Marks Deconstructing Legitimacy Viceroys, Merchants and the Military in Late Colonial Peru

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DECONSTRUCTING LEGITIMACY

Viceroys,Merchants, and theMilitary inLate Colonial Peru

P AT RI CI A H . M AR KS

T H E P E N N S Y L V A N I A S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

U N I V E R S I T Y P A R K , P E N N S Y L V A N I A


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library of congress

cataloging-in-publication data

Marks, Patricia H.Deconstructing legitimacy : viceroys, merchants, and the military in late colonial Peru /

Patricia H. Marksp. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.isbn 978-0-271-03209-2

1. PeruHistoryWar of Independence,182018292. PeruHistoryAutonomy and independence movements.

3. PeruEconimic conditions19th century.4. Legitimacy of governmentsPeru.

5. MerchantsPeruLimaHistory19th century.6. Political culturePeruHistory19th century.

7. Civil-military relationsPeruHistory19th century.I.Title.

F3446.M37 2007985'.04dc222007007604

Copyright 2007The Pennsylvania State University

All rights reservedPrinted in the United States of America

Published byThe Pennsylvania State University Press,

University Park, PA 16802-1003

The Pennsylvania State University Pressis a member of theAssociation of American University Presses.

It is the policy ofThe Pennsylvania State University Press

to use acid-free paper.This book is printed on Natures Natural,containing50% post-consumer waste, and

meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard forInformation SciencesPermanence of Paperfor Printed Library Material,

ansi z 39.481992.

Disclaimer:

Some images in the original version of this book are not

available for inclusion in the eBook.


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CONTENTS

Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xi

Introduction:Mercantile Conflict and Political Culture 1

1 City of Kings, City of Commerce 11

2 Bourbon Reformers and the Merchants of Lima 55

3 Sabotaging Reform 107

4 Preventing Independence 169

5 The Free-Trade Dispute 219

6 Merchants, the Military, and the Disintegration 265of Pezuelas Authority

7 The Pronunciamiento and Its Aftermath 303Conclusion:

Legitimacy and the Salvation of the State 339

Glossary of Spanish Terms 355

Bibliography 359

Index 389


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ILLUSTRATIONS

figures and maps

1 Edward Francis Finden, View of Lima from the Sea Near Callao. 162 Map of Callao and Lima,1835. 20

3 Map of South America,1821? 604 Anonymous,America Nursing Spanish Noble Boys. 102

5 Le Provincie de Quito, Lima, e Plata,1794. 1906 Mariano Carrillo, Viceroy Joaqun de la Pezuela. 2437Jos Mara Gutirrez Infantas, Viceroy Jos de La Serna. 309

tables

1 The wealthiest merchants of Lima,1819. 332 Merchants registering50,000+ pesos for Cdiz,1803. 39

3 Juan Bautista de Grates consignees in Spain,1803. 434 Destination of funds consigned to Spain aboard three ships,1803. 4546

5 Criollo Atlantic traders in Peru,1803. 48


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During the many years that this has been a work-in-progress, I have

accumulated more debts of gratitude than can possibly be acknowledgedindividually. Foremost among those who have helped me along the wayare the archivists and members of the staffs of the Archivo General deIndias in Sevilla, the Biblioteca Menndez Pelayo in Santander, the ArchivoGeneral de Simancas, the Archivo Histrico Nacional in Madrid, and theArchivo General de la Nacin Peruana and the Biblioteca Nacional inLima. I am also grateful to Rosario Ortiz de Zevallos for opening the

Tagle family archive to the neophyte historian I was in the 1960s. To all of

them, profound thanks.During the decade I lived in Peru, the late Flix Denegri Luna tutored

me in the basics of Peruvian history, encouraging me to make use of hissplendid private library. Many years later, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and JaneCasey Kuczynski (now Mrs. Thomas Hughes) provided encouragement andrefuge during a research trip to Lima. In Spain, Manuela Cristina GarcaBernal and Julian B. Ruiz Rivera were especially helpful.

Here in the United States, Professor Stanley Stein watched over theproject for more years than can reasonably be expected of anyone. Profes-sors Jeremy Adelman, Kenneth Mills, and Paul Gootenberg contributedmuch-needed criticism and support in the final stages. The resources andadvice provided by the late Barbara Hadley Stein and Peter T. Johnson,bibliographers for Iberia and Latin America at the Princeton UniversityLibrary, have been invaluable. Their successor, Fernando Acosta-Rodrguez,has also been generous with his aid and advice.

I am grateful to John Delaney, curator of historic maps, for finding andmaking available late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century mapsheld by the librarys Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

John Blazejewski produced images of the maps and other materials heldby the library, and AnnaLee Pauls saw to it that they found their way to

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


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my hands. Carlos Antonio Sobrino Zimmermann, curator of the Historycollection at the Museo Nacional de Arqueologa, Antropologa e Historiadel Per, made it possible to obtain photographs of portraits of Viceroys

Joaqun de la Pezuela and Jos de La Serna. And special thanks are dueRoberto Vergaray Arias, the knowledgeable and cordial owner of LimasLibrera E. Iturriaga y Cia., who dispatched them to me in Princeton.

An earlier version of Chapter 2 of this book, Confronting a Mercan-tile Elite: Bourbon Reformers and the Merchants of Lima,17651795,

was published in The Americas60,no.4 (April 2004).It is, of course, impossible to offer adequate thanks to my family. Daugh-

ters Tamara Marks Leppo and Melissa Marks Sparrow, M.D., were littlegirls when this project began. They were cheerful and loving company inLima, Sevilla, and Madrid, and over the many years I worked on it (inter-mittently) in Princeton. My husband, Russell E. Marks Jr., has beenunfailingly supportive in every sense of the word, providing a lifetime ofadventure and good fellowship. This work is dedicated to him.

Princeton, New Jersey

x acknowledgments


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agi Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla

agnp Archivo General de la Nacin Peruana, Limaahn Archivo Histrico Nacional, Madridahml Archivo Histrico Municipal, Limaamoz Archivo Manuel Ortiz de Zevallos, Limaamre Archivo del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Limaapn-m Archivo del Palacio Nacional, Madridbn-m Biblioteca Nacional, Madridbnp Biblioteca Nacional Peruana, Lima

cdip Coleccin Documental de la Independencia del PerHAHR Hispanic American Historical Reviewihcm Instituto de Historia y Cultura Militar, MadridJbLA Jahrbuch fr Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und

Gesellschaft LateinamerikasJL AS Journal of Latin American StudiesMenP Biblioteca de Menndez Pelayo, Santander, Spainmhs Massachusetts Historical Society, Bostonn-yhs New-York Historical Societyseg Archivo Militar de Segovia, Spainsim Archivo General de Simancas, Spain

ABBR EVIATIONS


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On 29 January 1821, there was a revolution in Lima, Peru. It was not arevolution for independence, similar to the one that had succeeded in Eng-lands North American colonies a few decades earlier. On the contrary, it

was a revolution intended topreventPerus independence from Spain. Norwas it a violent and bloody popular uprising like the French Revolution,

which historians have too often taken to be the only model for eventsdefined as revolutionary.The overthrow of Viceroy Joaqun de la Pezuela wasnevertheless a revolution in political culture, one that had far-reaching effectson the subsequent history of Peru. It changed the very idea of legitimategovernance. Instead of legitimacy being derived from the kings appoint-ment of a viceroy, a group of army officers and merchants took it uponthemselves to decide whether or not Pezuela could legitimately claim thepower and authority inherent in his office. Their decision was based not

on obedience to the kingthe constituted sovereign of Spainbut ontheir personal understanding of what makes a ruler illegitimate. It violatedthe two fundamental principles of Spanish monarchical polity, the princi-ples that legitimacy required both continuity of sovereignty and the consentof the governed.

In spite of its importance, very little has been written about Pezuelasoverthrow.1 Historians have assumed that thegolpe de estadowas entirely amilitary uprising planned and carried out by peninsular-born officers of

1. Accounts of Pezuelas overthrow are usually limited to a few sentences, but some compriseseveral pages: see, most recently, John R. Fisher, Bourbon Peru, 17501824 (Liverpool: LiverpoolUniversity Press,2003), 11820; Timothy E. Anna, The Fall of the Royal Government in Peru(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,1980),17074.

INTRODUCTION: MERCANTILE CONFLICT AND POLITICAL CULTURE


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the Army of Lima. According to this view, the militarypronunciamientothe model for many that were to follow in the nineteenth centurywas theresult of the officers ambition for personal advancement and their dissatis-faction with Pezuelas conduct of the war. In their ultimatum demandingPezuelas resignation,2 the royalist officers blamed the viceroy for the rebelssuccess, and since then military matters have dominated discussion of the

viceroys fall from power. Nevertheless, both the officers ultimatum andPezuelas Manifiesto,3 in which he answered the charges against him,indicate that those who engineered the golpe de estado were serving notonly their own interests but also those of a powerful group of royalist

merchants of the consulado de Lima (the merchants guild), who opposedPezuelas commercial policies, especially his proposal of 24 July 1818 toopen Limas port, Callao, to direct trade with the British. One of them,the peninsular-born Gaspar Rico y Angulo, later boasted that he hadbeen the instigator and organizer of the plot against Pezuela. Writing in1824, he declared:

Since the year 1818 . . . I have not ceased to combat the scan-

dalous lawlessness of the former government. . . . Convincedthat we would perish ignominiously if we remained subservientto a man who either did not comprehend the nature of his dutyor did not want to do it, I planned, proposed, and pursued hisabdication from command, as an honorable Spaniard. This enter-prise, the most important and useful thing that I have undertakenin my life, cost me four months of risk, labor, and expense.4

Because of his involvement with the controversial periodicalsEl Peruano(181112) and in the 1820s with El Depositario, Gaspar Rico is known to

2 introduction

2. The officers ultimatum (pronunciamiento) is printed in cdip-Tomo 26:Memorias, diarios ycrnicas,4 vols., ed. Flix Denegri Luna (Lima: Comisin Nacional del Sesquicentenario de laIndependencia del Per, 1971), 3:35358. The officers who signed the pronunciamiento werebriefly characterized by an unfriendly pen in the pamphlet composed by one of Pezuelassupporters, reprinted in ibid.,52024.

