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Venal Origins is a comparative and historical study of the roots of spatial inequalities in Spanish America. The book focuses on the Spanish colonial administration and the 18th-century practice of office-selling-where colonial positions were exchanged for money-to analyze its lasting impact on local governance, regional disparities, and economic development. Drawing on three centuries of rich archival and administrative data, it demonstrates how office-selling exacerbated venality and profit-seeking behaviors among colonial officials, fostering indigenous segregation, violent uprisings, and the institutionalization of exploitative fiscal and labor systems. The enduring legacies from their rule remain visible today, in the form of subnational authoritarian enclaves, localized cycles of violence, and marginalized indigenous communities, which have reinforced and deepened regional inequalities. By integrating perspectives from history, political science, and economics, Venal Origins provides a nuanced and empirically grounded analysis of how colonial officials shaped-and still influence-subnational development in Spanish America.
Aside from elite collusion and administrative capture, the arrival of venal officials spelled the end of the Pax Hispannica – primarily in the key Viceroyalties of Peru and Mexico but also in its other territories. Through the collection of eighteenth-century local-level uprising data, the chapter shows that provinces in high demand during sales exhibited a disproportionate number of uprisings per capita vis-à-vis those less demanded. Administrative venality also exacerbated subsistence crises created by eighteenth-century weather events such as drought in Mexico or El Niño(a) in Peru and Bolivia. In addition to more uprisings, provinces ruled by more venal officials also saw greater geographic segregation of the indigenous population. By the 1770s, provinces more exposed to venality show stronger signs of displacement of indigenous populations away from their original sixteenth-century locations. Together, these findings show that as the colonial era approached its end, different areas of the empire already had different “governance baggage” depending on their earlier exposure to venality: with those more exposed experiencing more uprisings and more displacement than those less so.
This chapter focuses on the impact of trade on the functioning of the economy of favor. It argues that the growing importance of conspicuous consumption in New Spain and the introduction of new venal practices raised questions about the assessment process that, according to many, was the key to a just distributive process. In the context of these discussions surrounding such impact, transpacific trade was thematized as well. After discussing critical reflections about the ways in which consumption and trade affected ideas of worthiness, the chapter returns to Rodrigo de Vivero’s Abisos to analyze his critique of the growing influence of commerce on New Spanish society and distributive processes in the Spanish empire. Subsequently, it examines the efforts of Mexico City’s cabildo to fashion a particular image of a deserving community while negotiating with the Crown over financial contributions to the Armada de Barlovento. By juxtaposing Vivero’s reflections with those of Mexico City’s cabildo, the chapter seeks once more to exhibit how calls for isolationism or economic integration were each, in their discrete way, crucial to the distributive struggles within the viceroyalty.
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