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 BOURBON PERU 1750–1824

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 Liverpool Latin American Studies

1 Business History in Latin America: The Experience of Seven Countries

Carlos Dávila and Rory Miller eds

2 Habsburg Peru: Images, Imagination and Memory

Peter T. Bradley and David Cahill

3 Knowledge and Learning in the Andes: Ethnographic Perspectives

Henry Stobart and Rosaleen Howard eds

4 Bourbon Peru 1750–1824

John Fisher

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 Liverpool Latin American Studies, New Series 4

Bourbon Peru
1750–1824

John Fisher

LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS

EUP_BPeru_00_Prelims 3 9/2/03, 12:30

 First published 2003 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU

Copyright © 2003 John Fisher

The right of John Fisher to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A British Library CIP Record is available

ISBN 0–85323–908-8

Typeset in Plantin by Koinonia, Bury

Printed and bound in the European Union by
Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn
Bell and Bain, Glasgow
Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow

EUP_BPeru_00_Prelims 4 9/2/03, 12:30

 Contents

Abbreviations vi
Preface and Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1
1 Antecedents: The Viceroyalty of Peru Prior to 1750 9
2 Government, Defence and the Church 26
3 Economy, Demography and Finance 51
4 Society, Ethnicity and Culture 80
5 Resistance, Revolts and Rebellions 94
6 Royalism, Patriotism and Independence 106
7 Conclusion and Epilogue: The Bourbon Legacy 138

Appendices
1 The Viceroys of Peru in the Bourbon Period 147
2 The Visitadores Generales 162
3 The President-Intendants of Cusco 167
4 The Regents of the Audiencia of Lima 174
5 The Regents of the Audiencia of Cusco 178
6 The Intendants 181

Glossary of Spanish Terms 198

Archives and Bibliography 202
Index 219

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 Abbreviations

ADA Archivo Departamental de Arequipa, Arequipa

ADC Archivo Departamental del Cusco, Cusco
AES Anuario de Estudios Americanos
AGI Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla
AGMRE Archivo General del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Lima
AGN Archivo General de la Nación, Lima
AHM Archivo Histórico Municipal, Lima
AHMH Archivo Histórico del Ministerio de Hacienda y Comercio,
Sección Colonial, Lima
AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid
BL British Library, London
BMP Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, Santander
BNP Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, Lima
HAHR Hispanic American Historical Review
JLAS Journal of Latin American Studies
RH Revista Histórica
RI Revista de Indias

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 Preface and Acknowledgements

In one sense I have been thinking about writing this book for over 30 years, for
it was in the (English) summer of 1968 that I first travelled to Peru to under-
take the extended period of research in Lima – mainly in the Biblioteca
Nacional, the Archivo Nacional (now, of course, the Archivo General de la
Nación), the Archivo Histórico Municipal, the Archivo Histórico del Minis-
terio de Hacienda y Comercio, and the Archivo General del Ministerio de
Relaciones Exteriores – that enabled me to turn my 1967 University of London
MPhil dissertation on the Bourbon reforms of local government in late-
colonial Peru into my first major monograph, published in 1970.1 Despite its
grandiose title – Government and Society in Colonial Peru – this book was, in
fact, a relatively narrow study of the aims, details, and consequences of the
reform of provincial administration in the viceroyalty of Peru in the late-
Bourbon period, centred around the introduction of the intendant system in
1784. The work raised as many questions as it answered, at least in my own
mind, particularly about, on the one hand, the true nature of the rebellion of
Túpac Amaru of 1780–1783 (which, although repressed with great severity by
the colonial authorities, actually helped Charles III and his ministers to
overcome resistance within Peru to the application of their programme of
administrative reform for Spain’s American empire) and, on the other, the
conditions of the viceregal economy, following the loss of Upper Peru in 1776
to the new viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, and the definitive introduction of
free trade in most parts of the Hispanic world in 1778. My serious output on
the first of these themes has been limited to one article, first published in 1971
(and reproduced with some minor alterations in 1972 and 1976).2 However,
subsequent research visits to Peru in 1970 and 1971 enabled me to produce a
relatively significant study of the mining industry in the period 1776–1824,
which led, first, to the award of my PhD at the University of Liverpool in
1973, and, after further work in Lima in 1974, to the completion of a series of
publications, including two substantial articles that appeared in 1975–1976,
and my second major book in 1977.3
By the mid-1970s my eyes had been fully opened to the enormous oppor-
tunities available in Peruvian archives to a scholar working on colonial history,

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 viii   ‒

particularly if, as in my case, it proved possible, as a consequence of generous

funding from government to promote the development of Latin American
Studies in the United Kingdom, to combine prolonged periods of research in
Peru with work in more accessible (at least for me) repositories in Spain
(principally the Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla). In some respects this
combination of opportunities for archival research gave me – and other British
historians who had begun to undertake research on colonial Spanish America
in the 1960s – a more privileged position than the majority of Spanish historians
(who were unaccustomed to going beyond the AGI, and whose publications,
therefore, tended to describe crown policies rather than the results of their
application in Spanish America) and, indeed, many Spanish American histor-
ians, for whom access in the opposite direction to Spanish repositories was
often too expensive and difficult to arrange; it also provided a sharp contrast
with the experiences of British historians working on Spanish America up to
and including the 1950s, for whom archival research in Spanish America had
been a rare experience, with the consequence that their research had tended
to focus upon the broad features of either Spanish imperial policy (but, often,
not upon its consequences) or British diplomatic and/or business interests in
the region, themes capable of being studied largely on the basis of archival
research in Europe.4 Of course, working with material in Peru that is largely
uncatalogued – for example, the 81 legajos in the AGN detailing the activities
of the Tribunal de Minería, which constituted the basic source for my mining
monograph and related publications – has disadvantages as well as benefits,
including one’s concern as a researcher about how to handle documents that
literally fall to pieces when touched. The freedom that I soon acquired as a
trusted researcher to wander around the stacks of documents in Peruvian
repositories and, occasionally, to remove items from the archives – once, in
Cusco, for example, so that I might take a secret report from the audiencia to
viceroy José de La Serna to a photocopying shop in the centre of the city, since
the archive had no copying facilities; on other occasion in Huancavelica, to sit
on a bench in the plaza to read material because the room in the cabildo
building in which documents were stored had neither a light nor a table and
chair – contrasted sharply with the rigid security controls imposed upon
investigators in, for example, the Department of Manuscripts of the British
Library, where taking notes with a pen rather than a pencil is considered a
high crime. These and other bizarre experiences – including walking daily past
armed guards in the basement of the Palacio de Justicia (they were there to
prevent prisoners rather than researchers from escaping, but I sometimes
wondered if they would be able to tell the difference in the half-light) to get to
the Archivo Histórico del Ministerio de Hacienda y Comercio – all became
part of the mosaic of rich experiences that made a visit to Peru exciting and
unpredictable as well as academically rewarding.
Throughout this early period as a young researcher in Peru I had only one
potentially serious brush with authority, in 1970: having acquired permission,
after much persistence, including having to present a formal petition on

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stamped paper (old colonial habits die hard), to consult the colonial docu-
ments that had been brought together in the Archivo General del Ministerio
de Relaciones Exteriores as a consequence of Peru’s boundary disputes with
neighbouring countries, I inadvertently left the Palacio de Torre Tagle at the
end of my first day in its library with my security pass still in my pocket. When
I returned the following day I was detained for some time by the security
police who were very keen to know who might have borrowed the pass over-
night and for what purpose. Their concern, reflecting in part the growing
difficulties of the Velasco régime with revolutionary groups, seemed to grow
rather than diminish when they discovered that I was staying with Pablo
Macera – in itself a rich cultural experience – but eventually Félix Denegri
came to my rescue, assuring the authorities that, like them, I was a staunch
believer in capitalist values, despite an occasional tendency to resort to revolu-
tionary rhetoric, a weakness shared with many of Velasco’s ministers. In those
days I walked with impunity in parts of Lima, Callao and beyond where tourists
– and until recently even limeños – subsequently feared to tread; in all my visits
to Peru I have had my pocket picked only twice, losing nothing more than a
handkerchief on the first occasion (in Callao) and a 10 soles banknote (on the
train from Lima to Huancayo, now, unfortunately, no longer running). In
Callao greater dangers came from eating cebiche in the market, and, on one
occasion from trying to photograph the modern guns installed at the Real
Felipe fortress: they point symbolically towards Lima (unlike their eighteenth-
century predecessors which aimed towards the sea, with a view to keeping out
the English) and the guards persuaded me very firmly that it would be a
mistake for me to use my camera to record this contrast.
Like other visitors to Peru from the well-ordered but rather conventional
Britain of the 1960s, I quickly learned not to take anything for granted. My
very first night in Peru in 1968 was a strange affair, for two reasons: first, I had
arranged in advance to spend the first few nights of my prolonged visit in a
student residence at the University of San Marcos pending finding suitable
family accommodation for my wife and son, who were due to join me several
weeks later. I had assumed, perhaps naively, that conditions at the San
Marcos hostel would be similar to those in a University residence in Liver-
pool, not realizing that the infrastructure was basic in the extreme and that I
was expected, for example, to supply my own blankets and pillow. I survived
one night there and moved the next day to the Pensión Alemana in Avenida
Arequipa, becoming convinced after a short time there that the owner was the
long-lost Martin Bormann. My even more immediate difficulty was that,
having arranged on my first evening in Lima to have dinner with a former
Liverpool student who had managed to obtain a junior post in the Law Faculty
of San Marcos – the individual concerned acquired some notoriety shortly
thereafter when he killed his mistress’s boyfriend by shooting him through a
bathroom door, having been found in a compromising situation with the
shared object of their passions – I discovered that the director of the British
Council had also arranged for me to have dinner on the very same day with

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 x   ‒

Pablo Macera. To avoid giving any offence to either host, I ate two dinners
during my first evening in Peru, first with the future assassin, and on the
second occasion surrounded by Pablo’s students, who were allowed to sit at
the table to observe the principal parties eating and listen to their conversa-
tion, but without themselves sharing in either experience.
The British Council had led me to expect a comfortable life in Peru, but
not one that involved two dinners a night. Its 1967 ‘Record of Living Conditions’,
supplied to those about to embark for Peru (normally British businessmen
rather than relatively impoverished junior academics), accurately described
Lima’s climate as ‘unhealthy to the extent that it is the reverse of invigorating’,
but made reassuring remarks about the availability of servants – ‘one servant is
enough for a married couple … In addition, one needs a washerwoman… a
gardener… and a man to clean the floors once or twice a month’. ‘Shopping’,
I learned, ‘is usually done by wives, but servants can help’ – how times change
– and ‘local forms of etiquette are the same as in Europe, except that times are
seldom adhered to’. The student residence of San Marcos, and, indeed, the
Pensión Alemana were somewhat removed from the hedonistic vision con-
jured up by this information. However, wherever I went in Peru, and when-
ever I went, I was – and remain – enormously grateful to Peruvian friends and
colleagues for their generous hospitality and, alongside that, the warmth of
their academic welcome. At the risk of forgetting some, I should like to record
my gratitude to in particular Félix Denegri, recently deceased, whose magni-
ficent library was opened every weekend to me and other researchers tempor-
arily resident in Lima; to Pablo Macera, who opened his house to me for two
months in 1970, following his visit to the University of Liverpool in 1969, to
Heraclio Bonilla (who also spent some time as a Visiting Fellow in Liverpool),
to Franklin Pease (also deceased), Javier Tord (with whom I stayed at La
Punta for several weeks in 1978), Juan Ossio, whose generous hospitality in
San Antonio-Miraflores has been a highlight of my recent visits to Lima,
Guillermo Lohmann Villena, Eusebio Quiroz Paz-Soldán (my ever-generous
host in Arequipa), Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, and many others. I have been
able to respond in kind to a small extent, by assisting a number of them to
come to Liverpool, but I am conscious that the hospitality scales remain
extremely unbalanced in my favour. On the academic front my first publica-
tions in Peru – my 1968 edition of the relación de gobierno of the second
intendant of Arequipa, Bartolomé María Salamanca, and my 1975 edition of
the matrícula of the miners of Peru – were reproduced in an amazingly short
time by the Seminario de Historia Rural Andina of the remarkable Macera.5
Both works, I understand, have become collectors’ items – it is amazing,
sometimes, what people will collect – despite being mimeographed; my more
substantial books, published in 1977 and 1981 by the Instituto de Estudios
Peruanos and the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú respectively, would
not have appeared in print in Lima without the encouragement of Heraclio
Bonilla and José Matos Mar in the case of the former, and Franklin Pease in
the latter case. Others to whom I am enormously grateful include Miguel

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    xi

Maticorena – already a fixture in the Archivo General de Indias when I took

my first nervous steps in Sevilla in 1965, who taught me a lot about Peruvian
history, perhaps without realising it, during long, late-night conversations in
the Bar del Duque, pausing only to light yet another cigarette – and, at a
different level the directors and staff of the archives in Peru where I have
worked over the years. They include Mario Cárdenas Ayaipoma of the AGN,
Guillermo Galdós Rodríguez, director of the Archivo Departamental de
Arequipa, the former directors of the Archivo Departamental del Cusco,
Horacio Villanueva Urteaga and Jorge Polo y La Borda, and Roberto Cáceres
Olivera, also of the ADC.
A further prolonged research visit to Peru in 1978 enabled me to pursue a
growing interest in investigating late-colonial conspiracies and, more generally,
the interplay of royalism, regionalism, and racial tensions in Peru in the
second decade of the nineteenth century, themes which loomed large in my
published output in the period 1979–1982.6 However, although I returned to
Lima and Peru in 1980 – in part to participate in the bicentennial colloquium
devoted to Túpac Amaru – my research had already begun to move towards
the broader field of Spanish imperial policy towards America as a whole in the
late-Bourbon period, with particular reference to the question of the conse-
quences for Hispanic trade in general of the introduction of comercio libre in
1778–1789.7 To some extent this research grew out of my interest in Peruvian
mining, for in 1976 I had drawn attention to the relationship between the
expansion in mining output at Cerro de Pasco in the 1780s and the market
there for imports from Spain as well as locally-produced goods.8 In the event,
what had been intended as a limited piece of research on Charles III’s
commercial policy, undertaken in the Archivo General de Simancas in 1977
for incorporation into one chapter of a general book which I planned to write
(but have still not written) on the reign of Spain’s third Bourbon king, Charles
III (1759–1788), turned into a major project that dominated my academic
output in the period 1979–1998, during which I published no less than three
books, and twenty essays and journal articles exclusively on Spanish-Spanish
American trade in 1778–1820, and a further two books on the broader issue of
economic relations during the colonial period as a whole.9 Throughout this
time I was particularly attentive to the possibility of concentrating my atten-
tion upon the relative importance of the viceroyalty of Peru in the imperial
commercial system, publishing one article and one essay on this theme.10
Moreover, in 1985 I convened with Allan J. Kuethe and Anthony McFarlane a
symposium at the 45th International Congress of Americanists in Bogotá
(comparing the viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada in the Bourbon era)
which led in due course to the publication of an important collection of essays
in 1990 which explored the links between imperial reform and revolutionary
activity in these regions.11 The appearance of this book, which took rather longer
to get through the publisher’s arcane procedures than I had anticipated, was
preceded in 1989 by my bibliographical volume on Peru in the World Biblio-
graphical Series, thereby seeming to confirm the hypothesis that historians

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 xii   ‒

who have stopped doing serious archival research on a particular country turn
first to its historiography before taking refuge ultimately in bibliography.12
Prior to my return to Peru in 1997, my final fling in Peruvian archives in
this intermediate period of my career occurred in 1985 – following the American-
ists meeting in Bogotá – when I was able to explore the recently-catalogued
Fondo Vega Centeno of the ADC, an experience which enabled me to publish
the first of two essays on cultural and political identity in Peru during the
independence period and beyond with particular reference to the tension
between the metropolis (Lima) and the southern highlands represented sym-
bolically by Cusco.13 The principal purpose of that visit, however, was not to
undertake extensive new work on my own behalf but to enable me to check on
the progress of a research project, begun in 1984 with the support of the
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), on ‘The Social History of
Southern Peru: the Cuzco Region, 1750–1850’, for which the bulk of the
archival work was being undertaken by one of my former doctoral students,
David P. Cahill, who had been awarded his PhD at Liverpool in 1984 for a
thesis on the diocese of Cusco in the period between the rebellion of Túpac
Amaru and the later movement of 1814–1815, begun by dissident creoles but
now commonly known as the rebellion of Pumacahua.14
Cahill was the fourth of my doctoral students, but the first to work exclu-
sively on Peru. Earlier I had supervised, in a rather benign way, students
writing doctoral dissertations on topics as diverse as ‘A Provincial Response to
the Mexican Revolution: State Sovereignty and Highland Caudillismo in
Oaxaca, 1910–1920’ and ‘British Protestant Missions to Spanish South
America, c.1840–1890’, and, with a greater degree of expertise on my part,
‘Urban Popular Society in Colonial Quito, c.1700–1800’.15 The last of these,
by Martin Minchom, was eventually turned into a fine book, a pioneering
work of social history, that focused on subordinate social groups – mestizos,
poor Spaniards, female Indian traders, artisans, and vagrants – in the city of
Quito, analysing social, religious, and economic trends against a background
of demographic change and endemic social unrest.16 Notwithstanding the
contribution made by the late Alberto Flores Galindo to the analysis of the
social history of Lima from 1760, a parallel study of non-élite groups in the
viceregal capital of Peru remains to be written.17 Cahill, however, was the first
of my research students to be entrusted with a project that, ideally, I should
have liked to research and write up myself, but was unable to do so partly
because of my continuing preoccupation, referred to above, as a researcher
with the topic of imperial commercial policy in the Hispanic world as a whole,
and partly because of the demands made upon my time by my increasing
administrative responsibilities in the University of Liverpool, including six
years as Dean of the Faculty of Arts (1986–1992) and, most recently, three years
as Pro-Vice-Chancellor in 1995–1998.
Cahill, in fact, produced better work on the late-colonial society of Peru,
particularly in the Cusco region, than I could have done, in part because of his
expertise in anthropological theory, publishing not only excellent articles

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    xiii

derived from his doctoral dissertation on clerical involvement in revolutionary

activity but also, arising from our ESRC-funded project (which continued
until 1987), a series of penetrating analyses of the social history of Cusco
during the late-colonial/early-republican periods.18 Subsequently, as my
absence from Peru grew inexorably longer – following my 1985 visit I did not
return until 1997 – further research students were entrusted with topics that
ideally I might have taken on board myself but was unable to do so because of
the other commitments already referred to. Again, this was a happy accident
as far as I was concerned, for both Monica Zaugg’s study of the textile
industry in late-colonial Peru, and Adrian Pearce’s analysis of imperial policy
and viceregal administration in the early-Bourbon period, completed in 1993
and 1998 respectively, are models of incisive scholarship that have already
begun to lead on to the publication of significant articles.19
Throughout the twelve years of my absence from Peru after 1985, I
continued to be regarded, somewhat to my embarrassment, as something of
an expert on Peruvian history in the Bourbon period. My occasional efforts to
resist invitations to write contributions to edited volumes on the grounds that
I had not done any recent research, except on the question of trade, were
often interpreted as an expression of undue modesty – or an indirect request
for further praise – and I usually succumbed to the blandishments of editors;
their gratitude suggested in some cases that they had either not read the books
I had published in the 1970s, or, if they had, had forgotten what they con-
tained, thereby enabling me to regurgitate old material.20 Increasingly, how-
ever, I saw myself in historiographical terms as an analogue of a modern miner
who, having lost the will and/or the skill to prospect successfully for new veins
of silver, turns to the reprocessing of the debris left behind by the less efficient
refining processes of an earlier period, perhaps producing from the spoilheaps
the historiographical equivalents of zinc and tin rather than precious metal.
One by-product (to pursue the mining metaphor) of the fact that my research
on Spanish-Spanish American commercial relations in the late-colonial
period was forcing me, somewhat reluctantly, to shift my attention away from
an exclusive interest in Peru to other parts of Spanish America was that I was
able to undertake research-related visits during my prolonged absence from
Peru to Puerto Rico (1987), Ecuador (1991, 1992), Chile (1992), Argentina
(1994), and (in part under the guise of recruiting students) Mexico (1997,
1998), as well as to a remarkable number of cities or regions in Spain that were
anxious in the run-up to the 1992 celebrations of the fifth centenary of the
‘discovery’ to convene symposia concerning the history of their economic and
commercial links with Spanish America.21
My archival research on commercial relations between Spain and Spanish
America has now been completed, and, following the publication in 1998 of
the article referred to in note 9 and of a Spanish translation of it in 1999, I
have no plans to write anything further on the subject (unless, of course, a
publisher makes me an offer I cannot refuse or a symposium is convened in a
tropical paradise that I have not yet visited).22 Perhaps somewhat incautiously, I

