1789: The Bourbon reformers in Spain attempted to place legal restraints on the absolute power of slaveholders in 1789.

1789: The Bourbon reformers in Spain attempted to place legal restraints on the absolute power of slaveholders in 1789. These reforms were intended to regulate the treatment of enslaved people and the authority of overseers on plantations. Like the debates in the British Parliament, these developments became subjects of irrepressible speculation in the colonies. The news contributed to a growing culture of expectation that a major transformation of Atlantic society was imminent. Such administrative shifts from the metropole often served to galvanize dissident groups into more direct action.