Antonio María Bucareli has been most often portrayed as one of the ablest and the best of the viceroys. Professor Bobb has set out to determine the true stature of Bucareli in this detailed administrative biography, which is based almost entirely upon a staggering amount of viceregal correspondence located in Mexico City and Seville. Bobb limits his study to certain aspects of administration, namely Patronato and ecclesiastical affairs, defense, the Interior Provinces, the colonization of California, mining, and finances.

The author is primarily concerned with assessing Bucareli as a man and as an administrator, and his conclusions are mixed. Though an honest and devoted servant of the Crown and an efficient financial manager, Bucareli showed no imagination or initiative. Basically he did what he was told to do or what had been suggested to him by José de Gálvez.” Therefore, Bucareli was an excellent viceroy by the standards of Madrid (Charles III praised him and excused him from the residential, but by any other standards he was only mediocre.

One might expect that these years would reveal the impact of the visita of José de Gálvez (1765-1771), which resulted in the expulsion of the Jesuits, the overhauling of the revenue system, and the strengthening of the system of defense, to say nothing of the introduction of new ideas. Bobb finds little evidence in this direction, suggesting as the reason the fact that Bucareli was fundamentally conservative and made only a minimum effort to press changes. Thus for Bobb Bucareli was a “bridge between the old and the new,” and his administration a “transitional one, during which the seeds of the Enlightenment, of change, even of rebellion, were sown but had not yet begun to sprout.” Bobb raises these problems in the early pages but unfortunately does not pursue them through the course of the book, nor does he re-open them in the concluding chapter.

Bobb’s negative findings are in themselves significant, but is it not possible that they were partially determined by his selection of topics to study? He says that he was prevented by limitations of time and space from treating justice, trade, public welfare, education, and local government, certainly pertinent areas in which to assess change. Furthermore, Bobb gives little insight into the structure of colonial government, to the relationship between the viceroy and the audiencia and local administration. If, as Haring suggests, the power of the viceroy was eroding in the eighteenth century, what does Bucareli’s administration tell us about this process? What about social problems? What about the aftermath of the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, which caused such relocation in land and education, not to mention the popular discontent evidenced during the Gálvez visita? Can we be content with Bobb’s four-paragraph treatment of the Jesuits? What about the general relationship between the Bourbon reforms and independence? It seems fair to assume that some suggestions along these lines should emerge from a minute investigation of this eight-year period.

One specific matter must be raised. I do not think Bobb adequately incorporates Walter Howe’s notable study of the Cuerpo de Minería into his chapter on the mining industry. In fact, he does not mention the mining industry among those aspects of the Bucareli administration which he says have been previously studied. Howe devoted 50 pages to the organization of the Mining Guild during the Bucareli years and used and cited much of the same archival material as Bobb.

One must admire Bobb’s effort to organize and present a massive quantity of archival manuscript correspondence. He has undoubtedly added much detail which will be of value to specialists of the late colonial regime. Furthermore, he successfully provides a reassessment of Bucareli, and shows afresh how overwhelming the job of viceroy was for any but an extraordinary man, which Bucareli was not. Can we not ask in addition that an administrative biography lead into the consideration of broader questions?