7 - Renovation: The establishment of the viceroyalty

Summary

From the foregoing account of New Granada's commerce during the eighteenth century, it is obvious that Bourbon economic reform failed to transform New Granada's trade or to reshape its economy. For most of the century, trade grew very slowly and the region's economy continued to be oriented more toward self-sufficiency than export. Even after the introduction of comercio libre, which permitted commerce with Spain to expand during the 1780s, growth in exports was slight and foreigners still effectively competed with Spaniards in the import trades. Bourbon mercantilism did not, then, significantly enhance Spain's economic exploitation of the region, nor did it bind New Granada's economy much closer to that of the metropolis.

Adjustments to economic policy were, however, only one way in which a reviving Spanish imperialism impinged on New Granada during the eighteenth century. Following the Bourbon succession, the region's administration came under closer scrutiny from Madrid, and Philip V's government started a series of reforms that, over the course of the century, sought to strengthen the crown's authority over the region, to improve its defenses against external attack, and to force colonials to pay more toward the costs of empire. To trace the genesis of such reforms and to gauge their impact, we must return to the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the government of Philip V took the first step toward reorganizing the territory's government, by incorporating it within a new political entity, the Viceroyalty of New Granada.