Fidel J Tavárez | Queens College of the City University of New York (original) (raw)

Books in Progress by Fidel J Tavárez

Research paper thumbnail of The Imperial Machine: Assembling the Spanish Commercial Empire in the Age of Enlightenment

In the eighteenth century, a host of Spanish statesmen compared well-ordered empires to harmoniou... more In the eighteenth century, a host of Spanish statesmen compared well-ordered empires to harmonious machines and devised a comprehensive plan to erect an integrated commercial empire centered on economic growth. While they drew on British and French thinkers to design their plans, Spanish ministers focused less on expanding international trade and more on synergizing Spain’s metropolitan and colonial territories. In fact, Spanish statesmen reasoned that the vast territories of the Hispanic world were a microcosm of the global economy that could become both self-sufficient and impervious to international commercial pressures. "The Imperial Machine" reconstructs how Spanish imperial officials endeavored to create a closed commercial empire—an imperial machine—in order to avoid the perils of modern commercial society, namely commercial warfare, while reaping its benefits, economic growth. Challenging the idea that Spain was a backward pseudo-mercantilist empire, Fidel J. Tavárez ultimately brings to light the Hispanic world’s innovative solutions to the dilemmas of early modern globalization.

Research paper thumbnail of Empirical Statecraft: The Emergence of an Information Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic

"Empirical Statecraft" reconstructs how and why information gathering became a central focus of S... more "Empirical Statecraft" reconstructs how and why information gathering became a central focus of Spanish imperial governance over the course of the eighteenth century. Convinced that Spain suffered from a shortage of “useful” information, imperial bureaucrats launched numerous research expeditions in order to collect scientific, administrative, and economic information about Spain’s overseas territories. The ultimate goal was to assemble a large information depository that would enable imperial administrators to make informed policy decisions. While Spain had long engaged in colonial information gathering, it was during the eighteenth century that Spanish officials made a deliberate effort to design imperial policy using empirical reports from the colonies. "Empirical Statecraft" weaves the histories of science, imperial governance, colonial information gathering, and the court’s political culture in order to demonstrate that the Spanish Atlantic became a vast and dynamic laboratory of the modern information age, a development that brought to the fore both the promise of knowledge-based governance and the perils of misinformation and distortion.

Articles by Fidel J Tavárez

Research paper thumbnail of Nacionalismo criollo desacreditado. La problemática recepción de Benedict Anderson entre especialistas de las independencias

Prismas - Revista de historia intelectual, 2023

Con la publicación de la segunda edición de Imagined Communities en 1991, Benedict Anderson escri... more Con la publicación de la segunda edición de Imagined Communities en 1991, Benedict Anderson escribió un prefacio en el cual dejaba muy claro cuál había sido una de sus principales metas en el trabajo original de 1983, a saber, localizar los orígenes del nacionalismo moderno en Hispanoamérica durante las revoluciones de independencia, cuando unos “pioneros criollos” intentaron crear nuevas naciones en las postrimerías del colosal imperio hispano. Dado el papel protagónico que Anderson asignaba a la Hispanoamérica revolucionaria, era de esperar que su trabajo se convirtiera en lectura obligatoria para quienes se dedicaban a estudiar las independencias de esa región. Sin embargo, el libro tuvo una acogida reticente entre historiadores de las revoluciones, incluso en el mundo anglosajón, donde era muy conocido. ¿A qué se debió esta recepción tan fría? Este texto propone que la razón principal radica en que Anderson desarrolló sus argumentos en base al trabajo de John Lynch, cuyos supuestos eran cuestionados de manera fundamental por un conjunto de historiadores revisionistas. Al final de cuentas, aunque innovador, el trabajo adolecía de obsolescencia historiográfica.

Research paper thumbnail of Free Ports within Empire: The Intellectual Origins of Spain's Intra-Imperial System of Free Trade, 1765-1789

Global Intellectual History, 2023

Between 1765 and 1789, the Spanish crown issued a series of comercio libre decrees that liberalis... more Between 1765 and 1789, the Spanish crown issued a series of comercio libre decrees that liberalised trade between Spanish America and peninsular Spain. What was the crown attempting to do by relaxing trade restrictions within the empire? Because the comercio libre decrees only authorised free trade within the confines of the empire, it may be easy to conclude, as the extant scholarship has, that these decrees were a delayed attempt to revitalise an increasingly obsolete mercantilist system. Indeed, Spain's new imperial system of free trade appears to be little more than an outmoded form of protectionism centred on hoarding bullion. This article pushes against this perspective and shows that Spain's decrees of comercio libre were part of an attempt to erect a peculiar interconnected system of free ports within the empire. Even though Spain's free trade system excluded international trade, its intellectual architects deployed Enlightenment political economy to dynamize and integrate the imperial economy while avoiding the increasingly bellicose competition for international markets that was ascendant among European empires.

