This article studies the mechanics of sales taxes in the viceroyalty of New Granada (present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and western Venezuela) during the second half of the eighteenth century. Advocating a careful examination of the accounting, institutional, and fiscal practices of North Andean customs houses, it provides an extensive discussion on how tax records can be harnessed to study the scope and nature of Bourbon reforms and to measure trade flows. The article pursues three interrelated goals. First, it studies the impact of local negotiations and jurisdictional fragmentation on local rates and revenue collection, providing new insights into the concrete mechanisms of tax bargaining. Second, the study reinterprets data on the main North Andean entrepôts of trade to measure fiscal cycles, real tax pressure, and tax incidence. Proposing a new method for examining customs records, this research shows how fiscal concessions and economic cycles led to diminishing fiscal revenues. Finally, the research places the viceroyalty within the broader context of fiscal change in the Spanish Empire, arguing that the region collected fewer revenues not only because of its comparatively smaller economic activity but also because the combination of custom and reform yielded lower taxation rates and unique fiscal structures.

In late eighteenth-century Mexico City, Spanish colonials, particularly members of the urban middle and popular classes, performed a number of weddings and baptisms on puppies (which were wearing clothes or bejewelled collars) in the context of fandangos or dance parties. These ceremonies were not radical challenges to orthodoxy or conservative reactions in the face of significant economic, political, religious and cultural Bourbon reforms emanating from Spain. Employing Inquisitorial investigations of these ceremonies, this article explores the rise of pet keeping, the meanings of early modern laughter and the implications of the cultural and religious components of the Enlightenment-inspired Bourbon reforms in late colonial Mexico.

This article examines the political imbroglios surrounding the tenure of José García de León y Pizarro (1778–84) as visitador and president-regent of the Audiencia or Kingdom of Quito, in order to demonstrate the deep political divisions that emerged in Spain's Atlantic empire over the Bourbon Reforms. García Pizarro's policies strengthened the colonial state and produced a dramatic increase in crown revenues, but they also led to a groundswell of protest from local elites and even provoked the condemnation of his successors. These political struggles in Quito reveal the many competing viewpoints about the reform and renovation of Spanish Empire. The Bourbon Reforms emerged from a series of hotly contested political struggles on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to patchy and even distinctive outcomes in different regions of the empire. This political contestation also helps to explain why no coherent, commonly accepted plan for the reform of Spain's Atlantic empire ever emerged during the century.

During the second half of the eighteenth century the Spanish Crown monopolised the tobacco industry in its American colonies, creating vertically integrated organisations which included factories for the production of cigars and cigarettes. A detailed analysis of the regulations, organisation and policies applied during the Peruvian viceroyalty suggests that Bourbon officials were effective managers. The monopoly was successful at curbing contraband and extracting rents. The evolution of monopoly policies, however, reflected political constraints on the Crown's efforts to raise revenues. The archival evidence suggests that Bourbon officials closed the tobacco factories in Peru in 1791 as a result of public opposition.