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"The Möbius Strip" explores the history, political economy, and culture of space in central Guerrero, Mexico, during the colonial period.This study is significant for two reasons.First, space comprises a sphere of contention that affects all levels of society, from the individual and his or her household to the nation-state and its mechanisms for control and coercion.Second, colonialism offers a unique situation, for it invariably involves a determined effort on the part of an invading society to redefine politico-administrative units, to redirect the flow of commodities and cash, and, ultimately, to foster and construct new patterns of allegiance and identity to communities, regions, and countries.Thus spatial politics comprehends the complex interaction of institutional domination and individual agency.The complexity of the diachronic transformation of space in central Guerrero is illustrated through an analysis of land tenure, migration, and commercial exchange, three salient and contested aspects of hispanic conquest."The Möbius Strip," therefore, addresses issues important to social theory and to the understanding of the processes affecting the colonialization of non-Western societies. ... Read more

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Traditional historiography describes therepartimiento de mercancías as a forced system of production and consumption in which officials of the Spanish crown compelled Mexican Indians to produce goods marketable in the Spanish economy and to purchase expensive and undesired Spanish products. The author challenges this conventional portrayal of Indian-Spanish economic relations by arguing that Indian market behavior was economically rational and voluntary. He further argues that the repartimiento was an institution designed to overcome market imperfections inherent in Mexico's colonial economy and to facilitate the extension of credit in a cross-cultural environment.

Examining repartimiento production of cochineal, a dyestuff produced exclusively by Oaxacan Indians and representing Mexico's most valued export after silver, this study shows that Indians produced cochineal for the market voluntarily because it provided them with needed income. The primary role of the repartimiento was to provide Mexico's indigenous peasantry with credit, without which they could not have participated in the market as extensively as they did. Owing to the difficulty of collecting debts, credit provision was monopolized by agents of the Crown, the alcaldes mayores, who alone possessed the legal leverage needed to enforce the payment of debts. Though Spanish officials profited from the repartimiento, their economic gains were not so great as traditionally believed.

Overall, the book demonstrates that Mexican Indians were much more actively engaged in the market than customarily imagined, and were adept at promoting their interests despite the discriminating policies of colonialism. The book rounds out its account of the repartimiento by examining the transatlantic trade in cochineal, especially in its late colonial decline. ... Read more

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Once Europe's supreme maritime power, Spain by the mid-eighteenth centurywas facing fierce competition from England and France. England, in particular, had successfullymustered the financial resources necessary to confront its Atlantic rivals by mobilizing botharistocracy and merchant bourgeoisie in support of its imperial ambitions. Spain, meanwhile,remained overly dependent on the profits of its New World silver mines to finance bothmetropolitan and colonial imperatives, and England's naval superiority constantly threatened thevital flow of specie.

When Charles III ascended the Spanish throne in 1759, then, after a quarter-century as ruler ofthe Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Spain and its colonial empire were seriously imperiled. Twohundred years of Hapsburg rule, followed by a half-century of ineffectual Bourbon "reforms,"had done little to modernize Spain's increasingly antiquated political, social, economic, andintellectual institutions. Charles III, recognizing the pressing need to renovate these institutions,set his Italian staff—notably the Marqués de Esquilache, who became Secretary of the Consejo deHacienda (the Exchequer)—to this formidable task.

In Apogee of Empire, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein trace the attempt, initiallyunder Esquilache's direction, to reform the Spanish establishment and, later, to modify andmodernize the relationship between the metropole and its colonies. Within Spain, Charles and hisarchitects of reform had to be mindful of determining what adjustments could be made thatwould help Spain confront its enemies without also radically altering the Hapsburg inheritance.As described in impressive detail by the authors, the bitter, seven-year conflict that ensuedbetween reformers and traditionalists ended in a coup in 1766 that forced Charles to sendEsquilache back to Italy. After this setback at home, Charles still hoped to effect constructivechange in Spain's imperial system, primarily through the incremental implementation of a policyof comercio libre (free-trade). These reforms, made half-heartedly at best, failed as well,and by 1789 Spain would find itself ill prepared for the coming decades of upheaval in Europeand America.

An in-depth study of incremental response by an old imperial order to challenges at home andabroad, Apogee of Empire is also a sweeping account of the personalities, places, andpolicies that helped to shape the modern Atlantic world. ... Read more