This article explores the financial and geopolitical networks behind the independence of Gran Colombia. It shows that the failure to obtain official British government support for independence was compensated for by the development of a network of private individuals and partnerships that supplied large quantities of arms, equipment and men. A Colombian government document granting ‘Powers’ to London intermediaries was crucial to the construction of this network. We analyse who the key players were and how the network operated. By exploring the decisions and actions of merchants through the lens of risk, trust, credit and networks, we provide a fresh insight into the wider process of independence in Gran Colombia.

When the colonists who made up the Virginia Company of London established James Fort on the banks of the James River in 1607, they brought with them sheets of scrap copper. Based in large part on the experience of the earlier Roanoke Colony, the English knew that copper was a highly prized material among Native peoples of the Chesapeake, and they brought it with them as a trade item. Artifacts made from European smelted copper (impure copper and copper alloy) have been found at contact period sites (ca. AD 1607–1680) throughout Virginia, and James Fort has long been hypothesized to be the primary distribution point for that material. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the elemental composition of a sample of smelted copper artifacts from James Fort (1607–ca. 1625), as well as samples of copper artifacts from five Native sites in central Virginia. We also analyzed a sample of copper artifacts from another well-known European fort site—Fort San Juan (1567–1568) in North Carolina. The results suggest that although a portion of the smelted copper that circulated through Native networks in Virginia came from James Fort, the rest of it possibly came from English, French, or Dutch distribution points to the northeast.

This article seeks to analyze the cocoa circuits during the final years of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, the transition towards independence and the beginning of the world cocoa crisis in 1820. Added to the traditional circuits of Guayaquil and Maracaibo linked with Pamplona, the article identifies circuits that were speculated to exist in the southwest of New Granada, but because they did not move large volumes, they were not considered for production statistics. These small productions supplied the domestic market, also exported or integrated into circuits from other places that had better interactions in international markets. It is not a microhistory of cocoa in remote regions, it is the history of a cocoa overshadowed by the visibility of others.

This article presents, for the first time, a continuous series of value of Honduran exports and imports for the period 1880-1930, extending the series previously available from Notten (2012). The new series were constructed based on the official statistics of the main trading partners of Honduras (United States, Great Britain, Germany and France) corrected from Honduran and complementary sources. The correction criteria applied are based on the results of a previous reliability validation exercise. The data obtained allow to delimit a new chronology of the foreign trade of Honduras where the “export age” began before the banana export boom that took place between 1903 and 1930.

Revisionist historians have convincingly argued that Spanish American independence was not the result of simmering grievances that galvanised a national or Creole identity against Spain. Instead, this scholarship insists that Spanish American national identities did not exist at the time and that independence was an unforeseen process that must be understood in the context of the Napoleonic invasion of Iberia. But, if independence was undesirable before 1808 and if national identities arose at a latter period, how do we explain the early independence projects of ‘precursors’ like Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán? By contextually reconstructing the logic behind Viscardo's projects, this article offers a new perspective on the intellectual conditions of possibility for Spanish American independence. It argues that though he certainly identified as a Creole from Peru, Viscardo actually deployed an Enlightenment global science of commerce, not Creole patriotism or nationalism, to legitimate Spanish American independence.

Literature published a decade ago reflected a pessimistic view of the market-oriented reforms that Latin America carried out in the 1980s and 1990s, and many politicians have attacked these reforms openly. Indeed, the atmosphere is so negative that it would be reasonable to assume that many of the reforms have been reversed. This paper will take a new look at the situation ten years later. Our argument is that the reforms have generally not been reversed. The reversal that has occurred has been with respect to privatisation in a few countries; negative public opinion is also concentrated on privatisation; and the reforms helped to enable Latin America to take advantage of favourable conditions leading to high growth in the 2004–8 boom period and a relatively strong performance during the 2008–9 crisis. While much remains to be done to raise growth and improve distribution, objective information about the reforms is needed when policies for the future are made.

