From Silver to Cocaine

Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000

Autor: Topik, Steven; Marichal, Carlos; Frank, Zephyr; Joseph, Gilbert M.; Rosenberg, Emily S.
Editor: Duke University Press
Colección: American Encounters/Global Interactions
ISBN: 9780822337539
eISBN Pdf: 9780822388029
Lugar de publicación: Durham , Estados Unidos
Año de publicación digital: 2006
Mes: Julio
Páginas: 384
DDC: 382/.098
Idioma: Ingles

Descripción

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
The Spanish-American Silver Peso: Export Commodity and Global Money of the Ancien Regime, 1550–1800
Indigo Commodity Chains in the Spanish and British Empires, 1560–1860
Mexican Cochineal and the European Demand for American Dyes, 1550–1850
Colonial Tobacco: Key Commodity of the Spanish Empire, 1500–1800
The Latin American Coffee Commodity Chain: Brazil and Costa Rica Steven Topik and Mario Samper
Trade Regimes and the International Sugar Market, 1850–1980: Protectionism, Subsidies, and Regulation
The Local and the Global: Internal and External Factors in the Development of Bahia’s Cacao Sector
Banana Boats and Baby Food: The Banana in U.S. History
The Fertilizer Commodity Chains: Guano and Nitrate, 1840–1930
Brazil in the International Rubber Trade, 1870–1930
Reports of Its Demise Are Not Exaggerated: The Life and Times of Yucatecan Henequen
Cocaine in Chains: The Rise and Demise of a Global Commodity, 1860–1950
Conclusion: Commodity Chains and Globalization in Historical Perspective
Contributors
Index