Description
Book SynopsisExamining repartimiento production of cochineal, a dyestuff produced exclusively by Oaxacan Indians and representing Mexico's most valued export after silver, this study shows that Indians produced cochineal for the market voluntarily because it provided them with needed income.
Trade Review"
Indians, Merchants, and Markets is an important, well-researched addition to the small but growing literature on the repartimiento." --
The Americas"His keen analysis of the Oaxacan case requires any future scholar of this subject to take his work into account." --
American Historical Review"Economic historian Jeremy Baskes has gone a considerable distance in convincingly rehabilitating one of the most vilified instruments of colonial domination in Spanish America, the notorious
repartimiento de mercancias. . . . [An] excellent work in economic history. . . . The closely reasoned revisionism of Baskes' study is very welcome." --
Journal of Social History"Baskes' study manages to provide the most detailed account yet of the economics of small-scale rural credit in late colonial Mexico, as well as a lucid quantitative reconstruction of the costs and complications of the commodity export business during that period. . . . His compelling arguments certainly do away with the old certainties and invite further research on Indians and markets in colonial Latin America." --
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History"In this engaging monograph, Baskes reconstructs a tantalizing glimpse of the agricultural aspects of cochineal production . . . .[
Indians, Merchants, and Markets] is a fascinating treatment of an undeservedly under-examined area of colonial Latin American history." --
Canadian Journal of HistoryTable of ContentsList of tables List of illustrations Acknowledgements Note on abbreviations and conventions 1. Introduction 2. The 'Repartimiento' and the production of cochineal 3. The 'Repartimiento' and crown politics 4. Coerced or voluntary? Market participation of Indians 5. Informal credit institutions and cross-cultural trade 6. A risky business: credit and default in the dye trade 7. Indians and markets 8. Oaxaca to London: a balance sheet 9. Epilogue Appendixes Notes Bibliography Index.