3. Joaqun de la Pezuela,Manifiesto en que el virrey del Per . . . refiere el hecho y circunstanciasde su separacin del mando (Madrid: Imprenta de D. Leonardo Nez de Vargas,1821; reprinted incdip-Tomo 26:Memorias, diarios y crnicas,3:267505, and hereafter cited as Pezuela,Manifiesto,with page numbers referring to the cdipversion).

4. Relacin de mritos y servicios de . . . Gaspar Rico y Angulo, Cuzco,23 Mar.1824,agi-Lima, leg.762.


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Peruvian history primarily as a publicist, not a merchant.5 In fact, he wasthe Peruvian factor for the powerful privileged trading company, the CincoGremios Mayores de Madrid, from 1801 to 1811, when the directors of thecompany finally succeeded in firing him. During his entire residence in Peru,he was the center of highly politicized mercantile quarrels, some of whichbrought him into direct and bitter conflict with the viceroys and causedone of them to exile him to Spain. After Napoleons army invaded Spainin 1808, Rico went so far as to criticize the king himselfin printandespecially the all-powerful royal favorite, Manuel Godoy. Throughout it all,Rico remained an ardent royalist. But his challenges to the authority of the

viceroys and his very public participation in the politics of early nineteenth-century Peru played a major role in delegitimizing colonial governance.In every system of government, a great deal of bargaining among elites

and interest groups takes place, however limited or opaque the processmay appear to outsiders. Such was the case in the Spanish empire as well.

The archives are replete with the records of bargaining groups and indi-viduals, the famous expedientes(case files) that provide historians with somuch fascinating information about how the colonial system worked and

how the lines of conflict shifted over time. The expedientesand the corre-spondence of officials and private persons reveal that Gaspar Rico and otherelite merchants were adept at promoting the kind of intra-elite conflictthat went far toward draining both power and authority from men charged

with the governance of Peru. Ricos quarrels with rival groups of mer-chants, especially those associated with the Real Compaa de Filipinas,contributed greatly to creating and expanding the cleavages within Peruviansociety while diminishing the ability of government to redress grievances

and command obedience to its dictates. The stakes were high, not onlythe wealth and power of individual merchants but also the very survival ofa colonial regime heavily dependent on revenue from taxes on trade.

That merchants like Gaspar Rico should challenge the authority ofviceroys and even seek to overthrow them comes as no surprise to students

mercantile conflict and political culture 3

5. See, for example, Timothy E. Anna, The Peruvian Declaration of Independence:

Freedom by Coercion, Journal of Latin American Studies 7, no. 2 (1975), 223; and AscensinMartnez Riaza, La prensa doctrinal en la independencia del Per, 18111824 (Madrid: EdicionesCultura Hispnica, Instituto de Cooperacin Iberoamericana,1985),240, where she declares thatRico, without being a merchant, was familiar with commercial procedures. Rico continued hismercantile activities after returning to Peru from Spain in 1818; in July 1819 he was trading insugar: see Acta de la Junta general de tribunales,15July 1819, MenP, Pezuela, Sig.4, q.3.


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of the late colonial history of Spanish America. But Peru has appeared tobe exempt from the commercial conflict that provoked political crises inMexico City and Caracas during the late colonial period. In the case ofLima, evidence of its presence has been ignored, in part because historianshave assumed that the consulado of Lima was unified politically, and thatall of its members (many of them born in Spain) were determined tomaintain a supposed Spanish monopoly over the supply of European manu-factures to Peru.6 But conflict between factions of merchants matriculated inthe consulado had long existed, and it escalated dangerously in 1818, pro-

voked by royalist military reverses and a crisis in viceregal finance that led

to the viceroys willingness to encourage direct trade with foreigners at Callao.

The officers of the Army of Lima who demanded Pezuelas resignationhad a great deal to say about military matters, as would be expected. They

would not be expected, however, to take an interest in viceregal commer-cial policy except as it affected the governments ability to support the armyand the war effort. But in their ultimatum, the officers accused Pezuela ofspecific crimes against the Spanish laws for the regulation of colonial

trade. The merchants, they said, have been injured by the considerablelosses occasioned by a scandalous contraband trade and by tolerance offoreigners. Besides being contrary to law, the officers declared, Pezuelastolerance of foreigners wronged those who had been most responsive to

viceregal appeals for aid in the battles against the rebels. The merchantshad made great sacrifices to supply the viceroy with the funds necessaryto prosecute the war, but their money had been misused. No one knows

what happened to the immense fortune collected in donations and forced

loans, they wrote; its misuse has been great and indisputable.7I am wronged to the greatest degree by the . . . officers of the Army

of Lima who signed the ultimatum, wrote Pezuela on the day he was

4 introduction

6. See, for example, Lilliana Regalado C. and Mara Salinas B., Apuntes sobre la actitud delconsulado limeo en la etapa emancipadora, in Quinto congreso internacional de historia deAmrica, 6 vols. (Lima: Publicaciones de la Comisin Nacional del Sesquicentenario de laIndependencia del Per,1972),3:27677. Another factor is the assumption that all matriculated

merchants signed representations to the viceroys or the crown: see Anna, Peruvian Declarationof Independence, 230, for example, where he cites a petition by sixty-four merchants andassumes that they represent the entire membership of the consulado, where in fact they were thehard-liners who opposed direct trade with foreigners. The petition is Consulado to Pezuela,27July 1818,agi-Lima, leg.1550.

7. Officerspronunciamiento,cdip-Tomo 26:Memorias, diarios y crnicas,3:356.


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overthrown, characterizing the charges against him as unjust, degrading,and self-serving.8 In his Manifiesto, the viceroy organized his defenseaccording to six general ideas and ten specific charges that had beenused to justify the golpe de estado. The second general idea dealt withthe allegation that, in spite of Limas position as the very center of vice-regal wealth, Pezuela had failed to amass resources sufficient to prosecutethe war successfully. The seventh specific charge discussed the accusationthat the viceroy had been too tolerant of the contraband trade and of theforeigners whose presence in the ports of Peru had become commonplace.9

On both of these issuesfinancing the war effort and relations with

foreignerstwo factions of merchants matriculated in the consulado hada great deal to say during the debates leading up to Pezuelas overthrow.Those debates took place in the context of complex crises in Spain itselfduring the first decades of the nineteenth centurycrises that includedforeign wars and the invasion of Spain by Napoleons army, multiple changesof government and government policies, royal abdications, and constitu-tional debates. Between 1808 and 1823, bitter disputes over colonial policyalso shook the Spanish government.10 Michael P. Costeloe has described

an intense struggle . . . between those who favored a policy of moderationtoward America, by which most meant the use of limited force temperedwith reforms, and those who wanted an all-out military effort with few, ifany, concessions. The conflict between these rival groups came to centeron the issue of free trade and particularly its use as a bargaining counter inpersuading other nations to help in restoring Spanish control of the empire.11

That struggle was reflected in events in Peru during the period from 1818to 1821, and it is here that we can locate the point where the interests of

the peninsular army officers who implemented the golpe de estado andthose of the faction of merchants led by Gaspar Rico, who claimed tohave planned it, coincided.


8. Pezuela to Sres. Jefes del E.M.G.D. Jos Canterac y dems que subscriben el papel que vacontestado,29January 1821,cdip-Tomo 26,3:35859.

9. Pezuela,Manifiesto,28286,31520.10. For an admirable account of the confused and changing American policy of the Spanish

government, see Timothy E. Anna, Spain and the Loss of America (Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press,1983), esp. chap.5: In Search of a Policy. See also Roberto Luis Blanco Valds,El problema americano en las primeras Cortes liberales espaoles,18101814 (Mexico: UNAM,1995).

11. Michael P. Costeloe, Spain and the Latin American Wars of Independence: The FreeTrade Controversy,18101820, HAHR61, no.2 (1981):219. See also Anna, Spain and the Loss of America,107, for British opinion on the link between direct trade and American independence.


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The Lima pronunciamiento of 29 January 1821, however, was not theresult of a mere four months of risk, labor, and expense, as Gaspar Rico

would have us believe, and was not the work of one man. Nor did it arisesolely from conflict between a single viceroy and an ambitious Spanishgeneral. On the contrary, the seeds of the first military revolt in Peru sincethe sixteenth century were sown by the Spanish Bourbon reformers of thelate eighteenth century who sought to reduce the power of a colonial mer-cantile elite by disrupting its economic foundations. The reforms provokedprotests that went beyond the normal patterns of intra-elite bargaining:

Their legitimacywas called into question. Merchants soon learned that the

reforms would seriously disrupt their accustomed ways of doing business,destroying their semi-autonomous submetropolitan entrept. They regardedthe losses to be incurred as nothing less than systematic state-sponsoreddespoliation.

