This article rereads the history of loyalist Montevideo through the prism of intraimperial fiscal cooperation and redistribution. On the eve of Buenos Aires’ 1810 revolution, Montevideo received close to one million pesos in external fiscal subsidies; such supplements to its meager tax base help account for its loyalism. As Spain proved unable to directly assist loyal Montevideanos, regency appointees and local corporations turned to loyalist authorities and locals in Lima, Peru. Through original archival research in Peru, Spain, and Uruguay, this article gives the first detailed account of the multiple seaborne missions sent from Montevideo to Lima, which by 1814 secured more than a half-million pesos in monetary assistance. These funds not only sustained military and naval campaigns but also assured big and small imperial stakeholders that the system of fiscal transfers that benefited them had not been brought to a complete halt.
Arrigo Amadori's Negociando la Obediencia analyzes the role the Spanish Americas had in the count-duke of Olivares' program for reinvigoration and reform of the Hispanic monarchy. Olivares' period as king Felipe IV's favorite or valido (1621-1643) has been the subject of defining monographs such as J.H. Elliott's 1984 and 1986 works. Olivares' approach to the Americas remained understudied partly due to the misleading effect of the count-duke's words of contempt toward the New World (17, 459). A decline in the remittances of Spanish-American bullion to Castile in the seventeenth century only galvanized scholars in the certainty that the Indies were benignantly neglected during this period (255). Unpersuaded by these assessments, the author sets out to study what were the attitudes toward the governance of the Spanish Americas during Olivares' valimiento. Amadori does so by using a variety of sources among which the recommendations (consultas) elevated by the Council of the Indies for the king's determination are the most prominent corpus. The author also analyzes the composition of the Council of the Indies in the age of Olivares as a means to understand the reach of the valido's influence on the body dictating most of the Spanish policy toward the Americas. Similarly, he seeks to reconstruct the ties of men in important positions-such as the viceroys of Peru and New Spain-with the courtly milieus hegemonized by Olivares.
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