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Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath
Contemporary natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are quickly followed by disagreements about whether and how communities should be rebuilt, whether political leaders represent the community’s best interests, and whether the devastation could have been prevented. Shaky Colonialism demonstrates that many of the same issues animated the aftermath of disasters more than 250 years ago. On October 28, 1746, a massive earthquake ravaged Lima, a bustling city of 50,000, capital of the Peruvian Viceroyalty, and the heart of Spain’s territories in South America. Half an hour later, a tsunami destroyed the nearby port of Callao. The earthquake-tsunami demolished churches and major buildings, damaged food and water supplies, and suspended normal social codes, throwing people of different social classes together and prompting widespread chaos. In Shaky Colonialism , Charles F. Walker examines reactions to the catastrophe, the Viceroy’s plans to rebuild the city, and the opposition he encountered from the Church, the Spanish Crown, and Lima’s multiracial population. Through his ambitious rebuilding plan, the Viceroy sought to assert the power of the colonial state over the Church, the upper classes, and other groups. Agreeing with most inhabitants of the fervently Catholic city that the earthquake-tsunami was a manifestation of God’s wrath for Lima’s decadent ways, he hoped to reign in the city’s baroque excesses and to tame the city’s notoriously independent women. To his great surprise, almost everyone objected to his plan, sparking widespread debate about political power and urbanism. Illuminating the shaky foundations of Spanish control in Lima, Walker describes the latent conflicts—about class, race, gender, religion, and the very definition of an ordered society—brought to the fore by the earthquake-tsunami of 1746.
280 pages, Hardcover
First published April 30, 2008
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About the author
Charles F. Walker
14 books8 followersCharles F. Walker is the MacArthur Foundation Endowed Chair in International Human Rights and Director of the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas at the University of California, Davis.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 6, 2013
Down right painful to read.
August 7, 2022
This book examines how this 18th century earthquake exemplified the social and political challenges in Spanish Peru. After Chapter 1 which describes the earthquake itself and the shock that reverberated through Peru, the successive chapters examine different elements of unrest and conflict in the aftermath.
Chapter 2 "Premonitions of the Destruction of Lima" lists the enormous number of people who prophesied that God's wrath would destroy the city of Lima for its sins (especially its sensuality). The most interesting was from the Franciscans.
"Father San Antonio burnt his arm in the midst of mass to shock his audience. In subsequent days, he brought a skeleton to the pulpit to emphasize his message of coming plague, hung three well-lit skeletons in a funeral mass, and displayed an image of the devil," (p. 33).
Chapter 3 "The City of Kings Before and After" is our first foray into the contradictions of Bourbon rule.
"The eighteenth century thus witnessed two seemingly contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the growing complexity of the Lima and Peruvian population and the parallel decline of the notion of three nations (European, Indian, and African) fostered a simpler, class-based divide between elite and lower classes. A basic division between those who were called decent people (that is, Europeans of the upper and middle classes) and the mulithued lower orders took hold. This transformation reflected both the slow, halting transition from caste to class categories and the Bourbons' efforts to weaken corporate groups . . . On the other hand, concerned about growing social complexity and influcned by Enlightenment classification systems, the bourbon regime created a set of pseudoscientific categories, about twenty in all, to categorize and rank the offspring of mixed groups," (p. 60).
Chapter 4 "Stabilizing the Unstable" is about the first efforts to rebuild, and the disastrous financial challenges in raising money (since all the wealthy lost their property and since Spain didn't care".
"Even more glaring is the lack of monetary aid from Madrid. In fact, the Marquis of Ensenada kept up his friendly but persistent requests for more money from Peru to swell the Madrid coffers" (p. 87).
Chapter 5 "Obstacles to Urban Reform" is about the attempt to implement actual building codes after the earthquake, which drew protest form the urban elite.
"Property owners asserted that they had a social right and even an obligation to build grand residences" (p. 95).
"The city council responded in early February that Portalanza represented only 300 people and that the majority of the city's population clamored for the demolition of altos" (p. 96).
"The cabildo response itself had stressed that even houses that cost over 100K pesos "were held up by just an adobe wall". In other words, behind the intricate exteriors, the houses of the elite and of the lower orders were essentially the same" (p. 99).
Chapter 6 is about Bourbon attempts to conveniently use the destruction of the earthquake to NOT restore the great power of the Church, and above all of the religous orders. As noted in an earlier chapter, the orders owned 50% of the property in Lima in 1700 (p. 65). Here, the focus was especially on the large - and, as reformers would argue - wasteful monasteries, especially female monasteries.