Chapter 1 begins by describing the structure and importance of theintercontinental and interprovincial trades on which Perus prosperity andthe merchants power had been built. But who, exactly, were the merchants

who played such a critical role in the politics of late colonial Peru, and

what alliances did they form among themselves in order to further theirinterests? Unlike bureaucrats and military men, they are virtually unknown.Until recently, neither their identities nor the patterns of their trade werethe subject of historians inquiry. Thus Chapter 1 also describes and analyzesthe merchant elite active in Peru from 1779 to 1821, identifying the wealthiestmembers of the group, describing the principal patterns of their trade, andsuggesting where the lines of conflict were likely to lie as the reforms tookhold in Peru.

Although competition among groups of merchants had always existed,in1779, when the first matrcula (register of consulado merchants) con-sidered here was drawn up, there is no evidence of bitter internecinequarrels comparable to those that split the consulado into factionsfollowing promulgation of the Reglamento de comercio libre of 1778. Thefree trade of that set of rules for the regulation of colonial commerce

was an attempt by the crown to abolish the old system by which onlymerchants of Cdiz in Spain could trade legally to America, carrying

their goods to four portsHavana, Veracruz, Portobello, or Callaoin all of Spanish America. Instead, merchants resident in thirteen portsin Spain were permitted to trade with six ports in Spanish SouthAmerica alone.

6 introduction


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The Bourbon administrative and commercial reforms attempted tochange the structure of Peruvian trade to ensure that the metropolis wouldreap the lions share of the profit to be had from colonial commerce.Chapter 2 describes those changes and the conflicts that arose from them inPeru. The first conflict involved the large numbers of peninsular merchants

who sailed for Callao in the 1780s. Like other wealthy merchants, bothcriollo and peninsular-born, who were already resident in Lima, the newmerchants assumed that they had the right to participate in the affairs ofthe consulado. By their sheer numbers, these newcomers, many of themresident in Spain, threatened to overwhelm the limeo merchants. Ques-tions about who should and should not be admitted to the consuladosmatrculabecame crucial contests for power and profit, especially after twolarge privileged trading houses established offices in Peru. Thus Chapter 2also discusses the competition for control of the consulado that arose as aresult of the Bourbon reforms.

With the growth of the Atlantic trade that followed the reforms, thecrown attempted to wrest control over the distribution of both Europeanimports and locally produced goods from the limeo merchants and transferit instead to merchants domiciled in Spain itself. In the normal course oftheir comings and goings, the metropolitan merchants would capture asignificant portion of the seaborne interprovincial trade in the Pacific,formerly dominated by limeo merchants and shipowners. These issueserupted in battles for economic survival in which the limeos found itincreasingly difficult to compete with their metropolitan rivals, who enjoyedstate support for their enterprises. Limeo problems were exacerbated bythe crowns well-thought-out program of tax reform, which served todisrupt still further Limas position as submetropolitan entrept.

The limeos perceived the reforms as having destroyed the economy ofPeru, creating poverty where once there had been prosperity. By the endof the eighteenth century, the grievances of the limeo merchants hadescalated to the point where political conflict threatened to delegitimizecrown authority. Unlike provincial cities such as Arequipa, however, Limadid not erupt in rioting, though viceroys believed that it came close. Whentheir traditional form of bargaining with their colonial masters by meansof expedienteand correspondence brought no relief, limeos embarked ona campaign to sabotage the reforms or render them irrelevant by noncom-pliance. Their efforts are discussed in Chapter3.

With Gaspar Ricos appointment in 1800 as the Lima factor for the CincoGremios Mayores, political conflict derived from commercial competition



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increased. Unwilling to accept viceregal rulings that curtailed the CincoGremios commercial power or enhanced the position of the FilipinasCompany and its allies, Rico repeatedly challenged the authority of every

viceroy who served in Peru between 1801 and 1821. Chapter3 also discussesattempts by limeos, in league with local agents of the Filipinas Company,to deal with Rico, as well as the international context that made it possiblefor them to sabotage the reforms that Rico and the metropolitan merchantschampioned. In the course of these conflicts, personal enmity between Ricoand the Filipinas Companys factor, Pedro de Abada, erupted into a publicscandal, and Viceroy Fernando de Abascal became convinced that Rico

was involved with men who sought to reduce his authority or remove himfrom office. When Abascal exiled Rico to Spain in 1812, however, challengesto viceregal authority did not depart with him. Ricos periodical,El Peruano,had given limeos a language with which to question the legitimacy of the

viceroy and his rulings, especially after the liberal Spanish Constitution of1812was promulgated in Peru.

With the return of the absolutist regime in Spain at the end of theNapoleonic war in 1814, liberals like Rico found themselves in a precariousposition. Nevertheless, while in Spain, Rico was able to secure the dismissalof Abascals charges against him. But by the time Rico disembarked inCallao in 1818, the new viceroy, Joaqun de la Pezuela, was embroiled in adesperate attempt to prevent Perus independence. In the struggle againstinsurgents both within the viceroyalty and on its borders, the absolutistand politically moderate viceroy had to contend with liberal hard-liners,like Rico and General Jos de La Serna, who believed in a purely militarysolution to the problem of rebellion, and who questioned Pezuelas deci-sions on the conduct of the war and the means he favored to pay for it.Rico quickly assumed a position of power, not as an elected official of theconsulado, but as the spokesman for the metropolitan merchants who insistedthat Pezuelas emergency commercial policies were illegal and inadmissable.Chapter 4 discusses the issues raised by royalist efforts to pacify Peru, andRicos role in the political debates that ensued.

When Pezuela proposed free trade with the English in 1818, Ricospolitical power grew steadily, and this process is traced in Chapter 5. Bythen, free trade was no longer defined as the ability of any Spanishmerchant residing in designated ports in Spain to trade with Callao andcertain other American ports. Instead, it had come to denote direct trade

with foreigners whose ships anchored in colonial ports to conduct businesswithout the mediation of merchants resident in Spain or their agents in

8 introduction


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Peru. As it developed, the free-trade dispute in Lima became the finalbattleground on which the commercial and political conflicts that began inthe 1780s were fought. That dispute played a critical part in destroying the

viceroys legitimacy.Gaspar Rico and the coterie of liberal, hard-line metropolitan merchants

were convinced that Pezuelas commercial policy seriously compromisedPerus security. Rico and his friends were therefore convinced that the

viceroy had stepped over a line, had in fact delegitimized himself. Theybelieved themselves justified in seeking redress of their grievances inanother quarter: the similarly liberal, hard-line peninsular officers of theArmy of Lima. But how were Rico and the metropolitan merchants ableto make contact with the peninsular army officers who, for their ownreasons, also wished to see Pezuela replaced? Chapter 6 discusses the long-standing links between merchants and the military and, more specifically,Gaspar Ricos membership in two militia units, both of them milicia disci-plinada, that is, units trained by professional army officers. As rebellionincreased, military training promoted a common view among merchantsand the military of how Perus security was to be safeguarded, one thatblamed foreigners for much of the accelerating movement toward inde-pendence and ignored the rising tide of colonial grievance.

Like the merchants, however, the army was divided in its opinion ofPezuelas policy of making use of foreigners to secure vital resources forthe defense of the viceroyalty. Unfortunately for Pezuela, the officers whosupported him were no match for La Serna and his friends, who tookadvantage of every opportunity to discredit the viceroy militarily, politi-cally, and personally. La Sernas insubordination played a large part in thecampaign to deprive Pezuela of the authority that should have attached tohis office, as did the 1820 militarypronunciamiento in Spain itself, whichrestored the liberals to power there. Pezuela was increasingly isolated, andhis attempts to negotiate with his adversaries only encouraged them totake advantage of their growing power.

Ultimately, Pezuela and his enemies, both military and civilian, disagreedover concepts of viceregal legitimacy and authority that proved to be irre-concilable. Both the army officers and Ricos faction of the consulado becameconvinced that Pezuela was a disastrously incompetent viceroy, and it isthis view of the last legitimate viceroy that has prevailed in the historio-graphy. Indeed, little more than that is said about him and the years of hisrule. But Pezuelas enemies went further: they accused him of being inthrall to men, both military and civilian, of questionable loyalty to Spain.



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They believed, therefore, that his removal from office was both legitimateand essential to the successful pacification of Peru. When La Serna andhis allies captured control of the newly formed Army of Lima, Pezuelasfate was sealed.

Chapter 7recounts the events of 29January 1821, showing exactly howLa Serna and his allies were able to usurp the remnants of Pezuelas powerand assume the reigns of government. In the aftermath of the pronuncia-miento, additional evidence of Gaspar Ricos complicity in the plot surfaces,suggesting that Pezuelas overthrow was the precedent for subsequentmilitary takeovers in Republican Peru that also served civilian interests.

