Corruption in the Iberian Empires: Greed, Custom, and Colonial Networks ed. by Christoph Rosenmüller (review)

The nine essays in this volume are a welcome aid in understanding the many puzzles of corruption in colonial Latin America. The puzzles are particularly complicated because, as Rosenmüller points out in the introduction, "included in the older imperial idea of corruption were … offenses that most modern people would not consider corrupt" (5).

The authors make a valiant effort to bypass contemporary notions, uncovering an enormous range of experiences as they seek a true basis. Temporally, the chapters stretch from the late 1500s to the mid eighteenth century; geographically, their subjects reach imperial centers in Mexico and Peru, the peripheries of Santo Domingo and Manila, and (welcome inclusion) Brazil. They cover all manner of misbehaviors, including forgery, voter manipulation, silver fraud, sexual misconduct, and even dubious gift-giving.

Despite this wide variety, there are some common threads, among them the difficulty in finding and defining limits of acceptability in any one place and time. In Chapter 4, Marc Eagle describes the case of a Santo Domingo judge who was investigated for behaving "improperly" with women, an accusation that angered the locals. However, Madrid was more interested in his commercial dealings (92). Smuggling was a concern for officials in Brazil who, as argued in Chapter 9, did not apply a uniform ban on contraband trade but instead allowed flexibility depending on the location and the products being traded.

Commerce especially had numerous legal and social gray areas, as embodied in the merchant-priests of Puebla, described in Chapter 7, or the merchant-bureaucrats of Manila and New Spain found in Chapter 8, whose multiple social roles further blurred already murky boundaries between accepted custom and unacceptable corruption.

Some of these problems trickled from the top down. In Chapter 6, Francisco A. EissaBarroso traces how the Bourbons moved away from the practice of placing palace favorites or highest bidders in office, seeking instead loyal operatives who would be less likely to act out of greed or self-interest.

A number of the chapters are based on judicial documents, and the authors' deep archival reading gives a genuine sense of their complexity. Chapter 5 illustrates this by explaining that one visita general in Mexico City involved interviews with 700 witnesses and resulted in a collection of 2,000 pages in 36 volumes (112). The book is particularly valuable in this regard. Such documental excavation brings to light insights about the power relationships between the diverse groups of people in imperial spaces, with the intersections of class, creole/Peninsular divisions, and race forming another theme across some of the chapters.

The black slaves working in the imperial mint in Potosí (Chapter 2) were one group that figured prominently in a power equation involving silver merchants. The slaves were willing to testify against the merchants in a wide-scale currency debasement investigation. Analyzing the actions of the parties, Kris Lane argues that it was not only the verdict that was important, but also the thinking behind it: "What did they think they were doing? What did those who stopped them think they were doing?" (56).

In a similar vein, Chapter 3 considers how the governor and chief tax collector in Mexico City faced claims that they "abused and mistreated Native people" and manipulated votes, illustrating the complexity of power structures within Mexico City's Spanish and native communities in the 1680s. Questions of personal authority surface in Chapter 1 as well, in the Peruvian province of Paria when a man claiming to be a judge and a visitador was alleged to be an impostor. His attempts to implement reforms were dashed once his documents were ruled to be a forgery (14).

Clearing up ambiguity, finding the limits of tolerance, and understanding the expectations of the time are some of the ways to make sense of colonial-era corruption. This volume poses a number of pertinent questions about an overlooked...