Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824: Circulation, Resistance and Diversity

325 Pages·2014·5.496 MB·English

by  Bethany Aram, Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla (eds.)

Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824
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Global Goods and the
Spanish Empire, 1492–1824
Circulation, Resistance and Diversity
Edited by
Bethany Aram
Ramón y Cajal Scholar, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
Full Professor of Early Modern History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain
Editorial matter and selection © Bethany Aram and Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla 2014
Remaining chapters © Respective authors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-32404-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-45891-2 ISBN 978-1-137-32405-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137324054
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Global goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824 : circulation, resistance and diversity / edited
by Bethany Aram (Ramón y Cajal scholar, Universidad Pablo de Olavide of Seville, Spain) and
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla (full professor of early modern history, Universidad Pablo de Olavide
of Seville, Spain).
pages cm
Summary: “Drawing upon economic history, cultural studies, intellectual history and the
history of science and medicine, this collection of case studies examines the transatlantic
transfer and transformation of goods and ideas, with particular emphasis on their reception in
Europe. It critiques and enriches Atlantic history and the history of consumption by highlighting
a degree of resistance to unfamiliar goods and information as well as the asymmetrical and
violent nature of many types of exchange. It considers agents who forged networks and
relations within and beyond the Spanish Empire, including Jesuit missionaries, Sephardic
merchants, African laborers and farmers from Oaxaca to Santo Domingo to the Piedmont. While
uniting increasingly homogenous and connected societies, the expansion of European horizons
also generated diverse interests and divergent material cultures”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-349-45891-2
1. Spain—Commerce—History. 2. Spain—Colonies—America—Commerce—History.
3. America—Commerce—History. 4. Consumer goods—Spain—History. 5. Consumer
goods—America—History. 6. Material culture—Spain—History. 7. Material culture—
America—History. 8. Business networks—History. 9. Europe—Foreign economic
relations—America. 10. America—Foreign economic relations—Europe. I. Aram,
Bethany. II. Yun Casalilla, Bartolomé.
HF3685.G55 2014
382.094607—dc23 2014024811
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
1 Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492–1824:
State of the Art and Prospects for Research 1
Bethany Aram
Part I Cultural and Intellectual Constraints
2 The Early Modern Food Revolution: A Perspective
from the Iberian Atlantic 17
María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper
3 The Difficult Beginnings: Columbus as a Mediator
of New World Products 38
Consuelo Varela
4 Accommodating America: Renaissance Missionaries
between the Ancient and the New World 53
Antonella Romano
5 America and the Hermeneutics of Nature in Renaissance
Europe 78
María M. Portuondo
6 The Diffusion of Maize in Italy: From Resistance to
the Peasants’ Defeat 100
Giovanni Levi
Part II The Social Use of Things
7 Taste Transformed: Sugar and Spice at the Sixteenth-Century
Hispano-Burgundian Court 119
Bethany Aram
8 Diet, Travel, and Colonialism in the Early Modern World 137
Rebecca Earle
9 Asian Silk, Porcelain and Material Culture in the
Definition of Mexican and Andalusian Elites, c. 1565–1630 153
José Luis Gasch-Tomás
v
vi Contents
10 Interest and Curiosity: American Products, Information,
and Exotica in Tuscany 174
Francisco Zamora Rodríguez
Part III Connected and Contrasting Societies
11 Mexican Cochineal and European Demand for
a Luxury Dye, 1550–1850 197
Carlos Marichal
12 Hispaniola’s Turn to Tobacco: Products from Santo Domingo
in Atlantic Commerce 216
Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero
13 Global Trade, Environmental Constraints, and
Local Conflicts: The Case of Early Modern Hispaniola 230
Igor Pérez Tostado
14 The Resilience and Boomerang Effect of Chocolate:
A Product’s Globalization and Commodification 255
Irene Fattacciu
Final Thoughts
15 The Spanish Empire, Globalization, and Cross-Cultural
Consumption in a World Context, c. 1400–c. 1750 277
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
Selected Bibliography 307
Index 319
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
5.1 “Orbis tabula,” in Benito Arias Montano, Phaleg siue
De gentium sedibus primis, orbisque terrae situ (Antwerp, 1572) 86
5.2 Narcissus jacobeus, in C. Clusius, Rariorum plantarum
historia (Antwerp, 1601), 157 88
9.1 Japanese trunk decorated in mother-of-pearl with floral
and animal motifs and Taoist symbols, 1576–1625.
Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid 163
9.2 Figure of the infant Jesus from Cebu (Philippines).
Anonymous, 1601–1700. Museo de América, Madrid 166
10.1 Frontispiece of Francesco Redi, Esperienze intorno a diverse
cose naturali (Florence: All’Insegna della Nave, 1671) with
a drawing of a custard apple, p. 163 185
11.1 The cochineal commodity chain: from Veracruz
to Europe, c. 1780 207
11.2 The cochineal trade: mercantile networks in colonial Mexico 209
11.3 Annual production of cochineal by weight registered
at the Oficina del Registro y la Administración Principal