The conclusion analyzes the coming of independence from the per-spective of the collapse of a colonial regimes ability to govern, a collapsethat owed much to the crowns failure to understand that allegiance isalways conditional, depending upon the willingness of the kings subjectsto obey and a regimes willingness to hear and redress the grievances of itscitizens. Although few governments know at any given moment exactly

where the limits of allegiance lie, the Spanish colonial system provedinept in supplying that information to the empires rulers, so far away inmetropolitan Spain, who in their turn were obstinately deaf. As a result, inPeru a radical change in political culture developed over the course of someforty years, one that went beyond noncompliance and culminated in a retro-gressive military revolt. The story of late colonial viceroys and their merchantand military adversaries reveals much about the nature of power and authorityin late colonial Peru, and about ideas of legitimacy that continue to berelevant after the passage of almost two centuries of independence.

10 introduction


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On 28 October 1746, a massive earthquake shook Lima, the City of Kings,capital of the viceroyalty of Peru, with its splendid churches and opulentAndalusian palaces. Small earthquakes wereand arecommonplace inLima, but as a Jesuit eyewitness reported in 1746, We may with truthaffirm that none ever broke out with such astonishing violence, or hath

been attended with so vast a destruction. The city had been reduced torubble: Of the three thousand houses . . . enclosed by the walls, scarcelytwenty survived undamaged by the earthquakes assault. In Lima, an earth-quake is usually announced by an oncoming rumble as the stones of thealluvial plain are rattled. But on this occasion, the destruction did not somuch as give time for fright, for at one and the same instant almost, thenoise, the shock, and the ruin were perceived together. More than 1,400citizens lost their lives.

The earthquake, with the tsunami that followed, also destroyed Limasport city of Callao, which overlooked the best harbor on the west coast ofthe continent. Callao simply disappeared from the face of the earth; in itsplace vast heaps of sand and gravel stretched away along the shoreline.Upward of5,000 of a population estimated at 7,000 died there, and twenty-three ships great and small were destroyed. In both the port and the capitalcity, still more people perished in the epidemic that followed.1

1. Pedro Lozano,A True and Particular Relation of the Dreadful Earthquake which Happend atLima, the Capital of Peru, and the Neighbouring Port of Callao, on the 28th of October, 1746 . . .(London: Printed for T. Osborne in Grays Inn,1748),131200; Pedro Jos Bravo de Lagunas yCastilla, Voto consultivo . . . en la causa que se sigue sobre si se han que preferir en la venta los trigos delDistrito de esta ciudad de Lima, a los que se conducen por mar del Reino de Chile,2nd ed. (Lima: En laOficina de los Hurfanos,1761),14143; Rubn Vargas Ugarte, Historia del Per: Virreinato, siglo

O N E

CITY OF KINGS, CITY OF COMMERCE


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And yet, amidst the catastrophe, there was one fortunate circumstance.As Viceroy Jos Manso de Velasco (later count of Superunda) reported inhis Memoria de gobierno, The sea carried away all the wheat held in the

warehouses of Callao and destroyed the ships that were then in port, butthe special mercy of Divine Providence . . . determined that the vessels

which had sailed to Chile to embark the harvests of that year did notarrive before the ruin and flooding of the presidio; because if they hadanchored earlier or if the earthquake had happened a few days later, we

would have found ourselves without wheat to consume or ships in whichto transport it.2

The one happy circumstance that the viceroy could cite in the midst ofthe calamitythe safety of the wheat supplyhighlights the importanceof Limas position as the principal entrept of Spanish South America,

where Peruvian silver was exchanged for European manufactures in anelaborate system of intercontinental and interprovincial trade. Even thesupply of a commodity as essential as wheat depended upon the existenceof seaborne commerce centered on the City of Kings.

Reconstruction was no small task, even though adobe remained theprincipal material from which even the most opulent palaces were made.

There was no building stone on the alluvial plain where Lima is located,and no nearby forest. Wood for humble houses and the elaborate Moorishbalconies so characteristic of Limas grandest architecture had to be importedfrom Chile, Guayaquil, or Central America; iron, ornamental tiles, and finetextiles came from Spain. The silver to pay for it came from Potos, highin the Andes of Alto Per, now Bolivia, and from other less spectacularmining centers of the interior. Commerce supplied it all, and the merchantsof Lima prospered even in adversity.

Lima was, and remained, a city of commerce. A few years before theearthquake, in December 1740, two important visitors had arrived in Lima,sent by the crown to examine the condition of the viceroyalty. In theirreport to the king, Jorge Juan y Santacilla and Antonio de Ulloa describedthe frenetic activity of the submetropolitan entrept:

12 deconstructing legitimacy

xviii,2vols. (Lima: Librera y Imprenta Gil,1956; Buenos Aires: Imprenta Lpez,1957),1:26374.

Bravo de Lagunas estimated that some 6,000 limeos out of a population of 60,000 perished inthe earthquake and subsequent epidemic; another eyewitness put the death toll in Lima andCallao at 16,000.

2. Conde de Superunda, Memoria de gobierno, in M. A. Fuentes, ed., Memorias de losvireyes que han gobernado el Per durante el tiempo del coloniaje espaol, 6 vols. (Lima: F. Bailey,1859),4:127.


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Lima could not be so magnificent or populous if it were not, asthe principal city of Peru, the general repository of that King-dom. . . . [I]t is the universal trading-house, or strong-box forevery sort of trade; because, as the center of commerce, whateverthe other provinces produce or make is taken there, as well as

whatever the fleets or licensed ships bring [from Spain]; and Lima,apportioning as a mother would the merchandise and products tothose that require them, sends it all out to the vast reaches ofthose Kingdoms; . . . And thus there is no Province or place in allof Peru that fails to remit to this City everything it produces orcultivates, . . . nor one that fails to go there to acquire whatever itlacks: and thus Lima is the emporium of Commerce, where peoplefrom every place assemble.3

The destruction of Callao brought only a temporary halt to the tradeof the viceregal capital. New port facilities were quickly improvised andsteadily improved over the next few years. A large fortress was constructedto defend the port from the English pirates and privateers who were findingtheir way to the Pacific, and a new townBellavistawas laid out for themerchants and port workers who had formerly lived in Callao itself. Beforelong, however, the merchants returned to Callao, and the great fairs heldevery Monday of the year resumed, with the owners of goods, and those

who want to purchase them, making their deals, and the buyers trans-porting them afterwards wherever they please in the mule trains maintainedby the owners of warehouses, whose gain depends on the profits from thefreight they charge.4The merchants who prospered from Limas entrepttrade established themselves at the pinnacle of both economic and poli-tical power in the viceroyaltys capital city.

The signs of opulence in the city were easy to see, especially by the tworecently arrived visitors from a more austere Spain. The magnificent palacebuilt by the first marqus de Torre Tagle with proceeds from his expandingtrade and the emoluments garnered from his position as paymaster of the

city of kings, city of commerce 13

3. Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Relacin histrica del viage a la Amrica Meridional,4vols.

in 2 (Madrid: A. Marin,1748), part 2, book 1, chapter 10,139,144. The visitors impression wascorrect. Between 1650 and 1700, for example,85 percent of Cuzcos surplus production and 86percent of La Pazs was marketed in Lima. Laura Escobari de Querejaz, El comercio deproductos cuzqueos en el siglo xvii, inEstado y mercado en la historia del Per, ed. Carlos Con-treras and Manuel Glave (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per,2002),90 and fig.5.

4. Juan and Ulloa, Relacin histrica,143.


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southern fleet was eloquent testimony to Limas importance as the continentsprincipal commercial center and the seat of colonial government. Othermerchant families enjoyed similarly fine palaces, but in spite of appearancestheir fortunes were precarious. Juan and Ulloa noticed that capital accumu-lation was not at levels that might be expected from such large-scale trade:scarcely ten to fifteen commercial fortunes (that is in silver or merchan-dise . . .) amount to so much as500 to 600,000 pesos. Limas merchants,they opined, invested little of their profits, spending it instead on luxuriesand dowries for their daughters. Whatever was left was divided equallyamong their offspring, male and female, when they died.5 And, ever sincethe Bourbon monarchs acceded to the throne of Spain, the government inMadrid had constantly harassed the powerful merchants of Lima with plansand edicts that threatened to diminish their wealth while increasing the metro-polis control of commerce and the profits to be had from colonial trade.

THE SUBMETROPOLITAN ENTREPT

It was not for nothing that Lima was known as the City of Kings. Thename derived from the fact that the city had been founded on Epiphany,6

January 1535, when the Catholic Church celebrates the arrival of three kingsto worship at the manger in Bethlehem. But over the years, as the colonialtown became a prosperous city with a population estimated at 60,000justbefore the 1746 earthquake,6 the name took on new meaning. Besides beingan entrept, Lima was the seat of colonial government, exercising politicaland commercial hegemony over all of Spanish South America fromBuenos Aires to Quito. The viceroy was truly a vice-king, presiding over acourt in which some twenty-four merchants and landowners held ttulosde Castilla at midcenturymarqueses and counts who jealously guardedtheir power and influence both locally and in Madrid.7Wealthy merchantfamilies, like the counts of Vistaflorida and the marqueses de Torre Tagle,insinuated themselves and their family members into every corner of

viceregal administration, becoming corregidores(provincial governors) andjudges of theAudiencia(high court), and monopolizing both political andeconomic power.


5. Ibid.,14445.6. Bravo de Lagunas, Voto consultivo,141.7. Juan and Ulloa, Relacin histrica,68; Josef Rezabal y Ugarte, Tratado de real derecho de las

medias-anatas seculares y del servicio de lanzas a que estan obligados los ttulos de Castilla . . . (Madrid:En la Oficina de don Benito Cano,1792).


