With this accomplished intellectual history of late eighteenth-century Spanish governance and political economy, Gabriel Paquette offers an innovative synthesis exploring the ideological motivations of the Bourbon reform agenda. Paquette rejects the older characterization of Bourbon politics as “enlightened absolutism,” preferring instead the more encompassing (and less loaded) label of “regalism.” He explores how regalism functioned in the empire through tracing the roles that state and quasi-state institutions played in supporting and promoting Spanish political economy initiatives. At the same time he pays special attention to how the Spanish Bourbons observed, admired, and at times critiqued foreign political economy programs. Ultimately, Paquette makes a convincing (and much-needed) corrective to the historiography of imperial rule in the late eighteenth-century Atlantic, demonstrating how Bourbon governance was not baroque and isolationist; rather, it was complex, sophisticated, and keenly attuned to contemporary political discussions.
The book describes regalism as an ideology of governance whereby the...
