New World of Gain

Europeans, Guaraní, and the Global Origins of Modern Economy

Brian P. Owensby

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781503628342
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

In the centuries before Europeans crossed the Atlantic, social and material relations among the indigenous Guaraní people of present-day Paraguay were based on reciprocal gift-giving. But the Spanish and Portuguese newcomers who arrived in the sixteenth century seemed interested in the Guaraní only to advance their own interests, either through material exchange or by getting the Guaraní to serve them. This book tells the story of how Europeans felt empowered to pursue individual gain in the New World, and how the Guaraní people confronted this challenge to their very way of being. Although neither Guaraní nor Europeans were positioned to grasp the larger meaning of the moment, their meeting was part of a global sea change in human relations and the nature of economic exchange.

Brian P. Owensby uses the centuries-long encounter between Europeans and the indigenous people of South America to reframe the notion of economic gain as a historical development rather than a matter of human nature. Owensby argues that gain—the pursuit of individual, material self-interest—must be understood as a global development that transformed the lives of Europeans and non-Europeans, wherever these two encountered each other in the great European expansion spanning the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Maps and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Directions
• 1. Coming to the Encounter
• 2. Of Gain and Gift
• 3. Limits of Law, Love, and Conscience
• 4. Beyond Predation
• 5. The Guaraní Mission World
• 6. Good Economy of the State
• 7. From Community to Liberty
• 8. The Only Example in the History of the Universe
• Conclusion: Reflections
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index