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 xiv   ‒

secured in 1999 a large grant (£126,000) from the Arts and Humanities
Research Board for a major research project on ‘British Trade with the
Hispanic World, 1763–1824’, which seeks to examine not only the commercial
intercourse that occurred through legal channels but also the much more
complex question of contraband trade; as with the ESRC-funded project
referred to above, the bulk of the archival work for this extremely challenging
topic, as well as the writing of the substantive monograh which will result from
it, was undertaken by a post-doctoral research fellow.23 Coupled with my
emancipation in 1998 from my triennium as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, this
recourse to working with a collaborator means that I now find myself free (in a
relative sense) to attempt to pick up the threads of my research activity in and
on Peru that were left dangling for twelve years following my 1985 visit. In the
interim, I had not entirely abandoned original research on late colonial Peru,
but had confined myself to work in the AGI, notably in 1995, when, with the
financial support of the British Academy, I consulted documentation relating
to Spanish imperial policy towards Peru during the second constitutional
régime (1820–1823), the results of which are incorporated in chapter 6 of this
book.24 As on many previous and subsequent occasions, my work in Sevilla
was facilitated by the co-operation of the staff of the AGI, and the Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-Americanos, and by the friendship and hospitality of many
academic friends there, including María Luisa Laviana Cuetos, José Luis
Mora Mérida, Julián Ruíz Rivera, Manuela Cristina García Bernal, Antonio
Gutiérrez Escudero, Juan Marchena Fernández, Carmen Gómez Pérez,
Carlos Martínez Shaw, Marina Alfonso Mola, and Enriqueta Vila Vilar. A
special word of thanks is due to José Hernández Palomo of the Escuela, who
generously made available to me biographical information relating to Manuel
de Abreu, who was despatched as peace commisioner to Peru in 1820 by the
restored liberal government in Spain, and whose ‘Diario político’, located in
the AGI, constitutes a hitherto untapped source of great significance on
relations between José de San Martín and viceroy José de La Serna in 1821.25
The first opportunity to go back to Peru after my long absence came in
1997, when I combined a visit to Quito (mainly to participate in the 49th
International Congress of Americanists) with a rather nostalgic return to
Lima, Cusco, and Arequipa. Despite the efforts of the Dutch airline KLM to
deprive me of my baggage – which followed me around the sierra for an
eventual reunification in Arequipa six days after I had left Amsterdam (minus
the items that had been stolen – almost certainly in Schipol airport rather than
in Callao – in the meantime) – the experience was extremely rewarding, both
personally and academically. A particularly memorable occasion was the
sumptuous dinner party provided by Juan Ossio and his wife Celia, which
enabled me to renew contact with Peruvian friends whom I had not seen for
many years – they included Miguel Maticorena and Franklin Pease – as well
as others (including Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy and Teodoro Hampe), whose
thirst for academic travel had brought them to Liverpool more recently. In
Arequipa I once again enjoyed drinking pisco and eating cuy with Eusebio

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Quiroz, and was able both to renew contact with Guillermo Galdós in the new
location of the ADA, and admire the excellent organization of the Archivo
Arzobispal being undertaken by Alejandro Málaga Núñez Zeballos, the son of
my late friend Alejandro Málaga Medina.
My appetite for a serious return to Peruvian things having been whetted, I
accepted with alacrity an invitation in 1998 from the Departamento de
Economía of the Universidad Católica to participate in its seminar on ‘El
estado y el mercado en la historia del Perú’. I found this to be an especially
rewarding experience for a variety of reasons: first, it enabled me to renew
contact with Peruvian scholars (for example, Heraclio Bonilla) whom I had
known for 30 years; second, it brought back to Lima several (relatively)
younger Peruvian historians who had passed through Liverpool on various
occasions en route to eventual academic careers in the United States (they
included José Deustua and Alfonso Quiroz); third, it enabled me to renew and
strengthen bonds with Peruvians who had undertaken their doctoral research
in Britain (notably Scarlett O’Phelan, Margarita Suárez, and Rafael Varón);
fourth, it brought together a variety of scholars, from Peru and elsewhere,
whom I had met at various times on the conference circuit or as visitors to
Britain: they included Carlos Contreras, Luis Miguel Glave, Nils Jacobsen,
Kendall Brown, and my good friends from Madrid, Alfredo Moreno Cebrián
(whose generous hospitality and friendship has enlivened visits to Santiago,
Lima and Cusco, as well as Madrid) and Ascensión Martínez Riaza. It was
during this seminar that I finalized the arrangements to write the Spanish
version of this book with Marcos Cueto, the then Director de Publicaciones of
the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, and also confirmed the arrangements for a
longer visit to Peru in July–August 1998, primarily to enable me to complete
the archival research in Cusco that I considered necessary to enable me to
write the section of chapter 6 that concentrates upon the establishment and
functioning of the viceregal court in Cusco in 1822–1824.
As ever, I was overwhelmed by the generosity, both academic and personal,
of Peruvian friends during these most recent visits. Once again, within hours
of landing in Lima in 1998, my wife and I were wining-and-dining in style at
Juan Ossio’s house, trying to forget the six hours’ time difference between
Lima and Liverpool. In Cusco I was especially grateful for the assistance given
to me in the ADC by Donato Amado González, who is cataloguing the
invaluable ‘Periódicos’ holdings, and once again Roberto Cáceres Olivera.
Our visit to Ayacucho in 1998 was made unforgettable by the lavish attention
bestowed upon us by the then Rector of the Universidad Nacional de San
Cristóbal de Huamanga, Enrique González Carré – whom I had met for the
first time a few weeks earlier during a most enjoyable evening at the home of
Marcos Cueto – who not only turned up at the airport at 7 am to receive us (it
would be most unusual for the Vice-Chancellor of a British University to do
this) but arranged a full programme of escorted visits for us in and around the
city (including a memorable one to La Quinua); Ulpiano Quispe Mejía
provided us with a much-appreciated introduction to the city’s textiles,

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examples of which now adorn our home. In Cusco I was grateful for an
opportunity provided by Jorge Enrique Escobar Medrano to lecture to staff
and students in the Departamento Académico de Historia of the Universidad
Nacional de San Antonio Abad. In Lima I experienced contrasting features of
the academic world, lecturing at both the Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la
Vega (thanks to Luis Alva Castro, president of Cambio y Desarrollo, whose
daughter, Julia, had recently completed her undergraduate studies in Liverpool)
and at the rather more traditional Instituto Riva-Agüero. On the latter
occasion, I was greatly honoured to be incorporated as a Miembro Honorario
of the Instituto, and should like to express my gratitude to Scarlett O’Phelan
(who had acted as an intermediary in arranging the event), to the Subdirector,
René Ortiz Caballero, who presided over the ceremony, and to the Coordin-
adora de Prensa y Promoción, María Cecilia Tello Pareja, who ensured that
my achievements as a historian of Peru were exaggerated in El Comercio and
Caretas. The finishing touches were put to my research for this book during a
further visit to Lima in August 1999, arranged primarily to enable me to
participate in the VI Reunión de Historiadores de la Minería Latino-
americana, organized with typical efficiency by Hector Noejovich.
This book has been written partly for reasons of self-indulgence, in an
attempt to enable me to pull together the somewhat diverse features of my
prolonged interest in the late-colonial history of Peru – in particular its govern-
ment and administration, society and race relations, mining and other features
of the economy, insurgency, and the transition to independence – into a
coherent whole. It also seeks to incorporate into its analysis the fruits of the
excellent research undertaken during the last 25 years or so by relatively
younger Peruvian scholars, who have succeeded in challenging and reshaping
the traditional interpretations of the late-colonial period that characterized
mainstream historiographical activity in Peru until the 1960s (and, in some
cases, beyond)26. My basic aim is to provide what might be described as a
general survey of the second half of the eighteenth century and the first
quarter of the nineteenth century that, by incorporating the research findings
of specialist historians, will inform and enlighten students without offending
fellow-researchers. Throughout the process of writing the book I have been
conscious of the academic debts that I owe to many other scholars within and
beyond Peru, and the personal debts that I owe to the many friends and
colleagues, particularly in Peru and Spain, with whom I have interacted during
the last three decades. I apologize to any whom I have forgotten to mention in
this Preface, and I emphasize, as is conventional, that I am fully and exclu-
sively responsible for any errors, omissions, and/or misunderstandings that
appear in the text.

 
Liverpool, August 2003

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Notes
1 J. R. Fisher, ‘The Intendant System in Peru, 1784–1814’, MPhil Dissertation, Univer-
sity of London, 1967. J. R. Fisher, Government and Society in Colonial Peru, London,
Athlone Press, 1970; republished in 1981 as Gobierno y sociedad en el Perú colonial, Lima,
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1981.
2 J. R. Fisher, ‘La rebelión de Túpac Amaru y el programa de la reforma imperial de
Carlos III, AES, Vol. 28, 1971, pp. 405–21
3 J. R. Fisher, ‘Silver Production in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1776–1824’, HAHR, Vol. 55,
1975, pp. 25–43; J. R. Fisher, ‘Miners, Silver-Merchants and Capitalists in Late
Colonial Peru’, Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv, Vol. 2, 1976, pp. 257–68.
4 I elaborate on this theme in J. R. Fisher, ‘La historiografía de latinoamérica en Gran
Bretaña durante los últimos 25 años’, in Problemas actuales de la historia: Terceras
Jornadas de Estudios Históricos, ed. José María Nistal et.al., Salamanca, Universidad de
Salamanca, 1993.
5 J. R. Fisher, Arequipa 1796–1811. La relación del gobierno del intendente Salamanca, Lima,
Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Seminario de Historia Rural Andina,
1968; J. R. Fisher, Matrícula de los mineros del Perú, 1790, Lima, Universidad Nacional
Mayor de San Marcos, Seminario de Historia Rural Andina, 1975.
6 J. R. Fisher, ‘Royalism, Regionalism and Rebellion in Colonial Peru, 1808–1815’,
HAHR, Vol. 59, 1979, pp. 232–57; J. R. Fisher, ‘La rebelión de Túpac Amaru y la
conspiración de Aguilar y Ubalde de 1805’, in Actas del Coloquio Internacional ‘Túpac
Amaru y su Tiempo’, Lima, Comisión Nacional del Bicentenario de la Rebelión Emanci-
padora de Túpac Amaru, 1982, pp. 261–70; J. R. Fisher, ‘Regionalism and Rebellion in
Late Colonial Peru: the Aguilar-Ubalde Conspiracy of 1805’, Bibliotheca Americana,
Vol. 1, 1982, pp. 45–59.
7. The project as a whole is summarised in J. R. Fisher, El comercio entre España e
Hispanoamérica (1797–1820), Madrid, Banco de España, 1993.
8. J. R. Fisher, ‘Miners, Silver-Merchants and Capitalists’. Subsequently, this theme was
developed by M. Chocano M., Comercio en Cerro de Pasco, Lima, Universidad Nacional
Mayor de San Marcos, Seminario de Historia Rural Andina, 1982.
9. J. R. Fisher ‘Commerce and Imperial Decline: Spanish Trade with Spanish America,
1797–1820’, JLAS, Vol. 30, 1998, pp. 459–79 is my most recent and, I intend, final
word on trade; the most recent general work is J. R. Fisher, The Economic Aspects of
Spanish Imperialism in America, 1492–1810, Liverpool, Liverpool UP, 1997.
10 J. R. Fisher, ‘El impacto del comercio libre en el Perú, 1778–1796’, RI, Vol. 48, 1998,
pp. 401–20; J. R. Fisher, ‘The Effects of Comercio Libre on the Economies of New
Granada and Peru: a Comparison’, in Reform and Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada
and Peru, ed. J. R. Fisher, A. J. Kuethe, and A. McFarlane, Baton Rouge, LA,
Louisiana State UP, 1990, pp. 147–63.
11 Fisher, Kuethe, y McFarlane, Reform and Insurrection.
12 J. R. Fisher, Peru, Oxford, Clio Press, 1989.
13 J. R. Fisher, ‘Cultural and Political Identity in Late Colonial and Early Nineteenth
Century Peru’, in Essays on Cultural Identity in Colonial Latin America, ed. J. Lechner,
Leiden, Vakgroep Talen en Culturen van Latijns Amerika, 1988, pp. 1–13; J. R. Fisher,
‘Local Power and National Power in Late Colonial/Early Republican Peru’, in Nation
Building in Nineteenth Century Latin America, ed. H. J. König and M. Wiesebron, Leiden,
CNWS Publications, 1998, pp. 189–200.
14 ESRC ref. G00232117; D. P. Cahill, ‘Crown, Clergy and Revolution in Bourbon Peru:
the Diocese of Cuzco 1780–1814’, PhD Dissertation, University of Liverpool, 1984.
15 M. Minchom, ‘Urban Popular Society in Colonial Quito, c. 1700–1800’, PhD
Dissertation, University of Liverpool, 1984. The authors of the other dissertations, Paul

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Henry Garner and Edward Nicholas Tate, are now, respectively, Professor of Spanish
and Latin American Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Head-
master of Winchester College, so some transferable skills resulted from their activities.
16 M. Minchom, The People of Quito 1690–1810: Change and Unrest in the Underclass,
Boulder, Westview Press, 1994.
17 A. Flores Galindo, Aristocracia y plebe: Lima 1760–1830, Lima, Mosca Azul, 1984.
18 D. P. Cahill, ‘Curas and Social Conflict in the doctrinas of Cuzco’, JLAS, Vol. 16, 1984,
pp. 241–76. Arising from the latter project, see, for example, D. P. Cahill, ‘Una visión
andina: el levantamiento de Ocongate de 1815’, Histórica, Vol. 12, 1988, pp. 133–59, and
D. P. Cahill, ‘Repartos ilícitos y familias principales en el sur andino, 1780–1824’, RI,
Vol. 48, 1988, pp. 449–73.
19 M. Zaugg, ‘Textile Production and Structural Crisis: the Case of Late Colonial Peru’,
PhD Dissertation, University of Liverpool, 1993, and M. Zaugg, ‘Large-scale Textile
Production in Late Colonial Peru’, Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, Vol. 35,
1998, pp. 101–28; A. J. Pearce, ‘Early Bourbon Government in the Viceroyalty of Peru
1700–1759’, PhD Dissertation, University of Liverpool, 1998; A. J. Pearce, ‘Huancavelica
1700–1750: Administrative Reform of the Mercury Industry in Early Colonial Peru’,
HAHR, Vol. 79, 1999, pp. 39–72, and A. J. Pearce, ‘The Peruvian Population Census of
1725–1740’, Latin American Research Review, Vol.36, 2001, pp. 69–104.
20 For example, J. R. Fisher, ‘Attempted Technological Innovation in the Late Colonial
Peruvian Mining Industry, 1776–1824’, in In Quest of Mineral Wealth: Aboriginal and
Colonial Mining and Metallurgy in Spanish America, ed. A. K. Craig and R. C. West,
Baton Rouge, LA, Louisiana State UP, 1994, pp. 329–42; J. R. Fisher, ‘Tentativas de
modernizar la tecnología minera en el virreinato del Perú: la misión minera de
Nordenflicht (1788–1810)’, in Minería y metalurgía: intercambio tecnológico y cultural entre
América y Europa durante el período colonial español, ed. M. Castillo Martos, Seville/
Bogotá, Muñoz Moya y Montraveta Editores, 1994, pp. 329–48.
21 Occasionally these activities produced relatively important publications, including: J. R.
Fisher, ‘Free Trade between the Canary Islands and Spanish America’, in Actas del VI
Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana, ed. F. Morales Padrón, Las Palmas: Cabildo
Insular de Gran Canario, 1987, pp. 387–404; J. R. Fisher, ‘Relaciones comerciales entre
España y la cuenca del Caribe en la época del ‘comercio Libre’, 1778–1820’, in Primer
Congreso Internacional de Historia Económica y Social de la Cuenca del Caribe, 1763–1898,
ed. R. E. Alegría, San Juan de Puerto Rico, Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto
Rico y El Caribe, 1993, pp. 209–58; J. R. Fisher, ‘Els resultats des comerç lliure per a les
relacions comerciales entre Espanya i Amèrica amb referència especial al cas català:
preguntes i algunes respostes’, in 2nes Jornadas d’Estudis Catalano-Americans, ed. C.
Martínez Shaw, Barcelona, Comissió Catalana del Cinquè Centenari del Descobriment
d’Amèric, 1987, pp. 121–36.
22 J .R. Fisher, ‘El comercio y el ocaso imperial: el comercio español con Hispanoamérica,
1797–1820’, in Relaciones de poder y comercio colonial, ed. E. Vila Vilar and A. J. Kuethe,
Seville, Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1999, pp. 173–93.
23 AHRB ref: AH/RG/AN1128/APN8282. My former student, Dr. A. J. Pearce, held a
Research Fellowship in connection with this project for the period 1 March 1999–31
August 2002.
24 British Academy ‘Small Personal Research Grant’ (ref: BA-AN1128/APN/1282).
25 ‘Diario político del capitán de fragata Don Manuel Abreu, como comisionado pacificador
por S. M. C. de los reinos del Perú y Chile; principia el 21 de enero en Puertobelo, de
donde di parte al gobierno de la separación de mi compañero Don José de Arias,
brigadier de la armada nacional’, 18 June 1822, AGI, Lima, leg. 800. The activities of
Abreu in Peru are discussed in chapter 6.

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26. Good overviews of recent advances by both established Peruvian scholars and current
research students specialising on the Bourbon period are provided by El Perú en el siglo
XVIII: la era borbónica, ed. S. O’Phelan Godoy, Lima, Pontificia Universidad Católica
del Perú, 1999, and La independencia del Perú: de los borbones a Bolívar, ed. S. O’Phelan
Godoy, Lima, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2001.

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 Introduction

In many respects 1750 was a rather unremarkable year for the viceroyalty of
Peru. Indeed, the author of one chronological history of the country could
find only two events worthy of mention in that year (apart from the births of,
among others, José Baquíjano y Carrillo, Francisco de Miranda, Alejo Toribio
Rodríguez de Mendoza, Hipólito Unanue Pabón, José Pastor de Larinaga,
and James Monroe, the future president of the future United States of
America): the discovery on the beach at Huacho by fishermen of a crucifix
venerated as ‘La Cruz del Sr de Varas’, and the hanging and quartering of the
leaders of an Indian revolt at Huarochirí.1 Although he was correct in drawing
attention to the importance of the last event – which was driven by not only
indigenous discontent but also the resentment of local mestizos at the attempts
of crown officials to lower their status by classifying them as tributaries – a
more perspicacious observer might also have commented upon the signifi-
cance for Peru of the unsuccessful attempts of Spain and Portugal to settle
their long-standing boundary disputes in South America.2 The Treaty of
Madrid of 1750, which sought for the first time since the late-fifteenth century
to define realistic boundaries between the American territories of the Iberian
states, was of direct significance for Peru in legitimising Portuguese (and,
hence Brazilian) possession of vast tracts of Amazonia that nominally belonged
to Spain under the terms of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas; its indirect
significance was even more substantial, first in setting in train the complex
series of events that would lead in 1767 to the expulsion of the Society of Jesus
from Peru (and, of course, other parts of Spanish America as well as Spain
itself). More crucially still, because of their failure to resolve definitively terri-
torial disputes in the Río de la Plata between the two powers, the negotiations
of 1750 also led eventually to the separation of Upper Peru from the old
viceroyalty in 1776 primarily in an attempt by the Spanish crown to guarantee
the financial viability and, therefore, the defensive integrity against further
Portuguese intrusions of the newly-established viceroyalty of the Río de la
Plata.3
It is probably accurate to suggest that the events of 1776 – those referred to
briefly above and a series of related innovations in metropolitan policies

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towards the viceroyalty of Peru – constitute a more important watershed for

Peruvian historiography than the rather notional 1750. The other major
features of imperial restructuring that profoundly affected the viceroyalty in
and immediately after this year in which Upper Peru was detached from the
viceroyalty included the commissioning of Antonio de Areche to initiate the
visita general of Peru that would continue until 1785; the definitive confirma-
tion in 1778 – with the promulgation of the reglamento de comercio libre – of the
loss of Callao’s monopoly of South American trade with Spain (a profound
shock to the morale of Lima’s consulado, even though the decision merely
legitimised what had already occurred de facto); the wholesale reform of
internal administration in 1784, with the introduction of the intendant system;
and, internally, the prolonged indigenous rebellion of 1780–1783 initiated by
the cacique of Tinta, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru. Historians of colonial
Spanish America have tended to recognise this logic in their periodisation of
the Bourbon era, with the consequence that the years 1776–1784 feature,
overtly and implicitly, as the chronological focus for a considerable number of
key studies of late-colonial Peru.4 However, this propensity to identify 1776
and the years immediately following as the turning-point in Peru’s late-
colonial history inhibits the possibility of placing the changes of the 1770s in
their proper context. It also clearly reflects a long historiographical tradition of
examining the past of Peru through the eyes of the imperial authorities in
Madrid, thereby allowing metropolitan projects and policies to determine the
framework for the analysis of historical structures and processes that were
shaped to a considerable extent by internal Peruvian factors rather than
ministerial decisions taken in the distant metropolis.
The legitimacy of this Madrid-centred approach in determining the
context for an analysis of the history of Peru in the late-colonial period is
relatively uncontroversial when it comes to deciding where to stop. The key
word here is ‘relatively’, for, although it has become part of Peru’s historio-
graphical mythology to identify the declaration of independence by José de
San Martín in Lima on 28 July 1821, as the defining moment in breaking the
bonds with Spain, the royalist régime not only survived in the sierra for a
further three-and-a-half years but, by establishing the viceregal court in Cusco
following the evacuation of Lima, gave a powerful boost to regional identity in
southern Peru that would be of enduring significance for many years after the
formal surrender of royalist forces following the 1824 battle of Ayacucho.
These themes are considered in some detail in chapter 6, which focuses upon
the history of Peru between the collapse of metropolitan authority in 1810 and
the patriot triumph at Ayacucho in 1824; they also feature in the concluding
chapter 7, which emphasises the enduring significance of colonial structures
and traditions in the new republic during the first two decades after the
royalist capitulation in 1824.
It is impossible – and undesirable – of course, to attempt to write a mean-
ingful historical analysis of Peru in the late-colonial period without constant
reference to the imperial context, for the major policy initiatives undertaken in

