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THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, DIPLOMATIC AND economic historians of the antebellum United States defined and dominated the fields of hemispheric relations and American capitalism, respectively. In recent years, however, cultural historians of the antebellum United States have turned their attention to the role of the U.S. South in the broader exchange of peoples, ideas, and goods. Historians using innovative literary approaches address questions of race and identity in connecting the U.S. South to Latin America and beyond, while scholars of the "new" history of capitalism aim to deepen our understanding of the business of slavery in southern economic development. (1) These two fields at times converge on the subject of empire, as the Gulf Caribbean is ever more frequently characterized as the "American Mediterranean" by U.S. as well as Cuban historians. (2) Indeed, no analysis of the antebellum United States is complete without integrating perspectives from the southern neighbors themselves--that is, by looking from south to north, rather than reflexively from north to south. In particular, the rapidly changing political and economic landscape of Mexico in the early nineteenth century impacted in highly significant ways the expansion of the U.S. South's premier port, New Orleans. A Mexican family business, the Lizardi Brothers, was at the center of key financial transactions in New Orleans in the 1830s and 1840s. Through the family's transnational business activities in the Americas and Europe, the Lizardi connected New Orleans to Texas, to Mexico and Cuba, and to the Gulf Caribbean and the Atlantic world more generally during this transformative period in the development of global capitalism. The port of New Orleans played a prominent role in the economic development of the antebellum South and the United States, a role far more complex than just as a point of deposit for the trans-Mississippi Valley. (3) By the 1830s and early 1840s, the city's exports matched or surpassed those of New York in value, although the value of New Orleans's imports remained far below those of eastern cities. (4) The peculiar nature of these imports, especially specie, had monetary implications that far exceeded the absolute size of the import trade and that affected the economy of the nation. Silver specie was a significant component of the U.S. domestic money supply and a source of reserves to the banking system. Because much of the specie arriving in New Orleans originated in trade with Mexico and Spanish Cuba, the nature, mechanisms, and merchant families associated with this exchange take on a special significance. Among the chief participants in this trade was the Lizardi family, who originated in Veracruz, Mexico. Strikingly, the Lizardi maintained their involvement in the United States even as they functioned as major financiers to the First Mexican Republic (1824-1835), also known formally as the Federation. Since money is fungible, the profits that the Lizardi gained from their activities in Mexico financed and supported their activities in New Orleans. For this reason, the Lizardi and their Mexican connections deserve particular attention. (5) With the exception of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, with whom the Lizardi had an intimate connection, there were no Mexicans of greater importance for the United States in the 1830s and early 1840s than the Lizardi family. They were an integral part, however briefly, of the history of capitalism in the United States, especially during the Panic of 1837, the most disruptive financial crisis of the antebellum U.S. economy. Although historians of the United States often mention the Lizardi and their importance, Mexican history and its sources, on the one hand, and the local records of Louisiana, on the other, allow for a fuller understanding of the family's origins, activities, and influence during this critical period. While focusing on the Lizardi places Mexico and Mexican players firmly at the center of local, regional, national, and international dealings, the family's deliberately opaque actions and sketchy records are obstacles to producing a complete picture of their complex transactions. …

Competitive markets reward the scarce factor of production. As a result of the Spanish Conquest, Indian labor became the scarce factor of production relative to land. But the whole point of conquest was to enrich the Spaniards, not the Indians. Therefore, the Spaniards resisted the use of the market as a device to accomplish productive economic activities. The result was an inefficient allocation of resources and a suboptimal rate of growth, not to say the structural economic distortions that resulted. The development of the economy in colonial Mexico was, in effect, given over to wholesale rent-seeking, the allocation of resources by the use of political power. If there is a conceptual basis for understanding colonial development, it is this rather than dependent capitalism.

SUGAR BARON: MANUELA RIONDA AND THE FORTUNES OF THE PRECASTRO CUBA. By Muriel McAvoy. (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003. Pp. 352. $27.95 cloth.) ENCUMBERED CUBA: CAPITAL MARKETS AND REVOLT, 1878–1895. By Susan J. Fernandez. (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2002. Pp. 192. $59.95 cloth.) GOVERNMENT, FOREIGN INVESTEMENT, AND RAILROADS IN BRAZIL, 1854–1913. By William R. Summerhill III. (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Pp. 297. $60.00 cloth.)

