UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Loyalty and Disloyalty to the Bourbon Dynasty in Spanish America and the Philippines During the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1715) Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2073p463 Author Olivas, Aaron Alejandro Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Loyalty and Disloyalty to the Bourbon Dynasty in Spanish America and the Philippines During the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1715) A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Aaron Alejandro Olivas 2013 © Copyright by Aaron Alejandro Olivas 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Loyalty and Disloyalty to the Bourbon Dynasty in Spanish America and the Philippines During the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1715) by Aaron Alejandro Olivas Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Kathryn Norberg, Chair My project analyzes the transatlantic consequences of the War of the Spanish Succession, one of the first global wars. Focusing primarily on relations between Spanish America and France, it establishes a connection between colonial resistance to the Spanish crown, interactions between European empires, and global trade. Previous scholars have assumed that Spain’s overseas empire accepted the transition from Habsburg to Bourbon rule without complaint, however my project reveals that the succession acted as a catalyst fomenting disloyalty throughout the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru. Representing a wide social and ethnic spectrum, wartime disloyalty cases illustrate the complexity of challenging Spanish imperial rule a century before the independence movements. ! ""! My project also demonstrates that trans-imperial forces actually shaped the contours of the Spanish empire. It provides concrete evidence as to how interactions between Spanish colonial subjects, foreign merchants, and the French, English, and Dutch governments steered personal loyalties regarding Spanish sovereignty during such political crises. Furthermore, it offers a new political perspective on the transatlantic slave trade. During the war, the directors of France’s slave company formed alliances with Spanish colonial elites and facilitated the sale of political offices to officials who not only protected French trade in the Spanish colonies, but also actively prosecuted Habsburg sympathizers for treason. Thus, through a French- held slave monopoly, the Bourbon dynasty was able to negotiate local loyalty, undermine its enemies, and consolidate its control of Spanish America. The project incorporates a range of unpublished sources from Mexico, Spain, and France: pamphlets, legal transcripts from colonial audiencias and Spain’s Council of the Indies, correspondence between Spanish colonial elites and Louis XIV’s ministers at Versailles, and records of England’s Colonial Office. ! """! The dissertation of Aaron Alejandro Olivas is approved. Claudia Parodi-Lewin Geoffrey W. Symcox Kevin B. Terraciano Kathryn Norberg, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 ! "#! I dedicate this work to my loyal partner Luis Muñoz…mi rey, mi príncipe. ! #! Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii Vita ix Introduction: The Global Dimensions of the Spanish Succession Crisis 1 Chapter 1: Disloyalty to the Crown Under Felipe V 12 Chapter 2: The Caribbean Basin 32 Chapter 3: Colonial Centers 64 Chapter 4: The Pacific Rim 108 Chapter 5: Changes and Continuities Under Felipe V 146 Appendix A: Origins and Course of the War of the Spanish Succession 152 Bibliography 164 ! #"! Acknowledgements It takes a village to write a dissertation. I would like to thank the many advisors, institutions, colleagues, and family members who provided the encouragement that made this project possible. My advisor Kathryn Norberg has been a tremendous mentor, whose guidance and knowledge as a historian proved vital. This dissertation would not have been possible without her. I am also indebted to my exceptional and truly “global” dissertation committee, Geoffrey Symcox, Claudia Parodi, and Kevin Terraciano. I also received invaluable assistance from other scholars in the field. William Summerhill and Robin Derby provided much appreciated support at UCLA. Tamar Herzog and Carla Rahn Phillips were particularly honest and generous with their advice regarding perspective and documentation. I have also benefited from the insight of historians from Spain, Latin America, and France, particularly Rafael Fernández Sotelo and Luis Navarro García. This dissertation was largely supported by a Fulbright IIE grant to Spain. The faculty of the Departamento de Historia de América at the Universidad de Sevilla kindly sponsored my