Los capitalistas
Subtitle: Hispano merchants and the Santa Fe trade
By: Susan Calafate Boyle.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Albuquerque
Language: eng
Number of pages: 236
Subjects: Merchants -- New Mexico -- History.; New Mexico -- Commerce -- Mexico.; Mexico -- Commerce -- New Mexico.; New Mexico -- History -- To 1848.; Santa Fe National Historic Trail -- History.; Mexico -- History -- Spanish colony, 1540-1810.
Description: This volume recounts the history of Hispano merchants in the nineteenth-century overland trade between Santa Fe and the Missouri frontier. Historians have generally focused on famous Anglo merchants, but the author demonstrates, that Hispanos were major participants in the trade by 1840. New Mexico's geographic isolation and Mexican commercial restrictions forced the Hispano elite to turn to trading raw materials and specie to the United States.

As the volume of trade increased in the 1830s and 1840s, the mercantile sophistication of the Hispano merchants developed apace. Their complex transactions and sophisticated financing linked together Chihuahua City, Santa Fe, St. Louis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York City, London, and Paris. After the Mexican-American War, their influence expanded with the volume of trade, which climaxed in the 1870s.

The author argues that, contrary to racial stereotypes, Hispano merchants were every bit as driven to material productivity and as business savvy as German and Anglo competitors in the Santa Fe Trade.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-230) and index.
Table of contents: title: Isolation and dependency; title: Poverty and neglect; title: Going down the royal road; title: Contraband and the law; title: New Mexican merchants and mercantile capitalism; title: Felipe Chavez; title: New Mexican capitalists; title: Too little freighting for Uncle Sam.