6 - Politics 1777–1808

Summary

Mention politics in connection with the late-eighteenth-century Spanish Empire and a well-defined general picture comes to mind: one of colonies struggling in the grasps of Bourbon reforms and Napoleonic Wars, experiencing the social, economic and political strains which accompanied the economic expansion, political centralization and military reorganization of the empire. Caracas, however, may have been an exception to the rule. No other colony, with the possible exception of Havana, experienced quite the combination of economic growth and internal political and social calm during the closing decades of the empire. In Caracas a relative harmony existed in practice between imperial and provincial interests, and indeed among the different components of the latter, which made the province not only an economic success, but also an example of what the Bourbon reforms might have achieved more widely throughout the empire if the circumstances which made the Caracas of our period possible had existed elsewhere.

I do not mean to suggest that late-colonial Caracas did not face problems and strains. It did, and some of the situations the inhabitants of the province confronted were grave indeed. But the issues the ruling elite dealt with cannot readily be seen in the usual light of a reaction to the imperial reforms and new demands from Spain, nor can they easily be seen as the reflection or result of internal divisions and rivalries among the components of the elite of the province. It is in fact more fruitful to look at late-colonial politics and society in Caracas not simply through the prisms of conflict and confrontation implied in the customary perspectives on our period, but also in terms of the cognizance of and resolution of issues.