"In 1700 approximately 20% of the city's female population lived in convents: the inhabitants included nuns, various types of spiritual women who had not taken vows, and the considerable servant population that waited on these two groups" (p. 108).
To take the largest monastery as an example:
"In 1700, La Concepcion had over 1000 residents: 247 nuns, 47 donadas, or servants who had taken vows and provided a small dowry, 162 seculars (ladies, schoolgirls, babies), 290 servants and 271 slaves" (p. 113).
Chapter 7 "Controlling Women's Bodies" is the logical extension of Chapter 6 - now instead of just controlling religious women, these was an attempt to police the dress and morality of all women in Lima. A key target were the tapadas, heavily-covered women who were seen as sources of seduction and sextual immorality. The author includes several illustrations of their distinctive outfit (p. 136 - 137).
"For critics, Lima seemed to be the worst of two worlds. Habsburg delegation of power and the consequent inability to rule the streets as well as baroque piety and extravagance continued to mark daily life. At the same time, increasing French influence under the Bourbons ushered in more risque clothing and a more active court life. A strange alliance thus emerged between the Franciscan moralists and midcentury absolutists . . . " (p. 139).
"Why were the state and the church so concerned about women's dress, particularly after the earthquake? Three related factors stand out in the historical record before and immediately after the earthquake: social and racial emulation, luxury and vanity, and divine wrath" (p. 145).
Finally, one critic denounced the pomp of the wealthy: "I'm justly horrified, as I know that all of this is from the blood of the poor" (p. 147).
Chapter 8 "The Lima and Huarochiri Rebellions" is about two Indian revolts after the earthquake. Much of the chapter centers around the Indian friar Calixto Tupac Inca's complaint regarding the exclusion of Indians from the Holy Orders.
"This remarkable text publicized deep resentment over Indians' exclusion from the religious orders, a grievance that ultimately put into question Spanish rule and influence the rebels of Lima and the hinterland" (p. 164).
There is a truly fascinating "heist" as a few friars try to smuggle this complaint to the king and the pope (p. 166).
The viceroy himself noted the disintegration of the social order:
"The viceroy thus captures how early modern cities weakened hierarchies more easily enforced in the countryside - Indians worked in higher status jobs, wore the same clothing as others, and even donned the elaborate fashions of the upper classes, leading them to demand fuller access to caste-limited jobs and positions. In additions, Indians in Lima did not pay the head tax, the ultimate marker of "Indianness". In light of this analysis, Manso's next paragraph is surprising. In a sprawling sentence, the viceroy concludes that the "true and permanent cause of Indians' restlessness" is that in all other conquered nations the dominated and dominant blend through marriage, and after a few generations "they are mixed up, becoming a single people" with uniform loyalty to the sovereign. The only distinction is that of origins. Yet in Peru "the diversity of customs, the accident of customs, or the vileness of the dominated" did not allow these connections or mixing" (p. 182 - 183).
Finally the conclusion sums this up in one sentence:
"The spent the 17th century pushing up Peru's tax share from 2% to 40% . . . in the process they gained a revenue and lost an empire" (p. 188).
Great lense into the Bourbon reforms and the fundamental contradictions of the Spanish empire and social order.
Chapter 2 "Premonitions of the Destruction of Lima" lists the enormous number of people who prophesied that God's wrath would destroy the city of Lima for its sins (especially its sensuality). The most interesting was from the Franciscans.
"Father San Antonio burnt his arm in the midst of mass to shock his audience. In subsequent days, he brought a skeleton to the pulpit to emphasize his message of coming plague, hung three well-lit skeletons in a funeral mass, and displayed an image of the devil," (p. 33).
Chapter 3 "The City of Kings Before and After" is our first foray into the contradictions of Bourbon rule.
"The eighteenth century thus witnessed two seemingly contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the growing complexity of the Lima and Peruvian population and the parallel decline of the notion of three nations (European, Indian, and African) fostered a simpler, class-based divide between elite and lower classes. A basic division between those who were called decent people (that is, Europeans of the upper and middle classes) and the mulithued lower orders took hold. This transformation reflected both the slow, halting transition from caste to class categories and the Bourbons' efforts to weaken corporate groups . . . On the other hand, concerned about growing social complexity and influcned by Enlightenment classification systems, the bourbon regime created a set of pseudoscientific categories, about twenty in all, to categorize and rank the offspring of mixed groups," (p. 60).
Chapter 4 "Stabilizing the Unstable" is about the first efforts to rebuild, and the disastrous financial challenges in raising money (since all the wealthy lost their property and since Spain didn't care".