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Madrid in the course of the eighteenth century had profound effects upon the
territorial extent and the economy of the viceroyalty, as well as many other key
features of its historical development. Therefore, following a setting-of-the-
scene in chapter 1, which briefly surveys the principal features of develop-
ments in Peru in the period 1700–1750, chapter 2 of this book provides a
conventional overview of first, the broad thrust of Spanish imperial policies
towards Spanish America in the Bourbon period and, second, a more specific
analysis of their impact upon Peru in terms of both government in the
viceregal capital and local administration in provinces often far-removed from
effective metropolitan scrutiny and control. Chapter 2 also considers the
themes of defence and military reorganisation, arguing that structures devised
primarily to protect the viceroyalty from the largely imagined threat of foreign
attack were employed in practice increasingly to preserve order within Peru in
the face of the interlocking factors of endemic rural violence, ethnic resistance
to the exploitation of the indigenous population, and nascent anti-peninsular
conspiracies. At a different level, this chapter also explores the role of the
Church in the governmental structures of the viceroyalty. Appendix 1, which
provides a summary of the careers of the 18 viceroys who presided over the
government of Peru in the Bourbon era – in some cases rather superficially, in
others much more meaningfully – again reflects the somewhat traditional
assumption that the occupants of the palace of government in Lima were
more than mere figureheads in the complex administrative structures of the
viceroyalty. In this second chapter, as in the three that follow, the starting date
of 1750 is intended to be an approximation, not least because it falls within the
extended period of office of viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco, Conde
de Superunda (1745–1761).5 Appendices 2–6, which provide biographical
details of other key figures in the superstructure of political and judicial
administration during the last half-century of the colonial period – the visitadores
generales, the presidents of Cusco, the regents of the audiencias of Lima and
Cusco, and the intendants – are also of particular relevance to the discussion
in chapter 2.
A more traditional starting point than 1750 for some prominent scholars of
both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who have written about Peru in
the eighteenth century – and about other parts of Spanish America and Spain
itself in the Bourbon period – is 1700, the year of the accession of the first of
Spain’s Bourbon kings, Philip V, following the long-expected demise of the
last Habsburg ruler, Charles II. I confess that I, too, initially assumed that this
would be an appropriate point of departure for this book on Bourbon Peru.
However, on reflection, I decided against it, despite the superficial illogicality
of adopting a temporal framework that excludes the first 50 years of the
Bourbon era. The reason is relatively straightforward, and, one hopes, persua-
sive: although from the standpoint of the metropolis there is some lingering
justification for seeing 1700 as a defining year in changing imperial policy –
there is conclusive evidence, for example, that at least from the end of the War
of the Spanish Succession in 1713, if not in 1700, Philip V was able to take

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several modest steps in the direction of improving imperial administration,

including, in 1714, the creation of the Ministry of Marine and the Indies,
which took over the executive functions of the inefficient Council of the
Indies, as well as addressing some of the structural barriers within Spain itself
to economic growth – it is now clear that it was not until the late 1720s, with
the appointment of José de Patiño to head the new ministry (1726–1736) that
a shift of emphasis began to manifest itself in imperial policy.6 Even then,
change was patchy and inconsistent, with the consequence that some
commentators suggest that it was not until the reign of Ferdinand VI (1746–
1759) that a more structured approach towards imperial government began to
emerge in Madrid.7 It is primarily in this mid-century period, therefore, not in
the reign of Philip V, that one can begin to identify with some clarity the
preamble to the dynamic programme of change implemented in Spanish
America by Charles III (1759–1788) following Spain’s humiliation at the
hands of England during the Seven Years War (1756–1763).8 Therefore,
chapter 1 of this volume, which concentrates upon the antecedents of the
impact upon Peru of the more coherent reform programmes of the second
half of the eighteenth century, is based upon the assumption that in the short
term the dynastic shift from Hapsburgs to Bourbons in 1700 was of relevance
to Peru only in terms of certain very specific aspects of colonial legislation –
for example, the grant of permission in 1704 for French ships to enter Peruvian
ports – and that in more general terms the accession of the new dynasty had
virtually no immediate effect upon most features of the viceroyalty’s history.
One is conscious, however, that once historiographical myths take root, it is
often exceedingly difficult to eradicate them, in part because they tend to feed
upon not only dogma but also a degree of reality, no matter how distorted or
misunderstood. Their eradication requires patient investigation, analysis, and
elucidation rather than dramatic denouements. This book is written in part,
therefore, if not to refute at least to question the pervasive myth that the
advent of the Bourbon dynasty in 1700 ushered in a century of unfettered
progress and prosperity for Peru and the Hispanic world in general, with the
implementation of a rational reform programme that would awaken Spain
and America from their Habsburg slumber. The book also suggests that it is a
mistake to assume too readily that one unintended consequence in due course
of the Bourbon reforms was to give Spain’s American subjects the maturity
and confidence required for the transition to independence. On the contrary,
more than a century later, it is argued in chapter 6, the majority of Peru’s
creole inhabitants, far from coming forward to fight for independence, iden-
tified fidelismo – the insistence upon the maintenance of Peru’s subordinate
relationship with metropolitan Spain – as a safer vehicle than separation from
metropolitan control for both the preservation of the privileged position
within the viceroyalty of españoles (whether born in Peru or in the peninsula),
and, in more general geopolitical terms, the sought-after restoration of the
viceroyalty’s pre-eminence in South America as a whole.
As chapter 2 seeks to show, the viceroyalty of Peru undoubtedly did

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experience a major upheaval in its government and administration during the

reign of Spain’s third Bourbon king, Charles III, particularly in the period
1776–1784. Nevertheless, it is necessary to bear in mind that most recent
scholarship on the imperial reforms of the Bourbons recognises that the so-
called reform process engineered by José de Gálvez on behalf of his royal
master was less structured, less coherent, less deliberate and, above all, slower
than most previous commentators have argued. Indeed, there are grounds for
suggesting that the mythology surrounding the Bourbon reforms, initially
invented by the self-satisfied ministers of Charles III to justify their actions in
the eyes of Charles IV (1788–1808), following the demise of both Gálvez
(1787) and Charles III, was embellished by uncritical historians of the
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.9 These latter groups included Spanish
American historians (virtually all of whom were conservative members of élite
families) who were deeply afraid of the prospect of popular insurgency and
social change in countries dominated by large, non-Spanish speaking masses,
and who idealised and sought, therefore, to preserve the vestiges of the stable
colonial society of their forebears – whether real or imagined – within which
the Indians, blacks and castes had recognised and on the whole accepted their
subordinate status.
Although academic politicians in the post-independence era from countries
beyond Peru were particularly prominent in painting a negative image of
Spanish America in the decades after independence and contrasting it with an
idealized eighteenth century, characterised by political stability and material
growth – the most prominent were the Mexican Lucas Alamán, the Venezuelan
Andrés Bello, and the Argentinian Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (for whom
not only the Indian but also the uncivilized gaucho literally represented rural
barbarism) – Peruvian commentators, too, were slow to abandon the myth of
progress and prosperity in the eighteenth century, a tendency which served, of
course, to provide a contrast with the perceived instability and impoverish-
ment of the immediate post-independence era. In fact, as chapters 2 and 4
reflect, most historians now writing about Spanish America in general and
about Peru in particular in the late-colonial period are much more aware than
previous generations of scholars that the final decades of the Bourbon era
were characterised by the relative impotence of the principal agents of
metropolitan authority, by the pervasiveness of local violence (and in the case
of Peru of one large-scale popular uprising – that of Túpac Amaru – if not of a
genuine conspiracy for independence), by the relative harmony of relation-
ships between creoles and peninsulares, and by the continuing flexibility of
informal economic relationships that functioned alongside the rigid controls
theoretically imposed by metropolitan legislation. In this historical (and
historiographical) context independence came to most countries as a result
not of the strength of nationalism but in the wake of the collapse of Iberian
authority, and, when first identified as a possible goal, was opposed by most
colonists in the first instance. In the particularly hierarchical societies of New
Spain and Brazil independence was eventually accepted with some reluctance

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by élite groups of European descent in order to preserve established society in

the face of metropolitan political instability, rather than because of deep
dissatisfaction with traditional structures of imperial control within America;
in the even more conservative Peru, by contrast, even this cautious process
seemed too radical and too dangerous for many – perhaps most – creoles, with
the consequence that independence from Spain was imposed by invaders
from Colombia and Chile, concerned primarily with eradicating the risk of
royalist reconquest from the old viceroyalty. The principal conclusion of a re-
evaluation of both the efficacy of the Bourbon reforms and the traditional
negative image of the immediate post-independence era is that even in the
political sphere (and, of course, in the social and economic), it is possible (and
necessary) to think of the collapse of Spanish imperialism in terms of
continuity rather than abrupt change, notwithstanding the obvious fact that
by the 1820s local élites were more fully in control of their political futures
than had been the case during the long period of formal imperialism.
Chapter 3 explores the reality of Peruvian economic structures in the late-
Bourbon era, with some concentration upon the mining industry because of
its particular importance for the overall economic life of the viceroyalty of
Peru, coupled with an attempt to assess the current state of historical under-
standing of the somewhat less prominent – or, at least, less researched –
manufacturing, agricultural, and commercial sectors. The general picture that
emerges from this analysis is that the viceroyalty as a whole, far from experi-
encing economic decline (a thesis postulated by traditional interpretations but
increasingly questioned by modern research) experienced economic growth
after 1750, albeit of a steady rather than explosive nature. The expansion of
economic activity that did occur, it is argued, was hampered more by the
relatively limited internal demand of a small population and by isolation from
European markets than by the consequences of imperial restructuring during
the final decade of the reign of Charles III. This chapter also surveys the state
of crown finances in the late-colonial period – the condition of which, like that
of the broader economy, was determined to some extent by the size and ethnic
composition of the viceroyalty’s population – as a prelude to the more detailed
discussion in chapter 4 of social structures and ethnic relations, which is
accompanied by a brief consideration of cultural life and influences in Peru in
the Bourbon era. The analysis of cultural activity, such as it was, is set to some
extent in the broad context of an increasing thirst in eighteenth-century
European intellectual circles for information about the history, the natural
resources, and the inhabitants of South America, a curiosity for knowledge
first stimulated by the gradual opening-up of the sub-continent by Spain’s
Bourbon kings to non-Iberian scientific travellers. Works such as Amédée
Frézier’s 1716 account of his exploration of the coasts of Chile and Peru in
1712–1714, and the classic 1748 account of the scientific travels in South
America in 1735–1744 of Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa first opened the
eyes of enlightened thinkers in eighteenth-century Europe to the need to
incorporate into their view of the world a growing body of information about

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the structures of non-European societies.10 Precisely in this period the influ-

ential Prussian priest, Cornelius de Pauw, anticipated a nineteenth-century
stereotyped view of Spanish Americans when he argued in 1768 that creoles
were physically and intellectually inferior to Europeans.11 The vigorous
rejection of this argument by Francisco Clavijero, an exiled Mexican Jesuit, in
a work published in Italy in 1780 [where his surname was expressed as
Clavigero], attracted considerable interest in European intellectual circles,
and in 1786 dominated several issues of the prominent Weimar periodical,
Deutsche Merkur.12 In the same period, a series of major scientific works
appeared in Spain itself – they included the influential geographical-historical
dictionary of the Ecuadorian Antonio de Alcedo – where, perhaps not surpris-
ingly, the natural curiosity of the Spanish intelligentsia in things American was
consolidated by the belief of government ministers that the dissemination of
scientific information about the resources of the country’s overseas kingdoms
was capable of assisting the process of fuelling economic growth in Spanish
America.13 The rôle of Lima’s Mercurio Peruano, published in 1791–1794, in
both reflecting and encouraging these currents – and perhaps even in incul-
cating an embryonic sense of national identity in the minds of the viceroyalty’s
creole elite – is also considered in chapter 4.14
Chapter 5 takes us away from the relative sophistication of the salons of
Lima to both the poverty and deprivation that characterized popular society in
the less salubrious neighbourhoods of Peru’s urban centres and the endemic
violence of rural society in the largely-Indian interior of the viceroyalty. As
noted earlier in this introductory discussion, the disturbances in Huarochirí in
1750 provide one argument, however feeble, in favour of regarding the mid-
eighteenth century, rather than 1700 (or 1776, etc.) as a suitable date for
beginning the substantive discussion of the history of Peru in the period that
would culminate 75 years later in the definitive rejection of Spanish imperial
authority. Therefore, particular attention is paid in this chapter, perhaps
unsurprisingly, to the background, nature, and consequences of the rebellion
of Túpac Amaru of 1780–1783, as well as to relatively less well-known
conspiracies and protests in other places and at other times in the viceroyalty
in the period prior to 1810. The links between, first, the pre–1810 movements
and conspiracies that have been identified and, second, the more substantial
manifestations of insurgency in Peru in the second decade of the nineteenth
century are considered, of course, in chapter 6, which is intended to provide a
substantive analysis of the factors that led to the declaration of the indepen-
dence of Peru by San Martín in Lima in 1821, and the definitive creation of
the new republic by 1824, following the royalists’ last stand at Ayacucho. The
concluding chapter 7 attempts not only to pull together the conclusions of the
preceding chapters but also to consider briefly the question of whether the
securing of independence from Spain in 1824 represented a comprehensive
watershed in the historical development of Peru or merely a minor change in
its political superstructure.

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Notes
1 L. Costa Villavivencio, Historia cronológica del Perú, Lima, Editorial Universo, 8 vols.,
1950, vol. 6, pp. 31–39.
2 A clear summary of the Huarochirí revolt is provided by S. O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de
rebeliones anticoloniales: Peru y Bolivia, 1700–1783, Cusco, Centro de Estudios Rurales
Andinos ‘Bartolomé de Las Casas’, 1988, pp. 111–16.
3 On the Treaty of Madrid and its repercussions see J. Lynch, Bourbon Spain 1700–1808,
Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp. 179–86. A detailed discussion of the factors leading
to the incorporation of Upper Peru in the new viceroyalty is in J. Lynch, Administración
colonial española, Buenos Aires, Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1962, pp. 11–50.
4 See, for example, J. R. Fisher, Minas y mineros en el Perú colonial, 1776–1824, Lima,
Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1977; G. Céspedes del Castillo, ‘Lima y Buenos Aires’,
AES, Vol. 2, 1946, pp. 669–874; S. Fernández Alonso, Presencia de Jaén en América,
Jaén, Instituto de Estudios Giennenses, 1991.
5 A good, recent study of Superunda’s period of office is provided by A. Moreno
Cebrián’s introduction to J. A. Manso de Velasco, Relación y documentos, Madrid,
Instituto Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, 1983.
6 A. Béthencourt Massieu, Patiño en la política internacional de Felipe V, Valladolid,
Universidad de Valladolid, 1954.
7 On Spain, for example: W. Coxe, Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon,
London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815; Lynch, Bourbon Spain;
W. N. Hargreaves-Mawdsley, Eighteenth-Century Spain 1700–1788, London, Macmillan,
1979. On Peru, for example: S. Lorente, Historia del Perú bajo los Borbones, 1700–1821,
Lima, Gil y Aubert, 1871; R. Vargas Ugarte, Historia general del Perú, Lima, Carlos Milla
Batres, 6 vols., 1966.
8 C. Pérez Bustamante, ‘El reinado de Fernando VI’, Revista de la Universidad de Madrid,
Vol. 3, 1954, pp. 491–514.
9 The celebrated instrucción reservada completed by the principal minister of Charles III,
the Conde de Floridablanca (José Moñino y Redondo) on 8 July 1787, although
prepared at the request of Charles III, falls within this tradition, and the new king
attended meetings of the Junta de Estado at which it was discussed: Lynch, Bourbon
Spain, 302. The full document is in Conde de Floridablanca, Obras originales del conde
de Floridablanca, ed. A. Ferrer del Río, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1952,
pp. 213–72.
10 A. F. Frézier, Relation du voyage de la mer du Sud, Paris, J.-C. Nyon, 1716; J. Juan y
Santacilia y A. de Ulloa, Relación histórica del viaje a la América meridional, Madrid,
Antonio Marín, 4 vols., 1748; J. Juan y Santacilia and A. de Ulloa, Noticias secretas de
América, London, R. Taylor, 1826. Modern Spanish editions include Madrid, Editorial
América, 1918, ed. R. Blanco-Fombona; Buenos Aires, Ediciones Mar Océano, 1953
(which is that used for the quotations in this study); Madrid, Historia 16, ed. L. J.
Ramos Gómez. An excellent modern edition in English is J. Juan y Santacilia and A. de
Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdom of Peru, ed. J. J. TePaske, Norman,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.
11 C. de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les americains, Berlin, G. J. Decker, 2 vols.,
1768–1769.
12 F. S. Clavigero, Storia antica del Messico, Cesena, G. Biassini, 4 vols., 1780–1781.
13 A. de Alcedo, Diccionario geográfico histórico de las Indias Occidentales o América, Madrid,
B. Cano, 5 vols., 1786–1789.
14 A detailed analysis of this work is provided by J.-P. Clément, El Mercurio Peruano 1700–
1795, Frankfurt, Vervuert, 2 vols., 1997–1998.

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Antecedents: The Viceroyalty

of Peru Prior to 1750

Just as conservative historians writing in many parts of Spanish America in the

turbulent post-independence era looked back with nostalgia to the late-
Bourbon period as a golden age of prosperity, order, social stability and
respect for the Church, so the Bourbon reformers of the 1760s and 1770s
tended to depict the unreformed fiscal, administrative, judicial and military
structures of Spanish America prior to the reign of Charles III (1759–1788) in
terms of fraud, inefficiency, incompetence, and corruption. Broadly speaking,
twentieth-century scholars have followed this somewhat uncritical – perhaps a
better adjective would be hypercritical – line of argument. Indeed, they have
tended to consolidate it by emphasizing the continuities rather than the
contrasts between the late-Hapsburg period of the second half of the seven-
teenth century and the early-Bourbon era of the first half of the eighteenth
century, depicting the century or so as a whole prior to 1759 in terms of
financial and administrative decadence, social and racial injustice, and the
inability or unwillingness of colonial officials and their subjects to defend
Spanish America from both the economic intrusions and the armed depreda-
tions of other nations hostile to Spain.1
A conventional and influential point of historiographical departure for
many scholars seeking evidence to sustain their negative depiction of the
unreformed state of government in the viceroyalty of Peru before the despatch
in 1776 of the visitador general, José Antonio de Areche, to reorganize its
government and finances, is the oft-cited report on political corruption and
maladministration completed in 1749 for the Marqués de Ensenada by the
young Spanish naval officers, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, the work
known to posterity as the Noticias secretas de América.2 To some extent it might
be argued that their geographical focus during the 10 years (1735–1744) that
Juan and Ulloa spent in the Indies – the kingdom of Quito – was peripheral to
the viceroyalty of Peru and, in a strict sense, no longer part of it from 1739 as a
consequence of the crown’s decision to incorporate the region into the newly-
established viceroyalty of New Granada. However, it also has to be borne in
mind that both men spent considerable periods of time in the viceroyalty of
Peru proper in the period 1740–1743, and again in 1744 prior to their

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departure in October of that year for Europe.3 Moreover, as advisors on

military and naval matters to José Antonio Mendoza, Marqués de Villagarcía
(viceroy of Peru, 1736–1745), with whom they had sailed from Cádiz to
Cartagena in 1735, they were in a good position to familiarise themselves with
the functioning of colonial government at the very highest level, at least as
perceived from the viceregal court. The question of whether even this experi-
ence made them reliable, first-hand witnesses to corruption and misrule in
Peru during the early-Bourbon era is currently the theme of historiographical
debate. One persuasive suggestion is that it had the subtly different effect of
distorting their analysis by bringing them into contact with ‘the discourses of
reform and renovation’ already in vogue in Lima and Madrid by the 1740s – in
part as a consequence of the activities at the Spanish court during the previous
decade of Hispanicized representatives of the indigenous elite of the Andean
region (such as Vicente Morachimo of Lambayeque) who were determined to
paint a negative picture of conditions in South America – thereby inducing
them to appropriate and endorse the existing demands of the proyectistas
(including Jerónimo de Uztáriz, José de Campillo y Cossío, and Bernardo
Ward) for fundamental administrative and economic modernization in
Spain’s American territories.4 This thesis does not necessarily invalidate the
accuracy – and, even less, the influence – of Juan and Ulloa’s indictment of
the fraud and inefficiency that characterised the ‘colonial political culture’
that they encountered in both Peru and Quito.5 It remains valid, therefore, for
analyists of the state of government in the Andean region prior to the reign of
Charles III to continue to rely upon them as apparently credible witnesses to
both the exploitation of the region’s indigenous population by local officials
and clergy, and the pervasive corruption at various levels of the colonial
bureaucracy.6 However, it is also legitimate for the historian to speculate
whether Ulloa – the principal author of the Noticias secretas – in particular set
out to produce a truly objective analysis of conditions in Peru or a negative
report which he anticipated being well-received by Ensenada, just as 30 years
later visitador general Areche was able to find abundant evidence of corruption
and incompetence in Lima that he knew would appeal to the prejudices of the
virulently anti-creole minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez.
Ulloa’s return to Madrid, and the patronage that he received from
Ensenada (who dominated Spanish domestic politics in the period 1743–
1754), coincided almost exactly with the onset of the reign of Ferdinand VI
(1746–1759), a period described by one authoritative commentator as ‘a time
of transition’ for Spain and its American possessions.7 Despite – or perhaps
because of – the king’s personal weaknesses, successive groups of powerful
advisors – led initially by Ensenada and José de Carvajal y Lancaster, and
subsequently by Ward and the Duque de Huéscar – were able, notwithstand-
ing their personal rivalries, to lay the foundations for both the fiscal and
administrative restructuring of peninsular Spain itself, and the promotion of
the ‘imperial project’ that would seek to define and apply in America a
‘governing ideology’ for the purpose of facilitating the exploitation of colonial

