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• #Fort quito contraband key series#

In terms of population, generation of revenue and volume of trade it lagged behind the far wealthier kingdoms of New Spain and Peru.

#Fort quito contraband key series#

It focuses particularly upon a series of events that worried authorities in Spain and were alluded to, either directly or indirectly, within the documentation surrounding the creation of the viceroyalty: the French occupation of Cartagena de Indias in 1697 the overthrow of the president of the audiencia of Santa Fe, Francisco de Meneses, in 1715 and the chronic political infighting in Panama and Quito during the War of the Spanish Succession.Ģ.1 Northern South America and the Spanish Atlantic EmpireĪt the turn of the eighteenth century, northern South America was strategically significant, but not economically or politically central to the Spanish American empire. This chapter offers a brief overview of the situation in northern South America in the two decades immediately preceding the first creation of the viceroyalty of New Granada. They are particularly telling of the links and interactions between local elites, royal officials, peninsular authorities and foreign merchants they are also indicative of the amount of self-government that local elites actually enjoyed and of the way in which local politics reflected the shifting balance of local interests and their connection to the wider Spanish and Atlantic worlds. Their significance was enough to concentrate the attention of Spanish authorities and, eventually, to determine the implementation of radical solutions trying to prevent their possible repetition. Several major incidents linked to one or more of these three themes took place in the region in the years spanning the end of Charles II’s reign and the creation of the viceroyalty of New Granada in 1717. They determined external perspectives of the region, its problems and the role that it should play within the broader Spanish empire. These three, often interrelated matters impacted directly upon the daily lives, networking strategies and interests of local elites and royal authorities. Indeed, political instability was one of three themes that permeated the history of the region in the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth century, alongside contraband trade and defensive concerns. 1 Although the city and province of Panama remained part of the viceroyalty of Peru, the reales cédulas also announced the suppression of its audiencia and suggested that putting an end to the political instability of that province was part of the motivations behind the radical overhaul of the administrative organization of northern South America. It included “all the province of Santa Fe, New Kingdom of Granada, those of Cartagena, Santa Marta, Maracaibo, Caracas, Antioquia, Guyana, Popayan and those of San Francisco de Quito, with all and boundaries they comprise”. The real cédula of May 27, 1717, which announced the creation of the viceroyalty of New Granada outlined the territory that would fall under its jurisdiction.