Braudel Comes to the New World: Rethinking the Evolution of Global Capitalism from the Americas. A Review of John Tutino's <em>Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America</em> (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011)

Authors

  • Florencia E. Mallon University of Wisconsin—Madison

Keywords:

Barudel, Bajio, Mexican independence wars, global markets

Abstract

As is clear from the massive appendixes in this already massive tome, Making a New World is the product of prodigious research and reflection across a long period of time.  Even more impressive, in a footnote to the epilogue the author promises a second volume, to be entitled Remaking the New World, that will begin where this one leaves off—with the impact of the Independence Wars on the Bajío.  The size and depth of this project is best explained by its conceptual and empirical ambition.  On the one hand, Tutino aims to provide us with a long-awaited, in-depth explanation of how and why the Mexican Independence Wars—which over the years have been seen by many Latin Americanist historians as a particularly interesting case of social revolution—began in the Bajío.  On the other hand, he aims to demonstrate how the mining, industrial, commercial, and agricultural activities in the Bajío region generated capitalism, and then spread north to create the larger region he calls “Spanish North America” that would be transferred from Mexican to U.S. control after the U.S.-Mexican War, and subsequently provide one of the sources of power and wealth that fuelled the emergence of U.S. expansionism.  Tutino also aims to place the development of capitalism in the Bajío in the context of a global economy that included not only the Atlantic World, but also the East Asian region then dominated by the Chinese Empire.  It was, after all, the Chinese demand for silver, Tutino argues, that initially generated the boom in silver production in the Bajío.

Author Biography

Florencia E. Mallon, University of Wisconsin—Madison

Florencia E. Mallon ocupa la cátedra Julieta Kirkwood y es directora del Departamento de Historia en la Universidad de Wisconsin en Madison. Es autora de, entre otros libros, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (University of California Press, 1995); (con Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef ), When a Flower is Reborn: The Life and Times of a Mapuche Feminist (Duke University Press, 2002); Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche Indigenous Community of Nicolás Ailío and the Chilean State, 1906-2000 (Duke University Press, 2005); Decolonizing Native Histories: Collaboration, Knowledge, and Language in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2011); y una novela de próxima aparición, Beyond the Ties of Blood (Pegasus Books). Es una de las editoras fundadoras de la serie de libros “Narrating Native Histories” de Duke University Press.

Published

2012-05-15

How to Cite

Mallon, F. E. (2012). Braudel Comes to the New World: Rethinking the Evolution of Global Capitalism from the Americas. A Review of John Tutino’s <em>Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America</em> (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 9(3), 391–396. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/371

Issue

Section

Reviews: Economic History and Social Justice in Latin America