Fidel Tavarez: "The Spanish Monarchy as an Imperial Machine, c. 1740-1795"

Fidel J. Tavárez obtained a Ph.D. in history at Princeton University and currently holds a Provost's Postdoctoral Scholarship at the University of Chicago.  His fields of expertise are the early modern Spanish Atlantic and Enlightenment political economy. At present, Fidel is transforming his dissertation into a book manuscript tentatively titled The Imperial Machine: Inventing the Spanish Commercial Empire, 1740-1812. He has published portions of his work in an article, “Viscardo’s Global Political Economy and the First Cry for Spanish American Independence, 1767-1798,” which appeared recently in the Journal of Latin American Studies.  In addition to completing his first book, Fidel is currently working on an article titled “Colonial Economic Improvement: Creating New Consulados in Spanish America during the Bourbon Reforms, 1778-1795.” His future research plans include a second book project provisionally titled Empirical Statecraft: The Origins of an Information Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic.