Politics of a Colonial Career: José Baquíjano and the Audiencia of Lima by Mark A. BurkholderReview by: Leon G. CampbellThe American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 5 (Dec., 1981), p. 1181Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1858692 .

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Latin Amerzca 1181

Konrad's articulate and erudite conclusions draw heavily on his knowledge of anthropology and eth- nohistory and make this book especially valuable.

RICHARD E. GREENLEAF

Tulane University

MARK A. BURKHOLDER. Politics of a Colonial Career: Jose Baqui'jano and the Audiencia of Lima. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1980. Pp. xi, 184. $20.00.

In an earlier study of royal appointment policy to the American audiencias between 1687 and 1808, Mark A. Burkholder and his coauthor D. S. Chand- ler demonstrated that over half of all the appoint- ments made to the high courts during the period 1687-1750 were awarded to Peruvian Creoles, many of them native sons who had been born and raised in the districts where they had been ap- pointed. After mid-century, however, Charles III and his successors radically altered these policies and procedures in an effort to regulate the number of Creole appointees to the courts. This book traces the political career of one of these ambitious and frustrated pretendientes, the Peruvian nobleman Jose Baquijano y Carrillo, which culminated with his appointment as a criminal judge in Lima in 1797, the first native son to have been directly appointed to the court in the space of two decades. In this sense, it gives a regional and personal dimension to a subject treated by the author in his earlier work.

The Peruvian elite, of which Baquijano was a re- spectable but not an outstanding member, was a profoundly insecure and fearful group, threatened on the one hand by ambitious Spaniards and on the other by numerous gente decente and unwashed masses. Baquijano's life provides ample testament to this fearful and excessively ambitious state of mind. Although socially and economically advan- taged, owing to complex factors of family wealth and background, Baquijano encountered enormous obstacles on his tortuous path to governmental of- fice. In 1776 he was unceremoniously expelled from Spain by Charles III for profligacy but recovered sufficiently in Peru to receive the first chair of civil law at San Marcos, to attain the presidency of the Society of Friends of the Country, and to contribute to the journal Mercurio peruano. In between, he es- caped censure for his ill-advised eulogy of the dis- credited Viceroy Agustin de Jauregui. Following his appointment to the Lima court in 1797, Baquijano earned membership on the short-lived Council of State before that body was abolished by the re- turned Ferdinand VII in 1814. He died in Seville in 1817 still seeking further political honors that would

allow yet another triumphal return to his native Lima.

By tracing a single political career against a back- drop of changing appointment policy, Burkholder certifies the insatiable quest of American Creoles for prominence through high bureaucratic posts and the rationale that governed appointments. The au- thor makes no effort to mask the frailties of his sub- ject-who clearly cared more about advancing his career than about the interests of his constituents or country-and in so doing revises the views of cer- tain Peruvian historians who depict Baquijano as a true son of the Enlightenment and a precursor of independence. Burkholder contends, however, that Baquijano's appointment was based on merit and that to his peers he was a good oidor, a judgment made despite the shadowy presence of an enor- mously wealthy and well-connected brother in Spain.

The book is an exceptionally well-researched and generally well-written study of Creole aspirations for office and status. Burkholder demonstrates that the data advanced in his earlier work are valid at the regional level in an exquisitely detailed mono- graph that will be read with particular interest by students of Bourbon reformism. Clearly Baquijano's aspirations to a career in government can stand for a generation of Creole aspirants to office. The book's appeal to a general audience might have been improved, however, had Burkholder placed Baquijano's career within a more theoretical per- spective similar to that developed in John Phelan's Kingdom of Quito. By focusing on the issue of the bu- reaucratization of power through Baquijano's atti- tudes and performance in office after 1797, the au- thor could better address the important question of how changing ethnic composition patterns affected the quality and tenor of colonial government. Simi- larly, although changing appointment policy after 1750 clearly exacerbated Creole-peninsular ten- sions, this is a venerable phenomenon of complex origin that deserves fuller study. These criticisms aside, however, Politics of a Colonial Career, by focus- ing on the life of one important Peruvian office seeker, constitutes a genuine contribution to the his- tory of administrative politics in late colonial Span- ish America.

LEON G. CAMPBELL

University of Califorzia, Riverside

CHARLES R. BERRY. The Reformn in Oaxaca, 1856-76. A Microhistory of the Liberal Revolution. Lincoln: Univer- sity of Nebraska Press. 1981. Pp. xviii, 282. $20.00.

Charles R. Berry's book on the reform in Oaxaca is one of several excellent contributions to the litera-

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