In Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and Its Empire, 1759 –1808 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Gabriel Paquette '99 posits a new interpretation of political reform in Spain and its American empire in the second half of the 18th century. He examines the intellectual foundations of commercial, administrative, and colonial policy during the tumultuous reigns of Charles III (1759 –1788) and Charles IV (1788 –1808), and explores how crown reformers employed both the ideas of the European Enlightenment and Iberian juridical concepts to create a distinctive ideology of governance. They sought to use these ideas in order to reinvigorate the Spanish monarchy and to transform the institutions of the Old Regime into those of a modern state in both the Old World and the New. Paquette draws upon archival research undertaken in Spain, Cuba, Chile, and Argentina. Paquette is a junior research fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK. He has published articles in European History Quarterly, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, and Journal of Transatlantic Studies.