This book traces the rise and fall of the Ocopa mission system, which, at its height, consisted of over seventy parishes and missions spread out over a half-million square miles in colonial Peru. Founded in 1709, the missionaries of Santa Rosa de Ocopa were part of a larger Franciscan reform movement called the Apostolic Institute. The Ocopa missions always existed within a difficult political environment, shaped not only by the reformist objectives of the Spanish Bourbon monarchs but also by competing agendas at the local and viceregal levels. The primary aim of In Service of Two Masters is to elucidate these “debates of the Bourbon reforms at all levels of the social, political, and economic spectrum through the narrative of the missionaries of Ocopa” (9–10). Ocopa presents an interesting case study in this regard. For reform-minded administrators, the Ocopa missionaries seemed, on the one hand, to be “ideal clerics,” as they were mostly peninsulares who strove to expand Spanish imperial frontiers and who could potentially open up new commercial markets. Yet, on the other hand, Ocopa posed a threat to “regalist” reformers, as the friars were perceived to constitute an overly autonomous community that, at times, could wield significant political influence (5). Throughout the book, Jones presents a nuanced examination of how competing reformist impulses of the Bourbon period emerged and were negotiated by divergent interest groups within the colonial domain.

Chapter 1 opens with a discussion of the founding of the Ocopa missions, located on the eastern frontiers of the Peruvian viceroyalty. An important dimension from the beginning was the missionaries’ heavy reliance on Crown funding. Unfortunately, for the friars, collecting their stipends from the Crown became increasingly difficult, especially during the tenure of Viceroy Castelfuerte (1724–1736), who grew strongly embittered towards the Franciscans. The negotiating position of the friars was noticeably weakened in light of the many small-scale uprisings that plagued the Ocopa missions, due chiefly to continual outbreaks of smallpox and other diseases. Chapter 2 analyzes the most devastating of these uprisings: the Juan Santos Atahualpa rebellion. Erupting in 1742, this rebellion destroyed all but two of Ocopa's twenty-three missions. In narrating the successive Spanish failures to end this uprising, Jones pays special attention to the irreconcilable divisions between the Ocopa friars and Viceroy Manso de Velasco, who viewed Ocopa as a threat to royal authority in Peru. This deepening estrangement left the Ocopa missionaries in a weakened and vulnerable position, and after 1750, the viceroy abandoned all further efforts to reclaim lost Ocopa territory. Chapter 3 examines the political strategies of the missionaries in the aftermath of the Santos rebellion. Through their representative at court, Friar Joseph de San Antonio, the friars petitioned the Crown for additional revenue and personnel. To convince the king of the worthiness of these requests, San Antonio emphasized the piety and obedience of the Ocopa missionaries, exemplified above all in those friars who were recently martyred by rebellious natives. While San Antonio was largely successful in his quest, the Ocopa missionaries were largely powerless to compel Viceroy Manso de Velasco to carry out the king's orders. During most of the 1750s, the viceroy only granted Ocopa half of their designated 6,000-peso annual stipend. It would not be until the pro-Franciscan monarch, Charles III, ascended to the throne in 1759 that Ocopa's fortunes would substantially improve in this regard.

Starting in the 1760s, a critical shift occurred in Ocopa's lobbying efforts. Instead of accentuating the missionaries’ piety and spiritual virtues, Ocopa's promoters underscored “the commercial potential of expanding their missionary enterprise” (111). As Chapter 4 demonstrates, this new strategy would bear much fruit. Not only did Ocopa begin to receive its stipends in full, but after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, the Franciscan missionaries also became the recipients of much property that had formerly belonged to the Society of Jesus. Nonetheless, increased Crown funding and patronage came at a price: Ocopa necessarily ceded some of its autonomy to Bourbon administrators. Some missionaries embraced this development as a beneficial one, while other friars remained wary of giving up too much control over internal Ocopa affairs. Chapter 5 elucidates these dynamics by focusing, in particular, on the highly contested election for Ocopa guardian in 1787. In the end, the “regalist” candidate emerged victorious, and Ocopa became more closely aligned with the objectives of the viceroy. Chapter 6 analyzes how Ocopa's leadership continued to promote the missions as materially and commercially beneficial to the empire in the latter decades of the colonial period. One interesting method of promotion was through a series of articles published in the Mercurio Peruano in the 1790s. Overall, these efforts proved successful in enhancing Ocopa's standing, and in 1802, the friars were granted almost complete control over the newly established diocese of Maynas. Problems soon emerged, however, as the (non-Franciscan) bishop clashed with Ocopa leadership. Yet, these conflicts were quickly overshadowed by the crisis of 1808, when Napoleon plunged the entire Hispanic world into chaos by placing his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne. For its part, Ocopa would not survive the wars of Spanish American independence. The community was fully suppressed by Simón Bolívar in 1824.

Given the indubitable significance of the larger themes under study, it is unfortunate that the accessibility of this work is hindered at times by somewhat overly detailed prose, as well as the general lack of useful maps. On this latter point, it is not until the middle of chapter 4, for instance, that Ocopa's various missionary zones are ever placed on a larger map of Peru (129). This map would have been much more effectively placed at the beginning of the book. The regional maps in chapter 1 are interesting (19, 20), but for those readers who cannot already place Jauja, Tarma, and Huánuco on a map of Peru, it is unlikely that they will be of much help. Nonetheless, for historians of colonial Latin America as well as for scholars of Catholic missions more generally, In Service of Two Masters stands an important examination of how political intrigue and contestation operated throughout the Bourbon era, not only in the imperial centers, but also on the distant fringes of empire.