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The viceroyaltys physical isolation from the Atlantic offered a geo-graphically determined space within which its merchant elite, with and

without titles of nobility, could operate with a significant degree ofautonomy. Geography also determined that Limas comparative advantagelay with trade, specifically an entrept carrying trade in European manu-factures and American products. Set in an oasis in the midst of a narrowcoastal desert and hemmed in by the Andes on the landward side, theeighteenth-century city depended on small-scale irrigation agriculture andChilean grain for subsistence. Lima was located near the mouth of theRimac River, which empties into a large bay protected by offshore islands,an advantage that led naturally to a seaborne coasting trade with settle-ments to the north and south. The Rimac River valley also led to a pass inthe Andes opening onto a high intermontane plain through which thegreat north-south Inca road ran, connecting Lima to the mining centersof the interior. The European goods that were exchanged for the preciousmetals essential to maintain Spains position as a world power were carriedover vast distances, changing hands several times from ship to land inaccord with the requirements of the transport system. Lima, located abouthalfway between Panama, with its linkages to the Atlantic commercialsystem, and the great silver mountain of Potos, high in the Andes of AltoPer, was well situated to serve as entrept for the exchange of Europeangoods for Peruvian silver and for the distribution of efectos del pas, goodsproduced within the boundaries of the vast viceroyalty.

The merchants matriculated in the consulado of Lima, established in1613, developed commercial networks that gave them ready access tolarge-scale inventories of imported goods, by no means all of themacquired in accord with the crowns rules for the regulation of trade. Thelimeos were supposed to purchase their imports at a fair in Portobelo,Panama, where European goods were to be carried by merchants residentin Spain. From Panama, the Armada del Mar del Sur (South Sea Fleet)sailed for Callao, Limas seaport and until 1778 the only port on the Pacificcoast legally open to the import trade in European manufactures. Besidesthe merchandise purchased by limeos who had personally journeyed toPanama, the Armada carried goods ordered by or consigned directly toresident Lima merchants, both criollo and peninsular-born, by merchanthouses in Sevilla or Cdiz.8 Undeniably, the fleet also carried contraband


8. Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Las ferias de Portobelo: Apariencia y realidad del comercio deIndias, Anuario de Estudios Americanos 39 (1982): 275340; Pablo Emilio Prez-Malana, LaArmada del Mar del Sur(Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos,1987).


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acquired from a variety of sources.9 Equally significant, a small buteconomically powerful cadre of merchants resident in Lima journeyed toSpain itself to purchase goods directly from peninsular houses and the

foreign suppliers whose agents frequented Sevilla or Cdiz.10 For a time inthe seventeenth century Spains trade to her South American colonies wascontrolled by merchants based in Lima. When Panamanian corruptionand extortion became intolerable, they went so far as to sabotage the fair


9. Lozano,A True and Particular Relation,13; Margarita Surez, Comercio y fraude en el Percolonial: Las estrategas mercantiles de un banquero (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos / BancoCentral de Reserva del Per,1995),41; Fisher, Bourbon Peru,1519; Sergio Villalobos, Comercio y

contrabando en el Ro de la Plata y Chile,17001811(Buenos Aires:eudeba,1965).10. Surez, Comercio y fraude, 4044, 50, 77, 93; Julin Ruiz Rivera and Manuela CristinaGarca Bernal, Cargadores a Indias (Madrid: Editorial mapfre,1992),11415; Lutgardo GarcaFuentes, Los peruleros y el comercio de Sevilla con las Indias, 15801630 (Sevilla: Universidad deSevilla,1997). The American trade originally operated out of Sevilla, but in 1717it was transferredto Cdiz.

Fig.1 Edward Francis Finden, View of Lima from the Sea Near Callao. Detail fromAlexander Caldcleugh, Travels in South America During the Years 18192021. London:John Murray,1825. Courtesy Rare Books Division, Rare Books and SpecialCollections, Princeton University Library (photo: John Blazejewski).


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and encourage French merchants out of Saint-Malo, who had been theirprincipal suppliers in Cdiz, to sail directly to the Pacific to sell their

wares at Callao.11

After the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, the newBourbon regime and the consulado of Cdiz were determined to capturecontrol of the Atlantic trade from peruleros, foreign suppliers, and Frenchcontrabanders. As a result, the first half of the new century was marked bycommercial conflict on many fronts and on both sides of the Atlantic.Like their counterparts in other colonies, limeo merchants were feelingthe weight of multiple changes in the rules for the regulation of trade,especially changes that diminished their ability to control access to suppliesof European imports. A royal order of 1749 reveals something of the pres-sure under which they labored: it put their metropolitan rivals on noticethat American merchants were indeed permitted to send their money toSpain to buy whatever they wished, from whomever they chose, and tohave their goods shipped to them . . . without interference by the crownor the merchant bodies in Spain.12The royal order was controversial, forit permitted direct trade between American merchants and their suppliers,

without the intervention of Cdiz middlemen or shipowners.13 Althoughit was repeated in 1769 and 1777, the trend was contrary to such toleranceof colonials. At various times during the eighteenth century, limeos wereforbidden to sail for Spain in their own ships to purchase manufactures,and metropolitan merchants, before setting sail from Cdiz, had to certifythat none of the goods in their cargoes had been purchased with fundsremitted from Peru by merchants resident there.14 Finally, in 1778 Article 1of the reformers Reglamento de comercio librestipulated that only merchants


11. Surez, Comercio y fraude, 99; Surez, Desafos transatlnticos: Mercaderes, banqueros y elestado en el Per virreinal, 16001700 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per, InstitutoRiva-Agero,2001),37885; Sergio Villalobos, Contrabando francs en el Pacfico,17001724,Revista de Historia de Amrica51 (1961):4980; Carlos D. Malamud Rikles, Cdiz y Saint-Malo enel comercio colonial peruano,16981724 (Cdiz: Diputacin de Cdiz,1985).

12. Geoffrey J. Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, 17001789 (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press,1979),199. The dispute on this point can be followed in R. Antunez y Acevedo,Memorias histricas sobre la legislacin y gobierno del comercio de los espaoles con sus colonias en lasIndias Occidentales(Madrid: Imprenta de Sancha,1797), and in the Expediente promovido ante el

Virrey del Per por algunos comerciantes de Espaa, on which the Spanish Consejo pleno de dossalas ruled on11 May1780,in agi-Lima, leg.1548.13. For Peruvian interest in dealing directly with suppliers, see Surez, Desafos transatlnticos,

37578.14. Josef de Azofra to Crown, Madrid,7 Mar.1777,agi-Lima, leg.980; Informe de mesa,

Expediente promovido ante el Virrey del Per,11 May1780,agi-Lima, leg.1548; Ruben Vargas


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resident in Spain (mis vasallos de Espaa) were to engage in the Atlantictrade.15 As Jos de Glvez, Carlos IIIs minister of the Indies, expressedthe crowns intentions in 1778, The Americans can practise commerceamong themselves, in their own ports, leaving the trade from Spain toAmerica in the hands of Spaniards of this peninsula.16

During the first half of the century, limeos were also struggling toprotect the system by which they distributed both European and Americanproducts by sea to Guayaquil and Central America in the north and Chileto the south, and overland to Quito, Buenos Aires, and to the towns andmining centers of the mountainous interior. After 1740, when a royal orderpermitted ships licensed by the crown (the registros) to sail to the Pacificon an irregular schedule, displacing the Armada del Mar del Sur, that system,too, was besieged.17 Once ships out of Cdiz began to enter the Pacific,Limas relative isolation from the Atlantic commercial system was reduced.Merchants resident in Spain and their agents invaded the geographic spacethat had been the domain of limeos, and both the quantity of goodsentering the colonial market and their distribution became impossible tocontrol from Lima. Increasingly, imports (and contraband) were landedand sold in ports to the south of Callao, and carried along with efectos del


Ugarte, Informe del Tribunal del Consulado de Lima,1790, Revista Histrica22 (195556),299;Lista de los expedientes de la secretara del Per que existen en poder de la contadura generalpara informar, sobre que slo los espaoles europeos pueden hacer la navegacin y expediciones Amrica, Madrid,9 Feb.1791,agi-Lima, leg.1619. See also Carmen Parrn Salas, De las reformasborbnicas a la repblica: El consulado y el comercio martimo de Lima,17781821(San Javier, Murcia:Imprenta de la Academia General del Aire,1995),16772.

15. Reglamento de comercio libre,2 Feb.1778, in Libro de Actas del Consulado de Lima,3Oct.1778,agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg.907.16. Quoted by John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions,18081826(New York: W. W.

Norton,1973),13. In 1794, a bureaucrat in Lima, Jos Ignacio de Lequanda, acknowledged thatlimeos would be forced to withdraw from the intercontinental and interprovincial tradebecause the general welfare requires it: see his Idea sucinta del comercio del Per y medios deprosperarlo, con una noticia general de sus producciones, Lima,26 Jan.1794, British Museum,Egerton mss no.771, of which a microfilm copy exists in Firestone Library, Princeton University.Glvez was minister of the Indies from 1776 to 1787.