Soy, lo confieso, uno de los escépticos sobre la Nueva Historia Económica Institucional. En términos generales, nada tengo que objetar al aspecto económico. ¿Quién podría tenerlo? La idea de que las tasas de beneficios marginales privados y sociales han de converger como condición necesaria para el crecimiento económico no es exactamente una idea novedosa, no digamos ya polémica, al menos en los círculos especializados. Pero hasta ahí llega aproximadamente mi coincidencia. Con excesiva frecuencia, me temo, el componente histórico de la empresa es bastante débil. Pregunten a un medievalista sobre el libro de North y Thomas, Rise of the Western World y es probable que la respuesta sea una mirada perpleja; eso con suerte. Sin ella, es posible que te obsequie con algún comentario pintoresco sobre «historia que realmente existe», o, si es más compasivo, con una simple negativa. Yo he tenido experiencias de esa índole con los análisis sobre los comienzos de la historia de América Latina. Mi predilecta atañe a un historiador económico español (sin nombres, por favor) que respondió a un trabajo sobre la encomienda mexicana —explicada como resultado de una estrategia de maximización por parte de la Corona española— con la muy coloquial exclamación en inglés: «You're kidding!» (¡Estás de broma!»). Pues no, el autor no lo estaba, pero tampoco lo estaba la revista que lo publicó. Así pues, seamos sinceros al respecto. Puede que fuera economía histórica, pero historia económica, desde luego, no era.

There is little historical evidence to support the thesis that deteriorating terms of trade hindered Cuban and Latin American economic growth, at precisely the time when large international disparities in income began to emerge (1820s to 1870s). For Cuba at least, it was resurgent Spanish imperialism in the form of new tariffs, taxes, and outright prohibitions that distorted patterns of trade, particularly with the United States. Likewise for Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, the terms of trade do not appear to have contributed significantly, if at all, to underdevelopment.

Cliometrics, the union of history and economics, has impressive successes to its credit. But it also displays a worrisome disregard for historical nuance, sometimes to the point of caricature. “Bargaining for Absolutism” by Alejandra Irigoin and Regina Grafe looks at this question from the standpoint of Douglass North’s work on institutions and particularly, Spanish fiscal institutions in the Americas. The result is an effective critique of the notion of early modern Spain as a centralized monarchy.

For the last few decades, the modern orthodoxy on the Roman economy has been a simple one: the vast majority of the population lived at or near subsistence, and that changed little over the lifetime of Roman civilization. Many parts of the Roman world witnessed dramatic population growth during the last few centuries BCE. Crucial performance indicators show dramatic aggregate and per capita increases in production and consumption from the third century BCE, or sometimes a bit later, until the Roman economy reached a spectacular peak during the first century BCE and the first century CE. Roman law is certainly part of the story of Roman economic success. Roman emperors of the first and second centuries CE repeatedly insisted on the importance of good government. The limits of the growth included long-distance trade which was interrupted in many regions, and so was manufacture of traded goods. Similarly, the sea trade to India that suffered an economic crisis was virtually abandoned.

I am of two minds in regard to a response to the reviews of Economic Growth and Change in Bourbon Mexico. Although I am gratified by the attention that it has received, I have been disinclined to engage in a debate about its merits and defects. Ultimately a book must stand on its own. Some will find that Economic Growth and Change makes a plausible case, and others will say that it does not. That is how it should be. I have no interest in rewriting those sections of Economic Growth and Change that miss the mark. Still, the invitation to write a reply does allow me the opportunity to re-examine some of the most controversial issues with an eye toward how scholars might move ahead with the agenda on the reconstruction of Latin America's colonial economic history.

The Wages of Conquest: The Mexican Aristocracy in the Context of Western Aristocracies. By HUGO G. NUTINI. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Pp. xviii, 444. Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531–1797. By STAFFORD POOLE. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Pp. 325. The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521–1763. By ENRIQUE SEMO. Trans. LIDIA LOZANO. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993. Pp. 231.

About twenty years ago, the Mexican SepSetentas series publishedLa historia económica en América Latina, the proceedings of a symposium held at the thirty-ninth International Congress of Americanists. For many novice historians of Mexico, the SepSetentas collectionavailable for ten (very old) pesos each at fine shops in the Metro, or at Sanborns-were Penguins or Pelicans of a lesser sort. Graduate students eagerly awaited new volumes, and scoured the streets for older ones. SepSetentas published some first-rate items, and, alas, some not-so-first-rate ones.La historia económica en América Latinawas a keeper. Its second volume contained useful bibliographies and historiographical essays by Enrique Florescano, David Brading, Woodrow Borah and Sherburne Cook, and Jan Bazant. To take just one example, Brading noticed that no one had reconciled Chevalier'sLand and Societywith Borah'sNew Spain's Century of Depression. “Where should one look to study domestic industry or commerce?” Brading wondered. The accounts of the Royal Treasury had not been systematically exploited. The tobacco industry had yet to find its historian. The costs of Spanish colonialism were essentially unknown. The proper scope of rural history was the regional study. And so on. Obviously, Brading's essay proved remarkably prescient. Historians in Mexico, Great Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Canada have all had a hand in carrying out the agenda that Brading proposed. We have, as the song says, come a long way. The latest and most comprehensive measure of our progress is the long-awaited appearance of Richard Garner's (with Spiro E. Stefanou)Economic Growth and Change in Bourbon Mexico(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993).