This paper focuses on the analysis of weak states in the international trading system during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic crises, especially on Portugal's trade relations with the United States. We argue that the previous studies of the trade flows during these conflicts have not paid enough attention on smaller actors. Even though the Peninsular War caused severe disruption of agricultural production in Portugal, the United States, despite its strained relations with an ally of Portugal, Great Britain, became a key supplier for the Portuguese market. Clearly, the threatened position of the peninsula, and the need to supply the troops, awarded the Portuguese some room to manoeuvre in the international markets. Total war was not a constraint for all states — economic necessities trumped political and diplomatic concerns during the era of the first real-world wars. This situation was a temporary one, only to change after the conflict.

China's rapid growth and increased integration with the global economy over the past three decades have significant economic impacts and political implications for Latin America. This paper reviews the debate over whether these impacts have on balance been positive or negative for the region. It argues that those who emphasise the positive economic impacts of China have been over-optimistic and underplay some of the negative impacts associated with Chinese competition in manufacturing and increasing Latin American specialisation in primary products. On the other hand, when focusing on the political dimensions, there has been a tendency to exaggerate both the extent of China's influence in the region and the fears to which this gives rise, particularly among US commentators.

In this paper the economic performance of post-independence Latin America is assessed in comparative perspective. The release from the colonial fiscal burden was partly offset by higher costs of self-government, while the opening of independent Latin American countries to the international economy represented a handmaiden of growth. Regional disparities increased after independence, so generalisations about the region's long-run behaviour are not straightforward. However, on average, per capita income grew in Latin America, and although the region fell behind compared with the United States and Western Europe, it improved or maintained its position relative to the rest of the world. Thus the term ‘lost decades’ appears an unwarranted depiction of the period between 1820 and 1870.

This article documents and interprets the Spanish trade in American cotton which developed between the 1740s and 1790s. Following an analysis of the historiography concerning the trade, it provides data on the quantities imported, the state, ginned or unginned, in which it was imported, its origins in the American empire, the shipping arrangements made for its transport, the charges for its freight and the prices which were paid for it in Spain. It shows the growth of the trade to be related to growing demand for raw cotton during the early stages of Catalan industrialization, the meeting of which was facilitated by the reforms introduced in the Hispanic colonial system.

Miguel de Cervantes placed some passages of his masterpiece in Catalonia. Nevertheless, the features he uses to approach the Catalan reality -halfwaybetween 16th and 17th centuries- are obviously influenced by Don Quixote's personality. At that time, the Catalan economy was making its way in every sphere of activity which could operate at a profit. Far away from that magnificent Middle Ages, agriculture had to be rearranged and it was necessary to promote the most competitive products and to try to find markets for them. New generations devoted themselves to this purpose, people who were equally distant from the old patrician oligarchies and from the fickleness of the marginal nobility. They were laying, perhaps without knowing it, the path to modernity.

The constant state of war which dominated the reign of Philip II and part of Philip III'S exerted a growing fiscal demand both on Castile and the American Colonies. The American treasure which opened the doors to credit to finance these campaigns increased substantially over the 17th century. Never the less, the merchants, which controlled the extraction of precious metals and their shipments to the metropolis, established a highly lucrative trade with the Peru and the Philippines which created a constant drain of silver to the Far East. Based on the complaints filed by the Consulado de Sevilla about the competition of Chinese goods and the loss of American silver, the Monarch imposed heavy restrictions on the triangular trade in the Pacific. These restrictions created conflicts with the American viceroys who were interested in this trade and resulted in the generalization of smuggling.

During Miguel de Cervantes' lifetime, the Mediterranean World was suffering a transformation in the internal distribution of power, both political and economic. Although the Ottoman fleet was defeated, which established the limits of dominance between the two empires, this did not prevent the entry in this space of the new commercial powers from northern Europe, which changed the trade in the Mediterranean. This article tries to provide a synthesis of this process, of which Cervantes was a direct witness both in his personal life and through the works which have survived to our time.