17. Sergio Villalobos,El comercio y la crisis colonial: Un mito de la independencia (Santiago:Universidad de Chile,1968),6667, and his Comercio y contrabando,3844; G. B. Cobb, Supply

and Transportation for the Potos Mines, HAHR29, no.1 (1949):2545; Valentn Vzquez dePrada, Las rutas comerciales entre Espaa y Amrica en el siglo xviii, Anuario de EstudiosAmericanos25 (1968):21516. For a viceroys description of the three epochs of trade betweenSpain and Peru, see Francisco Gil de Taboada y Lemos, Relacin de gobierno del Excmo. SeorVirrey del Per, . . . presentada su succesor . . . Ao de 1796, in Fuentes, ed.,Memorias de losvireyes,6:1057.


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pas to markets in the interior without first passing through the hands ofLimas entrept merchants.18

By the time of the great earthquake of 1746, therefore, the Hapsburgsystem of benign neglect, which had permitted the growth of a relativelyautonomous commercial economy in Peru, was unraveling. Each royaledict had been drawn up in the interest of one group or another ofpeninsular-based merchants, most of them from Cdiz, a few from theBasque provinces. Some of them had pursued their interest in ways thatbrought a limited but continuous influx of new merchants to the City ofKings. For the most part, they were easily assimilated into the mercantileelite; many of them were brothers, cousins, or nephews of establishedmerchants, and many other immigrants who served the limeo merchantsas junior members of the business ended by marrying into the family. Liketheir counterparts in Spain, the limeos, new and old, were well aware of

where their interests lay, and were not averse to pursuing them in the onlyway in which they could be legally furthered: by political activity, lobbyingviceroys and crown for preferential treatment. As the eighteenth centuryprogressed and the Bourbon commercial reforms had an impact on Limastrade, competition within the merchant elite and with other sectors ofcolonial society affected viceregal politics in significant ways.

THE MERCHANT ELITE OF LIMA, 17751821

Who, precisely, were the merchants of late colonial Peru? The questionis not easily answered. In spite of their importance, very little is knownabout them, either as a group or as individuals.19 In part this is due to theoverwhelming interest among Peruvian historians in political rather thaneconomic history; in part it derives from the fact that Manuel deMendiburu, compiler of Perus principal biographic dictionary and


18. A common complaint throughout the century; see Superunda, Memoria de gobierno,13542. For an early example, see Juan de Berria, Seor: D. Juan de Berria, diputado del Comercio delPer, puesto a los reales pies de V. Mag . . . (Madrid,16 May 1739),nypl, *KB 1739,10. Note thatdocuments do not always or even regularly specify that cargoes were bound for Callao, but onlyfor puertos del Pacfico.

19. The recent work of Cristina Ana Mazzeo de Viv has begun to remedy this problem; seeher edited volume, Los comerciantes limeos a fines del siglo xviii: Capacidad y cohesin de una lite,17501825 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per,2000), and her El comercio libre en elPer: Las estrategias de un comerciante criolloJos Antonio de Lavalle y Corts, Conde de PremioReal,17771815 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per,1994), a study of one of the mostimportant merchants of late colonial Lima.


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Fig.2 Callao and Lima, from The West Coast of South America from Valparaiso toLima and Panama, with the Principal Harbours on an Enlarged Scale. London: R. & W.Blachford,1835. Courtesy Historic Maps Division, Rare Books and SpecialCollections, Princeton University Library (photo: John Blazejewski).


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himself the scion of a merchant family,20 found both priests and noblemenmuch more interesting. As a result, information about even the mostpowerful merchantsthose who were matriculated in the consulado ofLimais difficult to find, and much of it must be compiled from briefreferences scattered throughout archives and secondary sources. In orderto identify all of them, every annual matrcula from 1775 until 1821 wouldbe needed; unfortunately, only one has been located, that for 1779. Thereare, however, four lists of consulado merchants, drawn up in 1803,1811,1819, and 1821, that were probably copied directly from the official matr-culas.21 But only those merchants who met the consulados requirementsof wealth, residence, and professional standing could be matriculated. Themerchants themselves were frequently unable to agree on who fulfilledthose requirements, partly because the criteria for admission were revisedfrom time to time, and partly because factions within the consuladoregularly attempted to reduce the voting power of their rivals. Thus pooror even fairly prosperous merchants, and the great majority of those whosecommerce was confined to the provinces, were excluded. But many of themore important provincial merchants who were not matriculated in theconsulado attended theJunta general de comercio, called to protest the impo-sition of additional sales taxes (alcabalas) in 1778, and their names can beadded to the roster of late colonial merchants.22Women who were merchants,however, are much more difficult to identify, even when they were asprominent as Mara Ignacia Carrillo de Crdoba, countess of Vistaflorida.


20. Manuel de Mendiburu, Diccionario histrico-biogrfico del Per,2nd ed.,11 vols. (Lima:

Imprenta Enrique Palacios193135). Some information about merchants can also be found inAlberto Tauro, comp., Diccionario encyclopdico del Per, ilustrado,3 vols. (Lima: Editorial JuanMeja Baca,1967), and in Diccionario biogrfico del Per, 1st ed. (Lima: Torres Aguirre,1944).Most entries give only political or genealogical information, neglecting to mention economicactivities.

21. Matrcula,1779,agnp-Consulado, leg.1; Razn de los seores ministros y subalternos, inConsulado to Amandarro, 26 May 1803, agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg. 1115; Razn de losindividuos del comercio de Lima que han subscripto para mantener soldados,6 Dec.1811,agi-Lima, leg.1551; Prorrata de los 400,000 pesos,1819,agnp-Consulado, leg.34; Cuentos del cupode los 150,000 pesos, 1821, cdip-Tomo 21: Asuntos econmicos, ed. Alberto Tauro (Lima:Comisin Nacional del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia del Per, 1971),1:379431,43339,

44146.22. Acta de la Junta general de comercio,7Dec.1778,agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg.907. Ofthe 205 merchants who attended this meeting, only 32 were matriculated in the consulado on 1Jan. 1779, less than a month later. See also Oswaldo Holgun, El Visitador Areche y elConsulado del Comercio de Lima: El problema de la alcabala de reventas, Boletn del InstitutoRiva-Agero9 (197274):83109.


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When her husband died in 1759, the countess took over the familysbusiness interests. She was both a landowner and a shipping magnate, aleader of the shipowners guild,23 and one of the wealthiest merchantsengaged in the trade with Chile. When she died in 1791, her estate was

valued at almost a million pesos, but in spite of her wealth and politicalpower, she could not be matriculated as a merchant because she was a woman.Instead, she depended upon her brother Luis and her peninsular-born son-in-law Domingo Ramrez de Arellano to represent her at formal meetingsof the consulado.24

There were other women who were merchants in late colonial Peru,though few as powerful as the countess of Vistaflorida.25 Most of themmanaged business affairs for husbands, brothers, or sons who engaged inmore prestigious careers such as law or the bureaucracy. Josefa de Tagle yPortocarrero, sister of the last marqus de Torre Tagle, took care of herfamilys business affairs, as had her great-grandmother, Rosa JulianaSnchez de Tagle, the first marquesa.26Josefas uncles and brothers occupiedmodestly remunerated positions of importance on the Audiencia of Lima,in the bureaucracy, and in the Church, thanks to profits on the familyscommercial ventures.

And how should their male relatives, the lawyers and bureaucrats, betaken into account in a discussion of the merchants of late colonial Peru?

The ordinances of the consulado of Lima expressly forbade lawyers to be


23. The shipowners guild functioned as an integral part of the consulado, but it held separatemeetings to discuss matters of special interest and to make recommendations to the prior,consuls, and viceroy, and occasionally directly to the crown. In 1782, three of the seventeenshipowners were women: El cuerpo de navieros del comercio interior de la Mar del Sur to

Crown,19 Apr.1782,agi-Lima, leg.911.24. Razn del nmero de chacras, trapiches y caleras, in Memorial de los hacendados ylabradores de Lima, 1776, ahn-Consejos suprimidos, leg. 20300; Libro de juntas del RealTribunal del Consulado de Lima desde 1770 hasta 1788,agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg.907; Mark A.Burkholder, Politics of a Colonial Career: Jos Baqujano and the Audiencia of Lima(Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,1980),1213; Oscar Febres Villaroel, La crisis agrcola del Peren el ltimo tercio del siglo xviii, Revista Histrica(Lima) 27(1964):175. See also Roisida AguilarGil, Domingo Ramrez de Arellano: Comerciante naviero y hacendado, in Mazzeo de Viv,ed., Comerciantes limeos,17587.

25. An exception would be Rosa de la Fuente, widow of the count of Villar de Fuente, whoalso carried on her husbands business, dealing in European imports, mules, and cinnamon:

Joseph Dager Alva, Noble y comerciante: Jos Gonzlez Gutirrez, Conde de Fuente Gonzlez,in Mazzeo de Viv, ed., Comerciantes limeos,71.26. On both Tagle women, see the family papers held in the Archivo Manuel Ortiz de

Zevallos (amoz), Lima. On Rosa Juliana, see Susy Snchez, Familia, comercio y poder: LosTagle y su vinculacin con los Torre Velarde,17301825, in Mazzeo de Viv, ed., Comercianteslimeos,3334.


