The economic history of eighteenth-century Spanish American is a burgeoning field, with contributions on finance, trade, taxation, and their interrelations on both sides of the Atlantic. For New Spain, most economics scholarship has focused on silver production, trade, and taxation for the Spanish crown. Guillermina del Valle Pavón addresses Mexico City's merchants and miners during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1779–83. They assisted the Spanish crown with donations and loans; thus, New Spain's silver helped to finance Spain's different war projects. The book starts in 1774, five years before the conflict, with the authorization of free trade in local goods among colonies.
Once licit, the magnitude and relevance of transpacific trade of different commodities, both local and imported, appears in official documents. The crown persuaded New Spain's commercial and mining elite to give extraordinary sums of money, and this work explores the economic changes and opportunities that stemmed from free trade and elite privileges negotiated in return for silver.
Chapter 1 examines the gifts that the minister of the Indies requested to strengthen the royal army, meet the economic needs of the prince of Asturias, and collect the “universal” donation that Charles III requested for the war. The merchant and mining guilds gave generous donations in return for trading and fiscal privileges. They built ships and defrayed other war expenses. An extensive investigation of surplus available in the coffers of the merchants’ consulate produced a first donation of 300,000 pesos. The viceroy convinced the miners guild to contribute by promising that they would be allowed to create their own guild with all legal privileges. In the past, they had depended on the merchants’ consulate. Throughout the war, they were asked for more loans; by the end of the war, they had given at least 2,490,000 pesos.
Chapter 2 studies business in the South Sea (Mar del Sur) conducted by merchants from Biskaia who had established themselves in Spanish America, Francisco Ignacio de Yraeta and Isidro Antonio de Icaza (cocoa trade). With representatives in ports in Panama, Ecuador, and Peru, they strengthened their ties when Icaza married Yraeta's older daughter in 1782. Cocoa was an important commodity because its preparation with sugar produced champurrado, a basic high-calorie staple in the laboring classes’ diet in New Spain. They also traded textiles from Asia and Europe.
The Spanish crown favored merchant's monopolies and ensured preferential treatment for European commodities. During the war, blockades and British corsairs reduced Spanish American trade and forced the crown to revise trade regulations. For the duration of the conflict, Yraeta and Icaza controlled a great portion of the trade in the Spanish American Pacific due to their high flow rates, business networks, and personal relations with the viceroy and other high-ranking government officials.
Chapter 3 delves into the requests for additional resources by Havana's military governor to support war in 1782 and 1783. The Merchants Consulate and Mining Guild courts persuaded other groups, the landed and mining oligarchy and ecclesiastical institutions, to contribute as well. The Church was reluctant to entrust its resources to the crown's coffers, rightly fearing that they would not be repaid and that their assets would be easily expropriated. Income from tobacco and coin-minting taxes guaranteed the loans. Merchants requested considerations such as licenses to participate in Asian textile trades in the Pacific.
Most money raised was spent in Havana on war campaigns, and the rest supported the heirs’ princes. Thanks to the donation, the Mining Guild operated as an autonomous corporation, and was liberated from the yoke of the Merchant's Consulate. Some obtained titles of nobility for their children. New Spain's economic elite willingly gave a substantial part of their wealth in return for social recognition from the Spanish crown.
This book makes important contributions to economic history and world history. Chapter 2 reaches beyond the general field of world history to show trade networks and consumer habits of New Spain, where commodities from the Pacific reached all social classes. New Spain's transpacific trade was as important as its transatlantic trade. The thorough archival research in this book sheds light on the wealth of resources in the late colonial period and the importance of familiarity with the archives for both sides of the Atlantic.
