Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590-1660


Book Description

Combining social, political, and economic history, Louisa Schell Hoberman examines a neglected period in Mexico's colonial past, providing the first book-length study of the period's merchant elite and its impact on the evolution of Mexico. Through extensive archival research, Hoberman brings to light new data that illuminate the formation, behavior, and power of the merchant class in New Spain. She documents sources and uses of merchant wealth, tracing the relative importance of mining, agriculture, trade, and public office. By delving into biographical information on prominent families, Hoberman also reveals much about the longevity of the first generation's social and economic achievements. The author's broad analysis situates her study in the overall environment in which the merchants thrived. Among the topics discussed are the mining and operation of the mint, Mexico's political position vis-a-vis Spain, and the question of an economic depression in the seventeenth century.




The King's Living Image


Book Description

To rule their vast new American territories, the Spanish monarchs appointed viceroys in an attempt to reproduce the monarchical system of government prevailing at the time in Europe. But despite the political significance of the figure of the viceroy, little is known about the mechanisms of viceregal power and its relation to ideas of kingship. Examining this figure, The King's Living Image challenges long-held perspectives on the political nature of Spanish colonialism, recovering, at the same time, the complexity of the political discourses and practices of Spanish rule. It does so by studying the viceregal political culture that developed in New Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the mechanisms, both formal and informal, of viceregal rule. In so doing, The King's Living Image questions the very existence of a "colonial state" and contends that imperial power was constituted in ritual ceremonies. It also emphasizes the viceroys' significance in carrying out the civilizing mission of the Spanish monarchy with regard to the indigenous population. The King's Living Image will redefine the ways in which scholars have traditionally looked at the viceregal administration in colonial Mexico.




Italy and the Islamic World


Book Description

Italy and the Islamic World tells the story of how Italian cities have been centres of international exchange for centuries, linking Europe with the most storied marketplaces of the Middle East and North Africa. From the Ancient Roman period and the Renaissance to the rise of the Italian Republic, Italy has been a global crossroads for more than two millennia. In Ali Humayun Akhtar's new picture of European history, Italy's debates about trade with its southern neighbours evoke an earlier era of encounters - one that sheds light on where the EU is heading today.




The Birth of Modern Mexico, 1780-1824


Book Description

The Birth of Modern Mexico, 1780-1824 investigates the roots of the Mexican Independence era from a variety of perspectives. The essays in this volume link the pre-1810 late Bourbon period to the War of Independence (1810-1821), analyze many crucial aspects of the decade of conflict, and illustrate the continuities with the first years of the independent Mexican nation. They all contribute to a nuanced view of the period: the different conceptions of legitimacy between the popular masses and the elite, the skill and importance of pro-Spanish propaganda, the process of organizing conspiracies, the survival and thriving of a mercantile family, the causes of failing mines, the role of religious thought in the supposed secular state, and differing conceptions of authority by the legislature and the executive. One of the few readable, concise books on the topic of independence, this volume probes the birth of modern Mexico in a crisply written style that is sure to appeal to historians and students of Mexican history.




Of Things of the Indies


Book Description

This volume offers an illuminating overview of the work of a pioneering and highly distinguished scholar of Latin American social and cultural history and philology. The "old and new" of the subtitle is meant literally; the first piece was written in 1968, the last in 1998. Four of the twelve essays are published here for the first time.




