Redes, corporaciones comerciales y mercados hispanoamericanos is one of the many edited volumes published in Mexico by the Instituto Mora, which has housed significant research on the colonial and early national economy in the last decades. The editors belong to a generation of historians trained at the Colegio de México who have greatly expanded the economic history research agenda in Mexico; Guillermina del Valle Pavón's authoritative study of the Mexican Consulado and Antonio Ibarra's novel contribution to the history of Guadalajara's regional economy, both for the eighteenth century, are an obligatory reference for scholars engaged with Mexican colonial history. In turn, they are now leading a new cohort of younger academics, and this book gathers some of their contributions presented at an international seminar in 2016.

This edited book compiles 12 chapters on diverse regions and periods, which better reflect the origin and local interest of each of the authors than a unified general appraisal of the colonial and global economy. As advanced in the title, topics range from the network of miners in seventeenth-century San Luis Potosí (Sergio Serrano), to the organisation and strategies of Basque and monta ñ és (highlander) businessmen and groups at the end of the Spanish rule (del Valle Pavón and Karina Mota), to the networks around the mercantile corporations in main hubs such as Cádiz, Veracruz and Puebla (Mario Trujillo, Iliana Quintanar and Yovana Celaya respectively). The rest zooms in on the general commerce at individual ports beyond Mexico, with chapters on Buenos Aires (Fernando Jumar), Cobija (Viviana Conti), Arica (Cristina Mazzeo) and Montevideo (Luis Aguirre) during the collapse of Spanish mercantilism through to the commercial transition of post-independence. Two other articles delve into the connection between overseas trade and the domestic regional economy in Guadalajara (Ibarra) and neighbouring Veracruz (Álvaro Alcántara). All the chapters are rich in empirical information, showing the virtues of careful archival work and offering very informed studies on particular situations and locations within the broader colonial commerce and economy in Spanish America.

An introduction by the editors and Alcántara describes a bit too thinly the historiographical background and the contribution of the individual studies. Methodologically, some chapters apply network analysis techniques – for instance, to commercial, financial or power relations in seventeenth-century San Luis Potosí; however, this analysis falls short of offering a new perspective on the mining business. While carefully implemented, the exercise is prejudiced by the ‘surviving bias’ problem, inevitable in any data-driven research design. More conventional approaches, grounded in painstaking archival research, are, however, more compelling at revealing agents, institutions and motivations underpinning the cleavages of the time: for example, the biography of businessman Bassoco in Mexico City and the political strategies of the Puebla elite; the opportunities and challenges for Buenos Aires merchants – native and foreign – involved in the booming import-export trade; and the versatility of the Montevideo elite in adapting to changing political circumstances. These chapters sharply mirror contemporary political economic problems. Unfortunately, the publication lacks a concluding chapter or epilogue which could aggregate findings, distinguish differences or sum up conclusions across individual chapters. Therefore, the overall analysis – and its historiographical implications – is somewhat incomplete. Nevertheless, there are a couple of interesting insights to take away from this book.

First, as outlined in the chapter on the introduction of Chinese (and other) goods into Guadalajara, and underlying Jumar's candid study of River Plate commerce, a vigorous and extended domestic demand for consumer goods is unveiled. Both highlight the importance of consumption, even in the remotest inland regions and encompassing all classes in the broad colonial society. These often-neglected features further Carlos Assadourian's seminal thesis on the role of the domestic colonial economy and the integration of regional markets in the eighteenth century. These findings shed light on the colonial demand, which deserves a more systemic analysis, ideally zooming out into a larger scale. Assessing the consumption potential of Spanish Americans – of all classes and ethnicity – without a proper yardstick for comparison can be misleading, though. Unlike Eurasia, early modern Spanish America never suffered Malthusian pressures. Plenty of land and water made all regions food self-sufficient (including the Spanish Caribbean islands) and all attained comparable or higher than average living standards in Europe and Asia – and most likely higher levels of inequality. The international demand for the silver mined and minted there, disseminated throughout by situados (intra-imperial transfers) afforded inhabitants of all classes very high (relative) purchasing power. In the background of such consumption levels – or coevolving with them – there was an extraordinary growth in the exports of silver coins that enabled the intensification of exchanges with the rest of the world from the 1780s more convincingly than ‘trade liberalisation’ policies.

Chapters here present the limits of using ad hoc – somewhat outdated – concepts of Spanish mercantilism. Some authors seem more persuaded than others about the scope of such restrictive metropolitan policies; yet, the cases discussed here suggest that these assumptions – often taken at face value – badly need a critical reassessment or more precision – for consistency – with the findings. All chapters show in one way or another that, indeed, while more direct trade was a feature of the later eighteenth century, this was not strictly a more open commerce. Following the Seven Years War, developments worldwide and in Europe in particular eased the gravitation of other Europeans to Spanish American coasts. The 1767 Free Ports Act opened Britain's monopoly in the Caribbean; the American Revolution saw a boom in US shipping around Cape Horn, and the French Wars disrupted Europe's colonial trade; Spain licensed neutral shipping to and from Spanish America – fostering a greater intermediation of its commerce by ‘foreign’ merchants. Piecemeal commercial legislation in Madrid did not pull British, US and Portuguese shipping (especially after the Court's move to Rio de Janeiro in 1808) over the Atlantic and the Pacific; it just reduced intermediation costs. Commerce was never ‘closed’ – even trade at Cádiz was never fully controlled by Spaniards – as reflected in the problems of estimating ‘illegal’ trade mentioned in some chapters. Foreign shipping made commerce more direct and more available via bypassing local privileged merchants, who, in collusion with royal officials, controlled the access to consumers inland – and silver exports, more importantly – in each of the ports or large cities. More direct and more frequent, rather than freer, access to exchange silver for imported consumer goods – Asian or European – improved the purchasing power of silver money and changed relative prices between tradeable and non-tradeable goods. It thus fostered the production of other export commodities in regions poorly endowed with metals, altering the leverage of local elites and colonial authorities and making commerce and politics more competitive and open. Naturally, old and new economic interests clashed over legitimacy issues when Spanish governance crumbled; indeed, regional divergence had started well before Independence. Any qualification of the outcomes of such transformations in the commerce and politics of Spanish America should take stock of the valuable empirical information presented here.