The Territorial Reconfiguration of the Spanish Empire during the Galvez Era, 1765–87

The Territorial Reconfiguration of the Spanish Empire during the Gálvez Era (1765-1787)

During his extremely dynamic administration of Spanish colonial affairs (1776-1787), José de Gálvez dictated innumerable policies that inevitably changed Spain’s relationship with its overseas possessions. In 1776 alone, Spanish Americans witnessed a veritable “geographical revolution.” In that year Gálvez proclaimed the creation of new administrative territories, the most well-known of which is the viceroyalty of Río de la Plata (modern Argentina); but he also established an intendancy in Caracas (modern Venezuela), and the Comandancia General of the Interior Provinces of New Spain (modern northern Mexican and southwestern United States). During Gálvez’s tenure of the ministry of the Indies, the establishment of a new type of intermediate administrative territory, the intendancy, advanced slowly but surely throughout the Empire. Finally, in this period, military and scientific expeditions worked on the fringes of civilization to define the borders between the Portuguese and the Spanish empire in the Americas. The rewriting of geographical lines responded to a new conception of empire among Spanish reformers, and inevitably it sparked reactions among Spanish Americans. In the case of New Spain, for instance, geographical changes related to Gálvez’s previous administrative experience as visitor-general (1765-1771). A reexamination of sources suggests that the minister’s decisive push for the creation of the Comandancia General of the Interior Provinces in 1776 had an origin in his two-year military expedition to northwestern New Spain in the 1768-1770 period. It is also clear that the project to establish intendancies in New Spain emerged in 1768, although the colonial minister was only able to enforce it in 1786.  From research conducted in archives in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Spain, this presentation shows the activities of an imperial agent in charge of the reconfiguration of the vast territory of the Spanish empire.