Political Reforms Of The Spanish Bourbon Family And Its New Spain

The Spanish Bourbon family came into rule of Spain and its New Spain colonies with the crowning of Philip V in 1713 (Meyer, et al 2010). This crowing brought with it new political reforms from the Spanish Bourbons to try and recover their control over New Spain. At this point, Philip V had to begin to replenish the distraught nation of Spain. The last of the Spanish Hapsburg lineage, Charles II, had neglected his country and saw it wither to close despair before his death in 1700 (Lecture Notes). What the Bourbon crown did economically was open areas for silver to be extracted more easily in New Spain soil, it made sure the church was again under their control, and it instigated a new political ruling class. (Meyer et al) The political state of reforms of the Bourbon crown was to ultimately centralize the colonial administration, yet what ended up happening was that the bureaucracy was expanded (Meyer et al, 2010) The political reforms of the Bourbon crown were to regain control and order, although successful to some extent their reforms only led to further resentment from other countries and their colonies’ people. They’re reforms seemed to only be successful for Spain’s upper-class folk, not so much for New Spain’s lower class. The Bourbon crown decided to focus a vast amount of their expenses on building up a military to ward away possible invaders who wanted to take rule of their colonies and also Spain. This made the Bourbons want to build up their military in order