The Viceroyalty of Peru ( ), officially known as the Kingdom of Peru (), was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district. Created in 1542, it encompassed modern Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in South America, including regions of Panama and islands in Oceania, governed from the capital of Lima. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Peru was one of the only two Spanish viceroyalties active in the Americas, the other being the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
After establishing the capital Lima in 1535 by Francisco Pizarro and Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the region of Peru suffered internal power struggles between many of the Conquistadors. To end the internal conflict, King Charles I by royal decree, signed the New Laws which established the Kingdom of Peru, which would encompass most of South America, setting Blasco Núñez Vela as the first Viceroy. Peru would greatly contribute to the wealth of the region and to Spain, with the discovery of gold, silver, and mercury. Cerro Rico in Potosí became the largest silver mine in the world, which made Peru the greatest distributor of silver. Reforms carried out by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo greatly changed the political administration in South America and the economy, which also led to the exploitation of the indigenous peoples. These reforms would lead to many uprisings which aimed to overthrow Spanish control.
The Spanish did not resist the Portuguese expansion of Brazil across the meridian established by the Treaty of Tordesillas. The treaty was rendered meaningless between 1580 and 1640 while Spain controlled Portugal. The creation during the 18th century of the Viceroyalties of New Granada and Río de la Plata (at the expense of Peru's territory) reduced the importance of Lima and shifted the lucrative Andean trade to Buenos Aires, while the fall of the mining and textile production accelerated the progressive decay of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Despite territorial losses, at the beginning of the 19th century, the Viceroyalty of Peru was still the main possession of the Spanish Monarchy in South America, being one of its main sources of wealth. However, by the end of the viceregal period, almost eighty percent of all American wealth came from the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
The Spanish American wars of independence brought an end to the Viceroyalty of Peru. From the outset of the conflict, the viceroyalty maintained its commitment to the integrity of the Spanish Monarchy, sending expeditions to suppress the insurgent governing juntas that formed in its border territories. During this first stage, beginning in 1810, Peruvian conspiracies and autonomous uprisings occurred, which were suppressed by the Royal Army of Peru. In 1820, mutiny of the troops being sent from Spain halted reinforcements to the Viceroyalty.
The Capitulation of Ayacucho, signed on December 9, 1824, marked the end of the royalist military effort, by which the viceregal authorities recognized their defeat and the independence of Peru, as well as Chile, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, at one point or another had constituted the Viceroyalty of Peru. However, isolated and without support, the last royalist strongholds, such as the Real Felipe Fortress in Callao and the Chiloé Archipelago, would finally fall in 1826.
History Conquest of Peru
Francisco Pizarro and the conquistadors arrived in Peru in 1532, establishing the first city of San Miguel de Piura. Traditionally, the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire is considered to have begun on November 16, 1532, when the Inca army encountered the Spanish conquistadors in Cajamarca, shortly after the end of the civil war between the two heirs to the Inca throne, Huáscar and Atahualpa (sons of the Inca Huayna Capac). After the Battle of Cajamarca, Atahualpa was taken prisoner by the Spanish and executed months later, on July 26, 1533, and the conquest of Peru began.
The complete defeat of the Incas would not occur until 1572, thanks to the help of their indigenous allies. Charles V granted the conquistadors with adelantados, giving them the right to become governors and justices of the region they conquered. Prior to the establishment of the Viceroyalty of Peru, several major governorates formed from these grants, including the Governorate of New Castile (1529), Governorate of New Toledo (1534), Governorate of New Andalusia (1534), and Province of Tierra Firme (1539). However, many civil wars were fought between the conquerors of Peru regarding power of the region. These struggles lasted from 1537 to 1554, with periods of relative peace. They began with the capture of Cusco by Diego de Almagro and culminated with the suppression of the last rebellion of encomenderos, led by Francisco Hernández Girón. Shortly thereafter, Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza initiated the definitive pacification of Peru.
Creation of the Viceroyalty During the process that led to the fall of the Inca Empire, a conflict erupted among the conquistadors. To bring it to a close, on 20 November 1542 , King Charles I of Spain signed the New Laws in Barcelona by Royal Decree. This legislative package for the Indies established the Viceroyalty of Peru, officially the Kingdom of Peru, replacing the former governorships of New Castile and New Toledo, and transferred the seat of the Royal Audiencia of Panama to Lima, the capital of the new viceroyalty.
