Search

Of all the influences on the development of New Granada's political life during the eighteenth century, Bourbon policies are the most obvious. We have seen how, throughout the century, ministers of Bourbon monarchs sought to enhance royal authority and improve Spain's command of the region's resources, with varying degrees of intensity and success. The first conjuncture of Bourbon reform in New Granada, in 1717–23, was ineffectual, if not entirely futile. It did, however, clear the ground for a second conjuncture of administrative and commercial reorganization in 1739–40, from which New Granada emerged with a new framework for government, under the command of the viceroys, and a new framework for its overseas trade, carried by individual register-ships. Then, after a long phase of piecemeal, incremental reform, the government of Charles III inaugurated Bourbon New Granada's third and most radical reformist conjuncture in 1778, when Gálvez's new colonial program was applied to the region in the visita general of 1778–83. New Granada's political system was therefore affected by three major moments of reform during the eighteenth century. In the first, the crown reasserted royal authority, but failed to sustain its reorganization of New Granada's system of government. In the second, Madrid established a permanent viceregal government, which strengthened the networks of royal command in New Granada by installing a strong authority at the heart of the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far, we have examined the structures of settlement, society, and economy in eighteenth-century New Granada and have seen something of the economic links that bound the colony to Spain. However, by focusing on the character of New Granada's social and economic structures, the foregoing chapters have tended to emphasize elements of continuity and evolution within the colony, without paying much attention to the external factors that affected its development. And yet, of course, the eighteenth century saw important changes in relations between Spain and her colonies, as the Bourbon kings who inherited the Hapsburg throne sought to reverse the seemingly inexorable process of decline that Spain had suffered during the seventeenth century. Not only did the new dynasty establish a more centralized and absolutist authority within the metropolis, but, by political, military, and economic reform, it also sought to bring about what has been called the “second conquest of America.” This was not a process that began immediately or proceeded smoothly. The first reforms were hesitant in tone and uneven in application, and the great age of reform did not arrive until the reign of Charles III. New Granada, however, felt the repercussions of change at the metropolitan center early in the century, when its trade and administration were touched by Madrid's earliest efforts to reassert control over the resources of its empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North of the equator It has become a truism of historical writing to conceive of Africa in the course of the nineteenth century as becoming increasingly a part of, and a product of, the expansion of Europe, which, beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had integrated ever larger areas of the world into a single economic system. In attempting an overview of the state of the continent on the eve of partition – roughly over the decade of the 1870s – a large number of questions arise from a consideration of this truism. To what extent was Africa already an adjunct of an economic system dominated by Europe? What was the relationship between Africa and this European system – was it one of an equal or an unequal exchange of commodities? To what extent was Africa dependent economically, if not yet politically? What social and ideological changes were beginning to follow from this dependency? Was Africa a fruit ripe for plucking in the 1870s, was there a certain inevitability about the forthcoming imperialist carve-up, or was partition an extraneous historical occurrence forced upon a continent which had within it other options for coping with the future? There are no answers to these questions that are at the same time simple and sensible. Certainly the answers to all such queries will differ, according to the region of Africa which is under scrutiny. Even within particular regions, the situation of individual states, societies or groups of people, their relations with each other and with the outside world (especially with the European capitalist economies) varied greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]