On his death bed Charles fought desperately to prevent the Spanish empire from being destroyed by political intrigue. The crown was being actively sought by three claimants, the prince of Bavaria, the archduke Charles of Austria, and Luis IV’s grandson, Philip Anjou.

Charles decided on the french, Philip Anjou to succeed him.

But England was very alarmed over the idea that there would be a union of France and Spain and this precipitated the War for the Spanish Succession that lasted from 1702 to 1713. The war ended with the treaty of Utrecht which granted to England Gibraltar, Minorca and some important trade concessions in the Spanish Indies and a guarantee against a future accommodation between France and Spain.

In addition a later peace treaty gave the Spanish Netherlands and Spain’s Italian possessions to Austria.

This was a humiliating defeat for Spain and left the country with a deep and pervasive sense of pessimism and defeatism.

Still, the defeat, like all defeats led to the call for sweeping reforms of Spanish institutions. The war showed just how divisive Spain really was, especially when Aragon, Valencia and Barcelona invited and received the support of English troops. In fact, it wasnt’ until September of 1714 a year after the treaty that Barcelona surrendered to the Bourbon armies under the leadership of Philip V. The new Bourbon regime made a systematic but unsuccessful effort to eradicate the Catalan language and nationality.

The new established peace allowed for the implementation of a program of reform inspired by the French reform model. The reform and revival of Spain is associated under the House of Bourbon. Under a government that could be described as despotic the bourbon Kings attempted to completely overhaul the existing political and economic structures and totally renovated Spanish national life.

After the war it was painfully apparent that despite the wealth and grandeur of Spain it was becoming peripheralized in terms of its national development when compared with other European countries.

Only such a sweeping reform could close the gap that separated Spain from its European neighbors and modernize the county so that it too would have a powerful industry, highly productive agricultural sector and growing and prosperous middle class. Spain rightly anticipated the fact that the entire 18^th century would be characterized by wars and rumors of war between Spain and England and its allies over colonial possessions.

The reform movement clearly provoked the reaction by the Catholic church and the nobility as the Bourbon reforms were steeped in French Liberal ideology of the day. It was a movement based on early French rationalism and Spanish enlightenment that severely criticized the role of the church and the clergy and that society could only be improved by using informed reason and organizing it along rational lines.

The work began under Philip V, but reached its highest expression under Charles III who ruled from 1759-1788.

The early reforms attempted to establish state-owned textile factories and invited foreign technical experts into Spain. Agriculture would be modernized, ship building speeded up and an infrastructure would be built in Spain that would facilitate regional and national economic integration and development.

The power of the Church in politics was severely curtailed with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. But the reform movement was somewhat still-born for the crown and the political power of the kings was still directly dependent on thousands of bonds to the feudal nobility and church of Spain. The reforms never touched the real problems of Spain which were terrible poverty in the rural sector, feudal labor forms, backward agricultural forms, and the overwhelming influence and wealth of the Catholic church.

As a result of these socio-economic impediments Spain had no real pool of investment capital to invest in industrial enterprises, consequently had an almost non-existent middle class and remained a third rate power in comparison to Britain, France or Holland.

It would be the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1788 that would bring that would end the period of Liberal reforms. Charles IV and his ministers turned sharply to the right and Liberal leaders and reformers were exile or imprisoned.

In the American colonies the Bourbon never gave any thought to greater self-government to the colonists or of permitting them to trade more freely with the non-Spanish world, despite the growing contraband trade between the 13 North American colonies and the rest of the Americas.

If anything, the Bourbons centralized colonial administration so as to make it more efficient. The commercial reforms were designed to stop smuggling and the contraband trade that had flourished for decades and reinforce the exclusive commercial ties between Spain and its colonies. If anything, Spain was out to reconquer the colonies economically for Spain.

Philip V, the first Bourbon sought to reinforce the flota system which had fallen into decay in the late 17^th century and had allowed for a growing contraband trade.

This reinforcement was even more pressing in the sense that the Treaty of Utrecht gave the English merchant class who owned the South Sea Company the v right to supply slaves to Spanish America. It was well-known that the English slave ships also carried contraband cargoes to the Spanish colonies.

The Spanish government sought to check this contraband trade by employing privateers guardacostas which patrolled the main sea lanes of trade. The piracies of the guardacostas eventually led to a war between England and Spain in 1739. The war again destroyed the flota system and by the end of the 18^th century it would be galeones that would carry the cargo between Spain and the colonies.

