New World of Gain: Europeans, Guaraní, and the Global Origins of Modern Economy by Brian P. Owensby

Abstract

Reviewed by: New World of Gain: Europeans, Guaraní, and the Global Origins of Modern Economy by Brian P. Owensby Mattia Steardo New World of Gain: Europeans, Guaraní, and the Global Origins of Modern Economy. By brian p. owensby. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2021. 400 pp. ISBN 9781503627512. $95.00 (hardcover). In the past years, the study of economic ideas has been gaining ground among historians, and a number of innovative studies increased our knowledge about the economic concepts and debates which accompanied the gradual extension of global economic interdependence. Brian P. Owensby contributes to the growing field of intellectual history of economic ideas, exploring the cultural contact between Spaniards and American indigenous groups—which came to be known [End Page 151] as Guaraní—between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth century, an account that highlights how their respective economic cultures changed in the course of their contact, due to creative adaptation to new circumstances as well as to unintentional misunderstandings. The cultural interpretation of economic ideas and practices allows the author to historicize the maximization of individual gain as a byproduct of the post-sixteenth century contact between Europeans and other cultures, rather than considering it as a constitutive trait of human nature. Starting from a Polanyian theoretical framework, Owensby stretches it in time and space, narrating the struggle between gain and mutuality in the Paraguay region. The tipping points of this history are the attempts made by individuals and (later) political power of turning individual gain into the founding principle of the Spanish-Guaraní social order, followed by the countermovements that communities made in order to resist the disembeddedment of the economy from the moral sphere. The book opens with the anthropological description of European and Guaraní societies before their contact, and the place that exchange and gift-giving was occupying in structuring each society's social relations. Then, the bulk of the work chronologically relates the history of their coexistence, mediated by their respective economic anthropologies, as well as the legal framework of the Spanish Empire. Throughout the narrative, the author strives for recognizing indigenous agency in this process, interpreting what were local ideas on their rights and obligations toward the Spaniards and the king through a scrupulous analysis of Guaraní language supplemented by a careful anthropological contextualization. Once European settlement in the Asunción area became permanent, Guaraní tried to build solid relationships through gift-giving, colliding against the difficulty of intercultural communication and the profit-seeking attitude of the conquistadores (Chapters 2–3). As Spanish greed was endangering their survival, royal power promulgated legislation aimed at their protection, considering it "as a counterforce to the self-destructive tendencies of gain left to itself" (p. 106). The arrival of the Jesuits in the 1610s–1620s provided indigenous groups with another tool to counteract the "exploitative dynamic" that came to dominate Paraguay since the arrival of Europeans (Chapters 4–5). The religious men tried to win Guaraní trust through prudent gift-giving, being well-aware that they had suffered from European mistreatment for at least 50 years. Indeed, Jesuits missions seemed a viable option to escape from the raids of Portuguese bandeirantes or Spanish encomenderos looking for cheap labor-force. [End Page 152] Jesuits established a number of villages in the area, and Guaraní voluntarily joined them, after understanding that the newcomers were not other Europeans trying to exploit them. In fact, in the following 50 years the population in the Uruguay-Paranà region tripled, thanks to a successful coexistence with Jesuits, whose commitment to personal poverty and non-accumulation sat comfortably with indigenous economic and social practices and ideas. The period of prosperity ended around the 1730s, when Atlantic imperial competition and Bourbon governmental ideology breached into everyday life of the Missions (Chapter 6–7). The first critical turn was the Comunero Revolts, during which various sections of Paraguayan society rose against the perceived Jesuit privileges. Bourbon regalism gave another deadly blow to the world of the Missions. First, seven villages were ceded to Portugal under the terms of the Treaty of Lisbon, fuelling a large-scale revolt. Second, Charles III sanctioned in 1776 the Jesuit expulsion from the territories of the Spanish Crown, leaving the...