The Spanish Monarchy and the Creation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada pdf download

The Spanish Monarchy and the Creation of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1717–1739) – The Politics of Early Bourbon Reform in Spain and Spanish America

By Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso

THE SPANISH MONARCHY AND THE CREATION OF THE VICEROYALTY OF NEW GRANADA (1717–1739)

Book Introduction

A real cédula, addressed to the tribunal of accounts, or audit court, of Santa Fe de Bogotá on May 27, 1717, informed its members that Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, had decided to create a new viceroyalty in northern South America. Other high-ranking civil and religious authorities across the region received similar documents communicating this decision.

 According to these documents, a number of “effective reasons of congruency” had convinced the king that it would be “most convenient” to appoint a viceroy to replace the president, governor and captain-general who had so far headed the audien-cia of Santa Fe.1

These documents further explained that the newly created viceroyalty of the New Kingdom of Granada would comprise “the Province of Santa Fe, New Kingdom of Granada, [and] those of Cartagena, Santa Marta, Maracaibo, Caracas, Antioquia, Guyana, Popayan, and San Francisco de Quito”.

The audience and tribunal of accounts based in Santa Fe became responsible for supervising the government and administration of all these territories to the exclusion of the courts in the viceroyalty of Peru and the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, Panama and Quito.2 Thus, the first Bourbon king of Spain established the first new viceroyalty created within the Spanish Monarchy since the mid-sixteenth century.

The viceroyalty, of course, was an administrative and political institution with a long tradition within the Spanish world. In 1701, when Philip V became king of Spain, the Spanish Monarchy included 10 such entities: Aragon, Catalonia, Navarre and Valencia within the Iberian Peninsula; Majorca, Naples, Sardinia and Sicily in the Mediterranean; and New Spain and Peru in the Americas.

However, Philip’s decision to create a further American viceroyalty is puzzling in several ways. Firstly, this monarch’s first reign (1701–1724) is probably best known for the suppression rather than the creation of viceroy-alties. Within the context of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713/16), the crown reformed local government in the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon—Aragon, Catalonia, Majorca and Valencia—effectively abolishing viceregal rule along with most autonomous provincial institutions. This was followed shortly afterwards by the much less well-known de facto suppression