (Bogot, 1977), vol. 2, p. 595.
58
59
356
On the side of the official Colombian army was the 900-strong rapidreaction force which had been sent from Bogot, led by 29-year-old, newlypromoted General Daniel OLeary. On the other side Crdobas rebel army
amounted to just 300 fighters, leaving him vastly outnumbered, but undeterred.
Clear political lines were drawn up between the two sides; but it was clear that
they were also bound closely together by personal ties. As the two sides lined
up, an early morning mist settled over the combatants. Visibility was poor
and chaos and carnage ensued when battle was declared. After a while, as the
two sides were re-forming after a skirmish, Jos Mara Crdoba called out to
Daniel OLeary.65 Carmelo Fernndez, who served under OLeary, described
the exchange thus:
There was a short break in the fire, and during this period, Crdoba whose troops
were already formed as a column, said in a loud voice from his place at the head of
his men General OLeary I invite you to save the Republic, to which OLeary
responded, also in a loud voice so that Crdoba could hear him, General Crdoba,
that is exactly what I am trying to do. Very good, said Crdoba, Long Live
Liberty! And OLeary turned to his own men to respond, and shouted out Long
Live the Liberator!66
For OLeary, the Libertador and the Republic were indivisible. All of his
hopes for the future of Colombia were vested in the figure of one great man
the only solution to the countrys problems was to give as much power as
possible to Bolvar in order to save the republic. For Crdoba, saving the
republic and supporting Bolvars leadership had become incompatible. Battle
therefore recommenced. At some stage in the hostilities, Crdoba shouted
out to OLeary again, declaring that if it is impossible to triumph, it is not
impossible to die.67 Crdoba was then wounded, his forces were routed and
many of his soldiers fled the battlefield. Crdoba retired to a small house
to the side of the battlefield, where witnesses saw him murdered by the
Irish-Colombian officer Rupert Hand, apparently following orders given by
Crdoba and OLeary had been corresponding by letter in affectionate terms only
a couple of months previously. Crdoba wrote to OLeary in July 1829, thanking OLeary
for news of an unnamed woman who was presumably Fanny Henderson. Crdoba to
OLeary, 29 July 1829, Popayn, in Pilar Moreno de Angel, (ed.), Correspondencia y
documentos del general Jos Mara Crdoba (Bogot,1974), vol. 4., p. 216.
66
Carmelo Fernndez, Memorias de Carmelo Fernndez y recuerdos de Santa Marta
1842 (Caracas, 1973), p. 67.
67
Jos Mara Arango, cited in Moreno de Angel, Jos Mara Crdoba, vol. 2,
p. 652.
65
357
OLeary to find Crdoba, and kill him.68 OLeary sent an official report of
his victory to Bolvar.69 Crdobas threat to the central government was no
more, and Bolvars authoritarian regime limped on for another year, but the
monarchy plan was never resurrected.
If the Manifesto is read alongside Crdobas surviving private and public
correspondence from the two years preceding his rebellion, a hypothesis can
be that Crdobas personal honour and morality were closely linked with
his public politics, and his decision to rebel in 1829.70 The two key aspects
of this personal honour are Crdobas relationship with Fanny Henderson,
the daughter of James Henderson, the British Consul-General in Bogot,
and Crdobas attitude towards Simn Bolvars relationship with his lover,
Manuela Senz.71
From Jos Mara Crdobas private correspondence from the period leading
up to his rebellion, his political aspirations can be detected:
I want a strong government, like a monarchy but subjected to laws, linked to the
representative Houses, reasonably similar to that of England, but without nobility,
Lords, Counts, etc. This country can never prosper, will never be truly free under any
other form of government ... Every day I like Fani [Fanny Henderson] more, because
every day she grows up, and she becomes more beautiful: I will never see a more
divine woman. Almost every day I go to the Quinta, to take tea in the evenings. Her
parents never let slip the considerations and appreciation with which they have greeted
me since the first day, although I suspect that she does not love me, despite several
occasions where I have detected acceptance of my glances and my conversations.
See for example the account of Crdobas friend Francisco Giraldo, who witnessed
the attack. His account is reproduced in Eduardo Posadas biography of Crdoba. Aguilera,
Clave politica reproduces many of the testimonies of these events.
69
Daniel OLeary to Simn Bolvar, 17 October 1829, Marinilla, Archivo OLeary,
Seccin Navarro, Fundacin John Boulton, Caracas, f. 14, reproduced in Brown and
Roa Celis (eds), Militares extranjeros, pp. 15051. Much later on, probably in 1832,
Daniel OLeary wrote in his diary that Crdobas death corresponded with the whole
tenor of his life. Fighting like a lion, he fell and expired sternly, proud, and unrepentant.
R.A. Humphreys (ed.), The Detached Recollections of General D.F. OLeary (London, 1969),
p. 26.
70
Matthew Brown, Creating National Heroes in Post-Independence Spanish
America, unpublished paper.
71
In the same paper cited above I set out the hypothesis that James Henderson was
scheming with Crdoba against Bolvar at the same time as the British Ambassador in
Bogot, Patrick Campbell, was involved in the monarchy project negotiating informally
with cabinet ministers such as Vergara, also in Bogot, and liaising with Bolvars
representative, Daniel OLeary. On Campbell see for the moment, Lynch, Simn Bolvar,
pp. 2634.
