Deconstructing Legitimacy

Viceroys, Merchants, and the Military in Late Colonial Peru Patricia H. Marks

Publish Date: 1/8/2009
Dimensions: 6 x 9
Page Count: 416 pages

Illustrations:

Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-03209-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-271-03210-8

Paperback Edition: $37.95Add to Cart

Ebook Edition: $14.95From Google

Winner of a 2008 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

“This is an impeccably researched and articulately written inquiry into the collapse of royal authority in Lima at the time of independence. Not only does the book yield a bounty of fresh insights and interpretations into these tumultuous events, but it also identifies actions by the rebels that set an important precedent in Peruvian politics and reverberated in the political culture for years to come.” —Peter Klaren, George Washington University

“Examining the bitter trade disputes that divided Peru and shaped its conflicts with Spain, Patricia Marks casts new light on Spanish America’s bumpy transition from colony to republic. In delightfully clear prose, she contributes to our understanding of the Wars of Independence and the trans-Atlantic struggles about 'free trade' and representation. This is a landmark book that offers many surprising and welcome discoveries.” —Charles F. Walker, University of California, Davis

“This book, based on decades of meticulous research, is a major contribution to the burgeoning literature on the late colonial period, a period whose intellectual vitality is now being recognized after many decades of neglect.” —G. B. Paquette, The Americas

“In a thoughtful and perceptive study, independent historian Marks . . . reveals that, rather than acting independently, the military officers who executed the coup also represented a significant group of wholesale merchants in Lima. Based primarily on extensive research in archival materials in Spain and Peru, this clearly written and argued work is the most important English-language study of Peruvian independence to appear in nearly 30 years.” —M. A. Burkholder, Choice

“In broad terms the arguments and conclusions presented in this stimulating book build upon and extend, rather than contradict, those of previous commentators on Peru’s transition to independence, but they do so with an unprecedented level of detail and incisive analysis, making a major contribution to the historiography of late colonial Peru. This book deserves to be read by all students of the Bourbon reforms and Spanish American independence.” —John Fisher, American Historical Review

The overthrow of Viceroy Joaquín de la Pezuela on 29 January 1821 has not received much attention from historians, who have viewed it as a simple military uprising. Yet in this careful study of the episode, based on deep archival research, Patricia Marks reveals it to be the culmination of decades of Peruvian opposition to the Bourbon reforms of the late eighteenth century, especially the Reglamento de comercio libre of 1778. It also marked a radical change in political culture brought about by the constitutional upheavals that followed Napolean's invasion of Spain.

Although Pezuela's overthrow was organized and carried out by royalists among the merchants and the military, it proved to be an important event in the development of the independence movement as well as a pivotal factor in the failure to establish a stable national state in post-independence Peru. The golpe de estado may thereby be seen as an early manifestation of Latin American praetorianism, in which a sector of the civilian population, unable to prevail politically and unwilling to compromise, pressures army officers to act in order to "save" the state.

Patricia H. Marks is an independent scholar who received her doctorate in history from Princeton in 2003.

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: Mercantile Conflict and Political Culture

1. City of Kings, City of Commerce

2. Bourbon Reformers and the Merchants of Lima

3. Sabotaging Reform

4. Preventing Independence

5. The Free-Trade Dispute

6. Merchants, the Military, and the Disintegration of Pezuela’s Authority