In this short but detailed study, Peter Bradley shifts his focus from colonial Peruvian defense to the often labyrinthine complexities of viceregal government. Through analysis and interpretation of Viceroy Count Alba de Liste’s official papers, Bradley has brought forth an informative and, on more than one occasion, insightful account of imperial management in Peru during the 1650s, that crucial historical juncture that marked the onset of fiscal crisis and pronounced economic decline in the viceroyalty. The author’s goal here is neither a political biography nor a monographic treatment of a sole viceregal term. Rather, he sets his sights on examining “an administration which epitomizes the issues that had become central to colonial government, . . . but which more importantly points decisively to areas in which future tensions within the system would eventually emerge” (p. 5).
The opening chapter furnishes brief introductory sketches of those tensions, while subsequent chapters deal with them in greater depth. Among the count’s more pressing concerns were managing a royal fisc whose revenues had begun to fall into frank decline; resolving the problems of Peru’s downtrodden native peoples; maintaining imperial defenses in the face of rebellion from within and threatened invasion from without; supervising administrative subordinates; and thwarting repeated challenges to his prestige and authority from the colonial aristocracy.
Readers familiar with the work of Kenneth Andrien and other historians of seventeenth-century Peru will find little novelty in Bradley’s conclusions regarding the viceroyalty’s economy; indeed, his conclusions tend to concur with the existing scholarship. Some may also feel that by relying mainly on viceregal correspondence for documentation, Bradley has unduly limited the scope of his monograph. Nevertheless, Bradley offers especially valuable insights into the Spanish Empire’s political psychology—a promising field of scholarly endeavor these days—that more than balance such possible shortcomings.
In sum, Bradley has turned out a useful and, above all, interesting little book. Though its greatest appeal doubtless will be to specialists and graduate students, its contents abound with material readily adaptable to undergraduate courses.