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matriculated, and there were laws intended to prevent trade by bureau-crats.27 Furthermore, noblemen who sought or held places in themilitary orders, especially as caballeros de Santiago, were required topresent proof that they did not engage in trade.28 Nevertheless, therecord shows that they did, and that Sebastin de Aliaga y Colmenares,marqus de Zelada de la Fuente, nobleman, bureaucrat, and caballero,

was one of them.29

The marqus was indeed a merchant, and a highly successful one, inspite of the fact that he was not matriculated and apparently did notparticipate openly in the consulados affairs. Instead, he placed his funds

with other merchants, and exercised his considerable influence on behalfof one faction of the consulado, those who traded Peruvian sugar forChilean wheat. He also owned twenty shares in the Filipinas Company.30

Zelada de la Fuente owned a large estate near Lima, and inherited thepost of treasurer of the royal mint upon his marriage to the daughter ofthe count of San Juan de Lurigancho. He had probably acquired much ofhis fortuneand his appetite for profit from commerceduring his


27. Representacin del Real Consulado de la Ciudad de Los Reyes sobre la eleccin del Priory Cnsul del Real Consulado de Lima,22 Aug.1787,agi-Lima, leg.1548; Testimonio de realescdulas que reglamentan el comercio de efectos trados de Espaa a la ciudad de Lima, 1770,bnp-Archivo Astete Concha, MS Z-807.

28. The papers of aspirants to the military orders are held in ahn-Ordenes militares. See alsoGuillermo Lohmann Villena, Los americanos en las rdenes nobiliarios,15291900,2vols. (Madrid:Instituto Gonzlo Fernndez de Oviedo,1947).

29. As was Josef Gonzlez Gutirrez, count of Fuente Gonzlez and count by marriage ofVillar de Fuente, caballero de Santiago. Unlike Zelada de la Fuente, however, he was

matriculated in the consulado and served as its prior in 177374 and 1783. Expediente personal,Josef Gonzlez de Gutirrez, ahn-Madrid, Ordenes militares: Santiago 65 Moderno;Representacin . . . sobre la eleccin del prior y cnsul,1787,agi-Lima, leg.1548; Expedienterelativo a la prxima eleccin de prior y cnsul del Real Tribunal del Consulado de este reino, 29Dec.1790,bnp-mss, C-1692; Mendiburu, Diccionario,11:425; Dager Alva, Noble y comerciante,in Mazzeo de Viv, ed., Comerciantes limeos, 6586. See also the case of Isidro de Abarca yGutirrez de Cossio, count of San Isidro, who was admitted as a caballero de Santiago in 1775 andserved repeatedly as prior of the consulado: Expediente personal, Isidro Abarca y Gutirrez deCossio,ahn-Madrid, Ordenes militares, Santiago 10; Ramiro Flores, El destino manifiesto deun mercader limeo a fines del siglo xviii: De comerciante a consignatario. La vida y negocios dedon Isidro Abarca, Conde de San Isidro, in Mazzeo de Viv, ed., Comerciantes limeos,89129.

These two are by no means the only noblemen who were members of one of the military ordersand who openly engaged in trade.30. Junta general de accionistas de la Real Compaa de Filipinas, Madrid,23 Dec.1805,agi-

Filipinas, leg.991. Zelada de la Fuentes apoderado at the shareholders meeting was the count ofPolentinos. An apoderadowas a holder of a power-of-attorney who acted as an agent or proxy forhis client.


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tenure as corregidor of Chancay.31 As a high-ranking bureaucrat and anobleman, the marqus kept his commercial ventures out of official records,such as the consulados matrculas. They were nevertheless an open secret,and provided grist for Limas ever-active rumor mill. For example, in 1803,it was said that 170,000 pesos registered aboard the merchantman Auroraby two dependents of the Cinco Gremios Mayores de Madrid, belongedin fact to the marqus.32 On another occasion, Zelada de la Fuente hadoffered to back a Chilean merchant, promising him eight thousand pesosto invest, and his signature, which is more valuable.33

Although one of the wealthiest, the marqus was by no means the onlybureaucrat of late colonial Peru who was deeply involved in trade. In 1746the viceroy owned a cargo of wheat aboard a small ship that escaped theeffects of the earthquake and tsunami because it was anchored in a smallport to the south of Callao; he had intended to market the wheat inPanama.34 Bartolom de Bedoya, a lawyer serving as advisor to the inten-dant of Tarma, maintained a lively transatlantic trade in Peruvian bark,occasionally using the services of the Cinco Gremios Mayores in Peru tocover his tracks.35

Not infrequently, commercial ventures undertaken by bureaucrats involveddirect conflict of interest. For example, Ignacio de Cruzeta, administratorof revenues in the northern port of Paita, owned a merchant house largeenough to require the assistance of his two sons, Gaspar and Manuel, whoalso helped him with his official duties. The Cruzetas and their associates

were accused of mounting a major trade in contraband goods via Panama,which, of course, paid none of the import taxes the elder Cruzeta was


31. Razn del nmero de chacras, in Memorial de los hacendados,ahn-Consejos, leg.20300;Lohmann Villena, Los americanos,2:267; Vicente Palacio Atard, Areche y Guirior: Observacionessobre el fracaso de una visita al Per (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos,1946),23;Manuel Moreyra y Paz Soldn, La moneda colonial en el Per: Captulos de su historia(Lima: BancoCentral de Reserva del Per,1980),16185.

32. Vicente Morales y Durez to Directors, Cinco Gremios Mayores,26 Apr.1803,agi -Lima,leg.1620. For a general account of the Madrid guilds and their trade, see Miguel Capella andAntonio Matilla Tascon, Los Cinco Gremios Mayores de Madrid(Madrid: N.p.,1957).

33. Jaime Eyzaguirre, ed.,Archivo epistolar de la familia Eyzaguirre, 17471854 (Buenos Aires:

Impresora Argentina,1960),143. For a similar case, see Dager Alva, Noble y comerciante,7879.34. Conde de Superunda, Memoria de gobierno, in Fuentes, ed. Memorias de los vireyes,4:127.

35. Duplicados de registros,1803,agi-Lima, leg.726; Morales y Durez to Directors, CincoGremios Mayores, 30 Mar. 1803, agi-Lima, leg. 1620. Peruvian bark (cascarrillo) was usedmedicinally to treat fevers.


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charged with collecting.36 Paita had long been notorious as a center ofillicit trade. In November 1740, when the English privateer George Ansonraided the settlement, he and his men were surprised to find such a largeamount of gold and silver in a town so small and poor. They had alsocaptured a small fishing boat . . . near the Islas de los Lobos, where it wasplying the coast from Callao to Paita. He confiscated more than 70,000pesos in gold on board. . . . Evidently the man was trying to reach Paita intime to join the other merchants waiting to depart for Panama and the coastof New Spain.37 More than a half-century later, the Cruzetas apparentlysaw no reason not to participate in a lucrative trade that defied the colo-nial rules for the regulation of trade.

Examples of bureaucrats who were also merchants could be multipliedendlessly, and included the judges of the Audiencia of Lima,38 but perhapsone more instance will suffice. Fernando de Abascal, marqus de la Con-cordia, viceroy of Peru from 1806 until 1816, celebrated for his unyieldingrectitude in the pursuit of Spains continued rule in America, was accusedby criollos and peninsulars alike of trading in wheat, sugar, and tobacco, to hisimmense profit.39 Less powerful bureaucrats were sometimes less fortunate.


36. El contador general de Indias . . . informe sobre las causas que motivaron la separacindel destino a D. Francisco Borja Portalanza,2 Feb.1815, with attached papers,agi-Lima, leg.626.Cruzeta was one of the provincial merchants who attended the Junta general de comercio on 7Dec. 1778, where opposition to Areches new taxes was voiced: Actas, Junta general, agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg.907.

37. Jorge Juan y Santacilla and Antonio de Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections on theKingdoms of Peru, ed. and intro. by John J. TePaske; trans. John J. TePaske and Besse A. Clement(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,1978),55.

38. Leon Campbell, A Colonial Establishment: Creole Domination of the Audiencia de

Limaduring the Late Eighteenth Century, HAHR52, no.1 (1972):125. For opinions about thequality of judges serving during the decade immediately prior to independence, see agi-Lima,leg.602,649,773; Manuel Lorenzo de Vidaurre, Plan del Per,cdip-Tomo 1: Los idelogos,13vols. (Lima: Comisin Nacional del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia del Per,1971), vol.5:Plan del Per y otros escritos por Manuel Lorenzo de Vidaurre, ed. Alberto Tauro,25.

39. Jos de la Riva Agero, Manifestacin histrica y poltica de la revolucin de la Amrica yms especialmente de la parte que corresponde al Per y Ro de La Plata (Buenos Aires: Imprenta delos Expsitos,1818),4243; Antonio Izquierdo Martnez to Ministro de Hacienda,9 May 1811,and Pedro Trujillo to Ministro de Hacienda, 31 Aug. 1813, agi-Lima, leg. 772; Miguel deEyzaguirre to the Regency,8 Aug.1813 as summarized for the Consejo de Indias on 28June 1815,agi-Lima, leg.602; Gaspar Rico to Fernando de Abascal, Havana,18 Nov.1812,agi-Lima, leg.