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resources for the benefit of the Bourbon state.8 Ensenada’s primacy in

Madrid coincided for almost a decade with the prolonged term of office as
viceroy in Lima (1745–1761) of José Antonio Manso de Velasco, Conde de
Superunda.9 As I shall explain in more detail in chapter 3, Manso was able to
initiate a significant process of fiscal reform in Peru – including the establish-
ment of the tobacco monopoly in 1752 – despite having to cope with the
major drain of treasury resources caused by the destruction of Lima and
Callao as a consequence of the devastating earthquake of 1746, and he was
also conspicuously successful in imposing some regulation upon the commer-
cial activities of the corregidores in the viceroyalty’s Indian communities, albeit
for fiscal rather than humanitarian reasons.10 Moreover, as befitted an
experienced professional soldier – Manso had served as captain-general of
Chile for seven years before his promotion to Lima – this viceroy was ready to
deal decisively with the sporadic but, according to some interpretations,
increasingly frequent manifestations of popular discontent that disturbed
rural society, including the aforementioned Huarochirí revolt of 1750,
although like his predecessor, Mendoza, he was obliged to contain rather than
extirpate the prolonged indigenous rebellion, led by Juan Santos Atahualpa,
that afflicted the eastern fringe of the more remote Jauja region in the period
1742–1752.11
In some respects the 1744 decision to transfer Manso from Santiago to
Lima – he was formally installed there as viceroy in 1745 – can be depicted as
representing the initiation of a Bourbon policy of placing viceregal office in
Peru (as in other viceroyalties in this period) in the hands of powerful
individuals with practical experience of naval or military service at the expense
of the jurists, courtiers and churchmen who had dominated appointments to
high office in earlier periods. In fact, the thesis is not entirely accurate –
despite the fact that all of Manso’s successors in Peru, up to and including its
last viceroy, José de La Serna (1821–1824) had military or naval backgrounds
– for the new trend had been initiated two decades earlier, with the appoint-
ment as viceroy of José de Armendáriz y Perurera, Marqués de Castelfuerte,
who held office in 1724–1736. However, in the intervening period (1736–1745)
the prolonged but relatively ineffectual term of office of Mendoza – an
authentic representative of the interlocking grandee families who had almost
monopolized appointments to high office in America in the seventeenth
century – reflected the inconsistent approach of Philip V and his ministers to
the making of colonial appointments. Moreover, Mendoza’s tenure of office
coincided with not only the definitive crown decision, taken in 1738 and
implemented the following year, to establish on a permanent basis the vice-
royalty of New Granada (thereby separating the kingdoms of Quito, Panamá,
and New Granada from the jurisdiction of the viceroy in Lima) but also with
the outbreak of the War of Jenkins’ Ear and the consequential incursions into
the Pacific of hostile British naval forces under George Anson.12 As noted, one
consequence of these renewed Anglo-Spanish hostilities was the summoning
of Juan and Ulloa to Lima to advise the viceroy on defensive measures –

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thereby providing them with their first opportunity to familiarize themselves

at first hand with the heartland of Peru – a decision that exemplifies the
continuing vulnerability of the health of the Peruvian exchequer and economy
to international conflicts over which both the governors and the governed of
the viceroyalty had little control. That unfortunate state of affairs seemed to
be resolved in 1748 with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ushered in a
period of peace between Spain and England that would last for more than a
decade, and, more significantly still, by the determination of Ensenada to
preserve Spanish neutrality in the event of further Anglo-French conflict.
However, as we shall see, the eventual inability in 1762 of Spain’s third
Bourbon king, Charles III, to resist the determination of his advisors to enter
the Seven Years War, underway since 1756, on the French side would bring in
its train, first, the military/naval humiliation of Spain at the hands of the
British and, second, a major overhaul of the defensive structures of Peru
during the viceregency of Manuel de Amat (1761–1776).
If the period of office of Mendoza – a lethargic, indolent individual
remembered by posterity for little more than a morbid interest in supporting
the anti-heretical campaigns of the Lima Inquisition – reflected the negative
aspects of the contradictory features evident in the American policies
employed by Spain during the latter years of the reign of Philip V, that of his
predecessor – Armendáriz (or Castelfuerte, as he is more commonly known) –
is generally seen as a clear reflection of the determination of his patron, José
de Patiño (Minister of the Indies, Navy and Treasury, 1726–1736), to pursue
the quest for efficient government in America at the expense, if necessary, of
entrenched creole interests. The quarter-century prior to Castelfuerte’s
appointment – and, indeed, the preceding decade, given that the tenure as
viceroy of Melchor Portocarrero, Conde de la Monclova (1689–1705) spanned
the dynastic change in 1700 – had represented the nadir of Spanish imperial
authority in the viceroyalty of Peru. Portocarrero had been, in fact, the last of
the viceroys appointed to Lima who had served previously in Mexico, albeit
for merely two years in his case, and his transfer reflected the last flickering of
the dying tradition that Peru was perceived in Madrid as being more impor-
tant, strategically and economically, than New Spain. The diminishing status
of Peru in the imperial hierarchy by the end of the seventeenth century was
reflected by – and was also a consequence of – the progressive fall in the
income of the central viceregal treasury in Lima from 1660, and, more
seriously still, at least from the crown’s perspective, for an increasing
proportion of this income – 95 per cent in the 1690s, compared with 55 per
cent in the first decade of the century – to be spent within the viceroyalty,
primarily on defence.13
It does not necessarily follow, of course, that the fiscal crisis that began in
the late-seventeenth century represented an absolute decline in the health of
the Peruvian economy. In fact, the reverse is true for, although the mining
sector experienced a long recession from the 1650s through to the 1740s, at
least in so far as it is possible to measure output on the basis of registered

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production and taxes at the principal centre of silver production (Potosí),

there is ample evidence available to confirm that what the viceroyalty was
actually experiencing in the century or so prior to 1750 was a process of
economic transition, characterised by a gradual but inexorable shift away
from an economy dominated by silver mining towards a more diversified
structure incorporating solid growth in agricultural production, regional
trade, and textile and artisan manufacture.14 The crown’s continuing fiscal
crisis – which saw the revenues of the Lima treasury fall from 16.9 million
pesos in 1701–1710 to nine million in 1711–1720 – reflected, it is true, the
gradual decline in mining production and the stagnation of Atlantic trade
through official channels, but it was also caused by its failure to devise and
implement a new system of taxation capable of tapping to the same degree the
new sources of colonial wealth that had emerged in the seventeenth century.15
The 1720s and 1730s brought some very modest improvement in income
compared with 1711–1720 – to 14.2 and 12.7 million pesos respectively – and
Castetlfuerte was able to respond to unambiguous orders in 1728–1729 from
Patiño to remit bullion to Spain by raising 2.2 million pesos from a variety of
extraordinary contributions.16 However, the onset of more substantial recovery
– treasury income reached 18.4 million pesos in 1751–1760, compared with
15.1 million in 1741–1750 – did not come, as we shall see in chapter 3, until
Manso began to tackle in a more radical way the basic structure of exchequer
organization and administration.
Prior to 1750 a limited number of significant initiatives were taken in Lima
and Madrid, particularly in the 1730s, to promote economic growth even at
the cost of causing short-term fiscal loss: they included the 1735 decision,
implemented in the viceroyalty the following year, to halve the principal tax
on silver production from one-fifth to one-tenth. Coupled with successful
attempts, initiated by Castelfuerte, to improve the supply of mercury from
Huancavelica to Potosí, this measure immediately stimulated a revival in
silver output which, in the longer-term, also benefited royal finances: revenue
at Potosí from the new diezmo, a mere 183,000 pesos in 1737, rose steadily
thereafter to a peak of 400,000 pesos in 1780.17 Similarly, a general census of
the viceroyalty’s non-Spanish population, begun by Castelfuerte as soon as he
took office in the aftermath of a plague in 1718–1723, which had devastated
the indigenous population of the highlands, thereby complicating both the
collection of tribute and the functioning of the mita, brought about an
increase of 60 per cent in the value of tribute revenues to some 680,000 pesos
a year.18 The arrival in Peru of the aged Mendoza as viceroy in 1736, although
incapable of reversing the structural changes implemented by his predecessor,
led to an immediate dilution in reform initiatives in favour of a return to the
lethargy that had characterized viceregal administration during the first
quarter of the seventeenth century. Mendoza did succeed, it is true, in raising
nearly two million pesos for the exchequer, initially to meet the increased
expenditure on defence made necessary by the outbreak of the War of Jenkins’
Ear in 1739, by imposing a new tax – the nuevo impuesto – on internal trade,

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but his successor, Manso, eventually abolished it in 1752 in the face of sustained
popular opposition in Lima and other urban centres.19
The War of Jenkins’ Ear, precipitated in part by English resentment of
zealous Spanish attempts to curb contraband in the Caribbean – hence the
cutting-off the ear of the unfortunate Jenkins – was fought almost entirely as a
naval war in the Caribbean. From 1739, with the appointment of Sebastián de
Eslava as first viceroy of the restored New Granada, the defence of the
Caribbean coast was no longer the direct responsibility of the viceroy in Lima,
although Mendoza was ordered in 1740 to send 300,000 pesos as a subsidy
towards defensive preparations in Cartagena, where the British under Edward
Vernon were repulsed in 1741.20 Mendoza also encountered difficulties nearer
to home, with the sacking and burning of the northern port of Paita in 1741 by
Anson, despite elaborate and costly defensive precautions taken by the vice-
roy.21 In the event, Anson’s departure from Peruvian waters for Panama early
in 1742 ended direct British attacks on Peru not only during the current war
but also in subsequent conflicts, but a squadron including ships commanded
by Juan and Ulloa was despatched from Callao for Chile in December 1742 to
guard against possible new incursions.22 Moreover, memories of earlier hostile
intrusions into the Pacific – by British, Dutch and (until 1698) French naval
vessels and privateers – were sufficiently strong in Peru to generate costly
defensive preparations (the arming of militia, the repair of fortifications, the
manufacture of weapons, and the reinforcement of naval squadrons) when-
ever Spain went to war with Britain, as it would do, often for prolonged
periods, in 1762, 1779, 1796 and 1804.23
For the Peruvian economy and exchequer an even more insidious problem
in times of war than high defence expenditure and the fear (or reality in some
cases) of foreign attack was the disruption of trade – and, hence, in due course
of mining and other productive sectors – caused by the inability or reluctance
of merchants to put to sea without naval protection. Given the parlous state of
the Spanish navy at the end of the seventeenth century, this meant that the
only way of maintaining at least some commercial intercourse between Peru
and Europe during the devastating War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713)
was for the new king, Philip V, to open up the hitherto exclusive imperial
commercial system of the Hispanic world to the merchant ships of his native
France. French ships had already appeared in the Pacific in 1700 carrying
contraband traders: for example, the Compagnie Royale de la Mer Pacifique,
formed in 1698 following the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick between Spain
and France, had despatched from La Rochelle in the same year an expedition
under Jacques Gouin de Beauchesne, which, although receiving a mixed
reception from Peruvian officials, had succeeded in selling some textiles in
Callao, Pisco and Ilo, returning safely to its home port by August 1701.24
In the following year, 1702, Philip V took the momentous decision to
transfer to the French Guinea Company the coveted asiento de negros, formerly
in the hands of Portuguese shippers, a decision which gave Spain’s new ally
the exclusive right to supply slaves from Africa to Spanish America. Although

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justified, and, indeed, made necessary in general terms by Spain’s perennial

inability to satisfy the American demand for slaves from its own resources –
the country had no possessions in those parts of Africa from which slaves were
traditionally obtained by European traders – and specifically by the probability
that the supply from both Portuguese and British traders would dry up in the
event of anticipated hostilities in the Americas, the 1702 agreement essentially
represented a surrender to persistent French pressure for commercial
concessions. This measure gave first French and from 1713 (when the Treaty
of Utrecht transferred the asiento to the British South Sea Company) British
traders indirect access to the Peruvian market via Buenos Aires, Portobelo and
Cartagena, where the legitimate presence of ships carrying slaves provided a
cloak of legality for widespread contraband activity.
The grant of the asiento to the French in 1702 – in return for promised
French naval protection of Spain’s trans-Atlantic shipping – accelerated the
outbreak of formal hostilities in that year between Britain and a united France
and Spain. This development, in its turn, led to the appointment in 1704 of
French advisers to a high-powered committee, established by Philip V in
Madrid to consider the whole question of the future of the Carrera de las
Indias. Its principal decision was to allow French merchant ships to sail directly
into the Pacific via Cape Horn to trade with Chile and Peru. Even before this
formal legitimization, French ships were trading with relative impunity in
Pacific ports, initially illicitly, but gradually with some degree of official
support from both Madrid and Lima, especially when, as in the Peruvian case,
the intruders insisted that their ultimate aim was to continue their voyages
across the Pacific to China, or offered their assistance to local naval forces in
the pursuit of British privateers.
Although some of the initial expeditions from La Rochelle made a loss, the
majority of the 168 ships that sailed for the Pacific between 1698 and 1726 (by
the latter year, Castelfuerte was able and willing to enforce with draconian
measures the orders of a more assertive Philip V to curb the trade) returned
with considerable profits.25 By 1705, for example, the East India Company
calculated that a typical cargo taken to Peru would yield a profit of 300 per
cent.26
The passivity with which successive viceroys of Peru prior to Castelfuerte
permitted – and in at least one case, outlined below, openly encouraged – the
French to flout the regulations that sought to impose some restrictions on
their commercial activities reflected in part the extremely unstable structure of
viceregal authority in Lima in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The
aged and ineffectual Portocarrero died in office in September 1705, having
taken very few initiatives for almost a decade, following the receipt of
confirmation from Madrid in 1695 that he would be permitted to retire; he
had remained as a ‘lame duck’ only because a series of accidents and illnesses
had prevented several nominated successors from reaching Lima.27 His
demise did nothing to puncture the general air of indecisiveness in the viceregal
capital, for interim authority reverted to the president of the audiencia,

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pending the arrival in mid-1707 of a substantive appointee, Manuel Oms de

Santa Pau, Marqués de Castelldossríus. The new viceroy – whose principal
claim to fame was that as Spanish Ambassador to France in 1700 he had
actually uttered to Louis XIV on 11 November (when news reached Versailles
of the accession to the Spanish throne of Philip V) the famous words
sometimes attributed to the Sun King himself – ‘Il n’existe plus de Pyrénnées’
– took a close but extremely venal interest in the commercial question, and is
widely regarded as being personally responsible for the failure of the Portobelo
trade fair of 1708.28
The ships that made up the galeones that tried to trade at Portobelo in 1708
– one of them actually transported Oms – left Cádiz in March 1706, arriving
without incident at Cartagena by the end of April. However, they were unable
to proceed to Portobelo until the new viceroy had travelled in a leisurely
fashion to Lima, and then spent the second half of 1707 establishing himself in
office instead of completing the arrangements for the despatch of the Peruvian
fleet from Callao to Panamá for an eventual meeting of its merchants with the
Spanish at Portobelo. In the meantime, Oms allowed French ships to sell their
cargoes in the port of Pisco to a company in which he had personal interests,
primarily through his nephew, Ramón de Tamarit, who commanded his
personal guard. The outcome was that when the Portobelo fair was eventually
celebrated in May 1708 – the first since 1696, and, as it turned out the only
one to be held during the War of the Spanish Succession – it was characterised
by a low volume of activity, compounded by administrative confusion and
fiscal fraud.29 Worse was to follow. With the end of trading, most of the ships
which sailed for Cartagena from Portobelo were sunk or captured in June
1708 off Cartagena by a British naval squadron commanded by Admiral
Charles Wager. The Peruvian merchants were also attacked by British pirates
both while crossing the isthmus, and again at sea by Woodes Rogers and
William Dampier. The Peruvians’ greatest problem, however, was that when
they eventually straggled back to Lima with the remnants of their goods, they
found the local market saturated with illegal French merchandise, imported
with the connivance of Oms and his associates, for sale at prices much cheaper
than those which they had paid for those acquired legally in Portobelo. The
problem had grown particularly acute precisely since May 1708 – that is when
the Peruvian merchants had begun their long and hazardous trip back from
Portobelo – with the entry into Callao of a French warship, under whose
protection a number of French merchant vessels were allowed to sell their
cargoes. According to one authority, when the French ships returned to Port
Louis in May 1709, they carried with them 30 million pesos, primarily in gold
and silver bars.30
Even allowing for possible confusion in the conversion of pesos to piastres
(other sources use the latter denomination when citing the 30 million), the
inescapable qualitative point about the French presence in the Pacific in this
period is that the penetration of the Peruvian market by French merchandise
during the War of the Spanish Succession was of such an intensity that those

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local merchants who stood aloof from it faced ruin, and the hard-pressed
viceregal and metropolitan treasuries were deprived of the customs revenue
that should have accrued from legal trade. The vicious circle of economic-
commercial and administrative incompetence continued, as an interim
viceroy of Peru, Diego Ladrón de Guevara (bishop of Quito) – Oms had died
in office in 1710 – allowed a large number of French merchant ships to enter
Callao in 1712 (under the pretext that they would help defend the port against
an expected English attack), again releasing a further flood of contraband
goods, at precisely the time that another, smaller galeones convoy (of a mere
four ships) was preparing to sail from Cádiz for Cartagena-Portobelo. The
small fair held in Portobelo in 1713–1714 (it dragged on from 3 December
1713 until 21 April 1714 while awaiting the arrival of treasure from Callao) was
a commercial and administrative nightmare, and, after further delays in
Havana, the returning ships were sunk in a hurricane in the Bahama Channel
in 1715.31
It was patently obvious by 1715, if not before, that the increasing popularity
of direct European trade with the Pacific – whether legal (Spanish and French
subject to certain restrictions) or contraband (British and Dutch) – had made
redundant the traditional exchange of Peruvian products for European manu-
factures via Portobelo and Panama. However, no initiative for radical measures
came from Lima, where indecisive viceregal government continued during the
terms of office of Carmine Nicolás Carácciolo (Principe de Santo Buono),
1716–1720, and Diego Morcillo Rubio de Auñón (Archbishop of Charcas),
1720–1724.32 In Madrid, too, despite an awareness of a need for fundamental
reform, there was a reluctance to confront the vested interests of Cádiz
merchants, who were optimistic that the advent of peace in 1713 would allow
the recovery of the galeones (and, of course, of the flotas that traded with New
Spain through Veracruz). Thus, a small trade fair was held at Cartagena in
1716 by four merchant ships that had escorted viceroy Carácciolo from Cádiz,
although the presence of the British ‘annual ship’ – the Treaty of Utrecht had
also granted to the South Sea Company the right for 30 years to send a ship of
500 tons to each trade fair – meant that it attracted little business. More
seriously, the so-called ‘royal project’ (produced by Patiño in 1720 at the
conclusion of two years of formal hostilities between Britain and Spain, 1718–
1720) confined itself to simplifying the taxes charged on colonial trade and a
commitment to ensure the regular despatch of fleets on a properly-organised
basis.33
The initial results seemed to be promising as a relatively large galeones – 13
ships with 2,000 tons of cargo – left Cádiz for Cartagena in June 1721, only
eight months behind schedule, with the aim of celebrating the first proper
Portobelo fair since 1708. However, the events that followed their arrival in
the Caribbean revealed that, despite the virtual collapse of formal links with
Cádiz during the previous decade, the viceroyalty of Peru had been reasonably
well-supplied with European goods by a combination of French merchant
ships (which were still being allowed by local officials to dispose of cargoes in

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Peruvian ports in 1720, despite specific decrees to the contrary), occasional

Spanish register ships, and British asiento ships which supplied contraband
goods primarily through Buenos Aires. The merchants of the consulado of
Lima, although ultimately obliged to observe viceregal orders to cooperate
with the despatching of the Callao-Panama fleet, protected by the armada del
mar del sur, did so with considerable reluctance, and it was not until April 1722
– eight months after the galeones had put into Cartagena – that the Peruvians
reached Panama, with the crossing of the isthmus still to be accomplished.
When the trade fair finally got under way in June 1722, the merchants who
had travelled from Spain encountered their second, more specific problem:
the presence of the South Sea Company’s ‘annual ship’, the Royal George
(which had arrived despite the Spanish crown’s failure to issue the necessary
permit), with 1,000 tons of high-quality, attractively-priced merchandise
(made even more attractive by the willingness to sell it on partial credit), and,
even more insidiously, the presence of over 20 additional foreign merchant
ships in unguarded coves and inlets near Portobelo, which were able to trade
with the Peruvian merchants under the cloak of semi-legality offered by the
Royal George.34 The British ship even took over responsibility for shipping
private bullion back to Spain – issuing letters of credit for a fee of 8 per cent –
thereby facilitating the use in commercial transactions of unregistered bullion.
The inevitable outcome was that when the fair ended in August 1722 a large
proportion of the goods brought from Cádiz remained unsold, and the
consulado of Cádiz, upon receipt of this news, immediately put a brake on
preparations for the despatch of the next galeones, planned for 1723. The
crown’s advisers, led by Patiño, tried to insist, however, that the ‘royal project’
(which stipulated a departure date of 1 September 1723) should be observed.
The result was that, although the exact date slipped, the next fleet, consisting
of 18 ships with 3,100 tons of merchandise, eventually left on the last day of
1723, reaching Cartagena in February 1724. There the sorry charade of 1721–
1722 was repeated, primarily because of the presence of the South Sea
Company’s ‘annual ship’ with another huge cargo of goods. When the
Portobelo fair finally opened in June 1726, over two years after the arrival of
the galeones in Cartagena – the long delay was caused by the difficulties faced
by the new viceroy, Castelfuerte, in finding funds to equip the naval squadron
to escort the merchant ships from Callao to Panama – the merchants of Lima
who attended spent their accumulated silver in illegal rather than legal trade.35
The 1726 galeones, in reality the last of the traditional fleets in view of the
desultory nature of subsequent sailings, found themselves marooned in the
Indies for two further years – following, first, the fear of war with England
which surfaced while the trade fair was being held, and the outbreak of formal
hostilities in 1727 – eventually getting back to Cádiz early in 1729, more than
five years after their departure. Further small fairs were held at Portobelo in
1729 and 1731, with the latter turning out in fact to be the last one, although
the formal decision to abandon them in favour of register ships was deferred
until 1740. The presence of the British ship was, thus, a major factor in the

