Abstract

The author awards, after a bibliographic section, a general panorama of the role of the Spanish American universities during the old regime, seen as a dynamic and interrelated set and not as isolated entities, homogenous and static. To explain their internal structure, sketches out some medieval features and the changes they underwent at the beginning of the early modern era, especially in Spain. Regarding the Indies, he highlights the decisive role that the social, political, and economic conditions prevailing in each place played in the emergence of this or that pattern: not always the desired one, but rather the one dictated by necessity. Finally, he reviews the complex map of the Spanish American universities from conquest to independence, along with an appraisal of the Bourbon reforms