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Mules, Quicksilver, and a `Glorious Death’: Bourbon Peru from the Experience of Tucuman’s (Ad)venture Merchants

Marquez, Maria Victoria
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1370134688

Abstract Details

, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, History.
The study of wealthy merchants, the Mendiolaza family, from the city of Cordoba, in the colonial district of Tucuman (present-day part of Argentina) during the eighteenth century, their social strategies, mercantile activities, and links to the Spanish colonial administration, shows how Tucuman families integrated in the regional socio-economic space of Peru and Rio de la Plata through their involvement in long-distance trade. Informed and shaped by scholarship on socio-economic history of Spanish Peru and Rio de la Plata, and the indigenous rebellions in the Andes, this study poses two primary objectives: first, examining the disintegration of the Spanish American colonial economy in the eighteenth century from the perspective of Tucuman, a peripheral area of the Spanish Empire; second, tracing changes in Tucuman’s power structures up until the period of the South American independences in nineteenth century. The Mendiolaza story begins around 1730, when they founded a mule-trade company that circulated between Cordoba and Peru. From 1730 to 1780, the family’s business expanded significantly thanks to investments in mercury—a resource extracted from the mines of Huancavelica—and its subsequent distribution to a number of silver mining centers including Potosi and Oruro. As the Peruvian economy improved in the second half of the century, the Mendiolazas expanded their investments in other merchandises that circulated in the Andes, such as low-quality regional textiles and European manufactures. This family’s financial success resulted from their construction of complex social networks with colonial bureaucrats and mercantile elites from Lima, Potosi, Buenos Aires, and Cadiz, based upon marriage alliances, kinship, and business partnership, which facilitated access to mercantile credit and information that became critical to the prosperity of the family. In addition, this thesis shows how the indigenous uprisings led by Tupac Amaru, Tupaj Katari and Tomas Katari in the Andes between 1780 and 1782 played a decisive role in the disruption of the traditional dynamics of Tucuman’s economy. These rebellions cut off existing trade routes for several years and additionally forced the Bourbons to enact administrative reforms that transformed the mercantile dynamic in South America in detriment to families like the Mendiolazas, who ultimately opted to reorient their interests toward the flourishing trade market of the Atlantic.
Donna Guy (Advisor)
Kenneth Andrien (Committee Member)
Latin American History

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Marquez, M. V. (n.d.). Mules, Quicksilver, and a `Glorious Death’: Bourbon Peru from the Experience of Tucuman’s (Ad)venture Merchants [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1370134688

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Marquez, Maria. Mules, Quicksilver, and a `Glorious Death’: Bourbon Peru from the Experience of Tucuman’s (Ad)venture Merchants. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1370134688.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Marquez, Maria. "Mules, Quicksilver, and a `Glorious Death’: Bourbon Peru from the Experience of Tucuman’s (Ad)venture Merchants." Master's thesis, Ohio State University. Accessed MAY 19, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1370134688

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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