Blasco Núñez Vela was Peru's first viceroy, appointed by royal decree on 1 March 1543. However, he was unable to exercise royal authority due to the clashes between the supporters of Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, for control of Peru, and he was assassinated by Gonzalo Pizarro. The murder of the king's highest authority caused great consternation in Spain; the Crown resolved to severely punish whoever had attempted to assassinate the viceroy, the king's representative in conquered territories. To this end, Charles I sent Pedro de la Gasca with the title of Pacifier to resolve the situation. Once in Peru, La Gasca, confident that he had sown the seeds of treachery among Gonzalo Pizarro's supporters, confronted the conquistador near Cusco in 1548. Gonzalo Pizarro saw his captains defect to La Gasca's side, and his defeat was crushing. Taken to Cusco, he was executed for high treason against the king. A few years later, in 1551, Antonio de Mendoza was appointed viceroy, after having served in that position in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Toledo Reforms (1559–1581)
After almost forty years of administrative disorder, the Peruvian Viceroyalty found an efficient leader in Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who, between 1569 and 1581, managed to establish the political-administrative framework that governed for many years in viceregal Peru.
Upon arriving in Peru, Francisco Álvarez de Toledo immediately gathered information about everything that had transpired in the viceroyalty and the policies implemented up to that point. He recognized the lack of an adequate tax system, as there was no record of the viceroyalty's total population. Francisco de Toledo, "one of the great administrators of human times,"Mabry, Donald J., Colonial Latin America. Coral Springs, Fla.: Llumina Press, 2002. established the Inquisition in the viceroyalty and promulgated laws that applied to Indians and Spanish alike, breaking the power of the encomenderos and reducing the old system of mita (the Incan system of mandatory labor tribute). He personally conducted several extensive general inspections of different parts of the viceroyalty, and for the first time, a record was kept of Peru's human and natural resources. After determining the number of potential taxpayers, he established the reducciones, indigenous settlements where approximately five hundred families were grouped together. This allowed for a precise understanding of the amount of tribute they were required to pay.
Viceroy Francisco de Toledo promoted the distribution of indigenous labor through the Mita system. This system provided labor for the rich mines of Potosí, in the province of Charcas, which produced immense quantities of silver ore, and for Huancavelica, from which mercury was extracted, necessary for silver refining. This system helped to make Peru one of the most important silver-producing centers in the world. He also improved the defensibility of the viceroyalty with fortifications, bridges, and la Armada del Mar del Sur (the Southern Fleet) against pirates. He ended the indigenous Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba, executing the last Sapa Inca Túpac Amaru, and promoted economic development from the commercial monopoly and mineral extraction, mainly from silver mines in Potosí.
Exploration and settlement The Amazon Basin and some large adjoining regions had been considered Spanish territory since the Treaty of Tordesillas and explorations such as that by Francisco de Orellana, but Portugal fell under Spanish control between 1580 and 1640. During this time, Portuguese territories in Brazil were controlled by the Spanish crown, which did object to the spread of Portuguese settlement into parts of the Amazon Basin that the treaty had awarded to Spain. Still, Luis Jerónimo de Cabrera, 4th Count of Chinchón sent out a third expedition to explore the Amazon River, under Cristóbal de Acuña; this was part of the return leg of the expedition of Pedro Teixeira.
Some Pacific islands and archipelagoes were visited by Spanish ships in the sixteenth century, but they made no effort to trade with or colonize them. These included New Guinea (by Ýñigo Ortiz de Retez in 1545), the Solomon Islands (in 1568), and the Marquesas Islands (in 1595) by Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira.
The first Jesuit reduction to Christianize the indigenous population was founded in 1609, but some areas occupied by Brazilians as bandeirantes gradually extended their activities through much of the basin and adjoining Mato Grosso in the 17th and 18th centuries. These groups had the advantage of remote geography and river access from the mouth of the Amazon, which was in Portuguese territory. Meanwhile, the Spanish were barred by their laws from enslaving indigenous people, leaving them without a commercial interest deep in the interior of the basin.
A famous attack upon a Spanish mission in 1628 resulted in the enslavement of 60,000 indigenous people. As time passed, they were used as a self-funding occupation force by the Portuguese authorities in what was effectively a low-level war of territorial conquest.
In 1617, viceroy Francisco de Borja y Aragón divided the government of Río de la Plata in two, Buenos Aires and Paraguay, both dependencies of the Viceroyalty of Peru. He established the Tribunal del Consulado, a court and administrative body for commercial affairs in the viceroyalty. Diego Fernández de Córdoba, Marquis of Guadalcázar, reformed the fiscal system and stopped the interfamily rivalry that was bloodying the domain.
Other viceroys, such as Fernando Torres, Fernández de Cabrera, and Fernández Córdoba expanded the royal navy and fortified the ports to resist foreign incursions, such as those led by privateer Thomas Cavendish. Fernández de Cabrera also suppressed an insurrection of the Uru and Mapuche Indians.
Economic boom
Between 1580 and 1650, the mercantilist economic system was definitively established in Peru with the emergence of large-scale mining thanks to the exploitation of the silver veins of Potosí through amalgamation with the mercury from Huancavelica.