From Silver to Cocaine

Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000

Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, Zephyr Frank, Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, Zephyr Frank, Gilbert M. Joseph, Emily S. Rosenberg

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780822388029
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

Demonstrating that globalization is a centuries-old phenomenon, From Silver to Cocaine examines the commodity chains that have connected producers in Latin America with consumers around the world for five hundred years. In clear, accessible essays, historians from Latin America, England, and the United States trace the paths of many of Latin America's most important exports: coffee, bananas, rubber, sugar, tobacco, silver, henequen (fiber), fertilizers, cacao, cocaine, indigo, and cochineal (insects used to make dye). Each contributor follows a specific commodity from its inception, through its development and transport, to its final destination in the hands of consumers. The essays are arranged in chronological order, according to when the production of a particular commodity became significant to Latin America's economy. Some—such as silver, sugar, and tobacco—were actively produced and traded in the sixteenth century; others—such as bananas and rubber—only at the end of the nineteenth century; and cocaine only in the twentieth.

By focusing on changing patterns of production and consumption over time, the contributors reconstruct complex webs of relationships and economic processes, highlighting Latin America's central and interactive place in the world economy. They show how changes in coffee consumption habits, clothing fashions, drug usage, or tire technologies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas reverberate through Latin American commodity chains in profound ways. The social and economic outcomes of the continent's export experience have been mixed. By analyzing the dynamics of a wide range of commodities over a five-hundred-year period, From Silver to Cocaine highlights this diversity at the same time that it provides a basis for comparison and points to new ways of doing global history.

Contributors. Marcelo Bucheli, Horacio Crespo, Zephyr Frank, Paul Gootenberg, Robert Greenhill, Mary Ann Mahony, Carlos Marichal, David McCreery, Rory Miller, Aldo Musacchio, Laura Nater, Ian Read, Mario Samper, Steven Topik, Allen Wells

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction: Commodity Chains in Theory and in Latin American History
• The Spanish-American Silver Peso: Export Commodity and Global Money of the Ancien Regime, 1550–1800
• Indigo Commodity Chains in the Spanish and British Empires, 1560–1860
• Mexican Cochineal and the European Demand for American Dyes, 1550–1850
• Colonial Tobacco: Key Commodity of the Spanish Empire, 1500–1800
• The Latin American Coffee Commodity Chain: Brazil and Costa Rica Steven Topik and Mario Samper
• Trade Regimes and the International Sugar Market, 1850–1980: Protectionism, Subsidies, and Regulation
• The Local and the Global: Internal and External Factors in the Development of Bahia’s Cacao Sector
• Banana Boats and Baby Food: The Banana in U.S. History
• The Fertilizer Commodity Chains: Guano and Nitrate, 1840–1930
• Brazil in the International Rubber Trade, 1870–1930
• Reports of Its Demise Are Not Exaggerated: The Life and Times of Yucatecan Henequen
• Cocaine in Chains: The Rise and Demise of a Global Commodity, 1860–1950
• Conclusion: Commodity Chains and Globalization in Historical Perspective
• Contributors
• Index