From Creole to Peninsular: The Transformation of the Audiencia of Lima

Abstract

C REOLES IN THE SPANISH colonies, long viewed as unhappy victims of systematic exclusion from high office throughout the colonial period, have recently emerged as participants, sometimes an overwhelming majority of the participants, in Spanish American government during the eighteenth century. Particular attention has been paid to their place in bureaucracy during the reigns of Charles III (1759-88) and Charles IV (1788-1808). Although the studies now available are limited geographically and chronologically, they represent an important advance in understanding both the workings of imperial administration and the power and position creoles enjoyed within colonial society. Several historians have demonstrated that in the audiencias of Mexico, Lima, and Santiago, creoles, many of them natives of the districts, held a preponderance of the judgeships at the beginning of the 1770s. David Brading has shown that the Mexican tribunal had eight creole judges in 1769; Leon G. Campbell has clearly displayed creole predominance in Lima during the mid-1770s; and Jacques Barbier has done the same for the Audiencia of Chile.' These detailed presentations support Jaime Eyzaguirre's earlier impressionistic contention that Americans had held the majority of audiencia positions since the mideighteenth century, a contention previously doubted by many historians.2