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demise of the Portobelo fairs, partly because of its direct impact, in pricing
Spanish manufactures out of the market, but primarily because it provided a
smokescreen behind which the Peruvian merchants, who travelled up to
Portobelo via Panama, could trade almost openly with the contrabandists who
were accustomed to assembling near Portobelo when a trade fair was expected.
At the Portobelo fair of 1731 the Peruvian merchants who had arrived from
Callao eagerly spent half of the nine million pesos which they had brought to
the isthmus on the 1,000 tons of merchandise supplied by the South Sea
Company’s ship the Prince William. They had to be forced, however, to accept
a consignment of cloth from the royal factory of Guadalajara, and many of the
Cádiz merchants remained behind when the fleet departed for Spain, to roam
through New Granada and Peru until 1737, attempting in vain to sell their
wares in a glutted market.36
In the meantime, a resigned Madrid government decided in 1735 to suspend
the despatch of further convoys to Portobelo, ostensibly on a temporary basis,
in favour of sending individual register ships to both that port and Cartagena,
if the market seemed to require them. A number of register ships did set out,
in fact, for Portobelo in 1737, with the intention of dealing with Peruvian
merchants, who finally sailed for the isthmus in June 1739 with 12 million
pesos to spend on imported goods. The eagerly-anticipated rendezvous was
thwarted, however, by the destruction of the fortifications of Portobelo by a
British force led by Edward Vernon early in 1740, following the declaration in
October 1739 of The War of Jenkins’ Ear, which would continue until 1748.
The Peruvians hurriedly returned to Callao from Panama with the silver that
had not been invested already in contraband goods, while Vernon moved
from Portobelo to mount an attack on Cartagena in March 1741. This action
turned into an abject failure from the British point of view and a glorious
victory for the defenders led by the Peruvian mariner Blas de Lezo and the
incoming viceroy of New Granada, Sebastián de Eslava.37
Despite the activities of Anson along the coast of Peru in 1741, which have
already been discussed, the viceroyalty suffered few direct consequences from
the conflict of 1739–1748, which was fought mainly as a naval war in the
Caribbean and as a land war in mainland Europe. Moreover, the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748, which ended it, ushered in a decade of cooperation
on the international front between Spain on the one hand and Britain and
Portugal on the other from which Peru (like other parts of Spanish America)
benefited. The year 1750 – the nominal point of departure for the next four
chapters – was of particular significance as a result of the success of negoti-
ations in Madrid which in 1750 terminated the asiento – which, in any case,
had been granted for only 30 years in 1713 – in return for a payment by Spain
to the South Sea Company of £100,000. The signing in the same year of the
Treaty of Madrid with Portugal – a process helped by the fact that Ferdinand
VI (1746–1759) was married to María Bárbara de Braganza – attempted for the
first time, as we have seen, to define the boundaries between Portuguese and
Spanish territory in the Río de la Plata, returning the contraband-dominated

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outpost of Sacramento to Spain but granting Brazil seven Spanish missions

north of the newly-established boundary as well as vast regions in Amazonia.
A particularly interesting, if idealistic, feature of the treaty was its attempt to
deny the logic and reality of international relations in the eighteenth century
by invoking ‘the doctrine of the two spheres’: the argument that even in the
eventuality of war between Spain and Portugal in Europe, peace would be
maintained in South America. In fact, quite the reverse was to occur: when
Spain and Portugal entered the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) on opposite
sides in 1762, Spanish forces captured not only Sacramento – which the Treaty
of Paris (1763) restored to Portugal – but also the Brazilian province of Río
Grande do Sul, where they remained until the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777)
imposed a territorial settlement which was to endure until the Independence
period of the early-nineteenth century.
Territorial disputes in the Río de la Plata in 1750–1776 reflected the fact
that, even after the separation of New Granada in 1739, the viceroyalty of
Peru remained too extensive for the authorities in Lima to exercise effective
control over the most far-flung of the provinces that remained within its
jurisdiction. The same point might also be made with respect to conflicts that
did not involve other powers: war on the Araucanian frontier of southern
Chile, for example, was a constant drain on meagre exchequer resources,
overland travellers from Buenos Aires to Peru were often in danger of attack
from the Indians of Tucumán, and the Santos Atahualpa rebellion of 1742–
1752 checked attempts to spread settlement and evangelisation into the central
Peruvian montaña.38 Moreover, if Juan and Ulloa were to be believed – and
there were many influential ears in Madrid only too ready to listen to them –
in the ‘civilized’ provinces away from the frontiers the standards of provincial
administration were abysmal, primarily because of the involvement of their
corregidores in both the administration of justice and commercial activities with
Indian communities through the repartimiento, a corrupt combination that
denied legal remedies against abuses and encouraged violence and rebellion.39
In other respects the viceroyalty of Peru in 1750 offered a more positive
prospect for both its governors and its governed than in 1700. Although the
port of Callao and the city of Lima were still partially in ruins as a consequence
of the devastating earthquake of 1746, viceroy Manso’s patient oversight of
the rebuilding and his judicious decision to ease the burden of taxation
seemed to be winning public support.40 The destruction of the old forts and
wall of Callao, (the upkeep of which had been hitherto a constant drain on
treasury resources), although not completed until the viceregency of Amat,
was something of a blessing in disguise, for it provided an opportunity for the
construction of the impressive Real Felipe fortress which still stands as a
monument to the thoroughness of its design.41 At the higher echelons of
government, viceroys after Manso would continue to be accused from time-
to-time of corruption and excessive deference to powerful creole interests –
his immediate successor Manuel de Amat (1761–1776) was widely believed to
have sold appointments to corregimientos but was absolved by his juez de

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residencia – but Peru in general was blessed with competent viceroys from the
second half of the century, with the possible exception of Manuel de Guirior
(1776–1780).42
The insistence of Juan and Ulloa that even zealous viceroys were thwarted
by the corruption of powerful creole families who dominated the consulado
and the audiencia – they alleged, for example, that the judges conspired to hold
up the sale of merchandise brought to Lima by Spanish register ships in 1743
while their merchant friends and relatives disposed of their previous stocks –
has been substantiated by modern research into the composition of the latter
body.43 By 1750 a long policy of selling appointments, coupled with the desire
of members of the limeño elite to consolidate their commercial success by
securing high office, meant that the audiencia of Lima was dominated by
Peruvian-born ministers. By this year no less than 13 of its 18 members were
‘native sons’, sitting alongside two additional creoles from other regions and
merely two peninsulares.44 Although Ensenada and other ministers in Madrid,
inspired in part by Juan and Ulloa’s revelations and by the agenda for reform
articulated by José de Campillo in 1743 in his ‘Nuevo sistema de gobierno
para la América’, were aware by 1750 of the need to redress this imbalance,
‘native sons’ would remain in the majority in Lima until 1780.45
On the economic front the portents by 1750 were somewhat mixed. Mining
output, which had declined from an estimated 6.4 million pesos a year in 1650
to merely four million in 1700, had begun to recover in the 1730s. In the
course of the eighteenth century as a whole, registered output in Peru and
Upper Peru reached a peak of 10 million pesos (an increase of 250 per cent on
the 1700 figure), but in relative terms the 600 per cent increase in production
in New Spain in the same period relegated Peru to a clear secondary
position.46 The agricultural sector was hampered by relatively low external
demand for all but very specialized products unavailable elsewhere in Spanish
America – cascarilla and vicuña wool, for example – and the traditional pro-
duction in the north of sugar and grain for the urban markets of Lima and
other cities, badly hit by a major earthquake as long ago as 1687, was coming
under further threat from the growing import of wheat into Lima from Chile,
as well as the supply of Brazilian sugar to Chile and the Río de la Plata through
Buenos Aires.47
Trade with Spain – legally, of course, the only trans-Atlantic trade permitted
after the Madrid government cancelled at the end of the War of Jenkins’ Ear
fresh licences that had been issued to French ships following the signing in
1743 of the Second Bourbon Family Compact – seems to have been on the
verge of modest growth in 1750. The crown stood firm in resisting pressure
from the consulados of Cádiz and Lima for the restoration of isthmian fairs
after 1748, and there is some evidence that the mercantile community of
Cádiz showed considerable initiative in purchasing foreign-built vessels to
enable them to send register ships into the Pacific (as well as using warships
for the return of silver to Spain).48 Detailed figures of the value of trade
between Spain and Peru (and, indeed, other parts of Spanish America) prior

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to 1778 are elusive, primarily because the available sources tend to express the
details of cargoes in terms of weights and quantities, rather than values. It is
clear, nevertheless, even on the basis of the crude calculations which can be
made, that the index of tonnage of total Spanish-Spanish American trade
increased from a base figure of 100 at the beginning of the century to 160 in
the period 1710–1747; in 1748–1778, by contrast, the index was to rise to 300,
a result which leads the principal Spanish authority on the subject to observe
that ‘la tendencia de crecimiento progresivo y continuo, aunque comparativa-
mente mas lento en la primera etapa, es la caracteristica del siglo XVIII’.49
This broad conclusion is echoed by a recent study of the activities of the
consulado of Lima, which contrasts ‘el desconcierto y falta de equipamiento de
los navieros para la navegación a Perú’ in 1740–1750 with trends after mid-
century when ‘con la paz el tráfico aumenta progresivamente hasta alcanzar su
apogeo en 1760–1770’.50
Perhaps in very general terms this conclusion on trends in trade in the
eighteenth century – some modest improvement following the War of the
Spanish Succession, particularly in the late 1720s and early 1730s, and the
onset of more rapid change after 1750 – might be applicable to the overall
conditions of the viceroyalty of Peru in the Bourbon period. The aim of this
chapter has been to provide an overview of the principal contours of develop-
ments in the government, finances, economy, and defence of the viceroyalty
in the period prior to mid-century, with particular reference to 1700–1750.
One obvious conclusion is that the advent of the new dynasty in 1700 had
little impact, if any, upon most of these features of the functioning of the
viceroyalty until the viceregency of Castelfuerte. Moreover, the subsequent
viceregency – that of Mendoza – reflected the unwillingness in both Madrid
and Lima prior to mid-century to carry structural changes through to their
logical conclusions. The four chapters that follow will concentrate upon the
period 1750–1810 when for both internal and external reasons a greater degree
of urgency, reaching a peak in 1776–1784, made itself evident in many areas of
activity within the viceroyalty.

Notes
1 The opening chapter of Fisher, Government and Society, for example, is entitled ‘The
Decadent Viceroyalty’.
2 A detailed analysis of the work is provided by J. J. Tepaske’s introduction to Juan and
Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections (pp. 3–33). The title of this work is a direct
translation from the Spanish original: Discurso y reflexiones políticas sobre el estado presente
de los reinos del Perú; su gobierno, régimen particular de aquellos habidadores y abusos que se
han introducido en uno y otro; Dase individual noticia de las causales de su origen y se
proponen algunos medios para evitarlos.
3 Ibid., pp. 16–23, provides details of the itineraries of Juan and Ulloa in 1735–1744, and,
of their circuitous returns to Madrid in 1744–1746 via Paris (Juan) and London (Ulloa)
respectively.
4 K. J. Andrien, ‘The Noticias secretas de América and the Construction of a Governing

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Ideology for the Spanish American Empire’, Colonial Latin American Review, Vol. 7,
1998, pp. 180–81, 184–86. On the activities of indigenous representatives at court, see
M. C. García Bernal, ‘Política indigenista del reformismo de Carlos III y Carlos IV’,
Temas Americanistas, Vol. 13, 1997, pp. 8–16.
5 Andrien, ‘The Noticias secretas’, p. 175.
6 As Andrien observes – Ibid., p. 176 – a recent study of political corruption in Spanish
America in the Bourbon period (A. McFarlane, ‘Political Corruption and Reform in
Bourbon Spanish America’, in Political Corruption in Europe and Latin America, ed. W.
Little and E. Posado-Carbó, London, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1996, pp.
41–63) regards them as an authoritative source and cites them extensively.
7 Lynch, Bourbon Spain, p. 157. Ensenada’s ubiquitous authority led one contemporary
to describe him as ‘secretary of everything’: Ibid., p. 160.
8 Andrien, ‘The Noticias secretas’, pp. 185–86. Lynch, Bourbon Spain, pp. 157–95,
provides a clear and convincing analysis of the principal features of imperial policy
during the reign of Ferdinand VI. An articulate overview of current debates about
Bourbon imperial policy as a whole is provided by H. Pietschmann, ‘Conciencia de
identidad, legislación y derecho’, in Dulce et decorum est philologiam colere. Festschrift für
Dietrich Briesemeister zu zeunem 65 Geburstag, ed. S. Grosse and A. Schönberger, Berlin,
Domus Editoria Europaea, 1999, pp. 535–54.
9 The introduction, by Moreno Cebrian, to Manso, Relación, provides a good summary
of the viceroy’s activities and achievements: see especially pp. 59–129. For a summary
of Manso’s career, see Appendix 1.
10 A comprehensive analysis of the latter process is provided by A. Moreno Cebrián, El
corregidor de indios y la economía del siglo XVIII, Madrid, Instituto ‘Gonzalo Fernández
de Oviedo’, 1977.
11 Details of the Huarochirí revolt are provided by K. Spalding, Huarochirí, Stanford,
Stanford UP, 1984, pp. 270–92. There is no comprehensive analysis available of the
Santos Atahualpa rebellion, but a sound synthesis is provided by M. Castro Arenas, La
rebelión de Juan Santos, Lima, Milla Batres, 1973. See, too, A. E. De la Torre y López,
‘Juan Santos: ¿El Invencible?’, Histórica, Vol. 17, 1993, pp. 239–66. The phenomenon
of rural/indigenous protest as a whole in the Bourbon period is addressed by O’Phelan,
Un siglo de rebeliones.
12 Details of both the abortive attempt in 1719–1723 to establish the new viceroyalty and of
its definitive creation in 1738–1739 are provided by A. McFarlane, Colombia before
Independence, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1993, pp. 191–97. Some discussion of the
background to and the consequences of the decision to incorporate the kingdom of
Quito in New Granada is contained in K. J. Andrien, The Kingdom of Quito 1690–1830,
Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1995.
13 The best analysis of the functioning of the treasury in the seventeenth century is
provided by K. J. Andrien, Crisis and Decline, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico
Press, 1985, despite the author’s reluctance to relate his findings to the broader
‘depression thesis’ first enunciated by Woodrow Borah in the 1950s. For purposes of
comparison see J. J. TePaske and H. S. Klein, ‘The Seventeenth-Century Crisis in New
Spain’, Past and Present, Vol. 90, 1981, pp. 144–61.
14 It remains remarkably difficult to locate accurate data on actual mining production – as
opposed to taxation revenue (from which it can be extrapolated) – prior to 1776 for not
only secondary mining centres in Lower Peru but also the major centres (primarily
Potosí and Oruro) in Upper Peru. The best sources for Potosí production are P. J.
Bakewell, ‘Registered Silver Production in the Potosí District, 1550–1735’, Jahrbuch für
Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas, Vol. 12, 1975, pp. 67–
103, and E. Tandeter, Coacción y mercado, Cusco, Centro de Estudios Rurales Bartolomé

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de Las Casas, 1992. For an overview of Peruvian production as a whole, see D. A.

Brading and H. E. Cross, ‘Colonial Silver Mining: Mexico and Peru’, HAHR, Vol. 52,
1972, pp. 545–79.
15 Revenue figures are taken from J. J. TePaske and H. S. Klein, The Royal Treasuries of the
Spanish Empire in America, Durham, NC, Duke UP, 4 vols., 1982–1990, vol. 1. It is
recognized, of course, that the income of the Lima treasury gives only a very crude
indication of not only economic activity but also the state of the exchequer in the
viceroyalty as a whole. For some comments on the pitfalls awaiting careless researchers
using treasury accounts, see J. R. Fisher, ‘Commentary on Public Expenditure
Financing in the Colonial Treasury’, HAHR, Vol. 64, 1984, pp. 313–19.
16 Patiño demanded remissions of a million pesos a year which makes Castelfuerte’s total
of 2.2 million during his twelve years in office seem rather modest at first sight; in fact,
they were the largest since the 1680s. Details of remissions for the period 1651–1739 are
in M. E. Rodríguez Vicente, ‘Los caudales remitidos desde el Perú a España por cuenta
de la Real Hacienda’, AES, Vol. 21, 1964, pp. 1–24.
17 Tandeter, Coacción y mercado, pp. 5–6, 10–11, also draws attention to the stimulus to
production provided by the growth in international trade – both legal and contraband –
which stimulated demand for American silver.
18 T. Hampe Martínez, ‘Visita a los indios originarios y forasteros de Paucarcolla en 1728’,
Revista Española de Antropología Americana, Vol. 15, 1985, pp. 209–40 provides a good
example of how the process operated in one particular province (Paucartambo); Pearce,
‘The Peruvian Population Census’ gives an excellent overview of the process as a whole.
Many of the tribute registers produced as a result of this exercise were still in use some
50 years later: Escobedo to Gálvez, 16 June 1784, AGI, Lima, leg. 1097.
19 Pearce, ‘Early Bourbon Government’. p. 120.
20 McFarlane, Colombia before Independence, pp. 199–200.
21 In his account of his voyage Anson explains why he decided not to attack Callao and to
abandon the rather naive plan of persuading the Indians of Peru to revolt against the
Spanish: G. Anson, A Voyage Round the World in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV,
London J. & P. Knapton, 1748, pp. 15–33.
22 Details of Anson’s activities, and of the defensive measures initiated by Mendoza are in
R. Vargas Ugarte, Historia del Perú. Virreinato (Siglo XVIII), 1700–1790, Lima, Librería e
Imprenta Gil, 1956, pp. 189–95.
23 P. T. Bradley, The Lure of Peru, Basingstoke, Macmillan, pp. 194–95. To give but one
example, in 1782 preparation of the Peruvian navy in anticipation of a British attack
(which did not actually materialise) cost 684,000 pesos, although even this substantial
sum was overshadowed by the 2.6 million spent on munitions, supplies and wages of
troops as a result of the Túpac Amaru rebellion: Escobedo to Gálvez, 5 Feb. 1785, AGI,
Lima, leg. 1104.
24 Bradley, The Lure of Peru, pp. 181–82.
25 Ibid., pp. 182, 187.
26 C. D. Malamud Rikles, Cádiz y Saint Malo en el comercio colonial peruano (1698–1725),
Cádiz, Diputación de Cádiz, 1985, pp. 146–47.
27 For further details of the careers of this viceroy and others in the Bourbon period, see
Appendix I (in which viceroys are listed according to their surnames rather than their
titles).
28 G. J. Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade 1700–1789, London, Macmillan, 1979,
p. 34.
29 Full details of the 1708 fair are in Ibid., pp. 34–49.
30 Vargas Ugarte, Historia del Perú. Virreinato (Siglo XVIII) 1700–1790, p. 25.
31 Details of the 1713 fair are in Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, pp. 60–63.

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32 Vargas Ugarte entitles a chapter on the period 1710–1720 as a whole ‘inestabilidad de

virreyes’: Historia general, Vol. 4, p. 95.
33 ‘Proyecto para galeones, y flotas del Perú, y Nueva España y para navios de registro y
avisos’, AGI, Indiferente General, leg. 652; copies are also located in several other
legajos.
34 Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, p. 146.
35 Ibid., p. 155.
36 Ibid., pp. 177–88, provides details of the 1731 fair. For details of the Guadalajara
enterprise, see A. González Enciso, Estado e industria en el siglo XVIII, Madrid, Fundación
Universitaria Española, 1980.
37 For details of the siege see A. J. Kuethe, ‘La batalla de Cartagena de 1741’, Historio-
grafía y Bibliografía Americanistas, Vol. 18, 1974, pp. 18–38.
38 Useful sources on Indian resistance in Chile and Tucumán include L. León Solís,
‘Malocas araucanas en las fronteras de Chile, Cuyo, y Buenos Aires, 1700–1800, AES,
Vol. 44, 1987, pp. 281–324 and A. J. Tapson, ‘Indian Warfare on the Pampa during the
Colonial Period’, HAHR, Vol. 42, 1962, pp. 1–28.
39 Juan y Ulloa, Noticias secretas (1953), pp. 189, 193–96, 198–99. Strikingly similar
complaints made in 1778 about the abuses attendant upon the repartimiento in the
diocese of Arequipa are in BNP, C4129.
40 Further details of the earthquake are in the section on Manso in Appendix I.
41 For further details, see J. M. Zapatero, ‘El castillo Real Felipe del Callao’, AES, Vol. 34,
1977, pp. 703–33.
42 See Appendix I. Details of Amat’s residencia are in E. Dunbar Temple, ed., ‘Un informe
del obispo don Baltasar Jaime de Compañon’, Documenta, Vol. 2, 1949–1950, pp. 652–
55.
43 Juan and Ulloa, Noticias secretas, 1953, pp. 366–67.
44 M. A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler, From Impotence to Authority, Columbia, University
of Missouri Press, pp. 64–67, 154.
45 Ibid., pp. 84, 154. On Campillo, see M. Artola, ‘Campillo y las reformas de Carlos III’.
See, too, L. G. Campbell, ‘A Colonial Establishment’, HAHR, Vol. 52, 1972, pp. 1–25.
46 Fisher, The Economic Aspects, pp. 186–89.
47 On the effects of the 1687 earthquake, see S. E. Ramírez, Provincial Patriarchs,
Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, p. 174. A detailed comment on the loss
of markets for sugar was provided by Escobedo to Gálvez, 16 Jan. 1784, AGI, Lima, leg.
1100.
48 The decision not to revive the galeones is described as ‘a watershed in the development
of colonial trade’, in D. A. Brading, ‘Bourbon Spain and its American Empire’, in The
Cambridge History of Latin America. Volume I: Colonial Latin America, ed. L. Bethell,
Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1984, p. 411.
49 A. García-Báquero, Cádiz y el Atlantico (1717–1778), Sevilla, Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-Americanos, 2 vols., 1976, vol. 1, p. 542.
50 C. Parrón Salas, De las reformas borbónicas a la república, San Javier, Imprenta de la
Academia General del Aire, 1995, p. 303.

