Deconstructing Legitimacy
Viceroys, Merchants, and the Military in Late Colonial Peru
416 pages | 4 illustrations/3 maps | 6 x 9 | 2007
ISBN 978-0-271-03209-2 | cloth: $65.00 sh
Paperback edition is not available
“This is an impeccably researched and articulately written inquiry into the collapse of royal authority in Lima at the time of independence. Not only does the book yield a bounty of fresh insights and interpretations into these tumultuous events, but it also identifies actions by the rebels that set an important precedent in Peruvian politics and reverberated in the political culture for years to come.” —Peter F. Klaren, George Washington University
The overthrow of Viceroy Joaquín de la Pezuela on 29 January 1821 has not received much attention from historians, who have tended to view it as a simple military uprising. Yet in this careful study of the episode, based on deep archival research, Patricia Marks reveals it to be a pivotal event in the emerging commercial conflict between free-traders and protectionists that retarded the establishment of a stable national state in post-independence Peru. The overthrow of the viceroy thereby may be seen as an early manifestation of Latin American praetorianism, in which a particular sector of the civilian population, unable to prevail politically and unwilling to compromise, pressures army officers to act in order to save the state.
Patricia H. Marks is an independent scholar who received her doctorate in history from Princeton in 2003.
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Mercantile Conflict and Political Culture
1 City of Kings, City of Commerce
2 Bourbon Reformers and the Merchants of Lima
3 Sabotaging Reform
4 Preventing Independence
5 The Free-Trade Dispute
6 Merchants, the Military, and the Disintegration of Pezuela’s Authority
7 The Pronunciamiento and Its Aftermath
Conclusion: Legitimacy and the Salvation of the State
Glossary of Spanish Terms
Bibliography
Index