de Rentas, Oaxaca, 1758–1854 212
11.4 Annual value of cochineal production registered at
the Oficina del Registro y la Administración Principal
de Rentas, Oaxaca, 1758–1854 212
14.1 Weights of cocoa imported by the Dutch and by
the Spanish, 1700–78, with an estimate of
Europe’s cocoa imports 265
Tables
6.1 Distribution of production of main cereals in four provinces
of Piedmont and in the region, 1760–69 and 1780–89 110
9.1 Ownership of Asian goods in Mexico City, 1580–1630 157
9.2 Ownership of Asian goods in Seville, 1580–1630 158
vii
Acknowledgements
This book represents the culmination of a four-year research project directed
by Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and financed by the Regional Government ( Junta)
of Andalucía, P09-HUM 5330, “New Atlantic Products, Science, War, Economy
and Consumption in the Old Regime.” The chapters selected and revised for
publication have been presented and discussed at international workshops
held at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, from 11 to
12 December 2010, as well as at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide and
the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville, Spain, from 22 to
23 March 2011. The editors are grateful to all of the participants for their
contributions to these workshops. For reasons of space and coherence, it has
not been possible to include all of them in this book.
The editors are grateful to their colleagues and students at the Department
of History and Civilization at the European University Institute of Florence
and the Department of History, Geography and Philosophy of the
Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville. They have acquired a particu-
lar debt of gratitude to Ruth Mackay, for accepting delays and providing
at tentive, expert translations of the chapters written in Spanish by Gutiérrez
Escudero, Pérez Samper, Pérez Tostado, Zamora Rodríguez and Varela. Her
work was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and
Competitivity, HAR2010-12073-E, “Nuevos productos Atlánticos, ciencia,
guerra, economía y consumo en el antiguo régimen,” which also helped
meet the costs of the workshop held in Seville. The editors are also grate-
ful to José Luis Gasch-Tomás for translating Giovanni Levi’s chapter from
Italian and preparing the index. At the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, they
also acknowledge the assistance of Laura Borragán Fernández and Lucrecia
Johansson with the book’s notes and bibliography.
Finally, the editors would like to thank an anonymous reader at Palgrave
Macmillan for thoughtful suggestions—incorporated to the best of our
ability—as well as Fiona Little, Jen McCall and Holly Tyler for their patient
help and support overseeing the project’s completion. Above all, however, we
thank the authors contributing to this volume for enduring our multiple que-
ries and requests in the context of an exchange that has brought us together
without undermining the diversity of the perspectives developed here.
Bethany Aram and Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
Seville and Florence, 2013–14
viii
Notes on the Contributors
Bethany Aram is a Ramón y Cajal scholar in the Area of Early Modern
History at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain. Her research
has focused on the early sixteenth-century Hispano-Burgundian monarchy
and the conquest of Central America.
Rebecca Earle is a cultural historian of colonial and early national Spanish
America at the University of Warwick. Her most recent work has been particu-
larly concerned with the construction of racial categories, with the construction
of national pasts in the postcolonial era and with the role of food in structuring
colonial society.
Irene Fattacciu is a research fellow at the University of Turin. She earned
her Ph.D. at the European University Institute in Florence with a thesis on
the mechanisms and implications of appropriation and diffusion of choc-
olate through eighteenth-century Atlantic and Spanish networks.
José Luis Gasch-Tomás, a member of the Area of Early Modern History at
the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, recently defended his Ph.D. thesis at the
European University Institute in Florence on the commerce, circulation and
consumption of Asian products in New Spain and Castile.
Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero, Director of the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
Americanos (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in Seville, has
been a tenured scholar at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
since 1989. Serving on the editorial boards of prestigious journals, he has also
been President of the Asociación Española de Americanistas since 2000.
Giovanni Levi is emeritus professor of the Ca’Foscari University in
Venice. One of the founders of the mico-historical movement, he has also
co-founded and co-directed the graduate program in the History of Europe,
the Mediterranean World and its Atlantic Diffusion at the Universidad Pablo
de Olavide in Seville.
Carlos Marichal joined the Colegio de México’s Center for Historical
Studies in 1989, after obtaining his Ph.D. at Harvard University. An inter-
national expert on imperial finance and trade as well as global crises, he is the
co-founder and President of the Mexican Association of Economic History.
María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper is Full Professor of Modern History
at the Central University of Barcelona and was President of the Spanish
Foundation of Modern History from 2010 through 2014. She specializes in
courtly and daily life as well as cultural and culinary exchange.
ix