Conclusion

Summary

New Spain’s integration into the Pacific Basin played an important role in the viceroyalty’s political and social history. Interactions between the two become visible in descriptions of Spain’s distributive struggles. The conclusion argues that diverging notions of a deserving self and undeserving other produced by such disputes were strategic responses to a changing world in which the increasing mobility of people and goods created both opportunities and fierce competition over limited benefits and resources. Consideration of the ways in which these men and women engaged with the logic of assessment has resulted in a more variegated understanding of their views of the world, as well as their places within it, that acknowledges not only individual agendas but their divergent relationships to collectives as well. While Pacific and transpacific exchanges continued to have an impact on distributive struggles after 1640, the importance of the hierarchy of beneméritos, as it developed in the wake of the diminished conquest, once again altered discussions about worthiness and unworthiness and the ways in which people identified themselves and others.