Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492-1824 Circulation, Resistance and Diversity

Drawing upon economic history, cultural studies, intellectual history and the history of science and medicine, this collection of case studies examines the transatlantic transfer and transformation of goods and ideas, with particular emphasis on their reception in Europe. It critiques and enriches Atlantic History and the history of consumption by highlighting a degree of resistance to unfamiliar goods and information as well as the asymmetrical and violent nature of many types of exchange. It considers agents who forged networks and relations within and beyond the Spanish Empire, including Jesuit missionaries, Sephardic merchants, African laborers and farmers from Oaxaca to Santo Domingo to the Piedmont. While uniting increasingly homogenous and connected societies, the expansion of European horizons also generated diverse interests and divergent material cultures.

Bethany Aram is Ramón y Cajal Scholar in Early Modern History at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, Spain, and has published monographs on Queen Juana 'the Mad' and the conquest of Central America. Much of her work, which began at Yale University and the Johns Hopkins University, USA, focuses on questions of political culture, representation and communication.

Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla is Full Professor at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, Spain, and a member of the Academia Europea and corresponding member of Spain's Royal Academy of History. He specializes in the study of political economies, the Spanish Empire, the history of consumption and the history of the aristocracy. An expert on global, transnational and comparative history, from 2003-2013 Yun taught at the European University Institute of Florence, where he directed the Department of History and Civilization from 2009 to 2012. He currently directs a research project on New Atlantic Products, Science, War, Economy and Consumption in the Old Regime, 1492-1824.

1.Global Goods in the Spanish Empire: State of the Art and Prospects for Research; Bethany Aram
PART I:CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL CONSTRAINTS
2.The Early Modern Food Revolution: A Perspective from the Iberian Atlantic; María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper
3.The Difficult Beginnings: Columbus as a Mediator of New World Products; Consuelo Varela
4.Accommodating America to Europe: Renaissance Missionaries between the Ancient and the New World; Antonella Romano
5.America and the Hermeneutics of Nature in Renaissance Europe; María Portuondo
6.The Diffusion of Maize in Italy: From Resistance to the Peasants' Defeat; Giovanni Levi
PART II: THE SOCIAL USE OF THINGS
7.Taste Transformed: Sugar, Spice and the Sixteenth-Century Hispano-Burgundian Court; Bethany Aram
8.Diet, Travel and Colonialism in the Early Modern World; Rebecca Earle
9.Asian Silk, Porcelain and Material Culture in the Definition of Mexican and Andalusian Elites, c.1565-1630; José Luis Gasch
10. Interest and Curiosity: American Products, Information, and Exotica in Tuscany; Francisco Javier Zamora Rodríguez
PART III: CONNECTED AND CONTRASTING SOCIETIES
11. Mexican Cochineal and the European Demand for a Luxury Dye, 1550-1850; Carlos Marichal Salinas
12. Hispaniola's Turn to Tobacco: Products from Santo Domingo in Atlantic Commerce; Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero
13. Global trade, environmental constraints and local conflicts: The case of early modern Hispaniola; Igor Pérez Tostado
14. The Resilience and Boomerang Effects of Chocolate: A Product's Globalization and Commodification; Irene Fattacciu
15. Globalization, Iberian Empires and Cross-Cultural Consumption in a World Context, c. 1400-1700; Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
Selected Bibliography