Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata
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The Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata was an administrative district of the Spanish empire in South America. The Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata was created in 1776, in the course of a massive reorganization of the Spanish imperial bureaucracy. This viceroyalty, created from land that had once belonged to the Viceroyalty of Peru, embraced present-day Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia, as well as part of present-day Chile. The Spanish Crown hoped that the creation of a viceroyalty dedicated specifically to governing the sparsely settled regions of southern South America would enable Spain to defend these territories more effectively from other European powers' military and commercial encroachments.
The viceroyalty was ruled by a viceroy and an audiencia, established in 1783 in the city of Buenos Aires.
[edit] References
- Burkholder, Mark A., and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
