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385
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English
Ebooks
2006
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Publié par
Date de parution
18 juillet 2006
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9780822388029
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
2 Mo
Demonstrating that globalization is a centuries-old phenomenon, From Silver to Cocaine examines the commodity chains that have connected producers in Latin America with consumers around the world for five hundred years. In clear, accessible essays, historians from Latin America, England, and the United States trace the paths of many of Latin America's most important exports: coffee, bananas, rubber, sugar, tobacco, silver, henequen (fiber), fertilizers, cacao, cocaine, indigo, and cochineal (insects used to make dye). Each contributor follows a specific commodity from its inception, through its development and transport, to its final destination in the hands of consumers. The essays are arranged in chronological order, according to when the production of a particular commodity became significant to Latin America's economy. Some-such as silver, sugar, and tobacco-were actively produced and traded in the sixteenth century; others-such as bananas and rubber-only at the end of the nineteenth century; and cocaine only in the twentieth.By focusing on changing patterns of production and consumption over time, the contributors reconstruct complex webs of relationships and economic processes, highlighting Latin America's central and interactive place in the world economy. They show how changes in coffee consumption habits, clothing fashions, drug usage, or tire technologies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas reverberate through Latin American commodity chains in profound ways. The social and economic outcomes of the continent's export experience have been mixed. By analyzing the dynamics of a wide range of commodities over a five-hundred-year period, From Silver to Cocaine highlights this diversity at the same time that it provides a basis for comparison and points to new ways of doing global history.Contributors. Marcelo Bucheli, Horacio Crespo, Zephyr Frank, Paul Gootenberg, Robert Greenhill, Mary Ann Mahony, Carlos Marichal, David McCreery, Rory Miller, Aldo Musacchio, Laura Nater, Ian Read, Mario Samper, Steven Topik, Allen Wells
Voir
Publié par
Date de parution
18 juillet 2006
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9780822388029
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
2 Mo
from silver to cocaine
a m e r i c a n e n c o u n t e r s / g l o b a l i n t e r a c t i o n s A Series Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg
This series aims to stimulate critical perspectives and fresh interpretive frame-works for scholarship on the history of the imposing global presence of the United States. Its primary concerns include the deployment and contestation of power, the construction and deconstruction of cultural and political borders, the fluid meanings of intercultural encounters, and the complex interplay be-tween the global and the local. American Encounters seeks to strengthen di-alogue and collaboration between historians of U.S. international relations and area studies specialists. The series encourages scholarship based on multi-archival historical re-search. At the same time, it supports a recognition of the representational character of all stories about the past and promotes critical inquiry into issues of subjectivity and narrative. In the process, American Encounters strives to under-stand the context in which meanings related to nations, cultures, and political economy are continually produced, challenged, and reshaped.
F R O M S I L V E R
T O C O C A I N E
Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000
Edited by Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank
d u k e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s Durham and London 2006
∫2006 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Quadraat by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.
Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, which provided funds toward the production of this book.
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contents
in tr o d u c tio n Commodity Chains in Theory and in Latin American History Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank
The Spanish-American Silver Peso: Export Commodity and Global Money of the Ancien Regime, 1550–1800Carlos Marichal
Indigo Commodity Chains in the Spanish and British Empires, 1560–1860David McCreery
Mexican Cochineal and the European Demand for American Dyes, 1550–1850Carlos Marichal
Colonial Tobacco: Key Commodity of the Spanish Empire, 1500–1800
Laura Nater
The Latin American Co√ee Commodity Chain: Brazil and Costa RicaSteven Topik and Mario Samper
Trade Regimes and the International Sugar Market, 1850–1980: Protectionism, Subsidies, and RegulationHoracio Crespo
The Local and the Global: Internal and External Factors in the Development of Bahia’s Cacao SectorMary Ann Mahony
Banana Boats and Baby Food: The Banana in U.S. History Marcelo Bucheli and Ian Read
The Fertilizer Commodity Chains: Guano and Nitrate, 1840–1930 Rory Miller and Robert Greenhill
Brazil in the International Rubber Trade, 1870–1930 Zephyr Frank and Aldo Musacchio
Reports of Its Demise Are Not Exaggerated: The Life and Times of Yucatecan Henequen
Allen Wells
Cocaine in Chains: The Rise and Demise of a Global Commodity, 1860–1950Paul Gootenberg
c o n c lu sio n Commodity Chains and Globalization in Historical Perspective Carlos Marichal, Steven Topik, and Zephyr Frank
c o n tr ib u to r s
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introduction
Commodity Chains in Theory and in Latin American History
Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank
latin america has been actively engaged in global trade since a Genoese sailor with Portuguese cartographic and navi-gational skills and experience sailing to Africa on Spanish ships partially financed by Italian bankers reached what would be known ∞ as the ‘‘New World.’’ A German named the new continent America, after a Florentine who wrote in Latin. Although today many observers of the world economy are fascinated by a package of transformations known as ‘‘globalization,’’ which they think was born in the post–Washington Consensus era as a result of the application of new rules on trade and finance, this volume stresses that forms of globalization have long ex-isted. In fact, many students of international trade date the beginning of ≤ the world economy to 1492 with the incorporation of the Americas. Marx and Engels eloquently noted this a century and a half ago: ‘‘The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisa-tion of America [north and south], trade with the colonies, . . . gave to ≥ commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known.’’ In contrast, researchers of a modern school date the intensification of global trade and price convergence to the last quarter of the nineteenth ∂ century. Still others argue that, despite antecedents, the true age of glob-∑ alization is actually the contemporary era. In any case, it is clear that the growing integration of the world economy has deep roots in history.
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The essays in this volume explore the numerous and changing connec-tions of Latin America with the rest of the world by looking at the complex networks of commodity trade and the chains that were created between producers and consumers over five centuries: some commodity chains, such as those of silver, sugar, and tobacco, began in the sixteenth century; those of others, such as bananas and rubber, started only at the end of the nineteenth century, and cocaine came into its own in the twentieth. Our studies are distinctive not only because we examine in detail the trajecto-ries of twelve significant commodities that prospered at di√erent times in the last five hundred years, but also because we use a commodity chain approach to investigate the relationships between producers, intermedi-aries, and consumers. Unlike some studies that concentrate on where—in which country or continent—in the chain the surplus is accumulated, we are also interested in the social and political consequences on both ends of the chain. And rather than pay attention primarily to the strategies of global firms, we are equally interested in the many other participants in the production, processing, and marketing of commodities. We focus on the production of most of the important export goods within Latin America but then move on to follow the commodities to their domestic Latin American as well as European, North American, and Asian markets. This approach is consonant with a new and vigorous trend in world economic history which has focused attention on chang-ing patterns of consumption over time and recognizes that value is cre-ated in the consumption and commercial spheres as well as in produc-tion. This expansive view allows for a more complete understanding of the full circle of supply and demand of many of the principal goods that ∏ human beings produce and consume. The idea that Latin America has been profoundly shaped by its rela-π tionship with the global economy is of long standing and well accepted. But the nature and consequences of that relationship have been stren-uously debated. Early on in Europeans’ colonization of the Americas, ∫ mercantilist views prevailed. The accumulation of natural resources, es-pecially precious metals such as silver and gold, defined wealth. Invest-ment of capital in technology, especially manufacturing, and increasing the employment level in these agrarian states was considered secondary. A complementary axiom was that the main purpose of colonies was to enrich the Iberian metropolises. Hence the imperial states of Spain and Portugal played central roles in directing their colonies’ economies. They attempted to constrain colonial commerce through royal monopolies,
s t e v e n t o p i k , c a r l o s m a r i c h a l , z e p h y r f r a n k
regulations, and licenses in order to ensure control of commodity trade and fend o√ their English, French, and Dutch rivals. It is manifest that the welfare of the colonial subjects was considered less important than the benefits that accrued to the imperial centers. Recent research, however, shows that Latin American producers were much more than simple marionettes set to dance by overseas commands Ω and demands. They were not simply passive victims. Often they played enterprising, defining, and even controlling roles. We do not assume that European players constituted the metropolis while Latin Americans were peripheral or semiperipheral. The chains were dynamic and the partici-pants often changing. Mexican and Peruvian silver miners as well as Brazilian and Caribbean sugar growers applied some of the most ad-vanced technologies to create some of the largest, most integrated man-ufactories of the world in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, gener-ating what were then several of the most valuable internationally traded commodities. Silver and sugar bound together Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, thereby fueling early globalization. This era is witnessed in our volume by four chapters on colonial exports and their international trajec-tories: Carlos Marichal writes on silver, which was not only a precious commodity but also the most widely used money of the ancien regime; David McCreery studies indigo and explains three competing chains of the most widely used dye in the world textile industry; Marichal adds a complementary essay on cochineal, the most expensive colonial dye; and Laura Nater analyzes the production and trade of tobacco in colonial Cuba. Generally speaking, the production and commerce of these valu-able goods was more closely regulated by the Spanish crown than the commodity trade of other, rival European empires. In each of these cases, the leading export commodities from Spanish America were essentially luxury goods demanded by aristocrats, merchants, and political and ec-clesiastical elites of ancien regime societies both in the Americas and in Europe. With the rise of the Industrial Revolution and expanded long-distance trade, the liberal free trade theories of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Jean-Baptiste Say became popular. Mechanization of production and transportation as well as expanded use of steam, wind, and water power led to a new calculus of profitability. Rather than sell a little for a high price under the controlled markets of the mercantilist era, producers now found it more profitable to sell a lot for the low prices now possible, and
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