True to its title, Julia Sarreal's book provides a socioeconomic history of the rise and fall of the Guaraní missions of South America. The author seeks to provide an integrated analysis of this eighteenth-century phenomena, drawing from understudied account books, receipts, summaries, and audits as well as from the canons of the field: censuses, Jesuit and other ecclesiastical papers, and reports by crown and provincial officials. Sarreal notes that study of the mission economy is particularly fruitful from the vantage point of ethnohistory. Because the Guaraní were the principal laborers and beneficiaries of that system, Sarreal's method of close reading for indigenous perspectives and economic actions permits her to reflect on their experiences of the missions, their responses “to political changes under the late colonial period, and how they became increasingly integrated into the Spanish Empire and the broader Atlantic world” (p. 12).

This unique approach relates that Guaraní experience in nine chapters, organized by theme and a loose chronology. Chapters 1 through 4 take place mostly in the seventeenth century, when readers are situated in the frontier lands of the Río de la Plata. There they meet the Guaraní, the Jesuits, the 30 missions of this study, and colonial and provincial church and state officials and learn about the social and economic relations that shaped and were shaped by the urban design of the mission towns and the communal system of production. The author finds that the Guaraní applied pressure on the missionaries to create this economy of collective labor and ownership of mission property. Whereas scholars have understood Guaraní flight broadly as resistance to the constraints of mission life, Sarreal argues that the Indians used these tactics carefully to mitigate mission policies in their favor. The low agricultural yields that resulted from Guaraní absence and a lackluster work ethic jeopardized a mission's viability and the health of its inhabitants. However, the missionaries could do little to impose a demanding labor regime. And, as the main work force, mission residents could halt the economy by threatening work stoppage. Sarreal reveals the real bargaining power gained by the Guaraní tactics, which compelled the Jesuits to increase by six times the land dedicated to food for internal consumption and to redistribute goods from the communal warehouse. Thus, the flexible communal system of the mission economy was shaped by the Guaraní, who obtained supplies without meeting onerous labor requirements.

The second half of the book, Chapters 5 through 9, is its strength. Following the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish empire (1767–68), the missions came under the control of separate secular administrators. Secular priests looked to the religious affairs, and Spanish bureaucrats oversaw economic functions. Specialists have looked to the departure of the Jesuits, corruption, and poor administration as the principal causes for the missions’ decline in the late eighteenth century, but Sarreal's analysis of accounting records revise scholarly explanations. The author explains that salaries emerged as a large expense when the missions fell under secular care. Whereas, previously, the Jesuits had shared and accepted as remuneration one collective crown donation, now each Spanish official received an individual salary. That the wages reflected market value dismisses corruption as a casual factor. Rather, the salaries became costly expenditures that the missions’ communal structure could not sustain while simultaneously providing for mission inhabitants and external trade. Sarreal argues that the market-based ideology introduced by Enlightenment-minded officials and other factors sent the missions’ communal system into bankruptcy.

This work will be of interest for graduate students, general readers, and specialists alike. It is written accessibly and accompanied by tables of economic and statistical data that will be useful for the classroom. This important work and its innovative method joining ethnohistory and socioeconomic history promises to open up new avenues of research.