68
358
There is a mystery about her that I think I can penetrate, but without confidence. Odd
things have occurred, which I will tell you when I have a moment. But in sum I am
anxious, I could not cope if I were to lose her, and for me to successfully possess her
there are so many obstacles; these would not include the will of her parents, but there
are so many more ...!72
Crdoba was careful in his choice of phrase: like a monarchy but subject
to laws. He recognised that monarchy in Colombia had lost all legitimacy
in the eyes of people who had gone from being subjects to citizens. By July
1829 Crdoba had become concerned about the legitimacy of authority in
Colombia, and convinced that Bolvar planned to set the republic on the
path to absolutism. He wrote to his brother from Popayn that I will not
return South for any reason whatsoever, under the despotic and treacherous
government of General Bolvar.73 Bolvars despotism was the outwardly
acknowledged cause of his rebellion but this was underpinned by other
concerns from his public and private lives. In July 1829 Crdoba wrote to a
supporter, Manuel Antonio Jaramillo, that Bolvar
commands us as though we were a rabble of shepherds ... and I have resolved to sacrifice
myself for the freedom of my patria and so that its government can be welcomed by
all, vigorous, just and liberal. ... The Liberator can not be the Emperor of Colombia
because he is a Venezuelan, and biased in favour of his countrymen ... and because
recently he has governed New Granadans as if he were a sultan ... and because he is
dominated by a woman who is worshipped by so many low-lifes including some of
our countrymen, shamefully who already treat her like a princess.74
359
His reaction against the threat of absolutism was shaped by personal antipathy
to monarchism in all its forms. His rebellion against the perceived threat of
monarchy, a threat denied in public by all those involved, cost him his life.
Conclusion
Into the vacuum of legitimacy created by the decapitation of the Spanish
monarchy in continental America after 1808, fell numerous schemes and
proposals for reconstituting and reforming society and its governance. Some
republicans were seduced by the stability that was thought to accompany
a monarchical system. After his military encounter with Crdoba in 1829,
Daniel OLeary was ever more convinced of the need for monarchy. He wrote
to Bolvar that:
The poverty of the country would not detain me for a moment in pronouncing myself
in favour of a monarchical system. If you offer security and stability to Europeans, they
will not hesitate to bring us their capital. All of Europe would be delighted to see the
adoption of this system.75
360
Chapter 21
Introduction
Robert Southey asserted that the materials required to write Brazilian history
differ from those of other countries: here there are no tangles of crooked
policy to unravel, no mysteries of state to elucidate, no revolutions to record,
[and] no victories to celebrate. Southey, whose History of Brazil was first
published in 1816, may have noted with some justice, and prescience, the
absence of full-blown political upheaval and major military engagements in
Brazils transition from colony to independent nation. But this essays central
assumption is that Southey equivocated, at least in part. A hefty measure of
crooked policy, and the political and economic ideas which underpinned it,
remains tangled and invites closer examination.
One key figure whose intellectual and policy contributions deserve further
study is Jos da Silva Lisboa (17561835). The activities of this Bahia-born
* The author expresses his gratitude to Trinity College, Cambridge and the British
Academy, both of which generously funded research trips to Brazil and Portugal in 2007
and 2008. A preliminary version of several sections of this essay was delivered as a paper at
the Beyond Slavery in the Iberian Atlantic conference held at the University of Liverpool
in September 2007. An early draft of this essay was awarded the 2008 JISLAC PostDoctoral Essay Prize.
Robert Southey, History of Brazil, 2nd edn ([1816]; London, 1822), vol. I, p. 1;
on Southeys attitudes toward colonialism, see Carol Bolton, Writing the Empire: Robert
Southey and Romantic Colonialism (London, 2007); curiously, the spirit of Southeys
analysis informed the subsequent historiographical tradition until very recently. See the
overview presented in John Charles Chasteen, Rediscovering the Excitement of Political
History in Nineteenth-Century Brazil, Luso-Brazilian Review, 37:2 (2000): 15.
362
363
364
365
366
367
Though it should be noted that this book was the subject of at least one savage
review. See Reflexes Criticas sobre a Obra de Jos da Silva Lisboa, Intitulada, Principios de
Direito Mercantil, Feitas por hum Homem da Mesma Profisso (Lisbon, 1803).
18
Both works were published, of course, in Portugal. Brazil would not have a
printing press until the transfer of the court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. On
reading practices in colonial Brazil, see Luiz Carlos Villalta, O que se fala e o que se l:
lngua, instruo e leitura, in Laura de Mello e Souza (ed.), Cotidiano e Vida Privada na
Amrica Portuguesa (So Paulo, 1997).
19
In analysing the failure to establish the chair, Jos Lus Cardoso noted that the
intentions of enlightened reformers so often did not lead to a concrete result in the short
term. See Cardoso, O liberalismo econmico na obra da Jos da Silva Lisboa, Histria
Econmica e Histria de Empresas, [So Paulo] 1 (2002): 155; the failure to establish a
chair, it must be stressed, was not a reflection of any prejudice against the study of political
economy in the Luso-Atlantic world. On the contrary, Joo Rodrigues de Brito would
argue that without the study of political economy, a person should not be admitted to
university or appointed to public [state] service of any kind. See his Cartas EconomicoPoliticas sobre a Agricultura e Commercio da Bahia (Lisbon, 1821), p. 66.
20
Silva Lisboa was hardly a unique case: on the integration of ilustrados brasileiros
into the Rio-based bureaucracy after 1808 and their impact on Brazils subsequent political
trajectory, see Odila Silva Dias, A Interiorizao da Metrpole (18081853), in Carlos
Guilherme Mota (ed.), 1822: Dimenses (So Paulo, 1972), pp. 18084.
17
368
Such flexibility, of course, was common in Europe in the same period. As H.M.
Scott has observed, state administrations were still primarily a reservoir of people and
ideas, rather than a collection of formalised administrative structures. Personal initiatives
and private connections oiled the wheels of the state machine, which were not yet driven
by the bureaucratic routines of a later age; see Scott, The Rise of the First Minister in
Eighteenth-Century Europe, in T.C.W. Blanning and David Cannadine (eds), History
and Biography: Essays in Honour of Derek Beales (Cambridge, 1996), p. 51.
21
369
the prevailing ones of the present period, and, at the same time, he was but too often
violent and fanatical in expression of these ideas.22
370
interests. The immediate and dramatic impact of this new legislation, which
completed the dismantlement of the economic nationalist framework devised
and implemented by Pombal,26 is well known: Bahia sent eight-ninths
of its cotton to Liverpool whereas three-quarters of the cotton and half of
the sugar produced in Pernambuco found their way to British ports.27 By
1812, Portuguese America took half as much English merchandise as either
the USA or the British West Indies. For Portugal, the metropole, this policy
shift produced much-lamented consequences. By 1812, for example, the
value of English exports to Brazil exceeded those of the Portuguese; of these
British exports, almost ninety per cent were wool and cotton manufactures.28
While these shifts were accepted as unavoidable expedients during the French
occupation, the restoration of the peace neither led to the resumption of
Portugals previous share of Brazils commerce nor the return of the seat of
empire to the Old World.29 The normalisation of what had been justified as
war-time exigencies had major repercussions in the next decade, culminating
371
372
extended excerpts of the Wealth of Nations into Portuguese in these same years.
