BOOK REVIEW – FIVE STARS
The Mexican Heartland: How Communities Shaped Capitalism, a Nation, and World History, 1500–2000 by John Tutino
This book is a history of capitalism from the perspective of the indigenous peoples of Mexico.
It covers the Spanish Inquisition’s 700 year war to drive the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula, to conquests and imperialistic lust for gold and silver in the Americas using enslaved indigenous labor to dig it, build the fleets to transport it, and retire from toil to manage their seemingly infinite bonanza.
Spain eventually became complacent in their lucrative victorious financial position and suffered a rude awakening when infinite wealth was discovered to be finite.
EXCERPTS:
The commercial capitalism of early modern times linked diverse centers of production across the globe—China and South Asia leading in manufacturing (in the literal sense of making by hand), European empires fighting to profit, and New World mines and plantations driving trade across oceans. Spanish-American silver capitalism and Atlantic war capitalism mixed to make the Americas essential to a polycentric global commercial capitalism from 1550 to 1800.
1810, working men facing new predictions took arms to destroy New Spain’s silver economy. The silver capitalism that made Spain’s Americas an engine of trade collapsed.
A century of decline in Spain and depression in Europe saw the center of the Spanish imperial economy shift to New Spain.
No comments:
Post a Comment