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Evolution of the Textile Industry of Puebla 1544–1845

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Jan Bazant
Jan Bazant
Affiliation:
El Colegio de México, Mexico City
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Extract

This article deals with an important chapter in the economic history of Mexico. Throughout its history Puebla was an industrial center. Well into the 19th century it was the prime center of the country's chief manufacture — textiles. The city became the commercial and industrial capital of New Spain within a few years of its foundation. I shall concentrate on the ways in which the several branches of the textile industry were organized, comparing their development with that of the textile industries of medieval and early industrial Europe.

Type
Comparative Perspectives in Economic Development
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , October 1964 , pp. 56 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1964

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References

1 de Terreros, Manuel Romero, Las Artes lndustriales en la Nueva España (Mexico City, P. Robredo, 1923), p. 47.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 120.

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1 Pueblo a través de los Siglos (Ed. “El Sol de Puebla”, Puebla, 1962), esp. p. 11.

11 Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario de la Nueva España, t. XVI, pp. 5–21. Hereafter cited as Epistolario.

12 Puebla a través de los Siglos, p. 14.

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17 Cf. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. III (Cambridge, 1963), p. 17.Google Scholar

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23 Ibid.,

24 Epistolario, t. IV, pp. 94–102.

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29 Ibid., p. 35.

30 Ibid., p. 97.

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32 Cited in Pujol, J. Carrera, Historia de la Economia Espanola (Barcelona, 1943), Vol. I, p. 529.Google Scholar

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35 Zavala, Silvio, Ordenanzas del Trabajo, Siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico City, Edit. Eleda, 1947), p. 202.Google Scholar

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37 Carrera Pujol, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 417.

38 Archivo del Ayuntamiento de Puebla, t. 221 (1583–1621), t. 224 (1621–1807). Cited hereafter a AAP.

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40 Bermùdez de Castro, op. cit., p. 189.

41 Zavala, Ordenanzas, p. 207.

42 AAP, t. 234, Expediente 2.

43 Bermúdez de Castro, op. cit., p. 190.

44 Cited in Priestly, Herbert Ingram, José de Gálvez, Visitor-General of New Spain, 1765–1771 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1916), p. 18.Google Scholar

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46 Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter cited as AGN), Sectión de bandos.

47 AGN, reproduced in Orozco, Luis Chávez, ed., Documentos para la Historia Económico de México, Vol. VII (published by Secretario de la Economía Nacional, 1935), pp. 25–33.Google Scholar Absenteeism from work on Monday is still common in some parts of Mexico.

48 The easiest way of solving labor shortage in New Spain consisted in lending small amounts of money to Indians who could then be forced to work to pay off their debt.

49 Flon, Manuel de, Noticias Estadísticas de la Intendencia de Puebla, 1804, in Relaciones estadísticas de Nueva España de principios del S. XIX (Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 1944), p. 54.Google Scholar This report refers to conditions in 1803.

50 AAP, t. 224, Exp. 26, ff. 226–235.

51 The best study is Franco Borlandi's, “Futainiers et Futaines dans l'ltalie du Moyen Age”, in Eventail de I'Histoire Vivante. Hommage a Lucien Febvre (Paris, Armand Colin, 1953).Google Scholar

52 See also the luxurious list of cloth and jewels which Cortes sent to Spain in 1519, printed in Lucas Alaman, Disertaciones (Ed. Jus, 1942), t. I, pp. 395 ff.

53 Variations in the size of pieces made before the Conquest are described in Othón de Mendizábal, Las Artes Textiles Indigénas y la Industria Textil Mexicana (Vol. VI of his Obras Completas), pp. 257–496.

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55 AAP, t. 231, L. 2695, Exp. 2.

56 Echeverria y Veytia, op. cit., p. 301. Fray Juan Villa Sánchez, in his important chronicle, Puebla Sagrada y Profana, edited by Fr. Javier de la Pena in 1835, also states that weavers in 1746 bought thread from the spinners. See the facsimile edition of 1962, pp. 39–40. Some weavers may have employed spinners for wages: see references to “the good old times” for weavers in Clamores del tejedor (1820), reproduced in Quintana, José Miguel, ed., Las Artes Grdficas en Puebla (Mexico City, 1960), pp. 109–11Google Scholar, and in Antuñano, Ampliatión, Aclaración y Correccion a los principales puntos del Manifiesto sobre el Algodon manufacturado y en greña, edited by Orozco, Luis Chavez (Parnia, 1955), pp. 63, 74.Google Scholar

57 Echeverráa y Veytia, op. cit., p. 301.

58 Potash, Robert A., El Banco de Avío de México, Fondo de Cultura Ecñnomica (Mexico City, 1959), pp. 20–23.Google Scholar (Translation of an unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1953.)

59 Flon, op. cit., p. 54. See above, n. 48.

60 AAP, t. 234, L. 2700, Folios 268–284.

61 Potash, op. cit., p. 24.

62 They were selling cloth to merchants in 1813. Pueblo Sagrada y Profana, p. 105.

63 J. M. Quintana, op. cit.

64 Antunano, Ampliación …, p. 73.

65 Ibid., p. 17.

66 Leicht, op. cit.