Research paper thumbnail of Colonial Economic Improvement: How Spain Created New Consulados to Preserve and Develop its American Empire, 1778-1795

During the 1780s, the Spanish crown endeavored to facilitate and expedite commercial exchange wit... more During the 1780s, the Spanish crown endeavored to facilitate and expedite commercial exchange within its vast Atlantic territories, a goal which it hoped to accomplish by creating new consulados (merchant chambers and courts) in many port cities of the empire. The need to create new consulados became an especially important issue after the implementation of the new system of comercio libre in 1778, which significantly stimulated economic activity across the Atlantic. Paying attention to Spain's efforts to create a modern commercial empire, this article asks why new metropolitan consulados were created in the mid-1780s, while, in the colonies, they came to fruition in the 1790s, after the infamous minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez, died in 1787? The article argues that, unlike Gálvez, who was committed to an extractive system of imperial governance, the ministers who came to power after 1787 were inspired by a distinct kind of soft colonialism, espousing that, if the empire were to survive, it had to govern its colonies with gentleness. This, in turn, entailed stimulating economic improvement in the colonies while promoting bonds of reciprocity among subjects from both sides of the Atlantic. By reconstructing the events that led to the creation of new consulados in the colonies, this article uncovers how a new regime of colonial economic improvement was put into place in order to bind the empire during a moment of impending crisis.

Research paper thumbnail of Viscardo's Global Political Economy and the First Cry for Spanish American Independence, 1767–1798

Revisionist historians have convincingly argued that Spanish American independence was not the re... more Revisionist historians have convincingly argued that Spanish American independence was not the result of simmering grievances that galvanised a national or Creole identity against Spain. Instead, this scholarship insists that Spanish American national identities did not exist at the time and that independence was an unforeseen process that must be understood in the context of the Napoleonic invasion of Iberia. But, if independence was undesirable before 1808 and if national identities arose at a latter period, how do we explain the early independence projects of ‘precursors’ like Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán? By contextually reconstructing the logic behind Viscardo's projects, this article offers a new perspective on the intellectual conditions of possibility for Spanish American independence. It argues that though he certainly identified as a Creole from Peru, Viscardo actually deployed an Enlightenment global science of commerce, not Creole patriotism or nationalism, to legitimate Spanish American independence.

Research paper thumbnail of La invención de un imperio comercial hispano, 1740-1765

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century a new imperial program took shape in the very heart ... more Towards the middle of the eighteenth century a new imperial program took shape in the very heart of the Spanish Monarchy. Its intellectual architects included officials who served in the new Bourbon ministries, the Junta de Comercio, and the Council of Castile. Fervent students of Enlightenment political economy, by the 1740s these ministers had begun to envision a new imperial system in which the colonies’ exclusive function was to consume the commodities produced by the metropole. In other words, these ministers sought to transform the composite monarchy inherited from the Habsburgs into a commercial empire, a kind of state whose power derived from its ability to harness colonial markets for its own advantage. This article tracks the intellectual coalescence of this new imperial program.

Book Chapters by Fidel J Tavárez

Research paper thumbnail of Building Nation-Empires in the Eighteenth-Century Iberian Atlantic

The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of A New System of Imperial Government: Political Economy and the Spanish Theory of Commercial Empire, c. 1740-1750

Research paper thumbnail of Ciencia de estado comercial. Un lenguaje político dieciochesco

Research paper thumbnail of The Contested State: Political Discourse during the Independence of the Dominican Republic, 1844

On 27 February 1844, a set of political leaders from the eastern portion of the Caribbean island ... more On 27 February 1844, a set of political leaders from the eastern portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola declared themselves independent from Haiti and created the Dominican Republic. This chapter investigates why these leaders suddenly opted for independence after years of collaboration with the Haitian Republic. According to nationalist narratives, cultural differences between Dominicans and Haitians precluded cohabitation under one state. It was natural for two incompatible cultures to clash and attempt to constitute themselves under separate nations. This chapter questions this nationalist myth by investigating the meaning that independence had for the various historical actors who participated in the creation of the Dominican state. It questions whether Dominican independence occurred solely because of irreconcilable cultural differences between Haitians and Dominicans. A close analysis of the earliest documents produced by the Junta Gubernativa and the speeches and writings of Dominican political leaders suggests a more complicated story, one that brought to the fore of politics a web of competing discourses for defining the nation and the shape the state should take. This chapter, in sum, aims to open space for a nuanced reconsideration of the nationalist meta-narrative that plays into anti-Haitian sentiment. Forthcoming in Kiran Jayaram and April Mayes, eds. Transnational Hispaniola. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

