“The Politics of Giving” in the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, 1793–1808

Based on the financial, political, and cultural analysis of donativos collected in the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata between 1793 and 1808, Grieco demonstrates that donativos functioned as effective mechanisms to transfer income and power from the less to the more powerful colonial subjects. However, challenging prior scholarship, she demonstrates that donativos were less successful at draining specie from the viceregal economic space.  Her research additionally links donativos to institutionalized and informal channels of negotiation and representation at work at the viceregal and municipal levels, which in the Spanish empire, have been generally overlooked.  In her view, donativo transactions cannot be associated neither with corruption nor with cronyism as they allow a variety of social actors to enter (and eventually exit) political bargains while simultaneously promoting the commercial and financial integration of distant regions within the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata.