No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
More than two decades of scholarship on colonial Mexico has established both the role and character of merchant class communities, especially in Mexico City and Guadalajara. Beginning with David A. Brading's seminal Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810, several additional studies now constitute a significant body of literature on the subject. Collectively, Brading, John E. Kicza, Doris M. Ladd and others have demonstrated how Mexico City merchants consolidated their fortunes by acquiring haciendas (landed estates). Moreover, their studies describe how Mexico City entrepreneurs maintained commercial hegemony by purchasing large quantities of European merchandise and then reselling it at grossly inflated prices. These businessmen monopolized colonial trade through extensive familial ties and trading networks extending back to Spain. Although these and other revelations are important with respect to Mexico City merchants, they neither explain the position nor the significance of entrepreneurs in the principal Spanish colonial port
The author would like to thank professors Jaime E. Rodríguez-O (U. of California-Irvine) and William F. Sater (California State U.-Long Beach) for reading early drafts of this article. The Mexico-Chicano Fund at the U. of California-Irvine provided money for research conducted in Spain.
1 Brading, David A., Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763–1810, (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 97–99.Google Scholar In addition to Brading, among the best studies on colonial Mexican elites are Kicza, John E., Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Mexico City, (Albuquerque, 1983), pp. 232 Google Scholar; Ladd, Doris M., The Mexican Nobility at Independence, 1780–1826 (Austin, 1976), pp. 38–39 Google Scholar; Tutino, John M., “Power, Class and Family: Men and Women in the Mexican Elite, 1750–1810,” The Americas, 39:3 (January 1983), 359–381 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamnett, Brian, Politics and Trade in Southern Mexico, 1750–1821 (Cambridge, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has some material on Veracruz merchants. Other good works include those on Guadalajara, for example, Lindley, Richard B., Haciendas and Economic Development: Guadalajara, Mexico at Independence (Austin, 1983)Google Scholar; Greenow, Linda E., Credit and Socioeconomic Change in Colonial Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675–1820 (Berkeley, 1981).Google Scholar For South America, Socolow, Susan M., The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778–1810: Family and Commerce (Cambridge, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is excellent. See also Twinam, Ann, Miners Merchants, and Farmers in Colonial Colombia (Austin, 1982)Google Scholar; Brown, Kendall W., Bourbon and Brandy: Imperial Reform in Eighteenth Century Arequipa (Albuquerque, 1986),Google Scholar especially chapter 4; and for a different perspective, Kinsbruner, Jay, “The Political Status of the Chilean Merchants at the End of the colonial Period: The Concepci“n Example, 1790–1810” The Americas, 29: 1 (July 1972), 30–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Charles F. Nunn treats immigration in Foreign Immigrants in Early Bourbon Mexico, 1700–1760.
2 Ysidro Antonio de Ycaza, Mexico City, to Viceroy Revillagigedo, July 4, 1791, Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico (Hereinafter cited as AGN), Consulado, vol. 23.
3 de la Tabla Ducasse, Javier Ortíz, Comercio Exterior de Vera Cruz, 1778–1821: Crisis de Dependencia (Seville, 1978), pp. 16–25.Google Scholar
4 Brading, , Miners and Merchants, p. 114 Google Scholar; Rodríguez, Jaime E. and MacLachlan, Colin A., The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico (Berkeley, 1980), p. 270 Google Scholar; Hamilton, Earl J., “The Role of Monopoly in the Overseas Expansion and Colonial Trade of Europe Before 1800,” American Economic Review, 38: 2 (April 1948), 42–43.Google Scholar
5 Boyd-Bowman, Peter, “Regional Origins of the Spanish Colonists of America,” Buffalo Studies, 4:3 (July 1968), 8.Google Scholar
6 Joseph Antonio Ximénez, Passport Application, Cádiz, 1771, Archivo General de Indías, Seville (hereinafter cited as AGI), General, leg. 2173; Lista de los Pasageros desde Cádiz a Veracruz, 1784, Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico City (hereinafter cited as BN), Manuscript (MSS), 1377, fol. 42.
7 Lista de los Pasageros desde Cádiz a Veracruz, 1787, BN, MSS, 457.
8 Pedro Fernández Guerra, Passport Application, Cádiz, September 4, 1785, AGI, Mexico, leg. 1779.
9 Augustin de Aravio Urrutía, Passport Application, Cádiz, September 30, 1785, AGI, Mexico, leg. 1776.
10 Joseph de Marzas, Passport Application, Cádiz, April 15, 1789, AGI, Mexico, leg. 1776.
11 Joseph Prado, Juan Martínez, Francisco Noriega, and Joseph de la Torre Passport Applications, Cádiz, April 30, 1802, AGI, General, leg. 2170.