Book Reviews by Fidel J Tavárez

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Writing the Americas in Enlightenment Spain: Literature, Modernity, and the New World 1773-1812, by Thomas C. Neal

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Iberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization, Edited by Ivonne del Valle, Anna More, Rachel Sarah O'Toole

Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500–1830, by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of Review of The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, Edited by Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek

http://revistas.uned.es/index.php/ETFIV/article/view/25030/20070

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Crafting a Republic for the World: Scientific, Geographic, and Historiographic Inventions of Colombia, by Lina del Castillo

Research paper thumbnail of Review of The Imperial Nation: Citizens and Subjects in the British, French, Spanish, and American Empires, by Josep M. Fradera

Research paper thumbnail of Review of An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World---New Countries: Capitalism, Revolution, and Nations in the Americas, 1750–1870

Essays, Blog Posts, and Interviews by Fidel J Tavárez

Research paper thumbnail of Mispricing Tuition

Research paper thumbnail of Interview with Fidel J. Tavárez, author of “Colonial Economic Improvement: How Spain Created New Consulados to Preserve and Develop Its American Empire, 1778–1795”

Research paper thumbnail of The Imperial Machine: Assembling the Spanish Commercial Empire in the Age of Enlightenment

In the eighteenth century, a host of Spanish statesmen compared well-ordered empires to harmoniou... more In the eighteenth century, a host of Spanish statesmen compared well-ordered empires to harmonious machines and devised a comprehensive plan to erect an integrated commercial empire centered on economic growth. While they drew on British and French thinkers to design their plans, Spanish ministers focused less on expanding international trade and more on synergizing Spain’s metropolitan and colonial territories. In fact, Spanish statesmen reasoned that the vast territories of the Hispanic world were a microcosm of the global economy that could become both self-sufficient and impervious to international commercial pressures. "The Imperial Machine" reconstructs how Spanish imperial officials endeavored to create a closed commercial empire—an imperial machine—in order to avoid the perils of modern commercial society, namely commercial warfare, while reaping its benefits, economic growth. Challenging the idea that Spain was a backward pseudo-mercantilist empire, Fidel J. Tavárez ultimately brings to light the Hispanic world’s innovative solutions to the dilemmas of early modern globalization.

Research paper thumbnail of Empirical Statecraft: The Emergence of an Information Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic

"Empirical Statecraft" reconstructs how and why information gathering became a central focus of S... more "Empirical Statecraft" reconstructs how and why information gathering became a central focus of Spanish imperial governance over the course of the eighteenth century. Convinced that Spain suffered from a shortage of “useful” information, imperial bureaucrats launched numerous research expeditions in order to collect scientific, administrative, and economic information about Spain’s overseas territories. The ultimate goal was to assemble a large information depository that would enable imperial administrators to make informed policy decisions. While Spain had long engaged in colonial information gathering, it was during the eighteenth century that Spanish officials made a deliberate effort to design imperial policy using empirical reports from the colonies. "Empirical Statecraft" weaves the histories of science, imperial governance, colonial information gathering, and the court’s political culture in order to demonstrate that the Spanish Atlantic became a vast and dynamic laboratory of the modern information age, a development that brought to the fore both the promise of knowledge-based governance and the perils of misinformation and distortion.

Research paper thumbnail of Nacionalismo criollo desacreditado. La problemática recepción de Benedict Anderson entre especialistas de las independencias

Prismas - Revista de historia intelectual, 2023

Con la publicación de la segunda edición de Imagined Communities en 1991, Benedict Anderson escri... more Con la publicación de la segunda edición de Imagined Communities en 1991, Benedict Anderson escribió un prefacio en el cual dejaba muy claro cuál había sido una de sus principales metas en el trabajo original de 1983, a saber, localizar los orígenes del nacionalismo moderno en Hispanoamérica durante las revoluciones de independencia, cuando unos “pioneros criollos” intentaron crear nuevas naciones en las postrimerías del colosal imperio hispano. Dado el papel protagónico que Anderson asignaba a la Hispanoamérica revolucionaria, era de esperar que su trabajo se convirtiera en lectura obligatoria para quienes se dedicaban a estudiar las independencias de esa región. Sin embargo, el libro tuvo una acogida reticente entre historiadores de las revoluciones, incluso en el mundo anglosajón, donde era muy conocido. ¿A qué se debió esta recepción tan fría? Este texto propone que la razón principal radica en que Anderson desarrolló sus argumentos en base al trabajo de John Lynch, cuyos supuestos eran cuestionados de manera fundamental por un conjunto de historiadores revisionistas. Al final de cuentas, aunque innovador, el trabajo adolecía de obsolescencia historiográfica.

