University:
Arizona State University
Course:
HST 200 | Historical Themes
Academic year:

2024
Views:

382

Pages:

2
Author:

Thuyoul US

THE ROYAL ECONOMIC SOCIETY OF FRIENDS OF THE CANARY ISLANDS (1777-1790) EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND Although the Spanish seventeenth century has been widely described as "decadent" and "unhappy" due to its failures in political, military and financial matters fundamentally, the eighteenth century has been characterized as a century of "reforms" and "prosperity" in practically all areas – including, of course, the cultural – in the wake left by the reign of Charles III. Although it seems evident that there is no lack of objective reasons to express themselves in this way – since some factors of various nature, difficult to see at times and imprecise to delimit at others, have intersected to place this virtual dividing line between two supposedly so opposite perceptions – it is no less true that the object of study, The dynamics of the events and the social processes and phenomena that occurred remained undisturbed through what we could call absolutist normalizing quietism that, strictly sensu, reached two centuries. A situation that, as we all know, would only be shaken timidly and at very specific moments by the pressure of the nascent industrial and above all commercial bourgeoisie, in almost permanent collusion with the rest of the sectors of the landowning oligarchy, which already foreshadowed the bankruptcy of the pre-Enlightenment monarchy and the emergence of a proto-liberal state. This initial warning, which tries to avoid Manichean simplifications in the prolific historical dialectic that we are trying to develop, also serves to situate the coordinates on which we are going to focus this work, circumscribed in time to the period of apogee and enlightened optimism typical of the royal reforms that in turn promoted the creation of the Royal Economic Societies of Friends of the Country. In spite of the general precautions set out above, which have no other interest than to situate the thematic and methodological axes in which we are going to move, our purpose is much more modest in dedicating this work to the study of one of these Societies, specifically the one established in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. to complete a little more the mosaic of the Canary Islands that we already started at another time with the analysis of the Tenerife Economy.1 The most unique aspects of it and, above all, its educational profiles, will become our focus of attention; First, however, we must make a specific reference to the insular precedents in this same formative, instructive and indoctrinating matter.