BOOK REVIEW
Abstract
Enlightenment, governance and reform in Spain and its Empire, 1759-1808, by Gabriel B. Paquette, Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 256 pp., 50.00 US$69.95 (hardback), ISBN 1-40-398594-4 Gabriel Paquette's book deals with the diverse and changing discourses and arguments of governance and reform in Spain and its empire during the second half of the eighteenth century. He claims that the intellectual pillars of Charles III's ideology of government were the critical emulation of foreign models, political economy, and regalism . Bourbon policymakers deployed different political languages, mixing them and creating a legitimization for a new projected creature (a centralized state administered by a powerful Crown) that would replace the decentralized system (conceived of today as a “composite monarchy”) thought to be inefficient to enlightened eyes. They deployed a precise vocabulary creating political arguments and giving rise to a general discourse of governance that was flexible enough to adapt to various circumstances. The aim of Caroline reformers was to create a more centralized state apparatus - a unified nation-state. In the first chapter, Paquette explains that geopolitical rivalry produced important debates in Bourbon Spain. On the one hand, Spanish policymakers emulated foreign practices and ideas to achieve the desired prosperity of