Publications
Journal Articles:
“Colonial Economic Improvement: How Spain Created New Consulados to Preserve and Develop Its American Empire, 1778-1795.” Hispanic American Historical Review 98, n. 4 (2018): 605-634, [article here].
Abstract: After implementing comercio libre (free internal trade) in 1778, the Spanish crown endeavored to create multiple new consulados (chambers of commerce) to facilitate commercial exchange within Spain's Atlantic territories. However, while the crown established new metropolitan consulados in the mid-1780s, it approved colonial consulados only in the 1790s, after the death of the minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez, in 1787. Why did the crown initially hesitate to establish colonial consulados? I argue that unlike Gálvez, who was committed to an extractive system of imperialism, the post-1787 ministers were inspired by a distinct kind of soft imperialism, which held that the empire's survival depended on stimulating colonial economic growth while promoting reciprocal bonds among all Spanish subjects. In reconstructing this history, I show how the post-1787 ministers established a new regime of colonial economic improvement to bind the empire during a moment of impending crisis.
“Viscardo’s Global Political Economy and the First Cry for Spanish American Independence, 1767-1798.” Journal of Latin American Studies 48, n. 3 (2016): 537-664, [article here].
Abstract: Revisionist historians have convincingly argued that Spanish American independence was not the result of simmering grievances that galvanised a national or Creole identity against Spain. Instead, this scholarship insists that Spanish American national identities did not exist at the time and that independence was an unforeseen process that must be understood in the context of the Napoleonic invasion of Iberia. But, if independence was undesirable before 1808 and if national identities arose at a latter period, how do we explain the early independence projects of ‘precursors’ like Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán? By contextually reconstructing the logic behind Viscardo's projects, this article offers a new perspective on the intellectual conditions of possibility for Spanish American independence. It argues that though he certainly identified as a Creole from Peru, Viscardo actually deployed an Enlightenment global science of commerce, not Creole patriotism or nationalism, to legitimate Spanish American independence.
“La invención de un imperio comercial hispano, 1740-1765.” Magallánica, revista de historia moderna 2, n. 3 (2015): 56-76, [article here].
Resumen. Hacia mediados del siglo XVIII se fragua un nuevo discurso imperial en el corazón de la monarquía hispana. Entre sus arquitectos intelectuales habría que incluir ministros de las nuevas secretarías borbónicas, la Junta de Comercio, y el Consejo de Castilla. Fieles estudiosos de la ciencia de comercio ilustrada, ya para 1740 dichos ministros habían delineado un nuevo sistema imperial en el que la única y exclusiva función de las colonias era consumir la mercancía de la metrópoli. Es decir, estos ministros ilustrados buscaban transformar la monarquía compuesta heredada de los Austrias en un imperio comercial, un tipo de estado cuyo poder derivaba de su capacidad para encauzar el mercado colonial a su propio beneficio. En este artículo intentamos reconstruir la manera en que se llega a proyectar ese anhelado imperio de naturaleza comercial.
Book Chapters:
“A New System of Imperial Government: Political Economy and the Spanish Theory of Commercial Empire, c. 1740-1750.” Empire and the Social Sciences: Global Histories of Knowledge. Ed., Jeremy Adelman. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, [book here].
“The Contested State: Political Discourse during the Independence of the Dominican Republic, 1844.” Transnational Hispaniola: New Directions in Haitian and Dominican Studies. Eds., Kiran Jayaram and April Mayes. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2018, [book here, abstract here].
“Ciencia de estado comercial. Un lenguaje político dieciochesco.” Historia en fragmentos. Estudios en homenaje a Pablo Fernández Albaladejo. Eds., Julio Pardos, Julen Viejo, José María Iñurritegui, José M. Portillo, and Fernando Andrés. Madrid, Spain: UAM, 2017, [book here].
Book Reviews:
The Global Spanish Empire: Five Hundred Years of Place Making and Pluralism, Edited by Christine D. Beaule and John G. Douglass (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2020), Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, forthcoming.
Los virreinatos de Nueva España y del Perú (1680-1740): Un balance historiográfico, Edited by Bernard Lavallé (Madrid: Casa de Valázquez, 2019), Hispanic American Historical Review 101, n.1 (2021): 163-164, [review here].
Writing the Americas in Enlightenment Spain: Literature, Modernity, and the New World 1773-1812, By Thomas C. Neal (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2017), Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 21, n. 4 (2020): 569-571, [review here].
Iberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization, Edited by Ivonne del Valle, Anna More, Rachel Sarah O'Toole (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2020), Journal of Jesuit Studies 7, n. 4 (2020): 676–678, [review here].
The Imperial Nation: Citizens and Subjects in the British, French, Spanish, and American Empires, By Josep M. Fradera (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), Journal of Social History 54, n. 1 (2020): 369-371, [review here].
Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500-1830, Edited by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Hispanic American Historical Review 99, n. 3 (2019): 539-540, [review here].
The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, Edited by Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie IV, Historia Moderna, n. 32 (2019): 385-392, [review here].
Crafting a Republic for the World: Scientific, Geographic, and Historiographic Inventions of Colombia, By Lina del Castillo (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), Journal of Interdisciplinary History 50, n. 1 (2019): 147-148, [review here].
An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World, By Ernesto Bassi (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017) and New Countries: Capitalism, Revolution, and Nations in the Americas, 1750-1870, Edited by John Tutino (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), Journal of Interdisciplinary History 48, n. 4 (2018): 581-584, [review here].
Other Publications:
Interview with Fidel J. Tavárez, author of “Colonial Economic Improvement: How Spain Created New Consulados to Preserve and Develop Its American Empire, 1778–1795.” Hispanic American Historical Review, [interview here].
“A New System of Imperial Government for Spanish America.” CONTEXTOS: The Blog of the Center for Latin American Studies at UChicago, February, 2018, [blog post here].
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Contact Information:
Queens College, CUNY History Department Powdermaker Hall, 352-G 65-30 Kissena Boulevard Flushing, NY 11367 Tel: 718-997-5118 ftavarez@qc.cuny.edu |