The dilemma faced by the Bourbon reformers in eighteenth-century South America was no different from that faced by imperial administrators throughout history: how to ensure control and enhance revenue without squeezing the vitality out of the colonial offspring. As Terán points out, in dealing with this troublesome dilemma the Bourbons turned Quito and northern South America into a field laboratory for administrative experimentation. That most of the experiments floundered was not for lack of ingenuity. The various innovations attempted—a new viceroyalty, the eradication of the corregidores, the establishment of intendencies, and the ever-shifting jurisdictional responsibilities of officials at all levels—were finally thwarted by complex and contradictory forces at work within the bureaucracy and society. Measures to enhance military security, for example, were instituted often at the expense of economic security; and those designed to curtail creole entrenchment and the stirrings of local sentiments ignored the realities of a geography that dulled the effects of centralization and turned even peninsular reformers into localists.
The themes and issues central to this book are as fascinating as they are complex. Unfortunately, neither the style nor the methodology is consistently equal to the task. Emphasizing effects more than causes, and obscuring meaning through often tortured syntax, Terán reduces a potentially enlightening project to one that is merely curious. The study nonetheless suggests enticing new perspectives on Quito’s colonial history. The effects of administrative reform on local economies, subregional atomization, the emergence of autonomous tendencies, and the growth of independence sentiments are issues whose fuller treatment would have added needed depth. They suggest, indeed, a book within a book, which assuredly will be written by Rosemarie Terán one day.
