Commercial and Business Networks in Colonial Guadalajara: Market, Commercial Elite and Institutions

This text studies the correspondence between the circulatory flows of goods and the business networks established by the Merchants’ Guild of Guadalajara. It shows how, in a time of corporate struggles caused by the opposition of the Merchants’ Guild of Mexico City to its upstart rivals, these networ...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Ibarra, Antonio
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2007
Country:México
Institution:EL COLEGIO DE MÉXICO
Repository:Historia Mexicana
Language:Spanish
OAI Identifier:oai:oai.historiamexicana.colmex.mx:article/1599
Online Access:https://historiamexicana.colmex.mx/index.php/RHM/article/view/1599
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Guadalajara
elites
economy
18th Century
19th Century
élites
economía
siglo XVIII
siglo XIX
Description
Summary:This text studies the correspondence between the circulatory flows of goods and the business networks established by the Merchants’ Guild of Guadalajara. It shows how, in a time of corporate struggles caused by the opposition of the Merchants’ Guild of Mexico City to its upstart rivals, these networks nevertheless kept their business among their members in spite of all antagonisms. This in turn configured spatial business networks that reorganized the markets of New Spain. With an analysis of tax records, we can see how ties were strengthened between small groups of merchants belonging to the merchants’ guilds of Guadalajara, Veracruz and Mexico City, with other groups of merchants from the countryside supplying local consumption in Guadalajara. This text observes how merchants who had occupied positions in the guild and those close to them concentrated their activities in import/export firms based in the city of Guadalajara and specialized themselves in terms of branch of trade and origin of merchandise, a phenomenon that may have favored trust as a crucial element in the development of business networks.