Portuguese Merchants in the Manila Galleon System


Book Description

Villamar examines the role of Portuguese merchants in the formation of the Manila Galleon as a system of trade founded at the end of the sixteenth century. The rise of Manila as a crucial transshipment port was not a spontaneous incident. Instead, it came about through a complex combination of circumstances and interconnections that nurtured the establishment of the Manila Galleon system, a trading mechanism that lasted two and half centuries from 1565 until 1815. Villamar analyses the establishment of the regulatory framework of the trade across the Pacific Ocean as a whole setting that provided legality to the transactions, predictability to the transportation and security to the stakeholders. He looks both at the Spanish crown strategy in Asia, and the emergence of a network of Portuguese merchants located in Manila and active in the long-distance trade. This informal community of merchants participated from the inception of the trading system across the Pacific, with connections between Europe, ports in Asia under the control of Portugal, the Spanish colonies in America, and the city of Manila. From its inception, the newly-founded capital of the Philippines became a hub of connections, attracting part of the trade that already existed in Asia. Surveying the Portuguese commercial networks from the ‘Estado da Índia’ across the ‘Spanish lake,’ this book sheds light on the early modern globalization from a truly comprehensive Iberian perspective. This is a valuable resource for scholars of Pacific and Iberian trade history and the maritime history of Asia.




Merchants and Trade Networks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1550-1800


Book Description

This collective volume explores the ways merchants managed to connect different spaces all over the globe in the early modern period by organizing the movement of goods, capital, information and cultural objects between different commercial maritime systems in the Mediterranean and Atlantic basin. Merchants and Trade Networks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1550-1800 consists of four thematic blocs: theoretical considerations, the social composition of networks, connected spaces, networks between formal and informal exchange, as well as possible failures of ties. This edited volume features eleven contributions who deal with theoretical concepts such as social network analysis, globalization, social capital and trust. In addition, several chapters analyze the coexistence of mono-cultural and transnational networks, deal with network failure and shifting network geographies, and assess the impact of kinship for building up international networks between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. This work evaluates the use of specific network types for building up connections across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Basin stretching out to Central Europe, the Northern Sea and the Pacific. This book is of interest to those who study history of economics and maritime economics, as well as historians and scholars from other disciplines working on maritime shipping, port studies, migration, foreign mercantile communities, trade policies and mercantilism.




The Atlantic World and the Manila Galleons


Book Description

Studies of the trade between the Atlantic World and Asia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries typically focus on the exchanges between Atlantic European countries – especially Portugal, the Netherlands and England – and Asia across the Cape route. In The Atlantic World and the Manila Galleons. Circulation, Market, and Consumption of Asian Goods in the Spanish Empire, 1565-1650, José L. Gasch-Tomás offers a new approach to understanding the connections between the Atlantic World and Asia. By drawing attention to the trans-Pacific trade between the Americas and the Philippines, the re-exportation of Asian goods from New Spain to Castile, and the consumption of Chinese silk, Chinese porcelain and Japanese furnishings in New Spain and Seville, this book discloses how New Spanish cities and elites were main components of the spread of taste for Asian goods in the Spanish Empire. This book reveals how New Spanish family and commercial networks channelled the market formation of Asian goods in the Atlantic World around 1600.




The Atlantic Staple Trade


Book Description

This two volume set reprints the most important standard studies and interpretations of the development of the crucial Atlantic trade. The first volume, concerned with general trade and political economy, approaches the topic from the viewpoint of individual trading nations in the Atlantic - England, France, Ireland, Spain - whilst not neglecting the importance of regions like West Africa. Rivalry between the different national traders is also considered, as well as the vexed question of the relation of trade to the old colonial empires. The impact of administration, war and regulation as reflected by the contraband issue highlights the strong political element in the developing Atlantic commercial world. Case studies are provided of major staple and luxury commodity trades: rice, molasses, tobacco, cochineal, logwood, hides, cacao and the sometimes neglected whaling industry. These set the scene for quantitative and technical studies of the contribution of shipping to trade. Specific markets considered in more detail include a comparison of Philadelphia and Havana, the changing scale of business activity in the Chesapeake trade, and the impact of trade on port development in America. The volume closes with seminal studies by McCusker and Price on the central role of trade and the Atlantic economy. Taken together these two volumes provide the best possible foundation for the detailed study of the Atlantic trade in global expansion.




Portuguese Intervention in the Manila Galleon Trade


Book Description

In this study of the Portuguese intervention in the Manila Galleon Trade, Etsuko Miyata explores its history through a new approach: the examination of Chinese ceramics.