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Government, Defence
and the Church

By the second half of the eighteenth century the viceroyalty of Peru had
undoubtedly lost its primacy in Spain’s overseas empire to the more pros-
perous and populous viceroyalty of New Spain. By the last third of the century
– that is in the years that followed the conclusion of the Seven Years War in
1763, when the crown gradually evolved an imperial reform programme that
would reach Peru in the period 1777–1785 – influential voices within the
viceroyalty, led by the officers of the consulado, began to suggest that Peru had
been pushed even further down the imperial ladder, behind Cuba and the Río
de la Plata, as the increasing preoccupation of the metropolis with improved
security in the Caribbean and the South Atlantic, coupled with the quest for
economic and fiscal growth in hitherto peripheral regions in America, induced
the crown to implement commercial and administrative reorganization that
seemed to threaten the vestiges of Peru’s traditional prestige and authority.1
The accuracy of this negative assessment of the impact upon Peru of key
elements of the Bourbon programme of imperial reform will be discussed in
particular detail in chapter 3. However, it is relevant to bear it in mind in the
present chapter, which describes and evaluates the structures of political,
military and religious organization in the viceroyalty in the post-1750 period,
in view of the overriding importance in these areas of activity of the broad
structures and policy initiatives imposed upon Peru from Madrid.
As has already been mentioned in the introduction to this study, one of the
fundamental questions currently being debated by historians of Spanish
America in the Bourbon period is how to interpret Spanish colonial policy in
the second half of the eighteenth century in terms of not only its aims and
implementation but also its consequences. Were the imperial reforms of the
Bourbon kings of Spain as structured, as coherent, as smooth, as deliberate,
and, above all, as prompt, as their apologists have argued? Or do they represent
a historiographical myth, invented by the ministers of Charles III, and
embellished by uncritical historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
who failed to distinguish between good intentions and the actual reality of
their partial implementation? In other words, it is now asked with increasing
frequency, should the Bourbon reforms in Spanish America be characterized

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not as a cohesive and clear-sighted process of rational change, whose imple-

mentation initiated a long period of progress and prosperity, enabling Spain to
use the untapped resources of America as the material and spiritual force for
the regeneration of the metropolis, but as a halting, uncertain, and essentially
incomplete programme, which succeeded only in bringing Spanish America
to the levels of maturity and confidence required for its transition to
independence in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century? This
latter interpretation depicts the reform process not as the cause of Spanish
America’s increased prosperity but, instead, as a reaction to the spontaneous
economic growth which had begun to manifest itself in some parts of the
empire (including Peru) in the early-eighteenth century as a reflection of both
their internal dynamism and their closer, albeit unofficial, integration into the
international, non-Iberian economy.
In some respects the history of Peru during the third quarter of the century
would seem to justify the more negative interpretation of Bourbon aims and
achievements, for, despite a firm conviction in Madrid that the standards of
judicial and fiscal administration in the viceroyalty were particularly poor,
relatively few policy initiatives were imposed from the metropolis during the
long terms of office of viceroys Manso (1745–1761) and Amat (1761–1776).2
For example, despite the detailed and damning indictment by Juan and Ulloa
and other critics within Peru of the abuses suffered by Indian communities as
a result of the repartimiento system operated by the corregidores, the regulation
undertaken by Manso (and endorsed by the crown in 1756) was limited to
establishing aranceles – with a total value of over five million pesos – as a basis
for the payment of the alcabala.3 Similarly, his successor, although quick to
criticise Manso in a secret report to the crown in 1762 for ‘el engaño que le
causaron unos sacres solapados’, allowed the abuses of the system, and the
inevitable consequential violence that they provoked, to persist throughout his
period in office.4 This, of course, is just one example among many of an
awareness (or perhaps belief would be a more accurate word) in both Lima
and Madrid of a relatively urgent need for reform failing to provoke a remedy,
either because viceroys were reluctant to upset local elites and/or because
ministerial minds were concentrated upon other issues and problems, both at
court and in other parts of America.
It has already been argued in the preceding chapter that the period prior to
1750 in the viceroyalty of Peru was characterised more by contradictions and
inconsistencies rather than by a process of radical – or even gradual – reform
as an immediate consequence of the dynastic change in 1700. Clearly, the
viceregency of Castelfuerte (1724–1736) was markedly different from those of
his ineffectual predecessors and that of his immediate successor, Mendoza
(1736–1745), reflecting to a considerable extent the relative dynamism intro-
duced to imperial affairs during the decade (1726–1736) when Patiño was
Minister of the Indies, Navy and Treasury. Similarly, the reinvigoration of
viceregal government during the tenure of office of Manso – notwithstanding
his failure to firmly grasp the repartimiento nettle – reflected the limited success

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of the omnipotent secretary of state Ensenada in pushing Ferdinand VI

(1746–1759) into a more progressive imperial policy, at least prior to the
minister’s exile in 1754 and the king’s own subsequent decline into a terminal
state of inactivity towards the end of his reign.5
Within this broad imperial context, it remains valid to regard the Seven
Years War – which Spain entered on the losing side in 1762 – as a force of
crucial importance for the history of Spain’s relations with its American
possessions in the 50 years before the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian
peninsula, for it was from the trauma and humiliation suffered in the conflict
that the third of its Bourbon kings, Charles III, and his ministers derived the
sense of purpose and direction required for the formulation and implementa-
tion of the all-embracing process of modernization which historians refer to as
‘the Bourbon reforms’. To an even greater extent than the international
struggles which preceded it in the eighteenth century, the Seven Years War
was an American conflict, although on this occasion, despite continuing
Spanish resentment about contraband and British incursions in Yucatán and
Honduras, the principal sources of tension derived from Anglo-French rivalries.
There were two main areas of tension: the Caribbean, where, ignoring Spain’s
feeble claims, the two powers competed to occupy islands such as Dominica,
Tobago, St Vincent, and St Lucia; and, more important, North America,
where the French encouraged and supported Indian resistance to the westward
expansion of the British colonies. Although the war began formally in Europe
in 1756, it was preceded by clashes between British and French forces in the
Ohio Valley in 1754, and in Nova Scotia and the Caribbean in 1755. The
conflict went decisively Britain’s way – for example, British forces took Quebec
in 1759, Montreal in 1760, and Martinique in 1761 – a process unhindered by
Spain’s tardy entry on the French side in 1762: although Spanish forces
invaded Portugal, Britain’s traditional ally, and also captured Sacramento, the
Portuguese outpost opposite Buenos Aires, Charles III suffered the appalling
humiliation of seeing Havana (and Manila) fall to British attacks. The
subsequent Treaty of Paris (1763) restored Cuba to Spain, but confirmed
British possession of Florida, a major loss, despite France’s decision to give
her Louisiana in compensation by the separate Treaty of Fontainebleau. The
restoration of Florida by the Treaty of Versailles (1783), following Spain’s
support for the revolt of Britain’s North American subjects against colonial-
ism during the War of United States Independence (1776–1783), initiated a
decade – the final five years of the reign of Charles III and the first five of that
of Charles IV – that witnessed, as we shall see, the high point of Spanish
imperial recovery under the Bourbons: a period characterised in Peru as
elsewhere by the strengthening of imperial defences, the rationalisation of
provincial administration, the streamlining and expansion of revenue collection,
the liberalisation of trade, and the introduction of many other reforms
designed, first, to centralise imperial authority in the hands of a self-confident
monarchy, and, second, to make America a real source of economic and
strategic strength for the metropolis.

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The focus for the introduction of this all-embracing process of change in

the viceroyalty of Peru was, of course, the visita general, commissioned in 1776
by the Minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez, and entrusted to the leadership
of José Antonio de Areche, who had served as a key subordinate of the
minister during his own visita general of New Spain, undertaken in 1765–
1771.6 Prior to Areche’s appointment, a mass of evidence had accumulated in
Madrid during the previous three decades about the perceived abuses and
weaknesses inherent in the existing governmental structures of the viceroyalty
of Peru. Particularly telling testimony had been provided in 1759–1762 by
Antonio de Ulloa, who had served in a variety of administrative posts
following his initial travels in Spanish America prior to his appointment as
governor of Huancavelica – South America’s only significant source of mercury,
the amalgamating agent essential for silver production – in 1758.7 Ulloa found
himself entrusted with the virtually impossible task of reforming fiscal
administration and production processes in the face of not only technical
difficulties but also a network of corrupt local interests involving local treasury
officials and the corregidor, as well as functionaries at the viceregal court and in
the audiencia of Lima who provided the provincial administrators with judicial
protection in return for financial favours.8 Drawing upon both his recent and
earlier experiences in Lima, Ulloa explained in no uncertain terms to Julián de
Arriaga – a former governor of Caracas, whose appointment as Minister of the
Navy and the Indies in 1754 had put American policy in the hands of an
experienced pragmatist – that the ministers of the audiencia regularly accepted
bribes.9 However, Arriaga’s diminished influence following the wartime
reverses of 1762–1763, coupled with effective resistance to Ulloa from viceroy
Amat, meant that the governor’s evidence was simply added to the growing
files on maladministration in Peru, while Charles III’s ministers in the mid–
1760s grappled with seemingly more urgent problems in Cuba and New
Spain.10
The detailed instructions issued to Areche by Gálvez in May and June 1776
dealt separately with the need to reform the audiencia of Lima, the
reorganization of exchequer machinery, and general administration in Peru.11
These broad responsibilities were clearly related to each other in the minds of
both the outstanding team of ministers that the Conde de Floridablanca had
assembled in Madrid to guide Charles III and the leaders of the complex
networks of vested interests in Mexico, Lima and other American capitals that
saw the Caroline reform programme as a wide-ranging attack upon estab-
lished institutions and de facto creole autonomy. For example, the reform of
provincial administration embraced within the gradual introduction of the
intendant system – notably in Cuba in 1765, in Venezuela in 1776, in the Río
de la Plata in 1782, in Peru in 1784 and, finally, in New Spain in 1786 –
reflected not only the desire to replicate the success of the new system in
doubling public revenues in Spain itself (from 18 million pesos a year in the
1750s to 36 million in the 1780s) but also a consistent policy of appointing to
these powerful new positions peninsulares – many of them with military and

EUP_BPeru_03_Ch2 29 9/2/03, 12:51

    ‒

naval backgrounds – as the agents of metropolitan authority at the expense of

the entrenched local interests that were thought to have dominated provincial
government prior to its reorganization.12
As salaried officials – their predecessors, the corregidores, by contrast, had
tended to rely upon nominal honoraria, coupled with fees and commissions, a
system which had made bribery and fraud almost inevitable – appointed by
and responsible to the metropolitan authorities, the intendants enjoyed
similar powers to those of the intendants of peninsular Spain (oversight of the
collection of taxes, military authority, and responsibility for the promotion of
public works and economic activity) coupled, in the case of America, with
important judicial functions and the exercise of the crown’s vice-patronage in
the making of ecclesiastical appointments. Above all, they were seen by the
rabidly anti-creole Minister of the Indies, Gálvez, whose low opinion of the
integrity and honesty of Americans was shared by Areche, as the crucial
weapon in his attempts to reverse the unplanned devolution of political
authority which had occurred in the pre-1750 period in many parts of the
empire to local elites of landowners, lawyers, merchants and churchmen, who
had enjoyed considerable success in installing representatives of their inter-
locking family networks in the colonial bureaucracy. Creole domination of the
American machinery of government was particularly marked by the mid-
eighteenth century in the audiencia tribunals, where a combination of sale of
office and administrative inertia, notably in the period 1740–1750, had
produced a situation whereby the majority of the oidores were creoles; more-
over, many of these American appointees were allowed to serve in the tribunals
of their native territories, thereby making it virtually impossible for the crown
to sustain the notion that they would administer justice impartially and defend
royal interests when exercising their administrative roles.13 In the period 1730–
1750 more than half (52 per cent) of the 102 new ministers appointed to the
American audiencias were creoles, and the attempts of Arriaga from the mid–
1750s to reverse this trend were hampered by a perhaps exaggerated respect
for the rights of individuals already in post, and the fact that relatively few
vacancies occurred. However, between 1751 and 1777 in America as a whole
creoles secured only 12 of the 102 vacancies that occurred (12 per cent), and,
although the deliberate pro-peninsular policy slackened somewhat in the reign
of Charles IV, during the period 1778–1808 as a whole only 30 per cent of
posts went to creoles. When, from 1810, following the collapse of government
in metropolitan Spain, creole spokesmen from all parts of America demanded
equality of access to public office from the Council of Regency and the Cortes,
they were seeking not a new right, but the restoration of an old one which had
been taken away from them after 1750.
When Areche reached Lima in June 1777, the composition of the city’s
audiencia mirrored the general picture described above: no less than 11 of the
12 judges were creoles, seven of them natives of Lima itself, and the only
peninsular, Alfonso Carrión, was related by marriage to the Torre Tagle
family.14 The crown’s intention of trying to curb the influence of American-

EUP_BPeru_03_Ch2 30 9/2/03, 12:51

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Cynthia referred again to her journalism and reiterated
congratulations.
"Mr. Turquand told Humphrey, or we should never have known, Aunt
Emily. Why have you kept it so quiet? We were delighted by the
news; I think it is very clever of you indeed."
"There is nothing to be delighted about. I kept it quiet because I did
not wish it known—a very sufficient reason. Mr. Turquand is much
too talkative."
"I think you ought to be very proud," said Kent—"a lady journalist!
May I—am I allowed to look at some of the copy?"
"As I can't prevent you seeing it whenever you like to spend a
penny," said Miss Wix bitterly, "it would be mere mockery to prevent
you now."
"You underrate your public," he murmured. "Winsome Words has an
enormous circulation, I hear?"
"Among chits," exclaimed the spinster, with sudden wrath—"among
chits and fools. Smack 'em and put 'em in an asylum! If you want to,
then, read it aloud. Cynthia shall hear what I have to do in order to
live. If Louisa weren't your mother, my dear, I'd say that it's a
greater shame to her than to me. I would! If she weren't your
mother, that's what I'd say."
"Well, let's have a look," said Humphrey quickly. "Where is it? Now,
then—what's this? Oh, Miserable Maidie! 'Yours is indeed a sad story,
Miserable Maidie, because you seem to have no one to turn to for
help and counsel. I am so glad you resolved to come to your Auntie
Bluebell and tell her all about it. So you and your lover have parted
in anger, and now you are heartbroken, and would give worlds to
have him back? Ah, my dear, I can feel for you! It's the old, old story
——'"
"That'll do," snapped Miss Wix. "'The old, old story'? My word, I'd
'old story' the sickly little imbecile if I had her here!" She sat bolt
upright, her eyes darting daggers, and her pink-tipped nose
disdainful. "Haven't you had enough of it yet? What do you think of
me?"
"I think with respect of anyone who can earn a salary," said Kent. "I
see there's one to Anxious Parent. May I glance at your advice to
Anxious Parent? 'My dear friend, were you I never young yourself?
And didn't you love your little Ermyntrude's papa? If so, you can
certainly feel for two young things who rightly believe that love is
more valuable than a good settlement. Let them wed as they wish,
and be thankful that Ermyntrude is going to have a husband against
whom you can urge no other objection than that he is unable to
support her.'"
"I'm a sensible woman, Cynthia," said Miss Wix, quivering; "and for
me to have to write that incomes don't matter, and sign myself
'Auntie Bluebell,' is heavy at your mother's door."
Her mortification was so evidently genuine that Kent gave her back
her copy, with replies to A Lover of "Winsome Words" and Constant
Daffodil unread, and as soon as was practicable he and Cynthia rose
and made their adieux. The apartments in the cottage proved to be
vacant, and as the references of the American family were
satisfactory, and the inventory was taken without delay, there was
nothing in the way of the migration being effected by the suggested
date. Cynthia had proposed that her husband should try to obtain
his old bedroom at Turquand's, where he could have the run of a
sitting-room for nothing, and this idea was adopted with the
approval of all concerned. Humphrey saw her off at Paddington, and,
kissing her affectionately, told her to "Make haste and get strong."
And the close of a week, which had opened without a hint of such
developments, saw Cynthia living with her baby in Monmouth, and
Kent reinstalled in his bachelor quarters in Soho.