12 Juan González. Passport Application, Cádiz, November, 1785, AGI, Mexico, leg. 2176.
13 Diego Rodríguez, Passport Application, Cádiz, November, 1785, AGI, Mexico, 3170.
14 Alejandra Moreno Toscano and Carlos Aguirre Anaya, trans. Urquidi, Marjorie, “Migrations to Mexico City in the Nineteenth Century: Research Approaches,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, 17:1 (Jan. 1975), 31, 40.Google Scholar
15 Juan Rodríguez Commercial Records, Veracruz, AGN, Consulado, vol. 169, fol. 302.
16 Padrón de 1809–1810, AGN, Historia, vol. 452, exp. 1.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 The 1793 Revillagigedo census for Veracruz could not be located in any archive. This data would have afforded a comprehensive analysis of the city's merchant population with more exactitude.
20 Padrón de Veracruz, Archivo Municipal de Veracruz, Veracruz, Mexico (hereinafter cited as AMV), vol. 18, fols. 302–310; Padrón de Veracruz, 1799, AGN, Indiferente de Guerra, vol. 47-B. The 1797 Veracruz census supplied some of the information for the merchant census estimate.
21 Rodríquez and MacLachlan, Cosmic Race, p. 300.
22 Gazeta de México, Mar. 9, 1809, pp. 193–196.
23 Libertad, 1810–1818, Archivo Historico de Hacienda, Mexico City (hereinafter cited as AHH), leg. 1040, exp. 24.
24 Reglamento of October 12, 1778, AGI, General leg. 2173; de Ayala, Simon Tadeo Ortíz, Resumen de la Estadística del Imperio Méxicana (Mexico 1968), p. 37.Google Scholar
25 Alexander von Humboldt Report, AGN, Historia, vol. 72, exp. 24, fol. 13.
26 Pedro Troncoso Commercial Records, Veracruz, June 11 and July 3, 1807, AGN, Consulado, vol. 153; Troncoso Commercial Records, Veracruz, 1807, AGN, Consulado, vol. 46.
27 Bartolomé García Commercial Records, 1804, AGN, Consulado, vol. 170; Martín María de Cos Commercial Record, Francisco de la Torre Commercial Records, Veracruz, 1803, AGN, vol. 172.
28 Pedro Miguel de Echeverría Commercial Records, April 10, May 8, and July 13, Veracruz, 1807, AGN, Consulado, vol. 153.
29 Juan Bautista Lobo Commercial Records, 1803, AHH, Consulado, leg. 679, exp. 24.
30 Commercial Records of Juan de Unanue, Manuel Muñoz, Gabriel Gómez, Gaspar de Palma, Martín Sanchez y Serrano, and Francisco Xavier Molina, Veracruz, 1802-1804, AGN, Consulado, vols. 173, 182.
31 See Brading, , Miners and Merchants, p. 254 Google Scholar; Socolow, Susan, “Marriage, Birth and Inheritance: The Merchants of Eighteenth Century Buenos Aires,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 60: 3 (August 1980), 390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 These findings were documented through the use of passport records scattered throughout sections of the AGI. For example, see Passport applications, AGI, Mexico, leg. 2506.
33 Socolow, , The Merchants of Buenos Aires, p. 39.Google Scholar
34 Lino Carrara Ximénez Notarial Records, Jalapa, 1788–1790, Archivo Municipal de Jalapa, Jalapa, Mexico (hereinafter cited as AMJ), vol. 30., fols. 128–132.
35 Ximénez Notarial Records, Jalapa, 1788-1790, AMJ, vol. 30, fols. 130–132.
36 Pasquel, Leonard, La Generación Liberal Veracruzana (Mexico, 1972), pp. 201–103 Google Scholar; Pasquel, , Xalapeños Distinguidos, p. 368.Google Scholar
37 García, Genaro, Leona Vicarío: Heroina Insurgente (Mexico, 1910), pp. 11–12 Google Scholar; Kentner, Janet R., “The Socio-Political Role of Women in the Mexican Wars of Independence, 1810–1821,” Ph.D. Diss. Loyola U. of Chicago, 1975, p. 12.Google Scholar
38 García, , Leona Vicarío, pp. 11–12 Google Scholar; Kentner, , “Role of Women,” p. 12 Google Scholar; Hoberman, Louisa, “Merchants in Seventeenth Century Mexico City: A Preliminary Portrait,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 57: 3 (August 1977), 494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
39 Juan de Unanue Commercial Records, Veracruz, 1795-1807, AGN, Consulado, vol. 167; de Zuñíga, Mariano y Ontiversos, , Calendario Manual y Guía de Forasteros en Mexico, 25 vols. (Mexico, 1795–1822), 1800, 1803–1805Google Scholar; Hamnett, , Politics and Trade, pp. 105, 179–181.Google Scholar
40 Juan Antonío de Barcena, Passport Application, Cádiz, 1788, AGI, Mexico, leg. 1774; Juan Antonio de Barcena Commercial Records, Veracruz, 1799-1800, AGI, Mexico, leg. 1507; Barcena Commercial Records, Veracruz, 1803, AGN, Consulado, vol. 19; Ontiversos, , Guía de Forasteros, 1807–1810, 1812–1815.Google Scholar
41 Ontiversos, , Guía de Forasteros, 1800–1818Google Scholar; Kicza, , “The Great Families of Mexico: Elite Maintenance and Business Practices in Late Colonial Mexico City.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 62:4 (October 1982), 451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
42 Ibid.