Project Responsible: Dr. Antonio Ibarra (UNAM) and Dr. Fernando Jumar (UNLa Plata)

Project Funded by CONACyT CB-2011/168120

In this project we will study, within a comparative perspective, the behavior of the Spanish American trade corporations in global contexts differentiated such as the Rio de la Plata and the Greater Caribbean Spanish. To do so, we examine the networks of commercial interests knotted in regional complexes at the consulates of trade such as those of Buenos Aires and Montevideo,in the Rio de la Plata and Veracruz and Guadalajara in New Spain, associated with Cartagena and Havana conceived as the overall context of the Big Caribbean. Thus this project is based in a comparative global history, taking Big Caribbean markets, which includes New Spain and its exporting mining sector, and the Rio de la Plata that is connected to the exporter mining sector of Upper Peru. Consequently, we start from the hypothesis what was the role of the silver which allows to integrate regional economies of the Empire to the world economy. We are interested not only on study commercial structures but also on the analysis of individual actors and corporations that were fundamental in shaping the late-colonial economies and the early Latin American republics.