Edge of crisis
Subtitle: war and trade in the Spanish Atlantic, 1789-1808
By: Stanley J. Stein.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 623
ISBN-13: 9780801890468
Subjects: Spain -- Commerce -- New Spain; New Spain -- Commerce -- Spain; Spain -- History -- Charles IV, 1788-1808; Spain -- Commercial policy -- History
Description: This authoritative study of colonialism in the Spanish empire at the end of the eighteenth century examines how the Spanish metropole attempted to preserve the links to its richest colony in the western Atlantic, New Spain (Mexico), in the face of international developments. Continuing the approach in Silver, Trade, and War and Apogee of Empire, Barbara and Stanley Stein detail Spain's ad hoc efforts to adjust metropolitan and colonial institutions, structures, and ideology to the pressures of increased competition in the Old and New worlds. In reviewing the attempts at reform, the authors explore networks of individuals and groups, some accepting and others rejecting the Spanish transatlantic trade system. They provide accounts from both sides of the Atlantic to show how economic policy, imperial goals, and consequent social divisions and factionalism in New Spain and Spain undermined the government's efforts at economic and political adjustments. The Steins draw on a wide range of archival material in Mexico, Spain, and France to place the waning of the Spanish empire in an Atlantic perspective. They also show how Spain came to the verge of collapse in a time of revolution and at the beginning of the transition from commercial to industrial capitalism. Comprehensive and carefully researched, Edge of Crisis explains the broad array of factors that led up to the French invasion of Spain in early 1808.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Continuity and crises, 1789-1797; title: War and the colonies : Aranda and Godoy; title: The late proyectistas; title: Reorganizing New Spain's external trade: the effects of comercio libre, 1788-1796; title: A hegemony threatened : Mexico City and Veracruz after 1789; title: Mining and its fissures; title: Export agriculture : growth and conflict; title: Comercio neutro/comercio directo, 1797-1803; title: "Informal" comercio neutro, 1804-1808; title: Consolidación and the financing of empire. I, Spain, 1797-1808; title: Consolidación. II, New Spain's silver transfers, 1804-1808; title: Strange saga : the transfer of new Spain's silver, 1804-1808; title: Treasures in the New World : the French diaspora of New Spain's silver; title: La tempestad que nos amenazaba; title: A national drama : Act I, conspiracy at the Escorial.