Taxation System in New Spain. Michoacán´s Bishop and Council Cathedral at the Bourbon Fiscal Crisis

Abstract

This article sheds light on the deterioration that the ecclesiastical economy in Michoacan began to suffer some twenty years before the outbreak of Mexico’s wars of Independence. This research draws attention to certain little known, indeed, somewhat unconventional, mechanisms that the Spanish Crown employed to extract economic resources from its churches in Spanish America. By analyzing diverse financial data that serve to contextualize each case within the framework of the Spanish fiscal crisis that spanned the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, this essay allows us to form an idea of the amount of resources that were transferred to the metropolis in those years, principally from the Church in Michoacan but, more broadly, also from churches throughout Spanish America.