Between 1810 and 1825 the American mainland territories of Spain and Portugal secured their independence from Iberian colonialism. In Brazil, which seceded from Portugal as an independent monarchy in 1822, the process was relatively peaceful and arguably incomplete, because the country's first emperor, Pedro I, retained his right of succession to the Portuguese throne, and peninsular-born ministers remained in control of the new state until his abdication and return to Portugal in 1831. In Spanish America, by contrast, the revolutions for independence were characterised by extreme violence, heavy mortality and inter-ethnic strife in those areas where both peninsulars and creoles (American-born Spaniards) struggled to maintain the hierarchical structure of society in the face of popular protests from the subaltern masses of Indians, blacks and castes. Particularly in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, the majority of creoles initially supported the royalist cause rather than insurgency until such time as they realised that full-blown independence offered them a greater guarantee of retaining their wealth and privileges than continued support for the Bourbon monarchy represented by Ferdinand VII (1808–33).

Independence from Spain was effectively secured in parts of the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata as early as 1810–12, in Chile and parts of the viceroyalty of New Granada by 1817–18, but not until the 1820s in Bolivia, Central America, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. The onset of the bicentenaries of these processes has already encouraged a renewed historiographical interest in the causes, nature and consequences of the transition from colonialism to independence. A key feature of the debate revolves around the extent to which the creoles in both empires, already socially and economically dominant as landowners, miners, churchmen, merchants and the holders of minor offices in the military and civil administrations, were gradually persuaded to turn against the much smaller number of peninsulars, who dominated the upper echelons of government in both Church and state. The present study is the seventh in the series of ‘Viewpoints/Puntos de Vista: Themes and Interpretations in Latin American History’, edited by Jürgen Buchenau, which is designed to introduce undergraduate students to key historiographical debates – in this case the background to and the validity and significance of the growing creole belief in the half-century or so prior to the independence period that they were discriminated against unfairly in appointments to office.

Mark Burkholder is particularly well qualified to address this issue, as the author, with D. S. Chandler, of a highly influential monograph on the appointments made by the Spanish crown to the colonial audiencias (high courts with both judicial and administrative functions) from the late Hapsburg period to the eve of Spanish American independence: From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687–1808 (University of Missouri Press, 1977). This was subsequently supplemented by their Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers in the Americas, 1687–1821 (Greenwood Press, 1982) and Biographical Dictionary of Councilors of the Indies, 1717–1808 (Greenwood Press, 1986). Collectively, these works, together with Burkholder's single-authored monograph entitled Politics of a Colonial Career: José Baquíjano and the Audiencia of Lima (University of New Mexico Press, 1980), demonstrated conclusively that until the mid-eighteenth century creoles had found it relatively easy to purchase high office in America – and in some cases, such as that of the Peruvian Pablo de Olavide, after whom the second university of Seville is named, even in metropolitan Spain. A crucial finding, to which Burkholder and Chandler were the first to draw attention, was that, despite legislation to the contrary, it was not impossible (although it was more expensive) for ‘native sons’ to secure office in the American kingdoms of their birth. More important still, they demonstrated that from the mid-eighteenth century the crown pursued a clear policy, which intensified during the reign of Charles III (1759–88) and the tenure of the Ministry of the Indies by the rabidly anti-creole José de Gálvez, in favour of appointing only peninsulars to the colonial tribunals and to other senior positions in the military, civil and ecclesiastical structures of America. Thus when, following the collapse of the Bourbon state in the face of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808, city councils throughout the empire began to demand that the Junta Central and the Council of Regency grant equality between creoles and peninsulars in appointments to office, they were demanding not a new right but the restoration of the opportunities that had existed in the collective memories of their families, prior to the intensification of absolutism half a century earlier.

This theme is explained with admirable clarity in chapters 4 (‘The Heyday of Native Sons and Daughters, circa 1630–1750’) and 5 ('Reforms, Commentaries, and Officials, 1750–1808’), preceded by those on ‘Spain and Its Early Empire in America’, ‘Native Sons and Daughters in the Church’, and ‘Native Sons in Office’. There is nothing new here for the specialist scholar, but the synthesis is clear and persuasive. Chapter 6 demonstrates that ‘native sons’ remained dominant in the lower echelons of the clergy, notwithstanding the parallel policy of favouring peninsulars in appointments to bishoprics. The final chapter (‘From Abdications to Independence’) demonstrates that on the eve of Independence the estimated 30,000–40,000 peninsulars in America, although heavily outnumbered by some two million creoles in a total population of 12–13 million, were dominant in the military, judicial, civil and ecclesiastical establishments. Despite deliberate attempts by the Council of Regency in 1810–14 to make concessions to creole demands, the abolition in May 1814 of the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz by the intransigent Ferdinand VII, following his return from captivity in France, meant that it was only a matter of time before Spain lost most of its American territories and the emerging new states embarked upon the expulsion of their remaining peninsular inhabitants. This process, too, is explained with admirable clarity in this authoritative, sophisticated overview of a key issue in Latin American history.