Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Steven Topik is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His books include The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present (with Kenneth Pomeranz) and Trade and Gunboats: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Empire.

Carlos Marichal is Professor in the Centro de Estudios Históricos at El Colegio de México. He is the author of A Century of Debt Crises in Latin America: From Independence to the Great Depression, 1820-1930 and numerous books in Spanish.

Zephyr Frank is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Stanford University. He is the author of Dutra's World: Wealth and Family in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

""From Silver to Cocaine" is an important and innovative collection. It provides a corrective to the purely national studies of commodities and of export sectors, and to studies that posit influence in only one direction, focusing on the international penetration of capital and trade into Latin America. This book makes a strong statement about the direction of future research: it should be required reading for anyone interested in the economic history of Latin America, broadly conceived."--Edward Beatty, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

FROM SILVER TO COCAINE

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

INTRODUCTION Commodity Chains in Theory and in Latin American History Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank.......................11 The Spanish-American Silver Peso: Export Commodity and Global Money of the Ancien Regime, 1550-1800 Carlos Marichal........................252 Indigo Commodity Chains in the Spanish and British Empires, 1560-1860 David McCreery.......................................................533 Mexican Cochineal and the European Demand for American Dyes, 1550-1850 Carlos Marichal....................................................764 Colonial Tobacco: Key Commodity of the Spanish Empire, 1500-1800 Laura Nater...............................................................935 The Latin American Coffee Commodity Chain: Brazil and Costa Rica Steven Topik and Mario Samper.............................................1186 Trade Regimes and the International Sugar Market, 1850-1980: Protectionism, Subsidies, and Regulation Horacio Crespo.......................1477 The Local and the Global: Internal and External Factors in the Development of Bahia's Cacao Sector Mary Ann Mahony.........................1748 Banana Boats and Baby Food: The Banana in U.S. History Marcelo Bucheli and Ian Read........................................................2049 The Fertilizer Commodity Chains: Guano and Nitrate, 1840-1930 Rory Miller and Robert Greenhill.............................................22810 Brazil in the International Rubber Trade, 1870-1930 Zephyr Frank and Aldo Musacchio.......................................................27111 Reports of Its Demise Are Not Exaggerated: The Life and Times of Yucatecan Henequen Allen Wells...........................................30012 Cocaine in Chains: The Rise and Demise of a Global Commodity, 1860-1950 Paul Gootenberg...................................................321CONCLUSION Commodity Chains and Globalization in Historical Perspective Carlos Marichal, Steven Topik, and Zephyr Frank.....................352CONTRIBUTORS..................................................................................................................................361INDEX.........................................................................................................................................365

Chapter One

Carlos Marichal

THE LEGACY OF the monetary regime of the Spanish Empire is not only an important chapter in world economic history but also key to an understanding of premodern monetary systems. The international diffusion of the Spanish-American silver peso between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries transformed it into what could be termed an almost universal metallic money. The reasons for the global trade and circulation of this commodity money can be explained by the dynamics of supply and demand. On the supply side, the silver mines of Spanish America were the richest in the world and allowed for a voluminous and rising production of high-value bars and coins for several centuries. On the demand side, it is clear that silver and gold were long the most highly valued money commodities in ancien regime societies and economies, since metallic currencies tended to be dominant as media of exchange in a large range of transactions. In this regard, analysis of the extraordinary historical and geographical trajectories of the silver peso in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries can elucidate important aspects of pre-modern processes of globalization.

Indeed, historians have clearly linked silver to the origins of a world trading system from the sixteenth century. As two researchers have argued: "Global trade emerged [in the late sixteenth century] when all important populated continents began to exchange products continuously-both with each other directly and indirectly via other continents-and in values sufficient to generate crucial impacts on all the trading partners. ... The singular product most responsible for the birth of world trade was silver."

Certainly this hypothesis may appear debatable, since in fact such products as silk, salt, spices, and gold had already been traded for centuries across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. But there is no doubt that it was not until the New World exports of silver and gold began to generate large transatlantic and transpacific trade flows that the full circle of global commerce was joined, making world trade a reality. Given the key role of precious metals as both commodities and money, it is not altogether surprising that they should have played such an important role initially and should have continued to do so for centuries.

Silver and gold coins have always competed with other monies but were the most esteemed in practically all ancien regime societies because they fulfilled the three traditional functions of money most effectively. Their durability and high unit value allowed them to serve as an excellent medium of exchange. In addition, their universal acceptance made them the measure of most units of account, since most metallic monies came to be measured by relative weight of silver or gold. Finally, as a store of value, silver and gold were highly prized, and therefore had universal demand. It is well known that a large variety of monies were circulating in the world in the period under consideration (1500-1800), including metallic currencies minted by states, commodity money in the shape of products (cotton, tobacco, cowry shells, cacao, etc.), and bills of exchange created by merchant bankers. The varied nature of monies meant that many clients placed a premium on a money with an intrinsically high metallic value and a relatively stable value. In many states silver and copper coins were systematically debased and hence soon lost their attraction for international trade. In a few cases such as China, where there had been a large circulation of official paper money, the paper currency could not be used outside the Chinese Empire. In other cases-in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-private monies issued by merchants (whether bills or promissory notes or tokens) were extremely useful to square accounts on trade yet had a limited or specific circulation outside of certain markets.

A premium, hence, tended to be placed on metallic currencies that were not debased. Indeed, perhaps the key reason for the international success of the Spanish-American silver peso was the fact that rising volume of production from the sixteenth century on was accompanied by maintenance of high quality, as assayers everywhere attested. Contemporary research testifies to this. Marie Thrse Boyer-Xambeu and her colleagues concur, noting that "Spanish coins exercised their role as international monetary standard (reference point) all the better insofar as their quality and official exchange rates remained virtually fixed. This fixed value was absolute for the silver real from 1497 onwards and during three centuries."

High-quality (almost pure) silver and gold coins had extraordinary demand among several groups, in particular (1) merchants involved in long-distance trade, (2)...