Research paper thumbnail of Free Ports within Empire: The Intellectual Origins of Spain's Intra-Imperial System of Free Trade, 1765-1789

Global Intellectual History, 2023

Between 1765 and 1789, the Spanish crown issued a series of comercio libre decrees that liberalis... more Between 1765 and 1789, the Spanish crown issued a series of comercio libre decrees that liberalised trade between Spanish America and peninsular Spain. What was the crown attempting to do by relaxing trade restrictions within the empire? Because the comercio libre decrees only authorised free trade within the confines of the empire, it may be easy to conclude, as the extant scholarship has, that these decrees were a delayed attempt to revitalise an increasingly obsolete mercantilist system. Indeed, Spain's new imperial system of free trade appears to be little more than an outmoded form of protectionism centred on hoarding bullion. This article pushes against this perspective and shows that Spain's decrees of comercio libre were part of an attempt to erect a peculiar interconnected system of free ports within the empire. Even though Spain's free trade system excluded international trade, its intellectual architects deployed Enlightenment political economy to dynamize and integrate the imperial economy while avoiding the increasingly bellicose competition for international markets that was ascendant among European empires.

Research paper thumbnail of Colonial Economic Improvement: How Spain Created New Consulados to Preserve and Develop its American Empire, 1778-1795

During the 1780s, the Spanish crown endeavored to facilitate and expedite commercial exchange wit... more During the 1780s, the Spanish crown endeavored to facilitate and expedite commercial exchange within its vast Atlantic territories, a goal which it hoped to accomplish by creating new consulados (merchant chambers and courts) in many port cities of the empire. The need to create new consulados became an especially important issue after the implementation of the new system of comercio libre in 1778, which significantly stimulated economic activity across the Atlantic. Paying attention to Spain's efforts to create a modern commercial empire, this article asks why new metropolitan consulados were created in the mid-1780s, while, in the colonies, they came to fruition in the 1790s, after the infamous minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez, died in 1787? The article argues that, unlike Gálvez, who was committed to an extractive system of imperial governance, the ministers who came to power after 1787 were inspired by a distinct kind of soft colonialism, espousing that, if the empire were to survive, it had to govern its colonies with gentleness. This, in turn, entailed stimulating economic improvement in the colonies while promoting bonds of reciprocity among subjects from both sides of the Atlantic. By reconstructing the events that led to the creation of new consulados in the colonies, this article uncovers how a new regime of colonial economic improvement was put into place in order to bind the empire during a moment of impending crisis.

Research paper thumbnail of Viscardo's Global Political Economy and the First Cry for Spanish American Independence, 1767–1798

Revisionist historians have convincingly argued that Spanish American independence was not the re... more Revisionist historians have convincingly argued that Spanish American independence was not the result of simmering grievances that galvanised a national or Creole identity against Spain. Instead, this scholarship insists that Spanish American national identities did not exist at the time and that independence was an unforeseen process that must be understood in the context of the Napoleonic invasion of Iberia. But, if independence was undesirable before 1808 and if national identities arose at a latter period, how do we explain the early independence projects of ‘precursors’ like Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán? By contextually reconstructing the logic behind Viscardo's projects, this article offers a new perspective on the intellectual conditions of possibility for Spanish American independence. It argues that though he certainly identified as a Creole from Peru, Viscardo actually deployed an Enlightenment global science of commerce, not Creole patriotism or nationalism, to legitimate Spanish American independence.

Research paper thumbnail of La invención de un imperio comercial hispano, 1740-1765

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century a new imperial program took shape in the very heart ... more Towards the middle of the eighteenth century a new imperial program took shape in the very heart of the Spanish Monarchy. Its intellectual architects included officials who served in the new Bourbon ministries, the Junta de Comercio, and the Council of Castile. Fervent students of Enlightenment political economy, by the 1740s these ministers had begun to envision a new imperial system in which the colonies’ exclusive function was to consume the commodities produced by the metropole. In other words, these ministers sought to transform the composite monarchy inherited from the Habsburgs into a commercial empire, a kind of state whose power derived from its ability to harness colonial markets for its own advantage. This article tracks the intellectual coalescence of this new imperial program.

