The viceroyalties

Los virreinatos

1535–1808. Spain governed its American lands through viceroys who represented the king: New Spain from 1535 (Mexico City) and Peru from 1542 (Lima), joined in the…

Draft: not yet checked against its sources.

What happened

Spain governed its American lands through viceroys who represented the king: New Spain from 1535 (Mexico City) and Peru from 1542 (Lima), joined in the eighteenth century by New Granada (Bogotá, 1717 and again 1739) and the Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires, 1776). Below them stood the audiencias (high courts), corregidores and town councils, and above them the Council of the Indies in Spain; the Crown also controlled the Church through the Patronato Real. Silver from Potosí and Mexico paid for the system and linked the Americas to Europe and, through the Manila galleon, to Asia. Society was ranked by origin, Spanish, Indigenous, African and mixed, but in practice the categories blurred.

Its events

1. 1609–1768: The Jesuit missions among the Guaraní
2. c. 1765–1788: The Bourbon reforms

Sources

1. Colonial Government in the Spanish Empire — World History Encyclopedia
2. The Iberian Conquest of the Americas — World History Encyclopedia
3. El virreinato de la Nueva España (ficha de clase) — Secretaría de Educación Pública (México), Nueva Escuela Mexicana