Amat y Junient, Manuel de (1704–1782)

Manuel de Amat y Junient (b. 1704; d. 1782), viceroy of Peru (1761–1776). Born in Varacisas into a noble Catalan family, Amat pursued a military career in Europe and North Africa until becoming captain-general of Chile in 1755. In Santiago he promoted higher education and public order, but his efforts to subdue the Araucanian Indians were unsuccessful.

As viceroy of Peru, Amat oversaw with ruthless efficiency the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and, superficially at least, undertook a major overhaul of defenses, fortifying ports and organizing militia companies throughout the provinces. Although public revenues expanded considerably in this period, Amat's vice-regency was pervaded by corruption, according to his many critics, including Antonio de Ulloa (1716–1795), who served under him as governor of Huancavelica, in south-central Peru. Following his return to Barcelona in 1777, the aged bachelor married a young Catalán, leaving for both her and posterity the splendid Palacio de la Virreina, now a museum.

See alsoPeru: From the Conquest Through Independencexml .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vicente Rodríguez Casado and F. Pérez Embid, eds., Memoria de gobierno del virrey Amat (1947).

José Cruces Pozo, "Cualidades militares del virrey Amat," in Anuario de Estudios Americanos 9 (1952): 327-345.

Leon G. Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 1750–1810 (1978), esp. pp. 21-68.

Additional Bibliography

Aragón, Ilana Lucía, and Carlos Pardo-Figueroa Thays, editors. El virrey Amat y su tiempo. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Instituto Riva-Agüera, 2004.

Marks, Patricia H. "Confronting a Mercantile Elite: Bourbon Reformers and the Merchants of Lima, 1765–1796." The Americas 60 (April 2004): 519-558.

                                   John R. Fisher