Local family and imperial politics: the elite class of Santiago, Chile during the Spanish monarchy (18th Century)

Abstract

This study deals with the relationships between the sovereign, one of the legitimacies of the Ancien Regime, and the elite families of Santiago during the eighteenth century. It tries to discover how this relationship came to be with the monarchy through the political and ecclesiastical careers of its members. For this, it will be considered the members of the families that obtained the civil posts of viceroy, governor, oidor, and the ecclesiastical ones such as bishop, archbishop, member of an ecclesiastical council. The struggle for obtaining these posts produced an internal division in the elite of Santiago with respect to other families which only achieved municipal ones. The latter were also founders of entailed states and received titles from Castilla. We consider this division as one of the keys to the understanding of the Chilean independence process.