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The Merchants and Economic Development in the Americas, 1750-1850: A Preliminary Study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Ralph Lee Woodward Jr.
Ralph Lee Woodward Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of North Carolina
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Extract

The century embracing the wars and turmoils that politically separated America from Europe coincides roughly with that great change in the economic life of the western world known as the “Industrial Revolution.” Admitting that this so-called “Revolution” did not occur simultaneously everywhere, or affect all parts in a like manner, it is nonetheless clear that it had a profound effect not only on the material well-being of the American peoples, but on their social and political institutions as well, probably an effect even more important than the political revolutions and wars that accompanied it. The period thus demands careful attention and lends itself well to regional comparative study.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 1968 , pp. 134 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1968

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the Seminario de Historia Comparada de las Américas, Viña del Mar, Chile, July 4, 1966.

References

1 Shepard B. Clough, The Economic Development of Western Civilization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 121.

2 For a concise but enlightening comparison of the early development of mercantilism in the European nations, see ibid., pp. 207-32.

3 John A. Burdon, comp., Archives of British Honduras, 2 vols. (London: Sifton Praed & Co. Ltd., 1931), I, 48. Burdon cites the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts, Long Papers, Book I, Chapter 12, taken from an unpublished thesis by James McLeish, “British Activities in Yucatán and on the Moskito Shore in the Eighteenth Century” (London, 1926).

4 See Bailyn, Bernard, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 146–97 Google Scholar; and Morison, Samuel E., The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (Boston: Houghton- Mifflin, 1961), pp. 8–28.Google Scholar

5 See Smith, Robert S., The Spanish Guild Merchant; a History of the Consulado, 1250-1700 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1940)Google Scholar.

6 Archivo Nacional de Guatemala, A3.1, legajo 1,284, expediente 22,106.

7 Clough, The Economic Development of Western Civilization, pp. 230-31.

8 Ibid., p. 231; and Ricardo Levene, Investigaciones acerca de la historia economica del virreinato del Plata, 2a- ed., 2 tomos (Buenos Aires: Libreria “El Ateneo” Editorial, 1952), I, 68.

9 Dispatch from Viceroy Teodoro de Croix to the President of the Audiencia of Chile, Ambrosio O'Higgins, Lima, July 31, 1788, in Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna, Juan Ferndndez, historia verdadera de la isla de Robinson Crusoe (Santiago de Chile: R. Jover, 1883), p. 320. In this dispatch, Croix cited the Real Cedula of November 25, 1692. See also Morison, Maritime History of Massa> chusetts, pp. 41-95.

10 Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790- 1860 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961), pp. 17-19.

11 Ibid., pp. 42-52, 221.

12 Ibid., pp. 54-57, 221, 228.

13 ibid., pp. 233-34.

14 In addition to the work already cited, Robert S. Smith has also written a large number of articles dealing with the institution of the consulado in Spanish America, including a useful bibliographical article, “A Research Report on Consulado History,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, III (January, 1961), 41-52. Other useful studies on the consulado in America include: Eduardo Arcila Farias, El real consulado de Caracas (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1957); Jos6 Ramirez Flores, El real consulado de Guadalajara (Guadalajara: Banco Refaccionario de Jalisco, 1952); Elsa Urbina Reyes, “El Tribunal del Consulado de Chile,” Boletin de la Academia Chilena de la Historia, XXIX (2° sem., 1962), 104-43; German Tjarks, El consulado de Buenos Aires y sus proyecciones en la historia del Rio de la Plata, 2 tomos (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1962); C. Norman Guice, “The Consulado of New Spain, 1594-1795” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1952); and Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Class Privilege and Economic Development: The Consulado de Comercio of Guatemala, 1793- 187] (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966).

15 Real cedula de ereccidn del consulado de Guatemala, expedida en San Lorenzo a XI de diciembre de MDCCXCI1I (Madrid, 1793), Art. XXII.

16 Ibid., Art. XXI.

17 Ibid., Art. XXII.

18 Ibid., Art. XXIII.

19 Ibid., Art. XXIV.

20 por example, Manuel de Salas in Chile, Manuel Belgrano in the Argentine, and Alejandro Ramirez in Guatemala.

21 Nettie Lee Benson (trans, and ed.), Report that Dr. Miguel Ramos de Arizpe, Priest of Borbon, and Deputy in the Present General and Special Cortes of Spain … Presents to the August Congress on the Natural, Political and Civil Condition of the Provinces of Coahuila, Nuevo Ledn, Nuevo Santander, and Texas of the Four Eastern Interior Provinces of the Kingdom of Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1950), pp. 44—45.

22 See Shafer, Robert J., The Economic Societies in the Spanish World, 1763-1821 (Syracuse. N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

23 Documentos para la historia argentina. Tomo VII: Comercio a Indias, Consulado, Comercio de Negros y de Extranjeros (Buenos Aires: Compañía Sud- Americana de Billetes de Banco, 1916), p. 134. See also Luis Ario Russo, La marina mercante argentina (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1938), p. 46.

24 See Keen, Benjamin, David Curtis de Forest and the Revolution of Buenos Aires (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947)Google Scholar, for an example of such activity.

25 See, for example, Mariano Moreno, “Representaci6n a nombre del apoderado de los hacendados de las campanas del Rio de la Plata dirigida al Excmo. Sefior Virrey Don Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros en el expediente promovido sobre proporcionar ingresos al erario por medio de un franco comercio con la nacion inglesa, Buenos Aires, septiembre 30 de 1809,” in Escritos de Mariano Moreno (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca del Ateneo, 1896), pp. 89-224. See also Kroeber, Clifton B., The Growth of the Shipping Industry in the Rio de la Plata Region, 1794-1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), p. 88.Google Scholar

26 North, Economic Growth of the United States, p. 88

27 Quoted in ibid., p. 57, citing Gallatin in American State Papers, Finance, II, 426.

28 North, Economic Growth of the United States, p. 257.

29 Ibid., pp. 67-69, 70-74, 233

30 Ibid., pp. v, vi.