CHAPTER XXI
It was very jolly to be back with Turquand. The first evening, while
they smoked with the enjoyable consciousness of there being no last
train to catch, was quick with the sentiment of their old association.
And after a letter arrived from Cynthia, in which she clapped her
hands with pleasure, the respite was complete. Kent had been
impatient to hear how the place struck her, and she wrote that she
had been agreeably astonished. The cottage was roomier than she
had expected, and beautifully located. It was furnished very simply,
of course; but there was a charm in its simplicity and freshness. The
landlady was a rosy-cheeked young woman who had already "fallen
in love with Baby," and overwhelmed her with attentions. "If you do
not see what you want, please step inside and ask for it." Kent
smiled at that; it was a quotation from one of the Streatham shop-
windows. Also there was a quite respectable garden, which her
bedroom overlooked. "There are fruit-trees in it—not my bedroom,
the garden—and a little, not too spidery, bench, where I know I shall
sit and read your answer when it comes." She wrote a very happy,
spontaneous sort of letter, and Kent's spirits rose as he read it. There
was the rustle of dimity and the odour of lavender in the pages, and
momentarily he pictured her sitting on the bench under the fruit-
trees, and thought that it would be delightful if he could run down
one day and surprise her there.
It was very jolly to be back with Turquand, though the satisfaction
was perhaps a shade calmer than, during the first year of his
married life, he had fancied that it would be. It was convenient,
moreover, to be in town, and a relief to feel that the unsettled
accounts with the tradespeople round Leamington Road were, at any
rate, not waxing mightier. Nevertheless, he missed Cynthia a good
deal; not only in the daytime when he was alone, but even in
minutes during the evening when he was in Turquand's company. It
was curious how much he did miss her—and the baby: the baby,
whose newest accomplishment was to stroke his father's cheek, and
murmur "poor" until the attention was reciprocated, when he
bounded violently and grew red in the face with ridiculous laughter.
Soho, too, though it saved him train-fares, soon began to appear as
distant from a salary as Streatham. Turquand remained powerless to
put any work in his way, and, despite his economies and the
cheapness of Monmouth, Kent found his expenses dismaying. He
was encroaching on the money laid aside for the landlord and the
rates, and, if nothing turned up, there would speedily be trouble
again. The butcher who had supplied No. 64 had been to the agent
for Mr. Kent's address, and he presented himself and his bill with no
redundance of euphemism. When another advertisement had been
inserted ineffectually, the respite was over and anxiety returned.
As yet Kent had not called on Mrs. Deane-Pitt, and on the afternoon
following his interview with the butcher he paid his visit to the lady.
He was very frank in his replies to her questions. He did not disguise
that it was imperative for him to secure an appointment at once, and
when she agreed with him that it was immensely difficult, instead of
answering that it was likely some opening might be mentioned to
her, his face fell. He felt that it behoved him to deprecate his
confidences.
"You must forgive my boring you about my affairs," he said. "And
what are you doing? Are you at work on another book now?"
"I've a serial running in Fashion," she said; "and they print such
ghastly long instalments that it takes me all my time to keep pace
with them. You haven't bored me at all. A post on a paper is a thing
you may have to wait a long time for, I'm afraid. You see, you aren't
a journalist really, are you? You're a novelist."
"I'm nothing," said Kent, with a dreary laugh. "For that matter, I
wouldn't care if it weren't on a paper. I'd jump at anything—a
secretary-ship for preference."
"Secretaryships want personal introductions; they aren't got through
advertisements." She hesitated. "I can tell you how you might make
some money, if you'd like to do it," she added tentatively. "It's
between ourselves—if it doesn't suit you, you'll be discreet?"
"Oh, of course," said Kent, with surprise. "But I can promise you in
advance that any means of making some money will suit me just
now. What are you going to say?"
She looked at him steadily with a slow smile.
"How would you like to write a novel for me?" she asked.
Instantaneously he did not grasp her meaning.
"How?" he exclaimed. "Do you mean you are offering to collaborate
with me?"
"I can't do that," she said quickly. "I'm sure you know I should be
delighted, but I shouldn't get the same terms if I did, and I haven't
the time, either. That's just it! I'm obliged to refuse work because I
haven't time to undertake it. No, but it might be a partnership as far
as the payment goes. If you care to write a novel, I can place it
under my own name, and you can have—well, a couple of hundred
pounds almost as soon as you give it to me! I can guarantee that.
You can have a couple of hundred a week or two after it's finished,
whether I sell serial rights or not."
She took a cigarette out of a box on a table near her and lit it, a
shade nervously. Kent sat pale and disturbed. That such things were
done, at all events in France, he knew, but her proposal startled him
more than he could say, or than he wished to say. His primary
emotion was astonishment that Mrs. Deane-Pitt had had the courage
to place her literary reputation in his hands; and then, as he
reflected, an awful horror seized him at the thought of a year of his
toil, of effort and accomplishment, going out for review with another
person's name on it. The pause lasted some time.
"I don't much fancy the idea," he said at last slowly, "thanks. And it
wouldn't assist me. I want money now, not a year hence."
"A year hence!" she murmured. "A year hence would be no use to
me. But you could do it in a month! Pray don't mistake me. I'm not
anxious to get any kudos at your expense, I don't want you to do
the kind of thing that I suppose you have done in this novel of yours
that's making the round now; I don't want introspection and
construction, and all that. All I want is to buy shoes for my poor little
children, and what I suggested was that you should knock off a
story at your top speed. I don't care a pin what it's like; only turn me
out a hundred thousand words!"
"A hundred thousand words," cried Kent, "in a month? You might as
well suggest my carrying off one of the lions out of Trafalgar Square!
The Eye of the Beholder isn't a hundred thousand words, and I
worked at it day and night, and then it took me a year! Besides,
that's another thing; it is going the round—the story mightn't be any
use to you if I did it."
"I can place it," said Mrs. Deane-Pitt, with emphasis. "Don't concern
yourself about its fate, my friend; your responsibility will be limited
to writing it. Your book took a year? I've no doubt you considered,
and corrected, and spent an afternoon polishing a paragraph.
Supposing you take six or seven weeks, then? Do you mean to say
you couldn't write two thousand words a day?"
"No, I don't believe I could—not if you offered me the Mint!" said
Kent.
"But you can put down the first words that come into your head!
Anything will do. Naturally, it would be no use to me if you wrote
'Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard' over all the pages, but any
trivial thing in the shape of a story, I assure you, I can arrange for at
once. Indeed, it is practically arranged for; all that remains is for you
to give it to me."
She puffed her cigarette silently, and the young man mused. The
plan was repugnant to him, but if, as she said, anything would do—
well, perhaps he could manage it in the time; he did not know. Two
hundred pounds would certainly be salvation, and, for seven weeks'
work, a magnificent reward.
"I'll tell you," she continued, after a few moments: "if you liked to do
me a short story or two now and again, we should have money from
those in the meanwhile. I don't want to persuade you against your
convictions, if you have any, but our business together would pay
you better than an appointment, even if you found one; and—
though that's nothing to do with it—it would be a tremendous
benefit to me as well. See, with our two pens we can produce
double the work, and we share the advantage of the popularity I've
gained."
"Oh, I quite appreciate the pecuniary pull," he answered. "I could
hardly write short stories while I was fagging at a novel, though."
"I think myself one goes back to the novel all the fresher for the
break," she said; "but, of course, everybody has his own system of
working. Would you care to write me a couple of three-thousand-
word stories first? We can discuss the book later. If you let me have
two stories to-morrow night, I could give you five guineas each for
them on Saturday."
"To-morrow is out of the question. You don't realise how slowly I
write, and I haven't the motives."
"Say the next day—say by Thursday. But it must be by then. The
man goes out of town on Saturday, and I want him to read them
before he goes. If I can have the manuscripts on Thursday, you can
have ten guineas Saturday night."
"It's a very good offer," said Kent. "You must get a royal rate."
"Well, I couldn't always offer you so much, but, then, I don't often
want them quite so long. Two, of three thousand words, and to end
happily, for choice. Not too strong. If they will illustrate well, all the
better, but you needn't give yourself any trouble on that score—it's
the artist's affair."
"I'll do them," said Humphrey. "I suppose I must make an attempt to
imitate your style?"
"It isn't necessary. I generally begin with a very short sentence, like
'It was noon,' or 'It rained'; you might do that; but I really don't
know that it matters.... Mr. Kent——"
"Yes?" he said.
"This is a confidential matter; I rely on your honour not to mention it
to a living soul, of course! I don't know how much married you are,
but I depend on you not to tell your wife. It would ruin me if it came
out."
He assured her that she might trust him, and having pledged himself
to the lighter task, he resolved on his way home that he would
undertake the heavier, too. She did not want a year of his best work
—he doubted if he could contemplate that, even if refusal meant
Strawberry Hill for Cynthia and the baby, and the workhouse for
himself—she asked only a few weeks of his worst. Money was
indispensable; he must make it in whatever way he could. A ghost,
eh? He was rising finely in the career of literature. His first novel had
received what was almost the highest possible cachet; his second
was "declined with thanks"; and now no mode of livelihood was left
him but to be a ghost. His throat was tight with shame; there were
tears in it.
That passed. He reflected that with two hundred pounds in his
pocket he would be able to sit down to another novel on his own
account; he might be luckier with that than with The Eye of the
Beholder. What were a few weeks compared with two hundred
pounds? Mrs. Deane-Pitt must have thought him a fool to hesitate.
Practical herself, indeed! But—well, for all that, it was rather
fascinating to feel that so intimate a confidence was going to subsist
between them! She had been a trifle nervous, too, as she took that
cigarette; he hoped he hadn't been a prig. She was very nice; it
distressed him to think that she had been afraid of him even for a
second. Two hundred pounds? He wondered what share it was—half,
or more than half, or less. With a woman, however, he could not go
into that. His admission that five guineas seemed a lot to him for a
three-thousand-word story had probably been injudicious—and it
must have made him sound very ignorant besides. Well, that
couldn't be helped. And he would be glad if the partnership paid her
well; whatever terms she obtained, she must be perfectly aware that
her offer was a liberal one to a man in his position, and he was
grateful to her. He felt it again—she had been "nice." He began to
revolve a plot for the first of the stories, and by the time he reached
home he had vaguely thought of one. When Turquand came in, it
had shaped. Saying that he had work to do, Kent left him, and went
upstairs. He drew a chair to the table, and sat down and wrote—
slowly, painfully. The man was an artist, and he could not help the
care he took. He sneered at himself for it. Mrs. Deane-Pitt had
impressed on him that anything would do, and here he was
meditating and revising as if it were a story to submit to the most
exclusive of the magazines in his own name. He dashed his pen in
the ink, and threw a paragraph on the paper. But he could not go
on. His consciousness of that slip-shod paragraph higher up clogged
his invention, so that he had to go back to it and put it right.
Presently a touch of cheerfulness crept into his mood. That was well
said. Yes, she would praise that! The pride of authorship possessed
him; he wrote with pleasure; and at two o'clock, when a third of the
tale was achieved, he went to bed feeling exhilarated.
It was no easy duty to him to complete both stories by Thursday
morning, and, confronted by the necessity for making Turquand a
further excuse for retirement, he almost wished now that he were
living alone. He was vastly relieved that the other accepted his
allusions to "something that would keep him busy for a month or so"
with no apparent perception of a mystery. After the first inevitable
question was shirked, the journalist put no more, and behaved as if
the explanation had been explicit. Neither Kent's friendship, nor his
admiration for him, had ever been so warm, as while he decided that
Turquand's experience must lead him to suspect something like the
truth and enabled him to conceal the suspicion under his normal
demeanour.
With Cynthia the ghost was less fortunate, though he barely divined
it by her answer. He told her as much as he was free to tell: he
wrote that he had work on hand at last, and that they would have
ten guineas on Saturday, and a large sum in a couple of months.
Where the stuff would appear, he could not say without a falsehood,
and he trustee! she would not be curious on the point. The
reservation that he regretted gave to his tone an aloofness that he
did not design; Cynthia refrained from inquiring, but she was hurt.
She felt that he might have imparted such intelligence a little more
enthusiastically, at a little greater length. Did he suppose that her
interest was limited to the payment? Was she only held sympathetic
enough, to mind the baby when they were obliged to discharge the
nurse? Now that he returned to work, her husband was going to
treat her as a child again, just as he had done when he was
engaged on his book! She did not perceive that, while he had been
writing the book, she had occupied the position most natural to her;
she did not detect that the attitude in which she recalled it was a
new one. It was, however, the attitude of a woman. The hidden
chagrin and urbanity of her reply was a woman's. These things were
part of a development of which, while they had remained together,
neither she nor the man who missed her had been acutely aware.