Research paper thumbnail of Building Nation-Empires in the Eighteenth-Century Iberian Atlantic

The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of A New System of Imperial Government: Political Economy and the Spanish Theory of Commercial Empire, c. 1740-1750

Research paper thumbnail of Ciencia de estado comercial. Un lenguaje político dieciochesco

Research paper thumbnail of The Contested State: Political Discourse during the Independence of the Dominican Republic, 1844

On 27 February 1844, a set of political leaders from the eastern portion of the Caribbean island ... more On 27 February 1844, a set of political leaders from the eastern portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola declared themselves independent from Haiti and created the Dominican Republic. This chapter investigates why these leaders suddenly opted for independence after years of collaboration with the Haitian Republic. According to nationalist narratives, cultural differences between Dominicans and Haitians precluded cohabitation under one state. It was natural for two incompatible cultures to clash and attempt to constitute themselves under separate nations. This chapter questions this nationalist myth by investigating the meaning that independence had for the various historical actors who participated in the creation of the Dominican state. It questions whether Dominican independence occurred solely because of irreconcilable cultural differences between Haitians and Dominicans. A close analysis of the earliest documents produced by the Junta Gubernativa and the speeches and writings of Dominican political leaders suggests a more complicated story, one that brought to the fore of politics a web of competing discourses for defining the nation and the shape the state should take. This chapter, in sum, aims to open space for a nuanced reconsideration of the nationalist meta-narrative that plays into anti-Haitian sentiment. Forthcoming in Kiran Jayaram and April Mayes, eds. Transnational Hispaniola. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

Research paper thumbnail of FIDEL TAVÁREZ SIMÓ: "La invención de un imperio comercial hispano, 1740-1765" / "The invention of the spanish commercial empire, 1740-1765"

RESUMEN: Hacia mediados del siglo XVIII se fragua un nuevo discurso imperial en el corazón de la ... more RESUMEN: Hacia mediados del siglo XVIII se fragua un nuevo discurso imperial en el corazón de la monarquía hispana. Entre sus arquitectos intelectuales habría que incluir ministros de las nuevas secretarías borbónicas, la Junta de Comercio, y el Consejo de Castilla. Fieles estudiosos de la ciencia de comercio ilustrada, ya para 1740 dichos ministros habían delineado un nuevo sistema imperial en el que la única y exclusiva función de las colonias era consumir la mercancía de la metrópoli. Es decir, estos ministros ilustrados buscaban transformar la monarquía compuesta heredada de los Austrias en un imperio comercial, un tipo de estado cuyo poder derivaba de su capacidad para encauzar el mercado colonial a su propio beneficio. En este artículo intentamos reconstruir la manera en que se llega a proyectar ese anhelado imperio de naturaleza comercial. // ABSTRACT: Towards the middle of the eighteenth century a new imperial program took shape in the very heart of the Spanish Monarchy. Its intellectual architects included officials who served in the new Bourbon ministries, the Junta de Comercio, and the Council of Castile. Fervent students of Enlightenment political economy, by the 1740s these ministers had begun to envision a new imperial system in which the colonies’ exclusive function was to consume the commodities produced by the metropole. In other words, these ministers sought to transform the composite monarchy inherited from the Habsburgs into a commercial empire, a kind of state whose power derived from its ability to harness colonial markets for its own advantage. This article tracks the intellectual coalescence of this new imperial program.

Research paper thumbnail of Building Nation-Empires in the Eighteenth-Century Iberian Atlantic

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 8, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of Nacionalismo criollo desacreditado

Research paper thumbnail of Colonial Economic Improvement: How Spain Created New Consulados to Preserve and Develop Its American Empire, 1778–1795

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2018

After implementing comercio libre (free internal trade) in 1778, the Spanish crown endeavored to ... more After implementing comercio libre (free internal trade) in 1778, the Spanish crown endeavored to create multiple new consulados (chambers of commerce) to facilitate commercial exchange within Spain's Atlantic territories. However, while the crown established new metropolitan consulados in the mid-1780s, it approved colonial consulados only in the 1790s, after the death of the minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez, in 1787. Why did the crown initially hesitate to establish colonial consulados? I argue that unlike Gálvez, who was committed to an extractive system of imperialism, the post-1787 ministers were inspired by a distinct kind of soft imperialism, which held that the empire's survival depended on stimulating colonial economic growth while promoting reciprocal bonds among all Spanish subjects. In reconstructing this history, I show how the post-1787 ministers established a new regime of colonial economic improvement to bind the empire during a moment of impending crisis.

Research paper thumbnail of Iberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization, edited by Ivonne del Valle, Anna More, and Rachel Sarah O’Toole

Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2020