from political exceptionality to jurisdictional restraint in franciscan california (1768-1803)

Abstract

In 1768, the missionaries of the Company of Jesus, banished from all imperial territories by King Charles III, left the peninsula of California. During 70 years, the Company had maintained an exceptional power in the region that ended precisely in expulsion. Substitute missionaries, all of them Franciscan, performed their chores in a different context to that of their predecessors, since after the collapse of the Jesuit regime, the Crown established the first formal provincial government, charged with the task of carrying out the Spanish Monarch's expansionist plans in the Northern Pacific area of New Spain. In this context, the new friars were circumscribed to the strict management of their missions, although even this was difficult because of the continual mistrust of provincial authorities. Explaining this process is our main goal.