Society, economy and defence in seventeenth-century Peru

by Peter T. Bradley

An analysis of the administration of the Count of Alba de Liste in the Viceroyalty of Peru, from 1655 to 1661, based largely on his correspondence. It is the perspective of one man, writing for official purposes, whose point of observation is the viceregal capital, Lima. Despite these apparent limitations, we learn about the fundamntal concerns of viceregal government, and also of the tensions that were to bring decisive changes in the following century. We see a viceroy fastidiously concerned with the public image of his authority, but hindered by a powerful local elite, the vast geographical extent of his jurisdiction, the growing precariousness of commercial and administrative links with Spain, and a rekindling of the debate over the spiritual and physical plight of the Indian.