In the past decades, historians of Latin America have shown renewed interest in the political, fiscal, and commercial effects of imperial reforms and warfare in altering the relationship between Spain and its American colonies. Historians often emphasize the mercantilist drive of the Bourbon reforms, which they believe resulted in the transference of resources and large sums of capital from Spanish America to Iberia in what John Lynch compared to a “second conquest” of Latin America. The Politics of Giving in the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata provides a new perspective on the financing of the Spanish empire in the late colonial period. Through careful and detailed examination of the fiscal measures employed in the Río de la Plata, and especially the donativos (gifts and giving to the crown), Viviana Grieco argues that large portions of these funds stayed in the Americas and stimulated economic development in the colonial space,...
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