On Modernity, Colonialism, and the Spanish Inquisition: Reflections on the Spanish Empire in the New World

This paper offers a critique of recent studies of Spanish colonialism that contend that the intertwining of modernity and colonialism originated, not in the 19th c., but in the 17th c., with the Spanish colonial project in the New World. According to the argument, Spain was in the vanguard of the modern world, installing cutting-edge bureaucracies around the globe, and decisively contributing to the creation of the modern state. Accordingly, there was no more modern bureaucracy in the Hispanic world than the Inquisition. Ironically the Inquisition, responsible to a large degree for the conventional image of the Spanish empire as primitive and oppressive, would be part of the vanguard of the modern state, characterized by the production of rational and efficient bureaucracies and modern technologies of control and social discipline. In contrast, this paper contends that the view of the Inquisition as a state-making institution only makes sense if we impose our political categories upon colonial Latin America and imperial Spain. To use the term ‘state,' with all the characteristics commonly attributed to it, is a projection of categories that belong to the political order of our time on the political formations existing before the liberal revolution. To adequately understand the political nature of Spanish colonialism, we must get beyond the state-building metaphor with its teleological implications. Thus, this paper argues that fundamentally political community was conceived of in terms that made impossible the existence of truly centralized political government. This paper thus focuses its analysis on the peculiar dual nature of inquisitorial power (it was both a secular and ecclesiastical tribunal) and on two of the Inquisition's most notorious activities: the celebration of spectacular autos-da-fé and the use of torture during the interrogation of suspects.