Full Description
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
Contents
Introduction. Commodity Chains in Theory and in Latin American History / Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank 1
1. The Spanish-American Peso: Export Commodity and Global Money of the Ancient Regime, 1550-1800 / Carlos Marichal 25
2. Indigo Commodity Chains in the Spanish and British Empire, 1560-1860 / David McCreery 53
3. Mexican Cochineal and the European Demand for American Dyes, 1550-1850 / Carlos Marichal 76
4.Colonial Tobacco: Key Commodity of the Spanish Empire, 1500-1800 / Laura Nater 93
5. The Latin American Coffee Commodity Chain: Brazil and Costa Rica / Steven Topik and Mario Samper 118
6. Trade Regimes and the International Sugar Market, 1850-1980: Protectionism, Subsides, and Regulation / Horacio Crespo 147
7. The Local and the Global: Internal and External Factors in the Development of Bahia's Cacao Sector / Mary Ann Mahony 174
8. Banana Boats and Baby Food: The Banana in U.S. History / Marcelo Bucheli and Ian Read 204
9. The Fertilizer Commodity Chains: Guano and Nitrate, 1840-1930 / Rory Miller and Robert Greenhill 228
10. Brazil in the International Rubber Trade, 1870-1930 / Zephyr Frank and Also Musacchio 271
11. Reports of Its Demise Are Not Exaggerated: The Life and Times of Yucatecan Henequen / Allen Wells 300
12. Cocaine in Chains: The Rise and Demise of Global Commodity, 1860-1950 / Paul Gootenberg 321
Conclusion: Commodity Chains and Globalization in Historical Perspective / Carlos Marichal, Steven Topik, and Zephyr Frank 352
Contributors 361
Index 365
