Book Projects
The Imperial Machine: Assembling the Spanish Commercial Empire in the Age of Enlightenment (First Book Project)
In the eighteenth century, a host of Spanish statesmen compared well-ordered empires to harmonious machines and devised a comprehensive plan to erect an integrated commercial empire centered on economic growth. In contrast to many contemporary economic thinkers, Spanish ministers focused less on expanding international trade and more on synergizing Spain’s metropolitan and colonial territories. In fact, these statesmen reasoned that the vast territories of the Hispanic world were a microcosm of the global economy that could become both self-sufficient and impervious to international commercial pressures. With these convictions in mind, Spanish imperial officials endeavored to create a closed commercial empire—an imperial machine—in order to avoid the perils of modern commercial society, namely commercial warfare, while reaping its benefits, economic growth. By bringing this effort to light, The Imperial Machine shows that the Hispanic world’s commercial reforms represented a genuine effort to solve the dilemmas of early modern globalization, not an atavistic form of mercantilism.
For the table of contents, click here.
Empirical Statecraft: The Emergence of an Information Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic (Second Book Project)
Under the aegis of a coterie of practically oriented bureaucrats, information gathering became a central focus of Spanish imperial governance during the eighteenth century. Convinced that Spain suffered from a shortage of “useful” information, imperial bureaucrats launched numerous research expeditions to collect economic, administrative, and botanical information about Spain’s colonies. The ultimate goal was to assemble a large information depository that would enable imperial administrators to make informed policy decisions. While Spain had previously engaged in colonial information gathering, it was during the eighteenth century that Spanish officials made a deliberate effort to design imperial policy using empirical reports from the colonies. Combining perspectives from the histories of science, imperial governance, colonial information gathering, political economy, and the court’s political culture, Empirical Statecraft demonstrates that the Spanish Atlantic became a vast and dynamic laboratory of the modern information age, a development that brought to the fore both the promise of knowledge-based governance and the perils of misinformation.
For the tentative table of contents, click here.
Under the aegis of a coterie of practically oriented bureaucrats, information gathering became a central focus of Spanish imperial governance during the eighteenth century. Convinced that Spain suffered from a shortage of “useful” information, imperial bureaucrats launched numerous research expeditions to collect economic, administrative, and botanical information about Spain’s colonies. The ultimate goal was to assemble a large information depository that would enable imperial administrators to make informed policy decisions. While Spain had previously engaged in colonial information gathering, it was during the eighteenth century that Spanish officials made a deliberate effort to design imperial policy using empirical reports from the colonies. Combining perspectives from the histories of science, imperial governance, colonial information gathering, political economy, and the court’s political culture, Empirical Statecraft demonstrates that the Spanish Atlantic became a vast and dynamic laboratory of the modern information age, a development that brought to the fore both the promise of knowledge-based governance and the perils of misinformation.
For the tentative table of contents, click here.