Introduction

Summary

The current historical portrayal of late-colonial Caracas, and by extension of Venezuela, is that of a society transformed and terminally upset by the Bourbon reforms of the late eighteenth century. A dualistic, colonial economy, supporting a fixed and not particularly comfortable caste society within the framework of a detrimental relationship with the mother country, is seen as creating the conditions for an unusually violent struggle for independence after 1811.

This book portrays a quite different colonial society. By the tail-end of the eighteenth century, Caracas was emerging for the first time as a significant member of the Spanish Empire; and in the process it revealed itself to be an unusually well-balanced and harmonious developing colonial society. An economic flowering unparalleled in the region's long history brought Caracas temporarily out of the relative obscurity in which it had lain, and into which it subsequently relapsed after independence. This economic transformation was accomplished within the confines and with the aid of the empire. Spanish legislation and imperial administrations either anticipated or accommodated the needs of the provincial economy; and the changes in the imperial trade system which may have hurt other American colonies only seem to have given Caracas an added incentive to grow. Not even the increasingly difficult years after 1796, when the negative effects of the Napoleonic Wars intensified, entirely obscured the essentially positive economic relation between province and empire.

Economic growth was accompanied by political stability and social calm. The picture we have of a captive Creole hacendado elite producing cash crops for Spanish export merchants is a distortion of the character of the market economy in the province.