Resistance to the Bourbon Dynasty in the Pacific Rim during the War of the Spanish Succession

     This paper examines the lives of elites that challenged Philip V’s authority in Spanish overseas territories along the Pacific Rim during the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1715). The War of the Spanish Succession rightly deserves to be considered one of the first global wars in part because its repercussions extended to the Pacific. Using documentation gathered in Spain and Mexico, this paper focuses on one such repercussion: cases of sedition and disloyalty to the new dynasty, specifically by clergy in the Philippines. These disloyal subjects included the Mexican-born bishop of Nueva Segovia as well as Aragonese and Catalan missionaries in Manila. In spite of the substantial geographical distance between the Audiencia of Manila and the rest of the viceroyalty of New Spain and the viceroyalty of Peru, I show that the social and political tensions that fomented disloyalty in the Philippines— above all, Creole patriotism and Peninsular regionalism— were in fact directly related to those of similar cases occurring throughout the Spanish Empire at the turn of the eighteenth century.