Piracy flourished under the galleon system in the Caribbean and Port Royal in Jamaica was the entrepot for piracy, was run by pirates and was impregnable to attack by the Spanish. Port Royal from all accounts was a licentious, wide-open port-town famous for its violence, immorality and vices, where pirates all over the Caribbean would stay over to party, drink, gamble, whore and reprovision for their next predations on the Spanish Main.

From the 1760’s the mercantilist system was gradually eliminated to allow for more free trade. In 1778 the famous free-trade decree was promulgated whereby with the exception of Mexico and Venezuela trade would be free between the colonies. In 1789 the decree was extended to all or Spanish America.

The success of the Free Trade policy was reflected in a spectacular increase in the value of Spain’s commerce with Spanish America. Between 1778 and 1788 it increased 700%.

This led to the creation of new trading center in SA and new merchant groups emerged as a new and increasingly powerful economic class. The volume of business increased, prices declined and the contraband trade was undercut.

But, still the reform ultimately failed in reconquering colonial markets for Spain for two main reasons. First, Spain was not an industrialized country and therefore the colonies actively sought trade was the emergent industrialized nations such as England, France and Holland. And number two Spanish American trade was plagued by the problem that Spain was unable to keep the vital sea lanes open in time of war. Because of these two reasons Spain was unable to supply the colonies with the essential goods that they needed. It would be more and more the US that would supply these goods to Spanish America much to the dismay of both Spain and England.

Probably the most significant result of the Bourbon Reforms was the boost it gave to economic activity in Spanish America. Still, it is unclear whether this upsurge in economic activity was the result of a general economic upswing in Western Europe at the turn of the century or whether it was a direct consequence of the Bourbon Reforms cannot be stated with a definite degree of certainty.

Nevertheless, there was a great increase in agricultural, pastoral and mining production in Spanish America.

The production of sugar, indigo, cacao, tobacco hides and other staples rose sharply due to increased European demand for these products and the impact of the Bourbon Reforms.

After 1770, coffee became a major export from Cuba and Venezuela. After 1770, population recovery led to increased demand for the production of foodstuffs. Church tithe records reveal that there was a 40% increase in agricultural production between 1779 and 1789.

Yet one historian on a regional level paints a much different picture. David Brading suggests that the Mexican hacienda at the end of the 18^th century was in a period of profound depression, profits averaged only 6 to 9 % and most haciendas were heavily mortgaged the church and other ecclesiastical institutions of the time.

The increased agricultural activity was for the most part on plantations that produced cash-crops, not on haciendas. At the end of the 18^th century land became more and more concentrated in fewer hands as the haciendas expanded in order to increase their production, profits and pay their heavy debt burdens. Powerful families emerged who would buy out small land holders and usurp Indian communities in order to expand production.

When natural disasters struck such as premature rains or early frost the precarious balance between population and food availability was upset. In 1785-87 a terrible famine killed tens of thousands due to drought and crop failure.

By 1735 trade grew between the la plata region and Spain. On what is now the Argentine pampas cattle flourished on estancias. By the end of the 18^th century these cattle estates were 20 to 50 square mile tracts of land that held as many as 100,000 head of cattle.

By 1790 Bueno Aires was exporting nearly a million hides annually to Spain. The meat of the animal was turned into jerked beef at saladeros or salting plants to feed the rapidly growing slave populations on the plantations in Brazil and the Atlantic coast.

The growth of the cattle industry in the La Plata region was accompanied by the concentration of land into fewer hands and a wealth and very powerful rural elite was created by the 1780’s. This took place at the expense of agriculture that remained in a very depressed state and at the expense of the growth of Liberal ideology and political power of Bueno Aires. The political power of the La Plata region would remain in the countryside despite the growth of Buenos Aires by the 1820’s.

The 18^th century saw a revival of silver mining in the colonies. The increase in silver mining as in the case of agriculture was not so much due to capital investment or new technologies, but rather to the recovery of the Indian and labor population.

Colonial manufacturing after a long period of growth began a marked decline at the end of the 18^th century due to the influx of cheap foreign imports against which the domestic products could not compete.

The textile and wine industries of Argentina fell into decay as they lost their markets in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

And while Spain adopted mercantilist measures in order to restrict the importation of foreign goods it had little effect. Also contributing to the depression in manufacturing were lack of investment capital, lack of a completely free-labor system, and a tradition of making ones living in either mines or haciendas.

The labor system in the 18^th century centered on forced labor despite the Bourbon’s professed dislike of forced labor. The Bourbons sought to tighten the legal enforcement of debt peonage. Only those peons who had no outstanding debts could move from one hacienda to another legally.

In Mexico, debt peonage seemed to be less severe in terms of forced labor regimes than in the Andes where the mita continued to play an important role in the provision of mining and agricultural labor until the end of the colonial period.

In the Andes the Spanish imposed the repartimiento de mercancias which was the forced purchase by Indians of goods from the Spanish and corregidores. Also heavy tribute demands created a need for cash among the Indian ethnicities.

This led to the creation of a class of Andean Indian known as the forestero or those who fled the mita and their villages and winded up working on haciendas.

Political

Under Charles III, the work of territorial reorganization of the sprawling empire continued. The Viceroyalty of Peru, already diminished by the creation of New Granada, was further reduced by the creation of the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, with its capital at Buenos Aires in 1776.

This was done in hopes that it wold curtail the large amount of contraband trade that moved up the river into the Andean region. Contraband that the British controlled.

The creation of new viceroyalties and captaincies general went hand in hand with another major political reform, the transfer to the colonies between 1782 and 1790 of the intendant system. This was an attempt to improve the efficiency of the administrative bureaucracy.

The intendants, who ruled from the capitals of their provinces were expected to relieve the overburdened viceroys of many of their duties. They were also expected to further the economic development of their districts by modernizing agriculture, mining and improving the infrastructure.

The intendants were probably good men, but the same could not be said for their underlings the subdelegados who became known for their oppressive practices towards the Indians.

The most common complaint lodged was that the subdelegados forced the Indians to trade with them even thought the repartimiento had been forbidden.

The great popular revolts of the 1780’s that would shake colonial society to its foundations were due in large part to the failure of the Indian and mestizo populations to share in the fruits of the 18^th century economic advance, whose principal beneficiaries were Creole and Spanish merchants, mine and landowners.

Increased revenue was a major objective of the bourbon commercial and political reforms. The main reason for the need for increased revenues was to strengthen the sea and land defenses fo the empire.

The disaster of the 7 Years War led to the loss of Havana and Manila to the English and this resulted in the desire to correct the shortcomings in the defense of the colonies.

To attract Creole youths the crown granted them fuero militar which was a privilege that exempted them from civil and criminal jurisdiction if they would join the officer corps.

This had the unintended consequence of leading to the formation of a special legal and social position of military officers that has continued throughout Latin American history.

The armed forces became a special caste with its own set of interests and agenda, that were not subject to civil jurisdiction. The military after Independence became the arbiter of political life.

But under the Bourbons the power of the colonial military was held in check by the bureaucracy and the church.

Colonial culture was a projection of Spanish culture at the time.

The church had a monopoly on colonial education at all levels. The primary and secondary schools maintained by the clergy with few exceptions were open only to children of the white upper-class and the Indian nobility.

Poverty condemned the overwhelming majority of masses to illiteracy.

The University of San Marcos in Lima was the first University opened in the New World (1542), the University of Mexico City was chartered by the crown in 1551.

There was strict censorship of books that was directed by the Royal council and this censorship led to the limited spread of new outside ideas in colonial society.

Though the ban was ineffective, Inquisition records of Lima reveal that many people were arrested tortured and killed for having seditious books in their possession.

Nevertheless, colonial scholars were able to make impressive contributions especially in the fields of Indian history, anthropology, linguistics and natural history.

The 16^th century was the Golden Age of Indian studies in Mexico. A large group of Franciscan missionaries carried out exhaustive studies on the Indian group there.

Bernardino de Saghagun compiled the monumental General History o of the Things of New Spain which was an encyclopedia of Aztec history.

For Andean history it was Garcilaso de la Vega who was the son of a conquistador and an Incan Princess who was the consumate historian. In his Royal Commentaries of the Incas he presents much valuable information on Incan and Andean history, culture, society, family, politics and religion.

The book was well-received in Europe and its favorable image of the Incan civilization continue to influence our view of Ancient Peru down to the present.

