Politics, Economy, and Society in Bourbon Central America, 1759-1821

This book examines how the Spanish policies known broadly as the Bourbon Reforms affected Central American social, economic, and political institutions. Although historians have devoted significant attention to the purpose and impact of these reforms in Spain and some of Spains other New World colonies, this book is the first to explore their impact on Central America. These reforms profoundly changed aspects of Central America’s politics and society; however, these essays reveal that changes in the region were shaped both internally and externally and that they weakened the regions ties to metropolitan Spain as often as they reinforced them. Contributors focus on specific policy changes and their consequences as well as transformations throughout the region for which no direct Bourbon inspiration appears to be responsible. Together they demonstrate that whether or not the Crown achieved its primary goals of centralisation and control, its policies nevertheless provided opportunities for evident, often subtle, and occasionally unintentional shifts in the colonial governments relationship to its constituent populations.