A Colonial Establishment: Creole Domination of the Audiencia of Lima During the Late Eighteenth Century
Year: 1972
Type: article
Abstract: IT HAS LONG BEEN an axiom of Latin American history that the Spanish imperial administration systematically excluded creoles, or American-born whites, from positions of power and responsibility. Much of the rivalry between creoles and Spaniards was imagined to be the direct result of this policy. Recent research, however, seems to demonstrate that by the eighteenth century at least, and probably earlier, the exclusion of creoles operated only at the viceregal level. In fact, American-born whites not only participated in, but sometimes dominated, many spheres of endeavor, including the Spanish American church, army and civil governments.' The exclusionary myth has been perpetuated by travellers' accounts of antipathy existing between creoles and peninsulares, or European-born Spaniards, in America. The Spanish naval lieutenants Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, for example, in 1741 described Lima as a theatre of discord and perpetual wrangling between creoles and peninsulares, which surpassed in intensity the hostility between two nations at war.2 That this antipathy existed is irrefutable.
Author: Leon G. Campbell
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2330161007