historian J. H. Elliott writes, “If the ‘modernity’ of the modern state is defined in terms of its possession of institutional structures capable of conveying the commands of a central authority to distant localities, the government of colonial Spanish America was more ‘modern’ than the government of Spain, or indeed of that of almost every Early Modern European state.”29 It contrasts in this respect with the rather laissez-faire attitude of the English monarchy to its new colonies in North America.