35
Silva Lisboa, Observaes sobre a Prosperidade do Estado pelos Liberaes Principios da
Nova Legislao do Brasil (Bahia, 1811), p. 22.
36
Observaes sobre o Comrcio Franco no Brasil (1808), reproduced in Silva Lisboa,
Visconde de Cairu, p. 71; in his 1804 Principios, he elaborated on his critique of the
physiocrats: if such political economy was universally practiced, it would barbarize and
impoverish all nations, depriving them of the healthy, natural and efficacious means of
voluntary and reciprocal assistance, cooperation and mutual assistance. It would, in a
word, make commerce impossible, p. 52.
37
Ibid., p. 155; also see Donald Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies
(London, 1965).
38
Memorias Beneficios, p. 70; here Silva Lisboas understanding of political economy
and reform reflects broader European eighteenth-century trends. As John Robertson
has suggested, political economy was no longer concerned with the aggrandisement of
governments at each others expense; moreover, the purpose of reform should be the
removal of obstacles to the optimal course of development. See Robertson, The Case for
the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 16801760 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 29, 37.
39
Observaes sobre o Comrcio Franco, p. 179; Silva Lisboas praise of the USA should
not be altogether surprising. As Maxwell pointed out, those who saw the North American
model as relevant tended to see it as the conservative option, a solution to the colonial
dilemma that preserved the basic social organization, especially the system of slavery, but
373
At first glance and by his own admission, Silva Lisboa might appear a
disciple of Smith, following his critique of colonies rather closely. But Silva
Lisboas peculiar focus was the manifestation of the long-established link
between commerce and civilisation in his New World context. Silva Lisboa
viewed international trade as a mechanism to prevent not only the sort of
domestic social upheaval which had engulfed other colonies whose economies
were reliant on slave labour, notably Saint Domingue, but also the political
chaos which had succeeded commercial stagnation in Spanish America. Silva
Lisboa argued that Napoleons Continental system prefigured Europes descent
into barbarism:
France is sliding down the ladder of civilisation. It will soon be deprived of innumerable
sciences, ideas, industries, and sources of wealth which maritime commerce and the
celestial art of navigation sustain. It is astonishing that Europe, after reaching the
apex of civilisation, will consent to becoming little more than a second sub-Saharan
Africa.40
For Silva Lisboa, then, as for many of his contemporaries, there existed a
strong correlation between economic growth, social harmony, and cultural
flourishing. His comments reflect a particular preoccupation with the
fragility of the social order and the economic and cultural consequences of
its disturbance.
This concern led him to insist on bolstering absolute monarchy and
favouring the states extensive involvement in many areas of economic and
social life.41 The existence, indeed, the rapid expansion of slavery, which Silva
Lisboa routinely conceded jostled uneasily with the tenets of political economy
he espoused, required a robust state, capable of decisive intervention. Lessregulated trade, then, was not in itself an impediment to the expansion of
brought political emancipation from Europe. See his Hegemonies Old and New, in
Naked Tropics, pp. 867.
40
Silva Lisboa, Refutao das Reclamaes contra o Commercio Inglez (Rio de Janeiro,
1810), p. 107
41
Antnio Penalves Rocha, A Economia Poltica na Sociedade Escravista (um Estudo
dos Textos Econmicos de Cairu) (So Paulo, 1996), pp. 10517 passim, 143; on the range
of slave revolts which coincided with, and in many cases were inspired by, the example of
Saint Domingue (Haiti), see David Patrick Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution in the
Greater Caribbean, 17891815, in Geggus and David Barry Gaspar (eds), A Turbulent
Time: the French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington, IN, 1997); for an
overview of the conspiracies in Brazil which involved slaves or the issue of slavery, see
Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery (London, 1988), ch. 10.
374
375
For Pombals diaries from his embassy in London, see Sebastio Jos de Carvalho
e Melo, Escritos Econmicos de Londres (17411742) ed. Jos Barreto (Lisboa, 1986); Jos
Bonifcio, Elogio Acadmico da Senhora D. Maria I, delivered at the Lisbon Academy
of Sciences, 20 March 1817, in Carvalho (ed.), Desenvolvimento e Livre Comercio (So
Paulo, 1985), p. 80 fn. 1; according to Robert Southey, however averse they may be to
French principles, many of the Portuguese dislike the English influence, and reprobate the
Methuen treaty as the ruin of their commerce. See Southey, Letters Written During a Short
Residence in Spain and Portugal, 2nd edn (Bristol, 1799), p. 402.
49
On D. Rodrigos early political thought, see Pedro Miguel Carvalho Alves da Silva,
O Dispotismo Luminozo: Introduo ao Pensamento de D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho
(M.A. dissertation, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1997); more generally, see Kenneth
Maxwell, The Generation of the 1790s and the Idea of the Luso-Brazilian Empire, in
Dauril Alden (ed.), The Colonial Roots of Modern Brazil (Berkeley and London, 1973),
pp. 10714; on the place of Britain in his thought, see Gabriel Paquette, Views from the
South: Images of Britain and its Empire in Portuguese and Spanish Political and Economic
Discourse, c.17401810, in Sophus Reinert and Pernille Rge (eds), Political Economy
and Empire (New York and Basingstoke, forthcoming).
50
Silva Lisboa, Leituras de Economia Politica, ou Direito Economico conforme a
Constituio Social e Garantias da Constituio do Imperio do Brasil, Dedicadas a Mocidade
Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1827), p. 7; in this regard, at least, Silva Lisboa shows himself
to be the heir of a previous generation of Luso-Brazilian reformers who had identified
cultural backwardness (atraso cultural) as the main obstacle to overcome. See Ana Rosa
Cloclet da Silva, Inventando a Nao: Intelectuais Ilustrados e Estadistas Luso-Brasileiros na
Crise do Antigo Regime Portugus 17501822 (So Paulo, 2006), pp. 3940.
48
376
English, with trust and constancy of friendship, the more we shall gain access
to the advantages which they enjoy.51
But it was Silva Lisboas perception of the sources of Englands prosperity
that deserves emphasis:
There is no doubt that the English nation is the most industrious and wealthy in
Europe. Its industry and wealth flow from eternal sources (which never run dry) of
knowledge and regularity (sabedoria e regularidade).52
For Silva Lisboa, then, economic prosperity and geopolitical power were
underpinned by habits of mind, cultural predilections, and carefully-cultivated
ingenuity. These underlying preconditions, rather than tangible results, justified
emulation. In Silva Lisboas view, such a strategy could expedite the passage
to opulence. It is sufficient to navigate in [Englands] wake, he remarked, to
follow in the admirable path it has opened such a good example should
enable [Brazil] to move forward with accelerated velocity, since it possesses
innate juvenile energy.55
Observaes sobre o Comrcio Franco, p. 83; certainly, Silva Lisboas optimism
was widely shared. Writing in O Observador Lusitano em Pariz in February 1815, the
distinguished intellectual and sometime diplomat Francisco Solano Constncio would
gush that civilisation in Brazil has made great progress, particularly in the port cities: the
mechanical arts are being perfected and the habits of the people are becoming more like
those of Europe. Today, in Rio and Bahia, there are beautiful theatres, promenades, and
hotels, as well as elegant shops, in no way different from those of Europe. In Jos Lus
Cardoso (ed.), Francisco Solano Constncio. Leituras e Ensaios de Economia Poltica (Lisbon,
1995), p. 42.
52
Ibid., p. 77.
53
Ibid., p. 85
54
Silva Lisboa, Refutao, p. 15.
55
Silva Lisboa, Memoria dos Beneficios, p. 145; Silva Lisboas mention of innate
juvenile energy should not be overemphasised. What Pocock has noted about Hume,
Robertson, and Smith applies equally well to Silva Lisboa: he regarded undifferentiated
51
377
primal energy as barbaric and dangerous. See Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Vol. II
Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 33031.
56
Observaes sobre a franqueza da indstria e estabelecimento de fbricas no Brasil
(Rio de Janeiro, 1810), reproduced in Silva Lisboa, Visconde de Cairu, p. 247. Antnio
Almodovar has noted that manufactures do not play any role whatsoever in Silva Lisboas
thought. See Almodovar, A Institucionalizao da Economia Poltica Clssica em Portugal
(Porto, 1995), p. 55.
57
Silva Lisboa, Memoria da Vida Publica do Lord Wellington (Rio de Janeiro, 1815),
p. 86; on Pombals views on privileged trading companies and less regulated commerce,
see Maxwell, Pombal, pp. 5675.
58
Silva Lisboa, Memria Econmica, p. 53.
59
Silva Lisboa, Extractos das Obras Politicas e Economicas de Edmund Burke (Rio de
Janeiro, 1812); these were republished in Portugal ten years later as Extractos do Grande
Edmund Burke. Por JSL. Segunda edio, mais correcto (Lisbon, 1822).
378
379
His political discourse is not anachronistic per se, but may appear so when
held up to the mirror of Europes historical trajectory. But this was not due to
any cultural or intellectual lag between the Old World and the New. Instead,
it may be attributed to the seismic political changes which resulted from the
ruptures wrought by the French revolutionary wars. Instead of viewing Silva
Lisboa (and, by extension, Brazil) as an exceptional case, the periodisation
of enlightened reform should be modified in order to encompass the first
decades of nineteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic.62
Silva Lisboas interest in Burke intensified in response to three political
stimuli: first, the 1817 insurrection in Pernambuco; second, Brazils
independence from Portugal; and, third, Pedro Is dissolution of the Assemblia
Constituinte, in which Silva Lisboa was a cantankerous and garrulous delegate.63
Silva Lisboas positions between 1817 and 1824 were surprisingly consistent,
even taking into account the destabilising forces percolating in the LusoAtlantic world. He was terrified by the prospect of Brazil retracing Spanish
Americas descent into political chaos. He derided the futility and instability
of [constitutional regimes] from Mexico to Chile, none of which has been
able to form stable and regular government or to secure the confidence of
foreign governments.64 Silva Lisboa argued that Brazil was unprepared for
what he disdainfully termed liberal political ideas. He asserted that Brazils
neighbours had been transformed
into fields of blood by the fantasies and passions of presumed liberal principles. They
tried to apply, to peoples of different character and an inferior level of civilisation, false
equality, spurious and far from genuine rights of man, which promise to transform
The difficulty of identifying discrete historical periods which are applicable across
the globe has been analyzed by C.A. Bayly: Any attempt to delineate periods in global
history, whether they are economic or cultural, is fraught with difficulty. The unintended
consequences of earlier political and economic decisions spiralled uncontrollably outwards
from world centres of power, deepening and changing as they were absorbed into
continuing local conflicts over rights, honour and resources; see Bayly, The Birth of the
Modern World 17801914 (Oxford, 2004), p. 168.
63
On broader political debates in this period, see Lcia Maria Bastos Pereira das
Neves, Corcundas e Constitucionais: A Cultura Poltica da Independncia (Rio de Janeiro,
2003); Renato Lopes Leite, Republicanos e Libertrios: Pensadores Radicais no Rio de Janeiro
(1822) (Rio de Janeiro, 2000); and Estilaque Ferreira dos Santos, A Monarquia no Brasil:
o Pensamento Poltico da Independncia (Vitoria, 1999).
64
[Cairu], Appello Honra Brasileira contra a Faco dos Federalistas de Pernambuco
(Rio de Janeiro, 3 August 1824), p. 7.
62
380
society into a terrestrial paradise but all nations do not share equal preparation to
take advantage of the same constitution.65
Instead, Silva Lisboa would argue for what he termed good constitutional
government, as opposed to its specious rival forms. Composed of three
powers, he compared it to sugar, which, in order to acquire and retain its
proper crystallisation, consistency and sweetness, requires that its three
principle constituent elements are in perfect equilibrium any disruption
of the balance will destroy its natural structure and virtues.66 On the basis of
such ratiocination, he distanced himself from Benjamin Constant, whom he
routinely denigrated as not my sort of man, because of his insidious attempt
to covert the monarchy into a mere neutral power without substantial
authority.67
While insisting that he despised despotism in all of its guises,68 Silva Lisboa
argued that while [Brazils] constitution is not the very measure of perfection
(nor would such a thing be possible, given the weakness of human reason),
it is nevertheless better than most of Europes constitutions and provides
more stability and guarantees than any other in America.69 Silva Lisboa, then,
justified the severe repression of federalist revolts in the northeast, Brazils
independence from Portugal, and the emperors imposition of a constitution
by invoking the spectre of instability and its potential to undermine irreversibly
economic prosperity and national consolidation.
Nevertheless, several questions remain: if he was merely a reactionary, why
did Silva Lisboa feel compelled not only to invoke, but actually to translate
and to engage with European writers? Why pay lip-service to constitutional
principles and describe a mixed constitution as optimal? Should his quest
Baro de Cayr, Contestao da Historia e Censura de Mr De Pradt Sobre Successos
do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1825), p. 23.
66
Silva Lisboa, Roteiro Brazilico, ou Colleco de Principios e Documentos de Direito
Politico (Rio de Janeiro, 1822), p. 3
67
Annaes do Parlamento Brazileiro: Assemblia Constituinte 1823 (Rio de Janeiro,
1879), tomo IV, 6 August 1823, p. 37; on the Assemblia Constituinte of 1823, see
Celso Rodrigues, Assemblia Constituinte de 1823: Idias Polticas na Fundaco do Imperio
Brasileiro (Curitiba, 2002); and Jos Honrio Rodrigues, A Assemblia Constituinte de
1823 (Petrpolis, 1974).
68
[Cairu, signed Fiel Naco], Falsidades do Correio e Reverbero Contra o Escriptor
das Reclamaes do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 23 July 1822).
69
Visconde de Cayr, Manual de Politica Orthodoxa (Rio de Janeiro, 1832), p. 43;
It is interesting to note that the 1824 constitution, framed by Dom Pedro, drew heavily
on Benjamin Constants political ideas. I found no disparagement, unsurprisingly, of
Constant in Silva Lisboas writings after 1824.
65
381
71
382
Silva Lisboas bleak survey of world affairs, into an albatross for the perils of
radical change:
In twenty-five years of irregular constitutions, France suffered more bloodshed and
poverty than during the ten centuries that it was under monarchical government
we now observe its government with a constitutional charter, but without stability,
and its people enjoy even less liberty in practice than that enjoyed in other advanced
countries which have pursued a reasonable and moderate reform of their laws.74
383
It may seem that this reasoning was a ruse to justify the postponement of
long-promised rights, but a closer examination indicates that Silva Lisboa rued
this state of affairs. In the short term, before such grandiose schemes could
be implemented, the sword must be used to combat the hydra of Jacobinism
and the spectre of federalism.77 Silva Lisboa insisted that the level of education
in Brazil was treacherously inadequate, and its internal threats too numerous
and immediate, to allow for flexibility. Nascent and fragile political structures
would only be exposed to manipulation by conspirators and cabals. Such
threats would become atavisms, however, as the progress of knowledge and
expansion of access to education brought not only material wealth, but also
public tranquillity, even political listlessness, to an independent Brazil. For
Silva Lisboa, as for many of his contemporaries, the Brazilian state would
instill civilisation and extirpate barbarism.78
Silva Lisboas Stance on Slavery and its Place in his Political Thought
Between 1790 and 1830, Rio de Janeiro emerged as the largest slave-importing
port in the Americas. Between 1780 and 1810, more African slaves entered the
Brazilian capital than all imports of slaves to the U.S.A. and Spanish America
combined. In 1808 alone, 765 slave trading vessels entered Rio; in 1810,
1,214 dropped anchor in its harbour. Between 1801 and 1839, 570,000 slaves
were brought to Rio.79 In this period, moreover, a transformation occurred in
the southern states. For example, in So Paulo, in 1804, 70 per cent of slaves
were forced to labour on farms that produced for the domestic market. By
1829, however, only 49 per cent of slaves were dedicated to production aimed
at domestic consumption. The changing ratio is explained by export-led,
Silva Lisboa, Appello, 29 July 1824, p. 1; it would be interesting to compare
Silva Lisboas call to crush the rebels in Pernambuco in the 1820s with Burkes defense
of intervention against France. For an astute analysis of Burkes view that the French
Republic presented an unprecedented threat justifying intervention by all European
states, see David Armitage, Edmund Burke and Reason of State, Journal of the History of
Ideas, 61:4 (2000): 61734.
78
For the repercussions of this view in nineteenth-century Brazilian politics, see
Jeffrey Needell, The Domestic Civilizing Mission: The Cultural Role of the State in Brazil,
18081930, Luso-Brazilian Review, 36:1 (1999): 118.
79
Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution, pp. 75, 246; even before this massive influx
of slaves, the 1775 census in Salvador revealed 44 per cent of the population was enslaved
whereas in Rio de Janeiro slaves made up almost 35 per cent of the population; figures
cited in Kirsten Schultz, The Crisis of Empire and the Problem of Slavery: Portugal and
Brazil, c. 17001820, Common Knowledge, 11:2 (2005): 2734.
77
384
Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert Klein, African Slavery in the Production
of Subsistence Crops: the Case of So Paulo in the Nineteenth Century, in D. Eltis,
F.D. Lewis, and K.L. Sokoloff (eds), Slavery in the Development of the Americas (Cambridge,
2004), pp. 1267, 149. NB: percentages for coffee and sugar are from 1836.
