Editing New Spain (section)

====Intendancies of the 1780s====
As part of the sweeping eighteenth-century administrative and economic changes known as the [[Bourbon Reforms]], the Spanish crown created new administrative units called [[Intendant (government official)|intendancies]], to strengthen central control over the viceroyalty. Some measures aimed to break the power of local elites in order to improve the economy of the empire. Reforms included the improvement of public participation in communal affairs, distribution of undeveloped lands to the indigenous and Spaniards, ending the corrupt practices of local crown officials, encouraging trade and mining, and establishing a system of territorial division similar to the model created by the government of France, already adopted in Spain.<ref>{{harvp|Haring|1947|pp=133–135}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|Lombardi|Lombardi|Stoner|1983|p=50}}</ref>

The establishment of intendancies was strongly resisted by the viceroyalties and general captaincies similar to the opposition in the Iberian Peninsula when the reform was adopted. Royal audiencias and ecclesiastical hierarchs opposed the reform for its intervention in economic issues, for its centralist politics, and the forced ceding of many of their functions to the intendants. In New Spain, these units generally corresponded to the regions or provinces that had developed earlier in the center, South, and North.<ref>{{harvp|Haring|1947|pp=133–135}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|Lombardi|Lombardi|Stoner|1983|p=50}}</ref>

Many of the intendancy boundaries became Mexican state boundaries after independence. The intendancies were created between 1764 and 1789, with the greatest number in the mainland in 1786: 1764 La Habana (later subdivided); 1766 Nueva Orleans; 1784 Puerto Rico; 1786 México, Veracruz, Puebla de Los Ángeles, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Sonora, Durango, Oaxaca, Guatemala, San Salvador, Comayagua, León, Santiago de Cuba, Puerto Príncipe; 1789 Mérida.<ref>{{harvp|Haring|1947|pp=133–135}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|Lombardi|Lombardi|Stoner|1983|p=50}}</ref>