1016; Javier Mara de Aguirre to Crown, London,23 Mar.1823,agi-Lima, leg.798. Viceroys whoprofited from trade were commonplace in Spanish America. For the notorious case of the firstcount of Revillagigedo, viceroy of Mexico from 1746 until 1755, see Andrs Cavo, Los tres siglos deMjico durante el gobierno espaol hasta la entrada del ejrcito trigarante ( Jalapa: TipografaVeracruzana de A. Ruiz,1870),290. For earlier examples in Peru, see Madelaine Glynn D. Evans,The Landed Aristocracy in Peru, 16001680 (Ph.D. diss., University of London,1972),220;


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During the late colonial period, it was common for bureaucrats toinvest government funds in commercial ventures, preferably those offeringshort-term profits. At the conclusion of the venture, the capital would bereturned to government coffers, and the bureaucrat would add the profitto his personal assets. Occasionally, however, the venture failed or tooklonger than expected to complete, and the hapless bureaucrat found himselfdescubierto,without cash on the day when the funds had to be accountedfor. In such cases, bureaucrats were not the only ones who suffered: theirbondsmen had to accept losses as well. Before appointment to a postrequiring responsibility for public funds, a bureaucrat had to find guaran-tors for the amount in his charge annually. Bondsmen were usually merchants,but landowners also served, earning 6 percent on their investment. Whencommercial ventures undertaken by bureaucrats failed, those who earnedtheir living primarily from trade were sometimes brought to the point ofbankruptcy. When the notorious and large-scale forced sale of imports(the repartimiento trade) undertaken by provincial governors is added tothe equation, it becomes even more obvious that bureaucrats involved intrade, but not matriculated in the consulado, were necessarily importantparticipants in the politics and economics of commerce.40

Finally, it is important to recognize one more sector of the economicallyactive population whose members were rarely matriculated in the consulado,but who might be classified as merchants. They were the hacendados,landowners who traded in sugar, wines, brandies, and cloth produced inthe obrajes (textile workshops) installed on their haciendas. In Peru, theGremio de hacendados existed independent of the consulado throughoutthe colonial period. Only rarely did the two guilds join forces to combatgovernmental decrees, and the landowners were frequently at odds withone faction of the consulado, the Atlantic-trade merchants living both in Peruand Spain. In those disputes, the merchants enjoyed certain advantages:


Demetrio Ramos Prez, Trigo chileno, navieros del Callao, y hacendados limeos entre la crisisagrcola del siglo xvii y la comercial de la primera mitad del xviii, Revista de Indias26, nos.1056(1966):269.

40. Guillermo Lohmann Villena, El corregidor de indios en el Per bajo los Austrias (Madrid:Ediciones Cultura Hispnica,1957); Alfredo Moreno Cebrin,El corregidor de indios y la economa

peruana en el siglo xviii (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientficas, Instituto G.Fernndez de Oviedo,1977); John Fisher, Government and Society in Colonial Peru: The IntendantSystem, 17841814 (London: The Athlone Press, 1970), 9096, 236; Miguel de Eyzaguirre toAgustn de Eyzaguirre, Lima,1 Aug. 1807, in Eyzaguirre, Archivo epistolar, 131; David Cahill,Repartos ilcitos y familias principales en el Sur Andino,17801824, Revista de Indias48 (1988):44973.


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they were wealthier and more numerous, and their loans to the beleagueredviceregal government were critically important.41 Because many of thelandowners held titles of nobility, however, their political power wasgreater than their economic position would normally have permitted. Onegroup of hacendados, those producing agricultural commodities for export,

were able to gain viceroys support by offering them opportunities toparticipate in their trade.

During the Napoleonic war in Spain (180814), the regency suggestedthat the two groups should be united in a newly structured consulado com-posed half of merchants and half of landowners. Jos Antonio de Errea, a

peninsular merchant and former prior of the consulado, was among thosewhose opinion on the proposal was sought.42 In his report, Errea acknowl-edged that agriculture and commerce were intimately related, but insistedthat the union of merchants and landowners in a single guild was notpractical in Peru. He pointed out that unless everyone who sold a few

vegetables in the market were matriculated as an hacendado, it would beimpossible to achieve the mandated division of power in the consulado.Moreover, few landowners could meet the consulados criteria for membership.

Spains outmoded rules for the regulation of trade had effectively deprivedPeruvian landowners of markets for their surpluses; sugar, cacao, and Peru-

vian bark were, for various reasons, difficult to sell in their traditionalmarkets, and the crown would permit no new outlets to be developed.

Thus landowners could not expect much of a profit from their enterprises,and merchants were reluctant to purchase what landowners produced,leading to ongoing friction between the two groups.

The lack of common interest between the consulado merchants and

the landowners, even those producing for export, is striking, and may havederived in part from the fact that so few merchants in Peru invested inland. In 1775, ninety-six people who owned land in the valleys near Limaprotested an attempt to raise their taxes; an additional 115 provided state-ments about the area and yield of the land they were working in those same


41. Anna, Fall of the Royal Government, 1114, 110,124,13941. Details of many loans and

grants are in agnp-Consulado, leg.24;agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg.1239; and Consulado toCrown,3 May 1817,agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg.1227.42. Jos Antonio de Errea to the Prior and Cnsules, Real Consulado de Lima,2 Apr.1814,

agnp-Consulado, leg.4. The consulados in Cuba, Caracas, and Mexico admitted landowners tomembership: Mercedes M. Alvarez F., Comercio y comerciantes y sus proyecciones en la independenciavenezolana(Caracas: Vargas,1963),48.


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valleys. Only ten of the 211 were matriculated in the consulado in 1779.43

Forty years later, the gap between the two groups seems to have widened:only 8 of the330 merchants assigned quotas in the forced loan of 1819 areknown to have been landowners.44

Landowners engaged in export agriculture had good reasons for refusingto seek membership in the consulado. Whenever the consulado was requiredto raise money for viceregal defense, its officers attempted to maximizethe number of individuals liable for quotas. During the last decade ofSpanish rule, landowners sometimes found that they were alleged to bemerchants rather than hacendados, and placed on the consulados rollagainst their will. The consulado insisted that they were subject to assess-ments because they were among those persons who engage in commerce. . . whether in a single instance or habitually. Without exception, in theexercise of their double profession, they have been able to increase theirprofits.45 In such cases, the landowners had difficulty maintaining theirindependent status. Merchants who had ceased to trade in order to dedicatethemselves to agriculture found themselves once again matriculated, andsometimes subject to double assessments, as Fernando del Mazo discovered.

Mazo arrived in Peru about 1788 as one of the agents of the CincoGremios Mayores de Madrid. He was dismissed in 1801 and spent thenext decade in litigation with the company while apparently carrying on amuch reduced trade in his own name.46 Unlike most peninsular merchants,Mazo invested in land, in his case a sugar estate in Pisco named Caucato,

which had once belonged to the Jesuits. Perhaps because he had difficultyobtaining imported goods, he began withdrawing from commerce. By 1811,


43. Razn del nmero de chacras, in Memorial de los hacendados,ahn-Consejos, leg.20300;Matrcula del Real Tribunal del Consulado,1779,agnp-Consulado, leg.1. In 1779, there were 164merchants matriculated in the consulado. One of the exceptions to the rule was the count ofFuente Gonzlez, who owned Hacienda Retes: see Dager Alva, Noble y comerciante,6586.

44. Prorrata de los 400,000 pesos, 1819, agnp-Consulado, leg. 34; Toma de razn de losenteros en Caxas Reales de los 600,000 pesos por cuenta del milln de pesos, 1819, agnp-Consulado, leg.33.

45. Consulado to Viceroy,23 Sept.1820,agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg.1239. For an earlierversion of the same argument, see Consulta del consulado,29 Mar.1817, in Informes y consultas

expedidas por el Real Tribunal del Consulado desde 9 de enero de 1816 hasta 2 de abril de 1818,agnp-Hacienda colonial, leg.1227.

46. The exact date of Mazos arrival in Peru is not known. He first appears on the scene in thedispute over the consulados matricula of 1791: Expediente relativo a la prxima eleccin . . . ,29Dec. 1790, bnp-mss, C-1692; Expediente sobre el conducto de los apoderados de los CincoGremios Mayores de Madrid en el Per,18038,agi-Lima, leg.1620.


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when the list of merchants required to contribute to the support of theroyalist army fighting in Alto Per was drawn up, Mazos name did notappear. In 1817, however, when Viceroy Joaqun de la Pezuela was mountinga costly expedition to recover Chile from the insurgents, the consuladosued Mazo for collection of 2,000 pesos in overdue quotas. Mazo appealed,insisting that he was no longer a merchant, but a sugar producer, and assuch was not subject to the consulados jurisdiction. The importance ofthe point at issue may be judged by the consulados long report on thecase, which declared that Mazo was to be considered a merchant in spiteof his wishes, and reminding the viceroy that other landowners were alsomatriculated.47 In 1819, the consulado again assigned Mazo a quota in theforced loan, this time amounting to 6,000 pesos. Those quotas had beenprorated according to the consulados estimate of the relative wealth of themerchants: there were only nine judged to be wealthier than Mazo.48

Mazo was by no means the only erstwhile member of the consulado whoattempted to sever ties with the guild during the last decade of colonialrule. Unlike landowners or lawyers, for example, the merchants wereconstantly dunned for money by an increasingly desperate viceregal govern-ment, especially after 1816 when Joaqun de la Pezuela became viceroy.Many noblemen, landowners, and bureaucrats who had in the past tradedmore or less openly became anxious to escape all association with commerce.49

Their last-minute behavior, however, should not obscure the fact that, likemost of the economically active sectors of Peruvian society, they engagedin trade.

It is thus difficult to define the merchants as a separate group inPeruvian society, and impossible to assume that they acted as a single powerblock with a common set of interests. On the contrary, when commercialdis

Documents

Marks Deconstructing Legitimacy Viceroys, Merchants and the Military in Late Colonial Peru