Introduction

A real cédula, addressed to the tribunal of accounts, or audit court, of Santa

Fe de Bogotá on May 27, 1717, informed its members that Philip V, the first
Bourbon king of Spain, had decided to create a new viceroyalty in northern
South America. Other high-ranking civil and religious authorities across the
region received similar documents communicating this decision. According to
these documents, a number of “effective reasons of congruency” had convinced
the king that it would be “most convenient” to appoint a viceroy to replace the
president, governor and captain-general who had so far headed the audien-
cia of Santa Fe.1 These documents further explained that the newly created
viceroyalty of the New Kingdom of Granada would comprise “the Province of
Santa Fe, New Kingdom of Granada, [and] those of Cartagena, Santa Marta,
Maracaibo, Caracas, Antioquia, Guyana, Popayan, and San Francisco de Quito”.
The audiencia and tribunal of accounts based in Santa Fe became responsible
for supervising the government and administration of all these territories to
the exclusion of the courts in the viceroyalty of Peru and the audiencias of
Santo Domingo, Panama and Quito.2 Thus, the first Bourbon king of Spain
established the first new viceroyalty created within the Spanish Monarchy
since the mid-sixteenth century.
The viceroyalty, of course, was an administrative and political institution
with a long tradition within the Spanish world. In 1701, when Philip V became
king of Spain, the Spanish Monarchy included 10 such entities: Aragon,
Catalonia, Navarre and Valencia within the Iberian Peninsula; Majorca,
Naples, Sardinia and Sicily in the Mediterranean; and New Spain and Peru in
the Americas. However, Philip’s decision to create a further American viceroy-
alty is puzzling in several ways. Firstly, this monarch’s first reign (1701–1724) is
probably best known for the suppression rather than the creation of viceroy-
alties. Within the context of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713/16),
the crown reformed local government in the kingdoms of the Crown of
Aragon—Aragon, Catalonia, Majorca and Valencia—effectively abolishing
viceregal rule along with most aunonomous provincial institutions. This was
followed shortly afterwards by the much less well-known de facto suppression

1 “Real cédula por la cual se crea el Virreinato del Nuevo Reino de Granada en 27 de mayo de
1717” reproduced in full in Jerónimo Becker and José María Rivas Groot, El Nuevo Reino
de Granada en el Siglo XVIII (Madrid: Imp. Del Asilo de Huérfanos del Sagrado Corazón de
Jesús, 1921), pp. 200–203, at 200.
2 Ibid., p. 201.

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2 Introduction

of viceregal rule in Sardinia and Sicily when both islands were reoccupied by
Spain in 1718–20.3 Secondly, the newly created viceroyalty of New Granada
turned out to be rather short-lived; the crown suppressed it in 1723, return-
ing the administration and government of the region to how it stood before
1717. Yet, the Spanish crown once again created a viceroyalty in the region a
decade and a half later, in 1739; this time around, it would remain in place
until the collapse of Spain’s continental American empire in the early nine-
teenth century.
Historians have not failed to notice a reform of this salience. Most textbooks
of early modern Spanish American history mention it, usually identifying it,
as Peter Bakewell does, as “[t]he one large reform in government made in
America before the mid-[eighteenth] century”.4 However, having been noticed
does not mean that it has attracted careful attention. Despite its prominence,
few historians have looked at the creation of the viceroyalty of New Granada
in much detail. Colombians or Colombianists wrote the bulk of the historiog-
raphy on the topic in the early- to mid-years of the twentieth century.5 Because
these works tended to be conceived as contributing to national histories, they
frequently offer somewhat narrow interpretations of the reasons behind the
creation of the viceroyalty. A need to address local circumstances, we are told,
led to the creation of the viceroyalty; the first viceroy’s poor performance and
the unanticipated expenses of viceregal rule explain its suppression; imminent
war and defensive considerations led to its restoration in 1739.6 Historians have

3 Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, “De la conservación a la desmembración. Las provincias

italianas y la monarquía de España (1665–1713),” Studia Historica. Historia Moderna XXVI
(2004): pp. 191–223 at 221; and Regina María Pérez Marcos, “Cerdeña en el marco de la Guerra
de Sucesión: administración y gobierno,” Jvs Fvgit. Revista de Estudios Histórico-Jurídicos de la
Corona de Aragón XIII–XIV (2004–2006): pp. 479–87 at 482–87.
4 Peter Bakewell in collaboration with Jacqueline Holler, A History of Latin America to 1825, 3rd
ed. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 364.
5 See, for instance, Carlos Restrepo Canal, “Erección del Virreynato de Santafé,” Boletín de
Historia y Antigüedades XXX (1928): pp. 982–1024; Ernesto Restrepo Tirado, Gobernantes del
Nuevo Reyno de Granada durante el siglo XVIII, Publicaciones del Instituto de Investigaciones
Históricas, LXV (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1934); José María
Restrepo Sáenz, “El primer Virrey. Don Jorge de Villalonga,” Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades
XXXII (1945): pp. 120–30; José María Ots y Capdequí, Instituciones de Gobierno del Nuevo Reino
de Granada durante el siglo XVIII (Bogotá: Taller Editorial Universidad Nacional de Colombia,
1950); María Teresa Garrido Conde, La primera creación del Virreinato de la Nueva Granada
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1965).
6 Demetrio Ramos, “Los proyectos de creación de los Virreinatos de Guatemala y Nueva Vizcaya
como ejemplo de la mentalidad ‘correctora’, tras la erección del de Santa Fé,” Boletín de la