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Traditional historical literature has stressed a generalised crisis throughout the world in the 17 th century. First proposed for Europe with its numerous dynastic, religious and state conflicts, it has now been expanded to include Asia and the Middle East as well. It was also assumed that there was a significant crisis in the Americas, a theme whi...
Citations
... Morineau (1985, p. 252) suggests there was a major transformation in the nature of the cargoes; as the century advanced, the fleets carried «more velvet from Genoa and bayettes from Colchester, cloth from Brittany and lace from Bruges, less oil and less wine»-that is, fewer cheap, bulky cargoes and more expensive, low-volume goods. This would appear to be consistent with another crucial development: the growing self-sufficiency of the colonial economy in the 17 th century (Assadourian, 1982;Klein and Serrano Hernández, 2019). However, García-Baquero (1994, p. 123) is not persuaded by Morineau's argument (which admittedly the French historian does not develop in depth), contending that such a radical transformation in the quality of goods exported to the Indies is uncertain. ...
This article examines the fiscal transformation of Spain's trade with Spanish America during the 17 th century. It analyses the taxation of trade combined with the evolution of the Hispanic Monarchy's long-term domestic debt. To this end, the author looks at the almojarifazgo de Indias (main customs duty), its juro (annuity) obligations and the evolution of the transatlantic trade. He argues that the fall in customs revenue and the increasing non-payment of the juros issued against the almojarifazgo were neither a consequence of the alleged crisis of the Carrera de Indias nor of the higher incidence of fraud. The Crown was not interested in exerting greater fiscal pressure on the trade or fighting fraud at the customs houses of Seville and Cadiz as the increased tax revenue would have gone entirely to service the unpaid juros . Instead, the fiscal burden shifted towards extraordinary contributions that were free of juro obligations.
... Discoveries of mercury deposits in California during the 1850s lessened the cartel's market power, gearing up for an era of cheap mercury until the advent of cyanidation. 69 New Spain's ores diverged regionally. In central Mexico and other belts in the western Sierra Madre, amalgamation became the process of choice, while producers in San Luis Potosí and other eastern belts resorted to smelting. ...
Objective/Context:
The paper provides a comprehensive overview of Latin American mining history, exploring cross-pollination opportunities between mining historians and scholars of the emerging field of the new history of capitalism. The analysis spans from the region’s integration into global markets during the 1500s to the twilight of export-led growth in the early twentieth century.
Methodology:
The study builds on an overview of both classic and contemporary literature, offering new insights into understanding existing data on mining history within a global context. By incorporating perspectives from geology, ecology, and economics, the article investigates the connections between specific mineral deposits and different paths of capitalistic development across Latin America.
Originality:
The paper sketches some of the gaps in the analysis of global and local flows of minerals and comments on notable contributions to the broader field of Latin American history. It introduces innovative approaches for the study of output cycles, geological and ecological endowments, technological spillovers, and mining economics.
Conclusions:
First, the existing literature has predominantly focused on precious metals, with few scholars studying non-precious metals and non-metallic minerals. Second, the narratives surrounding mining history have been primarily centered on silver, overshadowing the significance of bimetallism in understanding the emergence of global capitalism. Thirdly, examining the microeconomic dynamics of mining in the region may present fresh opportunities to explore the impact of mining on sectoral and managerial transformations. Finally, studies of the two-way interaction of capitalism and mining need to include research on the energy and environmental systems that underpinned mineral extraction and production.
... Another investigation showed that funds "extracted" from the Spanish colonies and remitted to Spain were actually rather low, as most colonial state revenues were locally spent (Grafe and Irigoin 2012). A recent survey by Klein and Serrano Hernández (2018) bolsters claims of robust economic and demographic growth across Spanish America during most of the seventeenth century. Likewise, Suarez Espinosa (2018, p. 259) documents Peruvian wine sales at Lima or Panama at over one million pesos in 1677 and 1679 (over 3 million pesos at prices in Potosí) alongside massive flows of contraband silver from Peru across the Pacific Ocean. ...
In recent decades, economic historians have debated when globalization began. Based upon a narrow definition of globalization focused on price convergence, providing evidence of market integration, one side argues that globalization began in the early nineteenth century. A competing argument defines globalization in broad geographical terms, citing multidisciplinary evidence to support the claim that globalization began during the sixteenth century. Both views are reviewed in this essay. When commodity market integration is considered under the narrow definition of globalization, now known as “hard globalization”, our study reveals abundant evidence of price convergence across markets in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe prior to the nineteenth century (notwithstanding deliberate mercantilist trading company policies designed to hinder convergence of prices). Assessment of globalization must expand beyond purely economic aspects (including price convergence). Imported epidemics dramatically depopulated the Western Hemisphere upon initial arrival of Europeans, for instance, resulting in eventual transoceanic shipment of millions of slaves. Oceanic connections also generated Columbian and Magellan exchanges that transformed physical geographies across Earth, promulgating worldwide agricultural and population explosions with multidimensional feedback loops that continue to reverberate to this day. Our conclusion is twofold: (a) globalization began during the sixteenth (not nineteenth) century, and (b) twenty-first century globalization is characterized by cultural, ecological, economic, epidemiological, demographic, and political interactions initiated 4.5 centuries ago upon fusion of Eastern and Western hemispheres, after 10,000+ years of mutual isolation due to ocean levels that rose by hundreds of feet during the interglacial Holocene.
This article analyses the evolution and development of royal households in the governmental structure of Spanish America between 1665 and 1746. This study aims to provide answers to the governmental crisis that developed in the kingdoms of the Indies after the Crown prohibited viceroys from granting grants and offices to their relatives and servants (1678), which limited the size of viceregal households and their entourages. In short, the purpose is to illustrate how the dismantling of the viceregal domestic structure and governance from afar affected viceregal households as a nucleus of political power.
