Imperialism, Private Interests, and the Reform of the Council of the Indies during the War of the Spanish Succession

Scholars of Latin American history tend to associate Bourbon colonial reforms chronologically with the late eighteenth century, often ignoring earlier administrative changes that occurred during the reign of the dynasty’s first monarch, Philip V (r. 1700-1746). In “A Most Contentious Council: Imperialism, Private Interests, and the Reform of the Council of the Indies During the War of the Spanish Succession,” Aaron Alejandro Olivas challenges this perspective by analyzing the causes of an immediate reform to Spanish American administration under the Bourbons: the dramatic reduction of the powers of the Council of the Indies during the first decade of the eighteenth century. Olivas demonstrates that the motivation behind this particular reform should be attributed to a conflict of imperial and private interests between the transnational Bourbon dynasty and the individual ministers of the council. Considered the most contentious within the Madrid bureaucracy in regards to Bourbon rule, the ministers of the Council of the Indies actively opposed Philip V’s efforts to align Spanish imperial policy with French colonial interests throughout the War of the Spanish Succession. The political conflict between the king and his council only intensified during the Allied capture of Madrid in 1706 and 1710, which led to the defection of over a third of the ministers to the court of the Habsburg pretender in Barcelona. Thus, Philip V’s creation of the post of Minister of the Navy and Indies in 1714 should be viewed as a deliberate means of avoiding such conciliar resistance to his government's control of colonial affairs. Drawing on documents from Seville’s Archive of the Indies and France’s naval and foreign affairs archives, the paper sheds light on the place of Spanish America and global imperialism in eighteenth-century European geopolitics.