The teachings of the Enlightenment were very influential on Creole thought in the colonies and despite prohibitions on the circulation of forbidden books, the idea and work of Locke, Montesquieu, Hobbes and others made their impact in an incipient feeling of Creole nationalism.

This nationalism was built on other foundations as well. By the end of the 18^th century the Creoles became increasingly conscious of their class position vis a vis the Spanish and peninsulares.

Creole nationals assembled an impressive body of data designed to refute the popular belief at the time that the Creole and any Latin America was inherently inferior when compared to the Spanish.

In Mexico this took a renewed pride in the Aztec and Toltec past that would later lead to Mexican pride and nationalism.

The Creole effort to develop a collective self-consciousness also found expression in thought and symbolism. In Mexico Creole intellectuals exploited two powerful myths in the attempt to achieve Mexican spiritual superiority over Spain.

One was the myth that the Virgin Mary appeared on a mill near Mexico City in 1531 and that an Indian named Juan Diego saw the miracle, and through the Indian commanded the Bishop of Mexico to build a church there.

The Bishop wanted proof and the proof came in the form of roses brought to the Bishop in winter time. On the cloak of Diego was a miraculous painting or image of a brown faced virgin. From the 17^th century the Brown virgin became the virgin of Guadeloupe and was venerated throughout Mexico.

In 1810 it would be father Miguel Hidalgo, who with the banner of the Virgin would lead the Indian and mestizo masses in a great revolt against Spanish rule and touch off the long struggle for independence.

The other great myth was that of Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec-redeemer King. Successive colonial writers had suggested that he was none other than the Christian Apostle St Thomas.

Revolt

The traditional view of the Indian was that they were more or less passive objects of Spanish rule and acculturation processes. But more in depth social and anthropological history reveals that the Indian were not mere passive objects, but individuals who actively resisted the Spanish at many junctures.

Resistance could take the form of revolts, flight, riots, sabotage and legal recourse.

In the Andes flight was the Indians most effective way to stop the Mita, as they became wage laborers on agricultural estates.

Revolt was the most dramatic and visible form of resistance to Spanish rule by the Indians and other oppressed groups. Numerous Indian and Black slave revolts punctuated the colonial period.

Before Spanish rule had been firmly consolidated, the Indian rose against their new masters in many regions. In Mexico, the Mixton War raged form 1540 to 1542. The Maya of Yucatan staged a great uprising in 1546. A descendant of the Inca Kings, Manco Capac II led a nationwide revolt in Peru in 1536.

In the Jungles and mountains of Brazil, the Caribbean and central America groups of runaway Black slaves established maroon colonies. One colony in the Brazilian jungle was reported to have as many as 25,000 inhabitants before it was discovered and conquered by the Portuguese.

The wave of revolutionary resistance subsided in the 17^th century but rebounded at the end of the 18^th century when new economic burdens were imposed on the common people.

Overall the bourbon reforms helped enrich colonial elites, but also created great disparities in terms of wealth and class distance. The rich got richer and the poor got skewed during the Bourbon attempts. The imposition of new taxes made misery of the lower classes more acute by the end of the 18^th century.

This class analysis help to explain the popular character of the revolts of 1780-81 as distinct fro the Creole wars for independence of the next generation.

It is important to point out that the Creole elite supported the Spanish against the native Indigenous uprisings. The uprisings of 1780-81 were to decide for all time whether the lands to the south of the Rio Grande river would be called Indo America or Latin America. Because of the racial and cultural issues at stake in the earlier popular movements most Creoles did not support the rebellions.

In the 18^th century, Spanish pressures and demands on the Peruvian Indians increased considerably.

The mita was intensified in order that Potosi could recover its productivity. There were also increases in the alcabala, the repartimiento de mercancias and a decrease in the wages for free-laborers. The mitayos were now forced to produce a quota of 30 loads per day from the mine as opposed to 15 before..

These innovations produced the desired results of doubling the silver output at Potosi, but they also caused intense discontent among the Indians.

Indian discontent reached a climax due to the severe measures taken by the vistador Jose de Areche who had been sent by Charles III in 1777 to reform conditions in Peru.

Areche who became hated by the Indians tightened up the collection of taxes and broadened the tributary category to include all mestizos.

Tribute revenues went up 1 million pesos annually, but these measures caused great hardships for the common people.

