In this work Susan Socolow examines bureaucrats in early modern society by concentrating on those of Buenos Aires under the Bourbon reforms in the late colonial bureaucracy, Socolow studies the individuals who held positions in the colonial civil service—their recruitment, aspirations, job tenure, professional advancement, and economic position. The late eighteenth century was a critical time for the southernmost regions of Latin America, for in this period they became a separate political entity, the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. Socolow's work, part of a continuing study of the political, economic, and social elites of the emerging city of Buenos Aires, here considers the bureaucracy put into place by the Bourbon reforms. The author examines the professional and personal circumstances of all bureaucrats, from the high-ranking heads of agencies to the more lowly clerks, contrasting their expectations and their actual experiences. She pays particular attention to their recruitment, promotion, salary, and retirement, as well as their marriage and kinship relationships in the local society.

In 1837 Mariquita Sánchez de Mendeville was so fed up with governor Juan Manuel de Rosas that she chose to leave her beloved city of Buenos Aires. Leaving was especially hard because Mariquita felt that she had played an influential role in transforming Buenos Aires from a Spanish colonial outpost into a brilliant capital in a world of republics. Juan Manuel de Rosas’s version of order alienated Mariquita, who chose self-imposed exile in Montevideo over living under Rosas’s stifling rule. The struggle went on for nearly two decades until Mariquita finally came home for good in 1852 while Rosas went into exile. Mariquita’s and Juan Manuel’s lives corresponded with the major events and processes that shaped the turbulent beginnings of the Argentine nation, many of which also shaped Latin America and the Atlantic World during the Age of Revolution (1750–1850). Their lives provide an overarching narrative for Argentine history that both scholars and students will find intriguing.