Council of the Indies

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This article is about the administrative body of the Spanish Empire. For the administrative body of the Dutch East Indies, see Council of the Indies (Dutch).
Royal emblem of the Council of the Indies, as on the frontispiece of the Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias. Madrid, 1774.[1]

The Council of the Indies (Spanish: Consejo de las Indias), officially the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies (Spanish: Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias, pronounced [reˈal i suˈpɾemo konˈsexo ðe las ˈindjas]), was the most important administrative organ of the Spanish Empire for the Americas and those territories it governed, such as the Spanish East Indies. The crown held absolute power over the Indies and the Council of the Indies was the administrative and advisory body for those overseas realms. It was established in 1524 by

Isabella II of Spain.[3][4]

History

The palace of the Alcázar in Madrid, residence of the kings of Spain, in which the Council of the Indies was installed until 1701.
Pedro Moya de Contreras, former archbishop of Mexico, President of the Council of the Indies
Luis de Velasco II, Marqués de Salinas, Viceroy of New Spain and of Peru, later President of the Council of the Indies
Juan de Solórzano Pereira, member of the Council of the Indies.

Catholic Monarchs (Isabella and Ferdinand) designated Rodríguez de Fonseca to study the problems related to the colonization process arising from what was seen as tyrannical behavior of Governor Christopher Columbus and his misgovernment of Natives and Iberian settlers. Rodríguez de Fonseca effectively became minister for the Indies and laid the foundations for the creation of a colonial bureaucracy. He presided over a committee or council, which contained a number of members of the Council of Castile (Consejo de Castilla), and formed a Junta de Indias of about eight counselors. Emperor Charles V
was already using the term "Council of the Indies" in 1519.

The Council of the Indies was formally created on August 1, 1524.

Viceroyalty of New Spain, encompassing Mexico, Nueva Galicia, Guatemala, Hispaniola, and their dependencies in the Spanish East Indies; the other in charge of Peru, Chile, Tierrafirme (northern South America), and the Kingdom of New Granada. The name of the Council did not change with the addition of the indias orientales of the East Indies and other Pacific territories claimed by Spain to the original indias occidentales.[7]

Internecine fighting and political instability in

encomiendas, grants of indigenous labor. Under Charles II the Council undertook the project to formally codify the large volume of Council and Crown's decisions and legislation for the Indies in the 1680 publication, the Laws of the Indies (es:Recopilación de las Leyes de Indias) and re-codified in 1791.[8]

The Council of the Indies was usually headed by an ecclesiastic, but the councilors were generally non-clerics trained in law. In later years, nobles and royal favorites were in the ranks of councilors, as well as men who had experience in the high courts (Audiencias) of the Indies. A key example of such an experienced councilor was

Luis de Velasco, marqués de Salinas
, former viceroy of both Mexico and Peru.

Although initially the Council had responsibility for all aspects of the Indies, under Philip II the financial aspects of the empire were shifted to the Council on Finance in 1556-57, a source of conflict between the two councils, especially since Spanish America came to be the source of the empire's wealth. When the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established as an institution in Mexico and Lima in the 1570s, the Council of the Indies was removed from control. The head of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, es:Juan de Ovando y Godoy became president of the Council of the Indies 1571-75. He was appalled by the ignorance of the Indies by those serving on the Council. He sought the creation of a general description of the territories, which was never completed, but the Relaciones geográficas were the result of that project.[10]

The height of the Council's power was in the sixteenth century. Its power declined and the quality of the councillors decreased. In the final years of the Habsburg dynasty, some appointments were sold or were accorded to people obviously unqualified, such as a nine-year-old boy, whose father had rendered services to the crown.[11]

With the ascension of the

Ferdinand VII's restoration, and the autocratic monarch appointed a great number of Councillors with American experience.[14]
The Council was finally abolished in 1834, a year after Ferdinand VII's death and after most of Spain's empire in the Americas declared independence.

The archives of the Council, the

Archivo General de Indias one of the major centers of documentation for Spanish, Spanish American, and European history, are housed in Seville
.

See also

References

  1. ^ "LAS INDIAS - Spanish Indies". Hubert Herald.
  2. ISBN 978-0-19-959726-0
    .
  3. ^ Fernando Cervantes, "Council of the Indies" in Encyclopedia of Mexico, vol. 1, p. 36163. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1997.
  4. ^ El Consejo Real de Castilla y la Ley
  5. ^ Gibson, Charles (1966). Spain in America. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 92.
  6. ^ Gibson, 94-95.
  7. ^ Recopilación de las leyes de Indias, Libro II, Título VI.
  8. ^ Gibson, 109-110, note 24.
  9. ^ Cervantes, "Council of the Indies" p. 361.
  10. ^ Cervantes, "Council of the Indies", p. 362.
  11. ^ Burkholder, Mark A. "Council of the Indies", vol. 2, p. 293. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.
  12. ^ Gibson, 167-168.
  13. ^ Burkholder, "Council of the Indies" p. 293.
  14. ^ Burkholder, "Council of the Indies" p. 293.

Further reading

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