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In carefully planned aVairs, we must rely upon presumption and conjecture, otherwise a conspiracy may never be uncovered when the instigators of a certain status cannot publicly lead the unfortunate masses in such disorders. Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes, Dictamen Wscal de expulsión de los Jesuitas de España (1766–69) Without clear goals, powerful vested interests, consolidating over centuries, have the power to thwart any possible reform. José Muñoz Pérez, “La publicación del Reglamento de Comercio Libre de Indias de 1778” Since the eighteenth century, mainly as a result of English and French experience , political systems in western Europe and the western portion of the North Atlantic have provided relatively open channels of communication between rulers and ruled, between government and people, elites and masses. The frittering away of systems of censorship, the expansion of literacy , and the complexity of interest in economic growth and/or development have inspired formal institutions providing representation to groups, classes, and interests. The most notable such institution has been the elected parliament or congress based upon political parties and a degree of freedom of the press. Acts of political terrorism in the form of guerrilla operations or urban riots as a political expression in the late twentieth century represent a breakdown in the functioning of open forms of accepted interest expression. In the prerepresentative polities of the eighteenth century, and particularly in an old regime typiWed by so-called “absolutism,” such as the Spanish monarquía, there were to be sure institutional channels through which the demands of interest groups could reach high courts and consejos, such as the Consejos de Castilla and Indias, and ultimately the chief executive and 4. Privilege and Power in Bourbon Spain:The Fall of Esquilache (1766) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • arbiter, the “crown.” At times, however, and especially in the case of the lower classes during economic crisis, protest took the form of violent crowd action, the riot, or motín, as a legitimate (sometimes awesome) form of direct appeal to the crown, as the chief source of justice. Less frequently and generally during acute political crises, powerful interests , obstructed or rejected in formal channels of redress, resorted to the ultima ratio, the coercive force of the managed pseudo-riot. Adroitly mobilized around a perceived injustice, such as an inXationary spiral, acute food shortage, or an aVront to customary practice, the crowd was manipulated to direct violence against a prominent Wgure of the regime, adroitly incriminated for real or invented abuse of delegated state (or royal) authority. In this ritualized coercive presentation of “popular” demands for respect for the “moral economy,” the crowd was the prime actor, and it bestowed upon a symbol of social cohesion and legitimacy, the cleric, the role of spokesmanmediator . In this context, a rioting mob marked the limits of state authority through a political object lesson, or escarmiento, directed at the ultimate source of secular power, the monarch of the monarquía. Such an event was the urban riot, or motín, that occurred at Madrid in March 1766, resulting in the ouster of the minister chosen by Charles III to oversee substantive change in the metropole’s economy and society, as well as in its American empire—the marqués de Esquilache. There would be a remarkable sequel: in March 1808, a similar episode at Aranjuez, a royal residence near Madrid, ended the reign of Charles IV, Wred resistance to French intervention, and ultimately resulted in Spanish America’s independence from Spain. The Madrid riots of 1766 illustrate the imperatives and constraints that characterized Bourbon renovation between 1759 and 1808; the crisis of 1808 marked the substantive failure of those reforms. Here we seek to clarify the signiWcance of the motín de Esquilache—an anti-Esquilache movement—as ritual mobilization of elites under stress. In analyzing the mechanics of the event and focusing on individuals and groups linked to it, we seek to illuminate cause and consequence. There is an underlying hypothesis—the primary, conspiratorial role of integrated elites composed of formal political, social, and economic groups, along with the indispensable informal ones that play roles essential to the maintenance and function of the whole society. What follows is a sketch of antecedents, an abbreviated account of the sequence of rioting, followed by analysis based on direct as well as circumstantial evidence incriminating individuals and groups, both formal and informal. Finally, we advance conclusions about the immediate and especially the long-term consequences of an episode that momentarily revealed the fragility...

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