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British Company and Mexican Community: The English at Real del Monte, 1824–1849

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Robert W. Randall
Robert W. Randall
Affiliation:
Robert W. Randall is associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky.
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Abstract

While it lost some five million dollars operating in Mexico between 1824 and 1849, the British Real del Monte Company conducted its business without major interruption from the political turbulence that characterized the new nation. In this article, Professor Randall shows how the company finessed most of the political risk that it potentially faced by keeping administrative distance between itself and the ever-changing central governments and by conducting political relations at the local level as community relations. Despite business rivalries with mine owners, labor-management conflict, and incidents of individual and institutional friction, the English firm and the Mexican town of Real del Monte generally maintained positive community relations. Accommodation as much as conflict accompanied foreign penetration into newly independent Mexico.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 59 , Special Issue 4: Business in Latin America , Winter 1985 , pp. 622 - 644
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1985

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References

1 Kobrin, Stephen J., “Political Risk: A Review and Reconsideration,” Journal of International Business Studies 10 (Spring/Summer 1979): 67–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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5 This sketch of the British RdM and the account of its relations with Mexican governments that follows are based on appropriate sections of my Real del Monte: A British Mining Venture in Mexico (Austin, Tex., 1972). For the principal mining districts of Mexico at the beginning of the nineteenth century, see Map 1; for the district of the mining camp, see Map 2.

6 See Robertson, Paul L., “Employers and Engineering Education in Britain and the United States,” Business History 23 (March 1981): 42–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 El Sol (Mexico City), 6 July 1824.

8 Libro en que se hallan, el preliminar con que la Sociedad de Aventureros formada en Londres convino celebrar una Compañía … con el S.D. Pedro Terreros …; la escritura pública con que se afianzó el contrato, y los ynventarios judiciales de las haciendas de beneficio de metales y de labor … [hereafter cited as El preliminar, la escritura y los ynventarios], archives of Manuel Romero de Terreros, Mexico City, 14–15.

9 “Correspondence from Mining Districts, Real del Monte, November 1830,” Quarterly Mining Review 5 (April 1831): 176.

10 John Rule to John Taylor, Real del Monte, 7 Dec. 1840, archives of the Real del Monte Mining Company, Pachuca, Mexico [hereafter cited as RdM], Correspondencia General, vol. 39. [Documents from the General Correspondence will henceforth be cited by a reference to the year and volume, as 1840 CG 39.]

11 El preliminar, la escrítura y los ynventarios, 16–17; 1829 CG 13; “Review of the Real del Monte Mining Association, Annual General Meeting, February 15, 1830,” Quarterly Mining Review 4 (Jan. 1831): 472.

12 1836 CG 35, 36, 39; Ley sobre exportación de platas pertenecientes à la Compañía del Mineral del Monte, junio 6 de 1836, in Recopilación de leyes … de la República Mexicana, comp. Basilio José Arillaga (Mexico City, 1836), 444.

13 1842 CG 39; El Siglo XIX (Mexico City), 20 Jan., 13, 29 Feb. 1844.

14 1846 CG 48; printed announcement, 16 April 1846, folder 211, Papeles de los condes de Regla, Library of Washington State University, Pullman, Wash.

15 1838 CG 39; Ordenancias de minería … legislación minera … hasta 1874; comentarios a las ordenancias de minería ([1874]; reprt., Mexico City, 1961), 24–25.

16 1838–1843 CG 39; 1843 CG 48.

17 This truncated account of labor relations is based on a detailed one in chap. 7, pp. 126–52, of Real del Monte.

18 Reglamento que la Compañía Inglesa del Mineral del Monte ha formado para el laborío de las minas que trabaja, con respecto al partido y obligaciones de los operarios, Archive del Estado de México, expediente 1827, doc. 50.

19 1826 CG 26; 1833, 1834 CG 28; 1840, 1845 CC 39.

20 1829 CG 12; 1838 CG 39.

21 Barca, Frances Erskine Calderón de la, Life in Mexico during a Residence of Two Years in that Country ([1843]; Mexico City, 1952), 137–38.Google Scholar

22 1827, 1833 CG 15, 26; 1835 CG 35, 37; 1845 CG 36, 45.

23 1829 CG 12, 15; 1836 CG 35; 1839 CG 39.

24 1825 CG 12.

25 1825 CG 8; 1835 CG 35; 1836 CG 37.

26 1827 CG 12; 1834 CG 28, 33.

27 1829 CG 12; 1833 CG 15.

28 El preliminar, la escritura y los ynventarios, 109; 1828 CG 12; 1835 CG 33; 1839 CG 37.

29 Journal Descriptive of the Route from New York to Real del Monte by Way of Tampico. By One of the First Detachment Sent by the Real del Monte Company ([1824]; Pachuca, Mexico, 1939), 20.

30 1825 CG 8; Memoria en que el gobierno del Estado de México da cuenta … de todos los ramos que han sido a su cargo … 1831 (Toluca, Mexico, 1825–1835), table 1.

31 Randall, Real del Monte, 134–37.

32 1828 CG 12.

33 1828 CG 12.

34 1830 CG 26; 1835 CG 35; 1844 CG 48.

35 1830 CG 26; 1842 CG 39.

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38 1827, 1828 CG 12.

39 1836 CG 35; 1843 CG 47; 1844 CG 48.

40 Robertson, William Parish, A Visit to Mexico … with Observations and Adventures on the Way (London, 1853), 2: 160–61.Google Scholar

41 El preliminar, la escritura y los ynventarios, 127–35; 1825 CG 8. The farms are shown on Map 2.

42 Lyon, George F., Journal of a Residence and Tour in the Republic of Mexico (London, 1828), 2: 151–52Google Scholar; Mexico in 1827, 2: 358.

43 1834 CG 33; 1845 CG 48.

44 1837 CG 39.

45 1837 CG 39. The English carpenter served a five-week prison sentence, and the Mexicans who had attacked him and his British companions outside the offices of the town government were also punished, some of them imprisoned three to four months (1838 CG 39).

46 1838 CG 35; 1839 CG 39; 1847 CG 48.

47 1829 CG 12; Ley reglamentaria para la milicia cívica del Estado … 1 de mayo de 1829, Colección de decretos de los Congresos Constitucionales del Estado Libre y Soberano de México (Toluca, Mexico,1850), 2: 91–92; 1830 CG 26.

48 1830 CG 26.

49 1830 CG 26. Nor was concern over the drinking habits of the workers restricted to the English management of the RdM. In the 1860s, the average pulque consumption among the 12,000 inhabitants of Pachuca (two-thirds of them mine workers or their families) was reported to be approximately a quart and three-quarters a day. Almaraz, Ramón, ed. Memoria de los trabajos ejecutados por la Comisión Cientifica de Pachuca en el año de 1864 (Mexico City, 1865), 79, 82–83.Google Scholar In the 1920s, the United States RdM waged a large-scale campaign against pulque drinking in its mines, mills, and shops, going “to considerable trouble and expense to provide drinking water at all important working places.” (RdM, file 161, newsletters, 1929).

50 Kobrin, “Political Risk,” 67.

51 1836 CG 37.

52 Personnel Agreement, 1855, RdM. Property of A. M. Gutiérrez, auditor of the Real del Monte and Pachuca Mining Company.