project as I worked at the Archivo General de Indias. The Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and U.S. Universities and the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University further facilitated my research abroad. I am thankful for the numerous research and writing grants I received from UCLA, in particular from the Department of History, the Center for European and Eurasian Studies, the Latin ! #""! American Institute, and the Burkle Center for International Relations. The support of the UC Diversity Initiative for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, the Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies allowed me to present at conferences in the United States and Europe, where my work evolved. I would also like to thank my many colleagues in the field. I am grateful to Kristina Poznan, Francisco Eissa-Barroso, Ainara Vázquez, Deborah Bauer, and Susan Cribbs for reading my work. I would like to thank Dorleta Apaolasa, Carla Aragón, Alex Boruki, Kaja Cook, Edward Collins, Consolación Fernández, Bethan Fisk, Guillermo García Montufar, Guillaume Hanotin, Nick Saenz, Daniel Wasserman-Soler, and David Wheat for our conversations at the archives, academic conferences, and over meals. At UCLA, I am indebted to Tiffany Gleason, Covadonga Lamar, Jimena Rodríguez, Lizy Moromisato, Erin Buker, and Jennifer Ng for their support. I could not have endured the ups and downs of graduate school without my dear friends Leslie Waters and Xochitl Flores. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for providing me with love and encouragement at home: my partner Luis, my parents Lucille and Antonio, siblings Andrea and Tony, my nieces, Wanda and Alex, Jessica and Jeff, Lillian, Bertha and Danielle, Auntie Dolores, and my grandparents Dolores and Lucio. ! #"""! Vita 2003 BA, History University of San Francisco San Francisco, CA 2004 MA, Social Sciences University of Chicago Chicago, IL 2005 Certificat de Langue et Civilisation Français Université de Paris-Sorbonne IV Paris, France 2007 MA, History University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Publications and Presentations “Las dimensiones globales de la resistencia catalana: el proceso contra la misión de Recoletos a Filipinas (1711-1712),” Los tratados de Utrecht: Claroscuros de la paz, la resistencia de los catalanes, Universitat Pompeu Fabra/Museu d’Història de Catalunya (Barcelona, ES), April 2014 (forthcoming) “Imperialism, Private Interests, and the Reform of the Council of the Indies During the War of the Spanish Succession,” 128th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association (Washington, DC), January 2014 (forthcoming) “Performance and Propaganda in Spanish America During the War of the Spanish Succession,” Performances of Peace: Utrecht 1713-2013, Universiteit Utrecht/Dutch Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Utrecht, NL), April 2013 “Resistance to the Bourbon Dynasty in the Pacific Rim During the War of the Spanish Succession,” 127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association (New Orleans, LA), January 2013 “The French Compagnie Royale de Guinée and Loyalty to Philip V in Spanish America During the War of the Spanish Succession,” Atlantic Geographies Summer Institute, University of Miami (Miami, FL), May 2012 “French Trade in the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru During the War of the Spanish Succession,” International Conference on the War of the Spanish Succession: New Perspectives, German Historical Institute (London, UK), March 2012 ! 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Panel chair and commentator, II Jornadas de Cultura, Lengua y Literatura Coloniales, Centro de Estudios Coloniales Iberoamericanos de UCLA (Los Angeles, CA), October 2011 “The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Spanish Succession Crisis, 1698-1713,” Spanish America in the Early Eighteenth Century: New Perspectives on a Forgotten Era, University of Warwick (Coventry, UK), April 2011 “How to Stage the Conquest of the New World: Translating Peruvian History into Opera in Enlightenment France,” 58th Annual Conference of the Rocky Mountain Conference for Latin American Studies (Santa Fe, NM), April 2011 “History, Fantasy, and the Staging of the Conquest(s) of the Americas in Jean- Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes (1735),” Subversions of Hi/story and Desire for Memory, 15th Annual Graduate Student Conference in French and Francophone Studies at UCLA (Los Angeles, CA), October 2011 “Exoticism and Erudition in Vivaldi’s Opera Motezuma (1733),” Getty Brown Bag Lecture Series, Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, CA), May 2008 “‘Por tan justas i necessarias causas’: Philip