This essay surveys both the traditional findings and new debates that have used the Spanish imperial royal financial accounts to analyze the colonial economy and government. The crisis of the seventeenth century, the relations between colonial elites and royal government, the impact of income transfers among treasury offices, the sale of offices, the system of voluntary loans, the eighteenth-century reforms, and the influence of the tax system on the evolution of the colonial economy and society have all created a new set of questions and debates that historians, economists, and political scientists have engaged in. There is both consensus and disagreement on what these numbers mean for various groups in the society as well as long-term institutional developments. Just as new approaches have opened up new area for research, there is also a great deal of unexplored topics that can be developed using the unpublished primary accounts.
This paper analyzes the policies that the Castile of the seventeenth century followed toward creating and selling short-term and long-term debt paid off from the Crown's New World revenues. We use microdata to reconstruct comprehensive fiscal accounts for Spanish America during the seventeenth century. Our new time series evidence shows that the Spanish Empire maintained differential debt policies in the center and the periphery. Spanish America issued considerably less debt, more credible than coetaneous Castilian debt. However, the issuances’ size did not reflect lower debt capacity in the New World, as the Spanish Empire restrained long-term debt issuance to emergencies. We also provide complementary evidence from debt issuances and explain why differential debt policies were maintained.
Table of Contents
1. Capitalisms of the “Global South” (c. 10th to 19th Centuries) – Old and New Contributions and Debates· 3-41
Kaveh Yazdani, University of Connecticut, United States
Constanza Castro, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
2. Capitalism and Global Mining: Latin American Perspectives 1500-1914· 43-76
James V. Torres, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
3. Political Economy and Knowledge Production in the Making of the Viceroyalty of New Granada· 77-101
María José Afanador-Llach, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
4. Exploring Capitalism in the Economy of Early Modern Gujarat: The Structure and Organization of Textile Production and the Market in Surat in the Eighteenth Century· 103-128
Ghulam A. Nadri, Georgia State University, United States
5. Merchant capital and labor migration in the colonial Indian Ocean world· 129-153
Richard B. Allen, Ohio University Press, United States
6. Capital and World Labor: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the Nineteenth Century· 155-182
Tâmis Parron, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil
7. “Soft Gold” Before the Gold Rush: Sea Otter Pelts in the “Competitive Expansion” of Merchant Capitalism and the Creation of a Pacific Ocean Economy· 183-207
Arturo Giráldez, University of the Pacific, United States
Analiese Richard, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Cuajimalpa, Mexico
8.The evolution of commercial finance in Ming-Qing China:16th to Early-20th Centuries· 209-230
Kaixiang Peng, Wuhan University, China
Liangping Shen, Henan University, China
9. Camel Caravans as a Mode of Production in Postclassical Afro-Eurasia.
An Interview with Richard W. Bulliet, Columbia University, United States· 231-252
By Constanza Castro, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia and Kaveh Yazdani, University of Connecticut, United States
10. The origins of commercial capitalism, colonial expansion and history as theory.
An interview with Jairus Banaji, Universidad de Londres, Inglaterra· 253-275
By Juan Vicente Iborra Mallent, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM
Using the wreck of the galleon Nuestra Señora de Las Maravillas (1656) as a point of departure, this article analyzes the role of Cartagena de Indias as a logistical center for fraudulent silver salvaging and transportation in the Spanish Caribbean during the middle of the seventeenth century. After 1640, Cartagena's insertion into Atlantic maritime networks suffered from the collapse of Portuguese-led slave trading, the decline in legal silver circulation in Spanish ports, and expansion of other European colonial powers across the Caribbean. The article uses the cases made against officials and contractors involved in unauthorized silver salvaging in Cartagena to show how Caribbean-based Spanish merchants and administrators created trans-Atlantic bullion transportation networks independent of royal control. Like their legal counterparts, these unauthorized networks relied on specialized maritime labor from free and unfree divers of African and Amerindian origin, and sailors of all races. Simultaneously, maritime laborers' knowledge, often extracted under torture, formed the basis of prosecutors' cases against suspect colonial officials. By following these maritime linkages, this article highlights the centrality of maritime labor and communication logistics in the structural rearrangement of the Caribbean during the seventeenth century.
Objetivo/Contexto:
Este artículo examina las causas de la evasión del impuesto a los metales en los reales de minas de la provincia de Pamplona del Nuevo Reino de Granada (NRG), en cuya Caja Real no se declararon metales desde el año 1636 hasta 1678, si bien en ese mismo periodo hubo mineros, alcaldes de minas, indios y esclavos dedicados a la minería. Las autoridades de Madrid buscaron establecer los montos defraudados mediante dos visitas, una llevada a cabo en 1659 y otra, en 1676.
Metodología:
Además de visitas fiscales, ordinarias y generales, se consultaron cuentas de la Caja Real de Pamplona y la historiografía sobre la minería neogranadina.
Originalidad:
la revisión documental permitió mostrar la forma como se evadía el impuesto a los metales en esta jurisdicción y ofrecer respuestas a un fenómeno generalizado en toda Hispanoamérica y evocado por los historiadores, pero pocas veces expuesto en sus detalles y en casos concretos, dada su naturaleza y la escasa huella documental.
Conclusiones:
Entre los resultados se destaca que los valores potencialmente defraudados en los años analizados, 1636-1678, reflejan una producción mayor que la dada en la etapa con huella tributaria: 1617-1635. También se constató que en el fraude participaban funcionarios de la Audiencia de Santa Fe y del cabildo de Pamplona, es decir, se trataba de un asunto socialmente compartido entre mineros y autoridades.
