Kenneth Hirth's agenda is a comprehensive examination of the Aztec market economy, and the book is outstanding in this regard. Topics include commoner producer-sellers, craftsperson-sellers, and retail merchants. Hirth approaches the Aztec economy with an ethnographic sensibility and an economic conceptual structure. He breathes life into the colonial documentation and carefully dissects key Nahuatl economic terms.
The book is strongly focused on the theme referenced in the main title, Aztec economy, rather than ancient Mesoamerica. Hirth uses information from other times and places in Mesoamerica sparingly to understand the Aztec Postclassic situation better. Most of the documentation related to the Aztecs derives from the central highlands, specifically, the Basin of Mexico, the nerve center of the empire and later Spanish administration. At the outset, Hirth clarifies that he is not bringing archaeological data to bear upon the subject, so it is not fair to wish that he had covered earlier and more spatially extensive archaeological information, although I do. As a consequence of his focus, Hirth does not tackle the origins of or changes in Mesoamerican commerce, examining instead the latest and most complex manifestation of a Mesoamerican economic system. This is also the only one for which rich documentation exists.
The book is well written, with a smooth presentation and few typographical or grammatical errors (such as “further” instead of “farther”). Many details, clarifications, and additional theoretical comments are placed in notes—33 pages of them, providing a substantial scholarly infrastructure. A number of key points are reiterated sufficiently in individual chapters so that many chapters can be used alone as readings for seminars or courses. Hirth is clear on ways he disagrees with other estimates, definitions, and interpretations in the literature, adding to the usefulness of the book.
The conceptual structure applied to the Aztec economy is the concern of chapter 2, following a chapter introducing the subject and place to orient readers. A fundamental distinction for Hirth is that between the domestic and institutional economies. The institutional economy is further subdivided into informal and formal components. The latter applies to society as a whole and includes tribute and labor service, for example. The informal institutional economy, defined as customary rules and expectations, usually without oversight, operates at the scale of lineage or community. Here there is room for some disagreement with Hirth's interpretations, if ostensibly kin-ordered corporate groups or associations operated with formalized procedures for membership, handling of resources, and decision making. Kinship links may play second fiddle or constitute fictive or manipulated ties. Readers can consider the organizational formality of the long-distance merchants or suspect that urban calpulli as corporate land-holding units may have become more like residential classifications than kinship groupings.
Chapter 3 characterizes Aztec marketplaces, the key formal institution for market exchanges. A consideration of market tax notes that it apparently varied across Mesoamerica; in the Aztec core, taxes supported the marketplace but did not result in significant accumulation of wealth by elites. Chapter 4 considers the general nature of mercantile activity and entrepreneurial efforts for “profit” or advantage. These concepts require careful dissection and attention to linguistic information, which Hirth provides.
A noteworthy strength of the book is its attention to the domestic economy and how it interfaces with the marketplace. Hirth redresses the state-centric and elite-centric perspectives that have colored so much of our understanding of Mesoamerican economies. Household producer-sellers operated in considerable numbers in Aztec marketplaces. Chapter 5 is devoted to that subject. Chapter 6 addresses the subject of professional retail merchants, including the articulation of merchants with craftspersons who were sellers.
Professional merchants who operated at long distances are scrutinized in chapter 7, which considers the confusion surrounding the Nahuatl term pochteca as it applied to professional merchants, not all of whom were vanguard merchants reaching distant lands. Examples of merchant communities and the relationship of long-distance merchants to the state are particularly interesting subjects. Hirth stresses that long-distance merchants faced elevated risks and required special organizational measures. The opportunity to accumulate riches in high-value transportable items became a point of tension with other centers of power and wealth in Aztec society, such as rulers, elite warriors, and landed nobility. Cleavages and competitions within ancient states and empires are a critical dynamic from a comparative perspective.
Chapter 8 will prove particularly pivotal for comparative work, as it addresses the mechanics of Aztec commerce, starting with the fundamentals of an economy largely reliant on human transport. Bargaining, currency, brokers, and other factors (agents) are discussed, especially in relation to long-distance commerce. Loans and interest are other features of economic activity, but sales of land and wage labor were not active sectors of the economy, in contrast to marketplace exchanges of items and services. Hirth stresses the vigor and pervasiveness of marketplace exchanges for households—the backbone of Aztec economy—although the marketplace transmuted mundane and elite luxury items alike, a process facilitated by media of exchange such as cacao beans.
The concluding chapter reprises key findings and situates the Aztecs within a framework suitable for comparison to other premodern societies. Hirth discusses the use of cross-cultural perspectives; this discussion is brief, and the primary comparison is with the well-documented history of western Europe. There is little discussion of the history of Mesoamerican exchange or the variability mentioned occasionally in earlier chapters. Nevertheless, the “leads” for further investigation are many: the roles of urban centers as loci for crafts, the indication that commerce beyond the empire was transforming the social roles of Maya elites, the possibility that earlier Nahua migrations and enclaves reflected, in part, the extension of commercial organizations to distant lands.
With this substantial treatment of the Aztec case, a path is laid down for new efforts to compare economies and economic change. This book is one of four volumes about markets in the ancient New World that have appeared since 2010. Hirth's book is unique in its depth of coverage and abundance of information about a particularly intriguing Mesoamerican economy, which will make it especially useful for comparative economists and economic historians. It will be a touchstone volume in Mesoamerica and beyond for a very long time.
