Author: Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199270286
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
This book examines the relationship between Spain and America in the seventeenth century through the life and thought of Juan de Palafox (1600-1659), a protege of the count-duke of Olivares who became bishop of Puebla and Visitor General of New Spain. A witness to the catastrophic consequences of Olivares' plan to abrogate the political heterogeneity of the Spanish monarchy, and more sensitive than his patron to the constitutional diversity of the empire, Palafox developed an alternativeprogramme for reform which involved delegating power to the American municipalities controlled by the creoles. His support for creole aspirations and attempt to carry out a radical plan for administrative decentralization threatened to overturn the established viceregal system and met with strong opposition in government circles. Faced with domestic revolt and war in Europe, ministers in Madrid chose to stand by the status quo and preserve a model of overseas government which, although in manyways defective and prone to abuse, at least seemed to offer the crown the measure of authority required for satisfying its growing financial requirements. Reform in America was sacrificed to the preservation of Spain's reputation in Europe. Yet the fact that Palafox failed in no way undermines the importance of his endeavour. By promoting a different political arrangement between Spain and the Indies, he thrust under the spotlight the main problem faced by Spanish statesmen of this period, that of ruling a composite monarchy at a time of mounting international pressure. This book contributes, therefore, to our understanding of the way in which the transatlantic relationship worked and developed; it redresses the deficit of studies of the Spanish practice of empire and raises questions that are relevant to other composite political structures. It does so at the same time as it revises and throws new light on the figure of Palafox, whose achievements and failures have been analysed so far almost exclusively with reference to his famous dispute with the Jesuits. By setting Palafox firmly in the context of his time, this study revises old commonplaces and assists current efforts to reconstruct the human fabric of the Spanish empire, a field of research which is only just beginning to receive the attention it deserves.
Author: Christoph Rosenmüller
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 1552382346
Category : Mexico
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Palace intrigues and clientelism drove politics at the viceregal court of colonial Mexico. By carefully reconstructing social networks in the court of Viceroy Duke of Alburquerque (1702-1710), Christoph Rosenm ller reveals that the Duke presided over one of the most corrupt viceregal terms in Mexican history. Alburquerque was appointed by Spain's King Philip V at a time when expanding state power was beginning to meet with opposition in colonial Mexico. The Duke and his retainers, though seemingly working for the crown, actually built close alliances with locals to thwart the reform efforts emanating from Spain. Alburquerque collaborated with contraband traders and opposed the secularization of Indian parishes. He persecuted several local craftsmen and merchants, some of whom died after languishing in jail, accusing them of treason to bolster his own credentials as a loyal official. In the end, however, the dominant clique at the royal court in Madrid sought revenge. Alburquerque was forced to pay an unheard-of indemnity of 700,000 silver pesos to regain the king's favour. Dealing with a topic and period largely ignored by historiography, Rosenm ller exposes the vast patronage power of the viceroy at the historical watershed between the expiring Habsburg dynasty and the incoming Bourbon rulers. His analysis reveals that precursors of the Bourbon reforms and the struggle for Mexican independence were already at play in the early eighteenth century.
Author: Matthew D. O'Hara
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822392496
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
Catholicism, as it developed in colonial Mexico, helped to create a broad and remarkably inclusive community of Christian subjects, while it also divided that community into countless smaller flocks. Taking this contradiction as a starting point, Matthew D. O’Hara describes how religious thought and practice shaped Mexico’s popular politics. As he shows, religion facilitated the emergence of new social categories and modes of belonging in which individuals—initially subjects of the Spanish crown, but later citizens and other residents of republican Mexico—found both significant opportunities for improving their place in society and major constraints on their ways of thinking and behaving. O’Hara focuses on interactions between church authorities and parishioners from the late-colonial era into the early-national period, first in Mexico City and later in the surrounding countryside. Paying particular attention to disputes regarding caste status, the category of “Indian,” and the ownership of property, he demonstrates that religious collectivities from neighborhood parishes to informal devotions served as complex but effective means of political organization for plebeians and peasants. At the same time, longstanding religious practices and ideas made colonial social identities linger into the decades following independence, well after republican leaders formally abolished the caste system that classified individuals according to racial and ethnic criteria. These institutional and cultural legacies would be profound, since they raised fundamental questions about political inclusion and exclusion precisely when Mexico was trying to envision and realize new forms of political community. The modes of belonging and organizing created by colonialism provided openings for popular mobilization, but they were always stalked by their origins as tools of hierarchy and marginalization.
Author: Juan Luis Burke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000383547
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
Architecture and Urbanism in Viceregal Mexico presents a fascinating survey of urban history between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It chronicles the creation and development of Puebla de los Ángeles, a city located in central-south Mexico, during its viceregal period. Founded in 1531, the city was established as a Spanish settlement surrounded by important Indigenous towns. This situation prompted a colonial city that developed along Spanish colonial guidelines but became influenced by the native communities that settled in it, creating one of the most architecturally rich cities in colonial Spanish America, from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods. This book covers the city's historical background, investigating its civic and religious institutions as represented in selected architectural landmarks. Throughout the narrative, Burke weaves together sociological, anthropological, and historical analysis to discuss the city’s architectural and urban development. Written for academics, students, and researchers interested in architectural history, Latin American studies, and the Spanish American viceregal period, it will make an important contribution to the field.