"Even more glaring is the lack of monetary aid from Madrid. In fact, the Marquis of Ensenada kept up his friendly but persistent requests for more money from Peru to swell the Madrid coffers" (p. 87).
Chapter 5 "Obstacles to Urban Reform" is about the attempt to implement actual building codes after the earthquake, which drew protest form the urban elite.
"Property owners asserted that they had a social right and even an obligation to build grand residences" (p. 95).
"The city council responded in early February that Portalanza represented only 300 people and that the majority of the city's population clamored for the demolition of altos" (p. 96).
"The cabildo response itself had stressed that even houses that cost over 100K pesos "were held up by just an adobe wall". In other words, behind the intricate exteriors, the houses of the elite and of the lower orders were essentially the same" (p. 99).
Chapter 6 is about Bourbon attempts to conveniently use the destruction of the earthquake to NOT restore the great power of the Church, and above all of the religous orders. As noted in an earlier chapter, the orders owned 50% of the property in Lima in 1700 (p. 65). Here, the focus was especially on the large - and, as reformers would argue - wasteful monasteries, especially female monasteries.
"In 1700 approximately 20% of the city's female population lived in convents: the inhabitants included nuns, various types of spiritual women who had not taken vows, and the considerable servant population that waited on these two groups" (p. 108).
To take the largest monastery as an example:
"In 1700, La Concepcion had over 1000 residents: 247 nuns, 47 donadas, or servants who had taken vows and provided a small dowry, 162 seculars (ladies, schoolgirls, babies), 290 servants and 271 slaves" (p. 113).
Chapter 7 "Controlling Women's Bodies" is the logical extension of Chapter 6 - now instead of just controlling religious women, these was an attempt to police the dress and morality of all women in Lima. A key target were the tapadas, heavily-covered women who were seen as sources of seduction and sextual immorality. The author includes several illustrations of their distinctive outfit (p. 136 - 137).
"For critics, Lima seemed to be the worst of two worlds. Habsburg delegation of power and the consequent inability to rule the streets as well as baroque piety and extravagance continued to mark daily life. At the same time, increasing French influence under the Bourbons ushered in more risque clothing and a more active court life. A strange alliance thus emerged between the Franciscan moralists and midcentury absolutists . . . " (p. 139).
"Why were the state and the church so concerned about women's dress, particularly after the earthquake? Three related factors stand out in the historical record before and immediately after the earthquake: social and racial emulation, luxury and vanity, and divine wrath" (p. 145).
Finally, one critic denounced the pomp of the wealthy: "I'm justly horrified, as I know that all of this is from the blood of the poor" (p. 147).
Chapter 8 "The Lima and Huarochiri Rebellions" is about two Indian revolts after the earthquake. Much of the chapter centers around the Indian friar Calixto Tupac Inca's complaint regarding the exclusion of Indians from the Holy Orders.
"This remarkable text publicized deep resentment over Indians' exclusion from the religious orders, a grievance that ultimately put into question Spanish rule and influence the rebels of Lima and the hinterland" (p. 164).
There is a truly fascinating "heist" as a few friars try to smuggle this complaint to the king and the pope (p. 166).
The viceroy himself noted the disintegration of the social order:
"The viceroy thus captures how early modern cities weakened hierarchies more easily enforced in the countryside - Indians worked in higher status jobs, wore the same clothing as others, and even donned the elaborate fashions of the upper classes, leading them to demand fuller access to caste-limited jobs and positions. In additions, Indians in Lima did not pay the head tax, the ultimate marker of "Indianness". In light of this analysis, Manso's next paragraph is surprising. In a sprawling sentence, the viceroy concludes that the "true and permanent cause of Indians' restlessness" is that in all other conquered nations the dominated and dominant blend through marriage, and after a few generations "they are mixed up, becoming a single people" with uniform loyalty to the sovereign. The only distinction is that of origins. Yet in Peru "the diversity of customs, the accident of customs, or the vileness of the dominated" did not allow these connections or mixing" (p. 182 - 183).
Finally the conclusion sums this up in one sentence:
"The spent the 17th century pushing up Peru's tax share from 2% to 40% . . . in the process they gained a revenue and lost an empire" (p. 188).
Great lense into the Bourbon reforms and the fundamental contradictions of the Spanish empire and social order.
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December 2, 2024Had to read for class- it’s a factual history book. Critique: pretty repetitive in my opinion
July 27, 2025
interesting topic just a little repetitive
July 23, 2016
3.5 stars.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews