Gamboa's World: Justice, Silver Mining, and Imperial Reform in New Spain by Christopher Albi (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Gamboa's World: Justice, Silver Mining, and Imperial Reform in New Spain by Christopher Albi Karen Stolley Christopher Albi, Gamboa's World: Justice, Silver Mining, and Imperial Reform in New Spain ( Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2021). Pp. 256; 12 halftones, 1 map. $95.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. In this lively and informative book, Christopher Albi charts the life and career trajectory of the jurist Francisco Xavier de Gamboa (1717–1794), exploring the intersection of the law, the political economy of eighteenth-century New Spain (now Mexico), and Spanish Bourbon reformism. Albi situates his study of Gamboa—seven chapters, organized chronologically and each dedicated to a different phase of Gamboa's career—within the context of a resurgence of interest in colonial legal studies (for example, Bianca Premo's The Enlightenment on Trial [2017]). The cover blurb by Matthew Restall notes that Gamboa was "neither famous nor a nobody." Albi emphasizes that like his subject, he too will stake out a kind of middle ground, without arguing, on the one hand, that Spanish colonial law in the Americas was mere window dressing for imperial power nor, on the other hand, that it was overly and overtly oppressive. Rather, Albi wants to show that judicial administrators like Gamboa functioned in a spirit of pragmatic flexibility and attention to local custom that often put them at odds with enlightened Bourbon reforms that aimed to centralize Spain's administration of its overseas territories for economic and military gains. In the opening chapters, Albi lays out the attributes of Spanish law as it was understood and practiced in colonial Spanish America—grounded in Roman jurisprudence and deeply religious, drawing both on divine or natural law and Catholic canon law. Jurists in eighteenth-century Mexico would have been familiar with the Corpus Juris Civilis, a compendium of Roman law (also known as the ius commune), as well as the thirteenth-century Siete Partidas. Castilian judicial order was adapted to social and geographical realities in the Americas which mandated attention to local customs and underscored the importance of jurisdiction. Albi quotes Juan Solórzano Pereyra, author of Politica Indiana (1648) and the foremost legal authority at the time, who argued for a casuistic and pluralistic approach and emphasized that it was "better to adjust the law to suit local reality than to try to change reality to suit the law" (9). The genesis of Albi's project is his desire to challenge David Brading's portrait of Gamboa in Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763–1810 (1971) as an opportunistic and servile representative of Mexico's merchant class. Albi emphasizes that in opposing certain elements of the Bourbon reforms (particularly those led by José de Gálvez, Visitador General 1765–1771 and Ministro de Indias 1776–1787), Gamboa's primary concern was to deliver Solórzano's vision of justice. Indeed, Gálvez functions in Albi's account as a foil for Gamboa, particularly regarding their views on the audiencias, a pillar of the Spanish American judicial system whose authority Gálvez hoped to weaken. Gamboa's story is a fascinating one, and Albi tells it well. Gamboa's father was a merchant of Basque descent whose early death plunged the family into financial precarity and motivated his son's dogged pursuit of socioeconomic stability through his involvement with silver mining. Educated by Jesuits at the Real Colegio de San Ildefonso, a historically prestigious institution that prepared students for ecclesiastical and secular positions, Gamboa studied law at the University of Mexico before practicing law in Mexico City. Albi discusses in detail [End Page 137] Gamboa's most notable cases and concludes, "No other audiencia magistrate of the late eighteenth century knew New Spain as well, both practically and legally, as Gamboa" (44). This knowledge informed Gamboa's views on the need to balance ius commune, local custom, and royal legislation to ensure the administration of criminal and civil justice, for which the autonomy of the audiencias was central. In 1755 Gamboa was sent to Madrid to represent the Basque merchants' guild, or Consulado of Mexico. Albi demonstrates a certain reverence for Basque exceptionalism—their industriousness, nobility, and attraction to both religion...