Policía y buen gobierno en la “producción” de obras públicas de Santiago de Chile, 1717-1810

Drawing on the records of city council meetings and a variety of archival sources, this study traces the evolution of the organizational framework responsible for the production of public works in Santiago de Chile throughout the eighteenth century and the late colonial period. The evidence demonstrates that the wider reform processes, which accelerated state centralization and fiscal modernization at the imperial level, profoundly influenced the methods of planning, financing, and overseeing infrastructure construction at the local level. Consequently, the policing functions of the cabildo gradually diminished whereas the authority which the royal administration exercised in these matters grew.