The work questions the thesis according to which during the 16th and 18th centuries an authoritarian and extractive regime operated in Viceregal Latin America; provides evidence that, on the contrary, the viceregal or Indian order functioned according to ideas and legal institutions that, in their historical context, allowed the power of the royal authorities and their representatives to be limited; and argues why it was neither justified nor beneficial to the citizens of the new Republics to fundamentally break with those legal institutions to adopt a foreign public law such as French administrative law.