81
On the function of slavery in liberal thought in late eighteenth and early
nineteenth-century Brazil, see Kenneth Maxwell, Portuguese America, International
History Review, 6:4 (1984); Jurandir Malerba, Os Brancos da Lei: Liberalismo, Escravido
e Mentalidade Patriarcal no Imperio do Brasil (Maring-PR, 1994); and Mrcia Regina
Berbel and Rafael de Bivar Marquese, The Absence of Race: Slavery, Citizenship, and ProSlavery Ideology in the Cortes of Lisbon and the Rio de Janeiro Constituent Assembly,
Social History, 32:4 (2007): 41531; for a comparative examination, see Rafael de Bivar
Marquese, Escravismo e Independncia: A Ideologia da Escravido no Brasil, em Cuba e
nos Estados Unidos nas Dcadas de 18101820, in Jancs, Independncia, pp. 80927;
but in this case, too, we must be wary of viewing Brazilian debates as behind their
European counterparts. As Christopher L. Brown has recently pointed out, it was the loss
of the Britains North American colonies in 17751783 that made British abolitionism
(and its discourses) conceivable and made Britain exceptional. He contends that it helped
antislavery activists seem like moral exemplars rather than utopian fanatics, as idealists
hoping to restore the honour of the British empire rather than driving it to division and
ruin. See Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC,
2006).
82
The most recent exponent of this view is Rocha, A Economia Poltica, p. 152.
80
385
386
forced migration from Africa. The state would have to intervene before market
forces created a society whose racial composition, predicated on socio-economic
disparities and political inequalities, would prove unstable. Immigrants would
flock to Brazil when it furnished conditions which resembled those of Europe,
only more salutary, and offered greater prospects for land tenure.
This conjuncture, however, could only come about as the result of rising
levels of wealth which were itself contingent on slaverys expansion. Brazil,
Silva Lisboa asserted, can be a place for immigrants whose overcrowding in
cities is the cause of their poverty, wrongdoing, and wars that afflict Europe.86
The level of voluntary immigration was directly correlated to Brazils economic
fortunes. Whitening and long-term prosperity, therefore, were inextricably
linked in Silva Lisboas thought. It came as no surprise, therefore, when,
in 1818, Dom Joo levied an import tax on slaves and decreed half of this
new revenue stream earmarked to encourage European immigration.87 This
legislation and similar, though sporadic, additional measures were embraced by
such leading political writers and actors as Hiplito da Costa, Jos Bonifcio,
and Jos Carneiro de Campos.88
For Silva Lisboa and his peers, such periodic state intervention
complemented a longer-term shift that would presage the extinction of slavery:
the transformation of the economic and social structure of society through its
Silva Lisboa, Causa do Brasil, p. 21.
Roderick Cavaliero, The Independence of Brazil (London and New York, 1993),
p. 67; It should be noted that these emigration inducement schemes did not work out as
well as many had anticipated. In fact, according to a document entitled Swiss Colonists in
the Brazils, which is the account of a meeting of Swiss residents in London on 20 September
1821, the situation was rather grave: Although every attention has been directed by the
Portuguese government towards preparations that might ensure the comfort of the settlers
on their arrival, many unforeseen difficulties intervened owing to the thick woods, the
very unlevel face of the country but few of the subdivisions of the lands appear yet to
have been made. Document found in the Arquivo Nacional do Torre do Tombo, MNE,
Caixa 745.
88
On Bonifcios views, see Maxwell, Portuguese America, p. 547 and Ana Rosa
Cloclet da Silva, Construo da Nao e Escravido no Pensamento de Jos Bonifcio
17831823 (Campinas, 1999); for Carneiro de Campos, see Documentos para a Historia
da Independencia (Rio de Janeiro, 1923), vol. I, p. 364; on the function of European
immigration scheme in Brazilian thought in the late nineteenth century, see Emilia Viotti
da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (Chicago and London, 1985), p. 124;
on link between comrcio livre and European immigration in early nineteenth-century
Brazilian thought, see Maxwell and Maria Beatriz Nizza da Sliva, A Poltica, in Nizza da
Silva (ed.), O Imprio Luso-Brasileiro 17501822. Vol. VIII of Nova Histria da Expanso
Portuguesa. Dir. Joel Serro and A.H. Oliveira Marques (Lisbon, 1986), pp. 37072.
86
87
387
388
As Stanley and Barbara Stein rightly noted, almost forty years ago, within the
variety of the nineteenth-century historical experience one detects large outcroppings
of the colonial heritage, symptoms of its survival under favourable conditions () the
historian must therefore question the validity of the wars of independence as an historical
benchmark. See Stein and Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic
Independence in Perspective (New York, 1970), pp. 15960.