The great revolt of 1780 had its forerunner for from 1742 to 1755 a native leader called Juan Santos, "the invincible" waged partisan warfare from the eastern slopes of the Andes.

The collective historical consciousness of this rebellion was remembered by Jose Gabriel Condocanqui Tupac Amaru and his wife Micaela Bastidas who were well-educated, wealthy descendants from Incan kings.

They lived in and around the area that is now Cuzco and Tupac Amaru was the owner of some 400 mules and ran a transportation line from the Rio de la Plata region to the Andes, often importing English contraband.

A growing number of Spanish tax collectors were being attacked as they rode into Indian communities to collect taxes.

At the same time TA was actively seeking legal relief for his people through legal channels, but to no effect.

It seems that both TA and Micaela had been planning this rebellion for some time with English help. Their older son was studying in England at the time and TA had many commercial contacts with British traders and shippers.

TA worked a deal with the English and for their support TA would receive money, English weapons, and logistical advice in planning the rebellion. The English would then in turn secure most favored nation trading status from the victorious Indian forces.

In November of 1780 TA raised the standard of revolt by ambushing the hated corregidor Antnio Arriaga near TA town of Tinta. TA then put him to death after a summary trial, despite the fact that Micaela thought this to be a very unwise idea.

But even before the TA rebellion reached fruition another rebellion of the Catari Brothers broke out in the Bolivian altiplano. By 1780 the entire altiplano and southern sierra were aflame with revolt, though TA was seen as the leader and unifier of the rebellions.

TA wanted to drive the Spanish from Peru. He wanted to return to a neo-Incan state of socialism and reciprocity that would be supported commercially and diplomatically by the British and possibly even the Americans. TA still did proclaim loyalty to the King of Spain in an attempt to secure the loyalty of the Indians who feared the mestizo and Creole more than the King, but this was just a ruse to get their support.

TA committed many tactical errors especially when he ignored Micaela’s plea to take Cuzco and secure it. This was a fundamental and terrible error. Had they taken Cuzco there would have been no way for the Spanish to survive the cold and hostile Andean nights, especially since the Indian forces controlled all the passes into Cuzco.

There was also poor communications between rebel forces and while TA led the Indian elites, it was Micaela who had the support of the common and poor Indian masses who didn’t trust the rich TA. When they saw Micaela’s power more and more limited by her husband they secretly abandoned the movement. This led to eventual divisions between the Indian nobility, especially since Micaela was of a different Noble kin than TA.

TA towards the end of the rebellion completely ignored Miceala when she told him that he had enemies on all side for not taking Cuzco and allowing the Spanish to garrison their troops there. She told him not to ride to Tungasuca, he struck her and left and was captured by rival Indian nobility and turned over to the Spanish in Cuzco.

At the trial of TA and Micaela they were cruelly tortured and their trials of marriage publicly exposed and then they were cruelly put to death with 70 other members of both their families.

The last Incan revolt did have some positive consequences in that the crown hastily abolished the repartimiento de mercancias, lightened the mita and established a high court in Cuzco.

In New Grenada in 1781 there occurred the Comuneros revolt that had its origins in the intolerable economic conditions. The Spanish had created new taxes to pay for defense against a supposed British attack and it was the poor that bore the brunt of the taxes.

This provoked an uprising in Socorro which was an important mining and agricultural zone in the north and the revolt soon spread. The motto of the revolt was viva el rey y muera el mal gobierno.

Its organizational objectives was to form a grass-roots movement of all colonial groups disaffected with Spanish authority except for Black slaves.

This was for the most part a peasant insurrection and in the town of Socorro a comun was created that served as a central revolutionary committee.

Under their command a mass of Indian and poor mestizos attacked and seized Bogota. In Bogota the rebel forces demanded reduction of tribute and sales tax, the return of usurped Indian lands, the abolition of the tobacco tax and preference for Creoles over Europeans in filling political positions.

An agreement was reached in June of 1781 with the rebels that was sanctified by the archbishop. Secretly, however the Spanish commissioners signed another document declaring the agreement void because it was obtained by force, and ferociously repressed the insurgents when they had disbanded.

Like the rebellions in the Andes the Creoles were either divided over supporting the movement or dead set against it. In the next political movement, this time for independence it would be the Creoles who lead and the commoners who are either divided or against an independence movement fomented by the racial and economic elite of the colonies.