Author: Harald E. Braun
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317110250
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
The Jesuit Juan de Mariana (1535-1624) is one of the most misunderstood authors in the history of political thought. His treatise De rege et regis institutione libri tres (1599) is dedicated to Philip III of Spain. It was to present the principles of statecraft by which the young king was to abide. Yet soon after its publication, Catholic and Calvinist politiques in France started branding Mariana a regicide. De rege was said to empower the private individual to kill a legitimate king. Its 'pernicious doctrines' were blamed for the murder of Henry IV in 1610, and it was burned at the order of the parlement of Paris. Modern historians have tended to build on this interpretation and consider De rege a stepping stone towards modern pluralist and democratic thought. Nothing could be further from the truth. The notion of Mariana as an uncompromising theorist of resistance is in fact based on the distorted reading of a few select sentences from the first book of the treatise. This study offers a radical departure from the old view of Mariana as an early modern constitutionalist thinker and advocate of regicide. Thorough analysis of the text as a whole reveals him to be a shrewd and creative operator of political language as well as a champion of the church and bishops of Castile. The argument as a whole is informed by a Catholic-Augustinian view of human nature. Mariana's bleak, at times downright cynical view of man imparts focus and coherence to a text that challenges well established terminological boundaries and political discourses. In the first instance, his deeply pessimistic appraisal of human virtue justifies his disregard of positive law. He is thus able to mould diverse elements extracted from Roman and canon law, scholastic theology and humanist literature into a deliberately equivocal discourse of reason of state. Finally, this secular interpretation of the world of politics is cleverly yoked to a thoroughly clerical agenda of reform. In fact, reason of state is made to propagate an episcopal monarchy. De rege is exceptional in that it strings together a curious scholastic theory of the origins of society, a conservative ideology of absolute monarchy and a breathtakingly radical vision of theocratic renewal of Spanish government and society. Juan de Mariana and Early Modern Political Thought elucidates the differentiated nature of political debate in Habsburg Spain. It confirms the complexity of Spanish political life in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Complementing recent work on Catholic political thought, the European reception of Machiavelli, and Spanish Habsburg government, this study offers a more complete and holistic picture of early modern Spanish political culture.
Author: Benjamin T. Smith
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 0826351735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
The Roots of Conservatism is the first attempt to ask why over the past two centuries so many Mexican peasants have opted to ally with conservative groups rather than their radical counterparts. Blending socioeconomic history, cultural analysis, and political narrative, Smith’s study begins with the late Bourbon period and moves through the early republic, the mid-nineteenth-century Reforma, the Porfiriato, and the Revolution, when the Mixtecs rejected Zapatista offers of land distribution, ending with the armed religious uprising known as the “last Cristiada,” a desperate Cold War bid to rid the region of impious “communist” governance. In recounting this long tradition of regional conservatism, Smith emphasizes the influence of religious belief, church ritual, and lay-clerical relations both on social relations and on political affiliation. He posits that many Mexican peasants embraced provincial conservatism, a variant of elite or metropolitan conservatism, which not only comprised ideas on property, hierarchy, and the state, but also the overwhelming import of the church to maintaining this system.
Author: Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004308792
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
In The Spanish Monarchy and the Creation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717-1739), Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso analyzes the politics behind the most salient Bourbon reform introduced in Spanish America during the early eighteenth century.
Author: William H. Beezley
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444340581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 701
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Book Description
A Companion to Mexican History and Culture features 40 essays contributed by international scholars that incorporate ethnic, gender, environmental, and cultural studies to reveal a richer portrait of the Mexican experience, from the earliest peoples to the present. Features the latest scholarship on Mexican history and culture by an array of international scholars Essays are separated into sections on the four major chronological eras Discusses recent historical interpretations with critical historiographical sources, and is enriched by cultural analysis, ethnic and gender studies, and visual evidence The first volume to incorporate a discussion of popular music in political analysis This book is the receipient of the 2013 Michael C. Meyer Special Recognition Award from the Rocky Mountain Conference on Latin American Studies.
Author: James Lockhart
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521299299
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492
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Book Description
A brief general history of Latin America in the period between the European conquest and the independence of the Spanish American countries and Brazil serves as an introduction to this quickly changing field of study.
Author: Jaime E. Rodriguez O.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804784639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 521
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Book Description
This book is a radical reinterpretation of the process that led to Mexican independence in 1821—one that emphasizes Mexico's continuity with Spanish political culture. During its final decades under Spanish rule, New Spain was the most populous, richest, and most developed part of the worldwide Spanish Monarchy, and most novohispanos (people of New Spain) believed that their religious, social, economic, and political ties to the Monarchy made union preferable to separation. Neither the American nor the French Revolution convinced the novohispanos to sever ties with the Spanish Monarchy; nor did the Hidalgo Revolt of September 1810 and subsequent insurgencies cause Mexican independence. It was Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 that led to the Hispanic Constitution of 1812. When the government in Spain rejected those new constituted arrangements, Mexico declared independence. The Mexican Constitution of 1824 affirms both the new state's independence and its continuance of Spanish political culture.