90
Index
Abailard, Pierre, Lettres portugaises de
Marianna Alcoforado 130
balos, Jos de 307, 308, 309
Abeille, Louis-Paul 58
absolutism
changing nature of 1314
and enlightened reform 34
see also enlightened absolutism;
enlightened despotism
Academia del Buen Gusto 158
Acadmie franaise 55
academies
Naples 75
provincial, France 55
Spain 162
Adelman, Jeremy 347, 350
Agricola, De Re Metallica 240
Agricola, Manuel 115
agriculture, Naples 294, 3012
Albi, Christopher 15, 34
Albi, Julio 341
Alcedo, Antonio de, Diccionario geogrfica
95, 96, 97
Alfieri, Vittorio 213
Almodvar, Duke of 84, 87, 89, 96
Amadeus II, Victor, King of Savoy 204,
207, 262
Amadeus III, Victor, King of Savoy 204,
211, 215
army reforms 222
new taxation 221
Amat y Junient, Manuel de 199
Amedeo delle Lanze, Carlo Vittorio,
Cardinal 219
America, Jesuit histories 84
American War of Independence
(177583) 5, 303, 309
Anderson, Benedict 100, 106
Anderson, M.S. 910, 205
390
Britain
Brazil
commercial treaty 368, 36970
exports to 370
Navigation Acts 377
see also England
Broggia, Carlantonio 288
Della vita civil economica 297
economic model for 2989
Melons Essai politique
criticism 2979
influence on 297
Brown, Matthew 19
Buenos Aires 12, 106
British invasion (1806) 320
Burke, Edmund
Index
391
portraits 152
Charles IV, King of Spain 93, 152, 159,
319
Charles, Loc 56
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 235
Child, Josiah 300
A New Discourse of Trade 289
China, government 283
Choiseul, Duc de 175, 177, 178, 179
Clark, Henry 60
Clarke, Samuel 121
Clavijero, Francisco Javier 84, 96
Storia Antica del Mexico 889
criticism of 8990
Clavijo y Fajardo, Jos 147
Coimbra University, Persian Letters,
readers 12027
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 17, 169, 295, 296
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 378
Collier, Simon 360
Colombia 339
Bolvars presidency 344, 345
monarchist historiography 34041
post-Independence, and monarchy
360
Colonialism, and enlightened reform 89
Colonies
English 291
Melon on 29093
need for, and commerce 290
commerce
and colonies, need for 290
conquest, incompatibility theory 289,
293, 295
Compagnie des Indes 40, 47, 58, 169
Constant, Benjamin 380
Crdoba, Jos Mara 339, 340, 343,
3445
death 345, 3567
manifesto 355, 357
political aspirations 3578
rebellion 3559
Crdoba, Matas de 105
Corte, Carlo Amedeo, reading 210
392
on Richelieu 259
thought 2568
works
Commercio mercantile 259
Del commercio del regno di Napoli
257, 259, 265, 294
Idea de una perfetta repubblica 263
La vita civile 295
Politico alla moda 258, 265
DuPont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel 37,
283
Dupont, Pierre-Samuel 58
Dym, Jordana 15, 35, 348
Earle, Rebecca 341
economic growth, and enlightened reform
16
education, for democracy, Pagano on
6970, 8081
El Censor 160
El Constitucional 3512
El Pensador 147
El Quiteo Libre 352
El Santuario, Battle (1829) 340, 345
elites, enlightened, and Gazeta de
Guatemala 1037
Elliott, John 13, 360
Elton, Geoffrey 154
Emmanuel III, Charles, King of Savoy
204, 206, 214, 215
England
Colonies
naval power 260
Silva Lisboas admiration for 3746,
381
enlightened absolutism 27, 288
Bolivian Constitution (1826) as 3478
enlightened despotism 2, 9, 39
in Dorias thought 263
Italian examples 205
revisionism 2056
Savoy 203, 207, 208, 21315, 225,
226, 227
see also absolutism; legal despotism
Index
393
394
France
agricultural societies 54
bibliothque bleue 148
censorship 556
colonies 67
administration 169
illicit trade 170
decline, Silva Lisboa on 373
economic debate 57
economy, eighteenth-century 38
enlightened reform 37, 4761
encouragement of ideas 578, 61
Genoa, attack on 260
Iberian states, contacts 7
ideas, discussion of 567
Jesuits, expulsion 50
local government reform 60
manufacturing policy 5960
military reform 50
non-noble elites, 1789 54
Parlement de Maupeou 274
pre-Revolution reforms 478, 50, 52,
59, 6061
print censorship 2767
provincial academies 55
provincial assemblies, establishment 60
Silva Lisboa on 382
simulated sales 59
tax
debates 2736, 278, 286
history 278
reforms 47, 276
resistance 53
see also French Atlantic empire; French
Crown; French Revolution
Francis I, King of France 147
Franciscans, Peru 186, 1923
Frederick the Great 204, 216
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor 285
freemasonry, Naples 77
Freitas, Nuno de 120, 121, 122
French Antilles 39
Exclusif trade regime 59
French Atlantic empire 37, 38
features 39
French Crown
and corporate bodies 523
economic stimulation 5960
in the public sphere 52, 54
vingtime tax 53, 282
French Indies Company see Compagnie
des Indes
French Revolution 38, 39
and taxation 40
Gagliardo, J.G. 203
Gaite, Carmen Martn 151
Galanti, Giuseppe Maria 70, 76
Galeani Napione, Francesco 226
Galiani, Celestino 288, 293
Galiani, Ferdinando 29, 255
on decline of Rome 299300
Della moneta 299302
on Histoire des Deux Indes 2878
Physiocrats, criticism of 302
Glvez, Jos de 23031, 238, 308,
31416, 317
popularity 316
Gamboa, Francisco Xavier de
Comentarios a las Ordenanzas de Minas
229, 230, 232, 240
economic plan 2423
as Enlightenment text 24043
juridical sources 2412
mercury monopoly 236
law studies 2334
opposition to Mining Tribunal 231
support for 1584 Ordinances 2438
Garca de Len Pizarro, Jos 317, 318
Garrett, Almeida 366
Gaudin, M. 1745
Gazeta de Guatemala 99
Bourbon, agenda 107, 11215
contributors 104, 105
controversy, avoidance of 110
correspondence 1067
and Creole identity 100, 102
didactic articles 1089
Index
395
Guadalajara 233
Guadeloupe 167, 169
British occupation 180
corruption 1712, 173
Mirabeaus governorship 17076
slave trade 169, 170, 172
see also Martinique
Guatemala City
Bourbon elites 103, 113, 117
San Carlos University 105
Sociedad Econmica 104, 108
suppression 110
Guatemala, Kingdom of 35, 99, 110