CHAPTER XXII

Mrs. Deane-Pitt paid Kent the ten guineas a few days after the
Saturday on which she had expected to receive the Editor's cheque,
and she made no secret of being delighted with the two tales. They
were based upon rather original ideas, and after she had had them
typewritten, and read them, she talked to him about them with the
frankest appreciation possible. Kent almost lost sight of his regret
that they weren't to appear under his own name, as the lady
expressed her approval, and declared enthusiastically that to call
them "excellent" was to say too little. He found it very stimulating to
hear his work praised by Mrs. Deane-Pitt, especially as it was work
done for her. Although she had professed to be careless of the
quality, it was not to be supposed that she would not rather sign
good stuff than bad, and the warmth and gaiety of her comments
took the sting from the association and lent it a charm.
When he began her novel, it was with the discomfiting
consciousness that the breakneck speed imposed on him would
prevent the labourer being worthy of his hire. He was too hurried to
be able to frame a scenario, and neither he nor the lady who was to
figure as the author had more than a hazy idea of what the book
was going to be about. He had mentally sworn to keep his critical
faculty in check and to produce a chapter of two thousand words
every day—if he did not bind himself to the accomplishment of a
fixed instalment daily, the book would not be finished in double the
time at his disposal! And he rose at seven, and worked till about
midnight, on the day on which Chapter I. was done. He had
corrected in a fashion as he composed, and he did not read it
through when he put down his pen—that would be too
disheartening. He remembered the opening chapter of The Eye of
the Beholder, and, contrasted with the remembrance, these pages
that he had perpetrated appeared to him puerile and painful. He
folded them up, and posted them to Mrs. Deane-Pitt with a note
before he slept.
"Whether you will want the novel after you have seen this, I don't
know," he wrote; "I am sending it to you to ascertain. It is a
specimen of the rubbish the thing will be if I have to turn it out at
such a rate. I will call, on the chance of your being in, to-morrow
afternoon."
He found her at home, and she welcomed him with a humorous
smile.
"You have read it?" asked Kent, with misgiving.
"Yes; I've read it," she said. "Violet! Pray don't look so frightened of
me!"
"Why 'violet'? Well?"
"The type of modesty. Well, what's the matter with it? It'll do all
right."
Kent drew a breath.
"I'm glad to hear you say so. I'm bound to confess I thought it very
slovenly myself."
"Oh, nonsense!" she said. "Have you gone on with it?"
"No; I waited for your verdict. I thought you might call me names
and cry off. I'll go on with it now, though, like steam."
"Do! I suppose you couldn't manage a five-thousand-word story for
me this week, could you? It would be good business."
He stared ruefully.
"No, indeed! Not if I'm to write a chapter a day."
"Oh, the chapter a day, please! Get the novel done at the earliest
moment possible; that's the chief thing. You will, won't you? I should
be so grateful to you if you finished it in six weeks."
"I promise to finish it as quickly as I can," he said. "Even if I didn't
care to serve you, I should do that, for my own sake. When I get
two hundred pounds, I shall be at the end of my troubles."
"Happy man!" said Mrs. Deane-Pitt. "Would that two hundred
pounds would see the end of mine! And as you do want to serve me,
you'll do it even more quickly than you can?"
"Or try."
"That's very nice of you. I wonder how true it is. One of the answers
one has to make, isn't it? Then when you're behind with the work,
and your wife wants to be taken out somewhere, you'll nobly
remember there's a miserable woman in Victoria Street depending
on you and persuade Mrs. Kent to go with a sister, or a cousin, or an
aunt? You'll say to yourself 'Excelsior!' and other improving mottoes,
meaning 'Loyalty forbids'?"
"I'll say 'Loyalty forbids' when I want to go out by myself; my wife's
in the country."
"Tant mieux! if it isn't shocking," she laughed. "I'm afraid a woman
on the spot would prove too strong for me. Am I grossly selfish?
Poor boy who has got no wife!"
She looked at him as she had looked across the supper-table in the
avenue Wagram. He could not think of anything to say, of a nature
that commended itself to him; and he exclaimed abruptly:
"Oh, you may rely on me, Mrs. Deane-Pitt; I'll never go anywhere;
I'll be a hermit! By the way, you don't know I'm in Soho now.
Perhaps I'd better give you the address?"
"Certainly," she said; "I may want to write to you. The Hermit of
Soho! Well, when you've been good and done penance thoroughly,
hermit, you may come and see me sometimes; I'll allow you that
distraction. Come in whenever you like, and you can tell me how the
thing is going. Any afternoon you please at this time. And don't
come in trembling at me any more; I don't expect you to write me a
masterpiece in six weeks, poor boy."
Kent kept his word to her doggedly, and, although he continued to
rise early, he was seldom free to join Turquand until about nine
o'clock in the evening. When the chapter was done, he would go
downstairs, and light another pipe, and Turquand would put away
his book or his paper without any indication of curiosity. With a
woman such a state of things would have been impossible; but
Turquand's manner was so unforced that by degrees Kent came to
own that he was tired, or to make some other allusion to his labour
quite freely. And not once did the other say to him, "Well, but what
is it you're doing?" On the days that he called on Mrs. Deane-Pitt, it
was later still before he could loll in the parlour; the temptation to
go to her, however, was more than he could resist. He realised very
soon that she had an attraction for him which was not in the least
like friendship, and which he could never term "friendship" any
more. In moments, as he sat writing in his shabby bedroom under
the tiles, the thought of her would suddenly creep into him, and beat
in his pulses till he was assailed by a furious longing to be in her
presence; and though he often denied the longing, he frequently
obeyed it. He would throw down his pen, and change his coat, and
leave the house impetuously, seeing her, in fancy, all the way to the
flat. During a fortnight or so, he sought some reason for the visit.
Would she like the heroine to go on the stage when her husband lost
his money? Did she think it would be a good idea to kill the
husband, and introduce a new character to reinstate the girl in
luxury? But presently such excuses were abandoned. For one thing,
Mrs. Deane-Pitt was too much occupied with her serial to accord any
serious consideration to his work; and for another, she welcomed
him as a matter of course. It was agreeable to her to see this man
who was in love with her, and whom she liked, looking at her with
eyes that betrayed what he would not allow his tongue to
acknowledge. "Oh, I'm glad," she would say, "I was hoping it was
you. Sit down and make yourself comfortable—no, bring me that
cushion first—and talk to me, and be amusing." Sometimes she
received him radiantly, sometimes wearily. On one afternoon she
declared she was in the best of spirits, and had just been wishing for
someone to bear her company; on the next she sighed that she was
worried to death, and that he had only arrived in time to save her
from extinction. "Bills," she would yawn, when he questioned her,
"bills! A dressmaker, a schoolmistress—I forget which. Some wretch
threatens something, I know. Don't look so concerned; I shall
survive. Cheer me up." Then the servant would enter with the tea-
things, and afterwards, in the cool shadows of the drawing-room,
through which the perfume of the heliotrope that grew in a huge
bowl under the crimson lamp floated deliciously, there would be
cigarettes, and a half-hour that he found exquisite in its air of
intimate familiarity. Though no verbal admission was ever made,
there were seconds in which Kent's voice, as plainly as his face, told
her what he felt for her, and seconds in which the tones of the
woman said, "I'm quite conscious of the effect I have on you; we
both understand, of course." Occasionally he had a glimpse of her
children, and once when he was there, Mrs. Deane-Pitt took the boy
on her lap, among the folds of her elaborate tea-gown, and fondled
him. "Do you think I make a nice mother, Mr. Kent?" she said,
flashing a glance. "This monkey doesn't appreciate his privileges."
She kissed the child three times, and in the gaze that she lifted over
his curly head there was, for an instant, provocation that shook the
man.
But such incidents as this were exceptional, and, as a rule, Kent
could not have cited a single instance of coquetry when he took his
leave and returned to the attic. Nor did the passion she had aroused
in him militate against the success of his enterprise, taking "success"
to mean its completion by the given date. Perhaps he was more
industrious, even, in the perception that she was always warmest
when he had done the most. "I finished the thirtieth chapter last
night!" Then she would be delightful, and if she had appeared
harassed at all, her languor would speedily give place to gaiety. The
tremulous afternoons were never so quick with the sense of alliance,
so entirely fascinating to him, as when he was able to surprise her
by some such report. The desire to please the woman became fully
as strong a stimulus to the ghost as his eagerness to receive the
money that would permit him to begin a third novel for himself. The
two short stories had been published now, in a periodical in which
Kent would have been very proud to see his own name, and though
he did not grudge them to her, he could not help feeling, as he read
them, that they were better than he had known and that it would be
eminently satisfactory to resume legitimate work.
After the fortieth chapter was scrawled, conclusion was in sight, and
though he could not quite sustain his earlier pace, he never turned
out less than one thousand words a day. Had anybody told him, a
couple of months before, that he could do even this, he would have
ridiculed the statement, but the consciousness that acceptance was
certain had been very fortifying. He scarcely allowed himself leisure
to eat after passing the fortieth chapter. The stuff was undeniably
poor, though it was not so jejune as it seemed to Kent. The worst
part was the construction, for, ignorant what the next development
was to be, he was often forced to write sheets of intermediate and
motiveless dialogue until an idea presented itself; but for the style,
hasty as it was, there was still something to be said. Instinctively
Kent gave to a commonplace redundancy a literary twist, and the
writing had almost invariably a veneer, though the matter written
might be of no account.
During the final week he did not go to Victoria Street at all. He could
not suppress the artist in him wholly, and for the climax he meant to
do his utmost. It was a sop to his conscience—he could remember
the last chapter and forget the rest. He had sent or taken the
manuscript to Mrs. Deane-Pitt piece by piece, and he took her the
last of it on the evening that he wrote "The End." A telegram had
told her to expect him. He had written the book in seven weeks; but
he felt as exhausted as if he had built a house in the time, brick by
brick, with his own hands. She read the pages that he had brought,
while he watched her from an arm-chair; and, with the candour
which was so striking a feature in such an association, she cried that
the scene was admirable—that she could not have done it half so
well. Kent's weariness faded from him as they talked, and
momentarily he regretted that he had not been able to write a book
for her equal to The Eye of the Beholder.
With regard to her negotiations, however, she was not so outspoken
—it was only by chance that Kent had seen the two short stories;
she had not even told him for what paper they were intended. There
was some delay in paying the two hundred pounds, and her
explanations were vague and various. The partner with whom she
always dealt was on the Continent; she would not sign an
agreement before American copyright was arranged; she generally
ran her stories as serials before they were issued in book-form and it
was not decided what she was going to do—half a dozen reasons for
postponement were forthcoming. She gave him his share at last,
though, and very cordially, and he felt some embarrassment in
taking her cheque when the moment arrived, its being his earliest
experience of business with a woman. If he had had others, he
would have appreciated her action in paying him in full, and only a
little late, more keenly than he did, though he was far from
ungrateful to her as it was.
He put the cheque in his pocket as carelessly as he could manage,
and said:
"Well, you've done me a tremendous service, Mrs. Deane-Pitt, and,
by Jove! I thank you for it—heartily."
"Oh, rubbish!" she replied; "the work's been as useful to me as to
you; you've nothing to thank me for."
"It makes more difference to me," said Kent; "it means—you hardly
know what it means! I needn't look out for a berth now; I can sit
down to another novel. I owe you that."
"If you like to think so——" She smiled, but her tone was
constrained. "I should be glad if somebody owed me something; I'm
more used to its being the other way round."
"I feel a Croesus. We ought to celebrate this accession to wealth; it
demands a festivity! If I get seats for a theatre, will you go to dinner
with me somewhere to-morrow night? What shall we go to see?
Have you been to Daly's yet?"
"I'm engaged to-morrow night, and the next."
"To-night, then?"
"This evening I am dining out; there's the card on my desk."
"What a fashionable person you are!" exclaimed Kent, rather
enviously. "Would Friday evening suit you?"
"Yes, I'm free on Friday; but a theatre is awfully stifling this weather,
isn't it?"
"Well, we needn't go to a theatre," he said; "we might dine at
Richmond. Will you drive down to Richmond, and have dinner at the
Star and Garter on Friday?"
Mrs. Deane-Pitt promised that she would, but the animation with
which she had given him the cheque had deserted her; and after a
minute, she said:
"I suppose your starting another novel for yourself needn't stand in
the way of our business together? There are several things I can
offer you, if you care to do them."
"Oh, thanks," said Kent; "but I'm afraid I'd better stick to the novel.
I want to do all I can with it, you see."
"L'un n'empêche pas l'autre—a short story now and then won't
interfere with it, surely? I can place a ten-thousand-word story at
once if you like to write it for me."
The refusal was difficult, and he hesitated how to express himself.
He had never contemplated the association as a permanent one, and
now that an alternative was open to him, its indignity looked doubly
repellant. He was surprised that Mrs. Deane-Pitt expected it to
continue. Couldn't she understand that he felt it a humiliation—that
he had adopted the course merely as a desperate measure in a
desperate case? He had taken her comprehension for granted.
"I'd rather not, if you don't mind," he said awkwardly. "It would take
me off my own work more than you can imagine. My motive for
doing this was to make it possible for me to devote myself heart and
soul to a novel; and that is what I want to do."
She looked downcast.
"When do you mean to begin it? You could knock off ten thousand
words first, couldn't you? And I believe an occasional short story
would come as a relief to you, too! I wouldn't persuade you against
your will—pray don't think that—but, as a matter of fact, there is no
reason why you shouldn't make a few pounds a week all the time
you're writing your book, you know? if you like. I don't want another
novel yet, but I can take almost any number of short stories; or, if
you preferred it, you might write me a short thing that could be
published in paper covers at a shilling. Will you think it over? I don't
want to hurry your decision." She hummed a snatch of tune, and
picked up a new song that was lying on the piano. "Have you seen
this?" she said carelessly. "It's pretty."
Kent took it from her, and played with the leaves in a pause. He was
conscious that he must decline now, and definitely, and the
insistence of her request made the duty harder every second. Mrs.
Deane-Pitt sauntered about the room; she felt blank and annoyed
with herself. Was this her reward for liking the man enough to give
him two hundred pounds in a lump, instead of paying him by
instalments, which would have been infinitely more convenient to
her?
"If you won't think me boorish," he said at last abruptly, "I'd rather
keep to my intention. I'm not a boy—I need all the time at my
disposal to succeed in."
She gave a forced laugh.
"How much younger do you want to be? If the money doesn't attract
you, it won't be in your way, I suppose; and—you can do it to oblige
me! Come, I'm quite frank! I own that you're very useful to me. You
don't mean that you're going to strike and leave me in the lurch?"
The face upturned to him was more earnest than her words. Her
brown eyes widened, and fastened on him, and for an instant his
resolution broke down. But it was his work, and his ambition, his
fidelity to his art, that she was asking him to waive—he would not!
"Nobody so sorry as the 'striker,'" he said, in a tone to match her
own. "Let me be your banker when I'm going into a dozen editions,
Mrs. Deane-Pitt, and I'll serve you all you want. The service you ask
me to-day is just the one I can't do."
"Bien," she murmured; "I suppose you know your own business
best."
But she was plainly disappointed, and, though she speedily spoke of
another subject, her voice lacked spontaneity. Kent's courage knew
no approving glow, and if, during the minutes he remained, she had
begged him to assist her by returning the cheque, he would most
certainly have done it. He thought that she must hate him—though
in truth he had never appealed to her so strongly—and it was the
only occasion on which he had ever taken leave of her without
regret.
To Cynthia he wrote immediately, telling her he had been paid two
hundred pounds, and enclosing twenty-five, that she might have a
surplus to draw upon without applying to him. He also remitted to
Paris the amount necessary to redeem her ring, and his watch and
chain, and the rest. He had now an opportunity of going down to
see her, and he told her that she might expect him on Monday or
Tuesday in the following week. The picture he had once seen of
surprising her in the garden had long since ceased to present itself
to him, and he was not impatient to find himself in his wife's
company in the circumstances. He questioned if Mrs. Deane-Pitt
would be disposed to go with him to Richmond after what had
passed. To refuse a woman's petition to augment her income, but to
invite her to dinner at Richmond, was rather suggestive of the bread
and the stone. Yet, now that propinquity was not her ally, he was
fervently glad that he had had strength to refuse. It was a
partnership that every month would have made more difficult to
sever, and she had, apparently, looked for it to extend over years. As
to Richmond, he hoped the engagement would be fulfilled; it would
pain him intensely otherwise. He owed her too much to be
reconciled to their separating with coldness, and he determined to
send a note, reminding her of her promise.
Her reply allayed his misgivings. It was confirmed by her demeanour
when they met. Indeed, her display of even more good fellowship
than usual made him feel rather guilty.
She seemed to divine his reflections, and to assure him that such
self-reproach was needless. She had never been brighter or more
informal with him than in the hansom as they drove down. Her air
implied that their previous interview had been a trivial folly which, as
sensible people, they must banish from their minds, and she talked
of everything and nothing with the gaiety of a schoolgirl on an
unforeseen excursion, and the piquancy of a woman who had
observed and lived.
Her vivacity was infectious, and Kent's constraint gradually melted in
a rush of the warmest gratitude for her forbearance. He was so
entirely at her mercy here, and he thought that few women similarly
placed would have refrained from planting at least one little sting
among their verbal honey. His admiration began to comprise details.
He remarked the hat she wore, and the delicacy of a little ear
against her hair's duskiness. He noted with pleasure the quick,
petulant twitch of a corner of her mouth as her veil got in the way,
and the appreciative gaze of young men in the cabs that rolled
towards them—a gaze which invariably terminated in a swift scrutiny
of the charming woman's companion.
When the hotel was reached, he had never been livelier; and, often
as he had read an opposite opinion, he found it very delightful to see
the woman he was in love with eat, and drink her champagne. It
was intimate, it lessened the noli me tangere mien of feminine
fashion and brought her closer. The attire of an attractive woman
who has never belonged to him has always a mystery for a man,
though he may have had three wives and kept a dressmaker's shop.
But liveliness was succeeded by a vaguer emotion, as they lounged
on the terrace over their coffee and liqueurs. Under the moon the
river shone divine, limitless in its glint and shadow. Her features took
tenderness from the tremulous light, and sometimes a silence fell
which, as he yielded himself to the subtile endearment of the
moment, soft as the breath of love on his face, Kent felt to be the
supplement of speech. A woman who could have uttered epigrams
in the mood that possessed him now would have disgusted him, and
insensibly their tones sank. She spoke gently, seriously. Presently
some allusion that she made begot a confidence about her earlier
life—her marriage. It disturbed him to hear that she had been fond
of Deane-Pitt when she married him, yet he was grieved when she
owned how quickly her illusions had died. Her belief that she might
have been "a better woman" if she had married a different man was
pathetic in its revelation of unsuspected heart-aches, and sympathy
made him execrate the feebleness of words. Her voice acquired an
earnestness that he had never heard in it before, and while he was
stirred with the sincerest pity for her, a throb of rapture was in his
veins that she could be talking so to him. The minutes were
ineffable, in which she seemed to discard the social mask and
surrender more and more of her identity to his view. Spiritually she
appeared to be lying in his arms; and when she checked herself, and
rallied with a laugh which was over-taken by a sigh, he felt that he
could have listened to her for ever.
"How solemn we've become!" she exclaimed; "and we came out to
be 'festive' to-night."
"I shall always remember the 'you' of to-night," he said.
They were silent again. She passed her hand across her eyes
impatiently, as if to wave away the pictures of the past. By
transitions their tones regained their former cheerfulness. She
mentioned the hour, and drew her wrap about her. It was time to
return.
"It has been delicious," she murmured, looking up at the stars. "Only
you let me bore you."
"By talking of yourself?"
"So stupid of me!"
"You know," said Kent—"you know!"
"I wanted to tell you; you won't think so badly of me, perhaps."
"I?"
"I'm sure you have. Now, sometimes?"
"If I confessed my thoughts, you'd never say so any more."
"Really?" Her eyes flashed mockery. "You mustn't tell me, then—I
might be vain."
The cab bowled over the white roads rapidly. The flutter of her scarf
on his shoulder stole through his blood, and the clip-clop sound of
the horse's hoofs seemed to him to waken echoes in his inside.
"Do you know, it was very indiscreet of me to come down here with
you?" she laughed.
"Supposing somebody had met us!"
"And then?"
"What would be thought?"
"What could be thought?" he asked unsteadily.
"Scandal, perhaps. I'm very angry with you; you've made me do
wrong. Why did you make me do wrong when I had such faith in
you?"
"You've given me the happiest evening of my life," said Kent; "is that
the wrong?"
"Do you think happiness must always be right? It's a convenient
creed. Happiness at any price—and let the woman pay it, eh? That's
a man's philosophy. You're quite right, though; but, then, you're at
the happiest time of life. No, nobody is ever that! The happiest time
of life's the past. Believe me, or believe me not, the past is always
beautiful; to-morrow I shall regret to-day."
"So shall I," said Kent. "But very much indeed I appreciate it now....
What are you cynical for? You only put it on. It's not 'you' really."
"'Wise judges are we of each other.' How do you know?"
"You said that to me once before—in Paris."
"Said what? Oh, the quotation! When?"
"At your place, after the Variétés."
"What a memory! Yes, you're certainly resolved to try to make me
vain. But I'm adamant. Did you know that? I'm made of stone. Do
you treasure up what every woman says to you? The answer is a
wounded gaze; it's dark to see expressions, but I'll take it for
granted."
"I remember what you said to me half an hour ago, and I know your
bitterness is a sham. You were meant to be——"
"Oh, 'meant'!" she cried recklessly; "a woman's what she's made.
I'm afraid I've been made untidy. Do you mind driving in a hansom
with such a figure?"
She plucked at her veil in the strip of looking-glass, and bent her
face to him for criticism. The brilliance of the eyes that she widened
glowed into him as she leant so, and his arms trembled to enfold
her. His mouth was dry as he muttered a response.
The sweetness of June was in the air that caressed them as they
sped through the moonlight. With every sentence she let fall, with
every glance she shot at him, she dizzied him more, and he sat
strained with the struggle to retain his self-command. Through his
febrile emotions, the horror of proving false to Cynthia loomed like
an angel betokening the revulsion of his remorse. He could imagine
the afterwards—he knew how he would feel—and there were
instants in which he prayed for the drive to finish and permit escape.
But there were instants also in which he ceased to fight, and
steeped in the present, yearned only to forget his wife, though tardy
remembrance should be a double scourge.
Her fingers were busy at a knot of violets in her dress; and she held
the flowers up to him, looking round, smiling.
"Shall I give you a buttonhole?" she inquired gaily. "It would be an
appropriate conclusion—my ideals, my withered hopes, and my dead
violets! Oh, I shiver to think of what I said to you! Did I gush
towards the last? I've a fearful, a ghastly misgiving that I gushed. If
you acknowledge that I did, I'll never forgive you; but you shouldn't
have encouraged me. Stoop for the souvenir! It cost a penny—
symbolic of the sentiment.... Though lost to sight, to memory dear!
It will be a very dear memory, won't it? Use me one day! I shall
come in as material—the hard woman of the world, who bares her
soul on impulse, and the Star and Garter terrace, to the man she
likes and stands revealed as—as what? I wonder what you'd make of
me. Child, I shall never get this buttonhole in if you don't turn! I've
admitted I'm a spectacle, but you might suffer for a second."
Her hair swept his cheek as she wrestled with refractory stalks, and
the dark eyes grew and; fastened on him again.
The hansom sped on. The quietude was left behind, and the lights of
the West End twinkled around them. There was the rattle of traffic.
Kent was laughing at something she had said, and he heard himself
with surprise—or was it; himself? The cab rolled to a standstill, and
they got out. The lift bore them to her landing. The servant opened
the door.
"Good-night," he said; "I won't come in."
"Oh, come in; it's not ten o'clock. You'll have a brandy-and-soda
before you go?"
She entered without waiting for his reply, and he followed her
reluctantly. Only the lamp had been lighted, and the room was full of
crimson shadow. He stood watching her unpin her hat before the
mirror, and pull at her gloves.
"I don't think I'll stop," he said again, "really! I've something to do."
"If I can't persuade you——" she answered listlessly.
Her gaiety had deserted her, and there was weariness in her attitude
as she drooped by the mantelshelf; her air, her movements, had a
languor now. She put out her bare hand slowly, and Kent's clung to
it.
He stood holding her hand in a pause....
"I can't leave you," said Kent.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was a little less than a fortnight after the dinner at Richmond that
Kent brought Mrs. Deane-Pitt the ten-thousand-word story that she
had wanted, and, like the two earliest stories that he had written for
her, it was work to which he would have been glad to see his own
name attached. He had promised to let her have half a dozen short
stories as soon after its completion as possible, and it was his delight
to surprise her by the versatility, as well as the originality, of the
invention that he displayed in these. In one he wrote an idyll; in
another a gruesome little sketch, bound to attract attention by its
weirdness; in a third he seemed to be running through the stalest of
devices towards the most commonplace of conclusions, until, lo! in
the last half-column there came a literary thunder-clap, and this
story was even more startling than its predecessors. But all the links
fitted, if a reader liked to take the trouble to look back, and the
tragedy had been foreshadowed from the beginning. The tales
tickled the fancy of the Editor for whom they were intended. They
tickled it so much that he asked Mrs. Deane-Pitt to contribute
regularly for a few months; and the lady accepting the compliment
and the invitation, Kent continued to supply The Society Mirror with
an idyll, or a tragedy, or a comedy every week, astonished at his
own fecundity.
It was amazing how his hand was emboldened, I his imagination
stimulated, by the knowledge that his work was accepted before it
was penned. There were weeks during which he turned out a story
for Mrs. Deane-Pitt nearly every day. All the stories were built upon
more or less brilliant ideas, each of them was noteworthy and
distinctive when it appeared in The Society Mirror or elsewhere; and
if his share of the swindle had been punctiliously paid to him now,
he would have been making a good deal of money. Even as it was,
he was making it in a sense, for his partner always credited him with
the sums that were not forthcoming—entering them in an oxidised
silver memorandum-book that she kept in one of the drawers of her
desk. When he said that it did not matter about that, she laughingly
told him not to be a fool.
His conscience was not dull, however, and there were hours when
Kent suffered scarcely less acutely than one realises that a wife may
sometimes suffer in similar circumstances. His remorse then was just
what he had known it would be. From making his projected visit to
Monmouth he had excused himself—it was repugnant enough to
play the hypocrite in his letters—and by degrees Cynthia ceased to
refer to his coming; but while her silence on the point relieved him
from the necessity for telling her further falsehoods, it intensified his
shame.
His abasement was completed by the seventh rejection of The Eye
of the Beholder. He sent it off again at once, to Messrs. Kynaston, to
get it out of his sight; but the return of the ill-starred package had
revived all the passion of his disappointment concerning it, and he
could not get rid of the burning at his heart so easily as he did of the
parcel. The weight of the slighted manuscript lay on his spirit for
days after Thurgate and Tatham's refusal. The irony of it, that Mrs.
Deane-Pitt could place his hasty work in the best papers, was
enabled to pay him two hundred pounds for writing a novel of which
he was ashamed, while his own book, to which he had devoted a
year, was scorned on all sides! True, he had had, in his own name,
very much better, reviews than those that had been accorded so far
to the novel written for her. But ... what a profession?
Once he owned to her something of what he was feeling. He
couldn't help himself—he wanted her to comfort him.
"The Eye of the Beholder has come back again," he groaned.
"Really?" she said. "How many is that?"
"God knows! It's awfully hard that you can place whatever I do, Eva,
and I get my best stuff kicked back to me from every publisher's
office in London. I'm miserable!"
She smiled. She did not mean to be unsympathetic, but Kent hated
her for it furiously as she turned her face.
"There's much in a name," she said with a shrug. "What's the
difference, though? Your terms aren't bad, 'miserable one,' whether
the name is mine or yours. By the way, I can work another tale for
The Metropolis, if you'll knock it off for me; I was going to write to
you."
Kent never appealed to her for pity again. But a little later there
came a letter from Cynthia, replying to his brief announcement of
Thurgate and Tatham's rejection. Her consolation and prophesies of
"success yet" overflowed four sheets, and the man's throat was tight
as he read them.
Well, he must do the tale for The Metropolis! But he would write
some short stories for himself as well, he determined. It had not
been a lucrative occupation when he essayed it before, but those
early stories had been the wrong kind of thing—he perceived it now:
he would write some short stories of the pattern that was so
successful when it was signed "Eva Deane-Pitt."
He soon began to see his work over her signature in almost every
paper that he looked at. If he turned the leaves of a magazine on a
book-stall, a tale of his own met his eyes, signed "Eva Deane-Pitt"; if
he picked up a periodical in a restaurant, a familiar sentence might
flash out of the pages at him, and there would be another of his
stories "By Eva Deane-Pitt." Yes, he would submit to the editors on
his own account! He would not receive such terms as she, that he
knew; he doubted strongly whether he would even receive so much
as she spared to him after retaining the larger share. But he could,
and he would, get what was dear to him—the recognition and the
kudos to which he was entitled!
He found that he did not write so quickly for himself as in his
capacity of ghost, but he was not discouraged, for he felt that he
was writing better. For a week he did nothing for the woman at all;
he wrote all day and half the night as "Humphrey Kent," and when a
manuscript was declined by The Society Mirror he sent it to The
Metropolis, and forwarded the story rejected by The Metropolis to
The Society Mirror. He could not abandon his work for her entirely,
but under the pressure that she put upon him, and his new
interests, he wrote for her more and more hastily—wrote frank and
unmitigated rubbish at last, and on one occasion candidly told her
so.
She had telegraphed to him at six o'clock, begging him to call, and
he had risen from his table feeling that his head was vacant. She
clamoured for a two-thousand-word story by the first post the
following morning, and insisted, as usual, that "anything would do."
He assured her that he was too exhausted even to invent a motive;
how could he produce two thousand words before he slept? She
overruled his objections, hanging about him with caresses. She
made him promise that the sketch should reach her in time.
"Write twaddle, dearest boy," was her parting injunction, "but write
it! A motive? A mercenary girl jilts her lover because he is poor, and
then her new fiancé loses his fortune, and the jilted lover succeeds
to a dukedom! What does it matter? Write a story that Noah told to
his family in the Ark—only cover enough pages. Write any rot; simply
fill it out. I depend on you, Humphrey, mind!"
He went home and did it—on the lines she had laid down. She
wanted drivel—she should have it! He did not stop to think at all. He
wrote, without a pause or a correction, as rapidly as his pen would
glide, and posted the tale to her before half-past ten. A note went
with it.
"I have done as you ordered," he scribbled. "Don't blame me
because no editor will take such muck now you are obeyed."
She had no complaint to make when he saw her next. And it was
after this that Kent's work for her was uniformly fatuous, while he
lavished on his own a wealth of fastidious care for which she would
have mocked him had she known. He visited her at much longer
intervals now, for a disgust of her caresses was growing in him, a
horror of the amorous afternoons, which ended always with a plea
for additional tales. But that cowardice prevented him, he would
have stayed away altogether. There grew something like horror of
the woman herself, insatiable, no matter with how much work he
might supply her—coaxing him for "two little stories more; anything
will do—I must have a new costume, darling, really!" while a batch
of manuscript that he had brought to her lay in her lap. He could
remember now, with her arms about him, the many original ideas
that she had had from him at the beginning, and he felt with a
shudder that her clutch was deadly. First she had had his brains, and
now she stole his conscience. He foresaw that, if the strain that she
put upon him continued, a day must come when the imagination
that she was squeezing like an orange would be sterile, or fruitful of
nothing better than the literary abortions with which his mistress
was content.
His dismay at his position did not wane. It became so evident that,
by degrees, a coldness crept into the woman's manner towards him.
He was at no pains to dispel it. That their relations drifted on to a
purely business footing inspired him with no other fear than that
presently she might make him a scene and entail upon him the
disagreeable necessity for declaring, as delicately as he could, that
his infidelity to his wife had been a madness that he violently
regretted, and would never repeat. The obvious retort would be so
superficially true that fervently he trusted that the necessity would
not arise.
Meanwhile the short stories submitted in his own name, with silent
prayers, had all been refused; but, undeterred by the failure, he
wrote more and more. The present tenants of No. 64 were anxious
to renew their agreement for another six months, and he was
pleased to hear it. The prospect of meeting Cynthia again frightened
him; and, closing readily with the off er that afforded him a respite,
he remained at his literary forge in Soho, writing for Mrs. Deane-Pitt
and for himself—seeing sometimes three of his tales for her
published, by different papers, in the same week, and finding the
tales submitted in the lowlier name of "Humphrey Kent" returned
without exception.
He would once have said that such a state of things couldn't be, but
now he discovered that it could be, and was. There was not at this
stage: a periodical or magazine in London that Humphrey Kent did
not essay in vain, and there were; not more than three or four (of
the kind that one sees in a club or an educated woman's room) in
which his stuff did not appear, at a substantial rate of payment,
when it was supposed to be by Mrs. Deane-Pitt. There were not in
London five papers making a feature of fiction, which did not
repeatedly reject the man's best work, signed by himself, and accept
his worst, signed by somebody else. Not five of the penny or
sixpenny; publications—not five among the first or second-class—not
five editors appraising fiction in editorial chairs who did not either
find or assume a story bearing the unfamiliar name of "Humphrey
Kent" to be below their standard, while they paid ten or twelve
guineas for a tale scribbled by the same author in a couple of hours
when it was falsely represented to be by Mrs. Deane-Pitt. During
nine months he was never offered a single guinea by an editor for a
tale. Every story that he submitted during nine months was declined,
and every story that he gave to Mrs. Deane-Pitt was sold. Raging, he
swore that some day he would set the facts forth in a novel; and
even as he swore it, he knew that they would be challenged and
that, in at least one literary organ of eminence, a critic would write,
"We do not find the situation probable."
Once an editor did know his name. He was the Editor of a
fashionable magazine, and Kent had called at the office to inquire
about a manuscript that had been lying there for a long while. The
gentleman was very courteous: he did not remember the title, and,
unfortunately, he could not put his hand on the tale at the moment,
but he promised to have a search made for it, and to read it as soon
as it was found.
A letter from him (and the manuscript) reached Kent the same
week. It was as considerate a letter of rejection as any one could
dictate. The Editor began by saying that the story "was clever, as all
Mr. Kent touched was clever, but——" And then he proceeded to
analyse the plot, to demonstrate that the motive was too slight for
the purpose. The tone was so kindly that, though Kent could not
perceive the justice of the criticism—he was sensible enough to try—
he felt a glow of gratitude towards the writer; and his appreciation
was deepened when the following post brought him a copy of the
current issue of the magazine, "With compliments."
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