ABSTRACT

Castilian territorial expansion in the New World followed quickly behind indigenous demographic collapse, the latter being the result of epidemics and the subsequent destruction of the great Amerindian political systems in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Ultramarine reform for Portugal came later, as mineral strikes in Brazil ushered in a period of unprecedented prosperity, and made structural reform appear, for the moment, less urgent. Commercial empires were never simply commercial, nor were the silver empire based only on mining. The transformation of international commerce with the Antilles slave plantations and rising consumption of tropical agricultural products in the metropolis placed the Hispanic monarchy in a difficult spot. Coimbra was the training ground for imperial service, where the “bureaucratic socialization which readied a man for the robe of office” occurred. The chapter concludes with consideration of the impact of the reforms, particularly the resistance that they provoked, and how reform and the revolutions that would tear the Iberian empires asunder were linked.