identity 112, 113, 116
independence 103
Indians 11213, 114
Maya 116
newspaper culture 35
see also Gazeta de Guatemala
as patria 109, 116
public sphere 106
guatemaltecos 112
Guerra, Franois-Xavier 99100, 104
Guyana
freedom of trade 59
slave trade 169
Habermas, Jrgen, public sphere concept
101
Haiti see Saint-Domingue
Haitian Constitution (1816) 349
Hall, Francis 352
Hand, Rupert 345, 356
Hartung, F. 203
Harvey, Robert 3467
Havana 12
Intendancy of 310
Hazard, Paul 26
Helg, Aline, Liberty and Equality 347
Helvetius, Andrien, Le vrai sens du systme
de la nature 121
Henriques de Paiva, Manuel Joaquim 120,
123
Hesse, Carla 3
396
illuministi 23, 24
Napoleons conquest 32
Risorgimento 24
utopia, vs reform 24
Iturri, Francisco, Carta crtica sobre la
historia de Amrica 95
Jaksic, Ivan 347
Jansenism 50
Jaramillo, Manuel Antonio 358
Jesuits
expulsion from
France 50
Italy 25
Portugal 41, 43
Spain 185, 200
New World historiography 8397
Peru 186, 187, 191, 1945
suppression of 31
Savoy 219
Jos I, King of Portugal 41, 137, 322
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor 13, 206,
208, 217
Jover, Blas 159
Juan, Jorge, and Antonio de Ulloa,
Noticias secretas de Amrica 1857
Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis 234
Koselleck, Reinhart 264
Krieger, L. 203
Lagrange, Luigi 204
Lamoignon de Malesherbes, ChrtienGuillaume 556
Lanning, John Tate 104
Laverdy, Clment-Charles-Franois de 60,
275, 276
Le Blanc, Jean-Bernard 54
legal despotism 39, 168, 175, 1812
Leite, Paulo Gomes 134, 136
Lima 106
Bellavista port 189, 191
Callao port, destruction 188
earthquake (1746) 188, 193
Index
reconstruction 189
tsunami (1746) 35, 188
Lisbon
Cortes 366
earthquake (1755) 41
Lobo, Jernimo Francisco 120, 1246
Locke, John 120, 121, 289
Second Treatise on Government 122
Longano, Francesco 28
Louis IV, King of France 169
Louis XIV, King of France 39, 295, 328
Louis XV, King of France 48, 277, 284,
285
Louis XVI, King of France 48
Lucena-Giraldo, Manuel 17, 34
Lugo, Estanislao de 163
Luther, Martin 126, 127
Luzn, Ignacio 161
Lynch, John 117, 314, 346, 355
Macao, enlightened reform 42
McFarlane, Anthony 100
Machiavelli, Niccol 259, 268, 269
Madrid
Esquilache mutiny 316
masquerades 151
Reales Estudios de San Isidro 163
Royal Academy of Fine Arts 162
Royal Academy of History 85, 87,
889, 94, 96, 162
Royal Seminary of Nobles 1623
Madrid Economic Society, Ladies
Committee 164
Maistre, Joseph de 213
Malabaila di Canale, Luigi 210
Malaspina, Alejandro, scientific
expeditions 945, 31920
Malines, Roberto di, Count 214
Mangarino, Pedro, Provincial of San
Francisco 192
Manso de Velsco, Josef 184, 188, 190,
191, 1934, 196, 198, 201
Lima, reconstruction 189
Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples 26
397
398
Index
399
execution of 81
on feudalism 678
on middle order government 712,
73, 74, 78, 7980
on moderate government 689, 712
on the people 79
on political participation 8081
on representative government 71
on theatre 75
on virtue 73
works
Corradino 756
Progetto di costituzione della
repubblica napoletana 79
Rapporto del Comitato di
Legislazione al Governo
Provvisario 79
Saggi politici 67, 68, 71, 73, 78, 80
Pagden, Anthony 99, 111
Palacios, Marco 347
Palafox y Mendoza, Juan de, Bishop 201
Palmieri, Gioia 29
Paoletti, Ferdinando 29
Paquette, Gabriel 35, 39, 40, 43
Paris, Treaty of (1783) 309
Parlement de Maupeou, France 274
Parma, Duke of 25
Paz, Gustavo 100
Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil 342
Peralta, Vctor 15
Pereira de Caldas, Antnio 120
Pereira, Luis 160
periodization, chronological vs stylistic 19
Pernambuco
sugar exports 370
uprisings (1817/18234) 368, 378,
379
Perrone di San Martino, Baldassare 214,
218
Peru 109
clergy
criticism of 1857
reform attempts 188, 189, 19091
wealth 186
400
Index
401
402
slavery
Brazil 43, 383
Silva Lisboas attitude 3846, 387
Smith, Adam
Wealth of Nations 40, 277, 278, 385
influence on Silva Lisboa 371
Southern Europe
Atlantic empires 2
collaboration of states 56
cultural connections 6
and enlightened reform 4
Southey, Robert, History of Brazil 361
Souza Caldas, Antnio Pereira de 122
Souza Coutinho, Rodrigo de 15
Spain
Castilian public law 237, 239
church property, seizure 185
enlightened values 1467, 15960,
1645
and the Enlightenment 1478, 149
salons 15051, 158
foreign travellers in 145
intendancy system, extension 190
Jesuits, expulsion 185
law, decrees vs general rules 235
legal culture 235
literacy 1578
printing industry 161
reading public 158
royal academies, foundation 162
royal court
cosmopolitanism 156
curbs on excesses 1513
enlightened reform, contribution
1578
functions 1545
organization 156
patronage 159, 160
reform 1567
sociability 1457
Royal Library 1612
secularization edicts 185
tertulias 145, 146, 150
Index
403
theatre
didactic power of 75
reform, Spain 162
Thr, Christine 176
Thomas, Antoine-Lonard 54
Thnen, Johann Heinrich von 257
Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista 6
Tocqueville, Alexis de 39
Torquemada, Juan de 90
Torrepalma, Count of 158
Tortuga 169
Townsend, Joseph, at Spanish court
1456, 147, 148
Trudaine, Daniel 56, 57, 58
Tpac Amaru revolt, Peru 307, 318
Turgot, Jacques 37, 48, 59, 60, 179,
2778
Turin 209, 210
Accademia di Agricoltura 21112
Accademia Reale delle Scienze 211, 217,
223
Accademia Sampaolina 212
Arsenal 211
Camera dei Conti 214
Literari Societas Patria 212
Societa Privata 211
Tuscany 25
Tuscany, Grand Duchy 205
agricultural reform 27
404
Aristotle on 723
Pagano on 73
Vitoria, Francisco de 239
Voltaire 124
influence in Spain 148
La Henriade 130
The Maid of Orleans 120
Walpole, Robert 325
War of Austrian Succession (174048) 53,
58, 215, 216, 273
War of Jenkins Ear (173948) 190
War of Spanish Succession (170114) 183
White, Jos Blanco 165
Yeregui, Jos de 161
Zacagnini, Antonio 161
Zambelli, Paola 258