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

Abstract

The Jesuit missions among the Guaraní Indians in Paraguay (1640s to 1767) have attracted attention for many centuries. At their peak in the early eighteenth century, the missions, numbering thirty at the time, encompassed around 140,000 people. They appeared to be virtually autonomous in their government, relying mostly on an internal economy only partially connected to the colonial economy. Owensby contributes to the study of these missions by placing them within a larger history of capitalism (which he calls “gain”). He argues that the Guaraní economy, based on what he calls “substantive mutuality,” offered an alternative to the European model’s increasing focus on mercantile endeavor and the exaltation of individual profit.Owensby dives deeply into the history of Paraguay as a Spanish colony, from its beginnings when the Guaraní accepted the Spanish as allies to aid in the defense against outside indigenous enemies. He asserts that the Guaraní understood society as the ultimate refuge against predation; the keys to a good life were exchange and reciprocation, which the Guaraní initially enjoyed with the Spanish, accepting them as brothers-in-law to their women and thus incorporating them into their society. As the sixteenth century wore on, however, the Spanish changed this relationship by seizing or demanding Guaraní women as a way to accumulate wealth. Owensby provides a culturally sensitive discussion of the interplay between Spanish exploitation of indigenous labor and the Guaraní response. The Guaraní began to bristle at the Spanish demands.By the early seventeenth century, the Jesuit missions had offered the Guaraní protection from Spanish exploitation. Owensby shows through the careful reading of philosophical texts, ranging from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to sixteenth-century Spanish treatises, how the Jesuit vision dovetailed with Guaraní social relations. By the early eighteenth century, the missions had reached their apogee, which Owensby characterizes as a system largely based on indigenous consent to the mutual benefit of the Spaniards and the Guaraní (“substantive mutuality”). Owensby does not provide much detail about the founding of the missions nor of their administration; his purpose is to explore the thinking that lay behind the way the missions were supposed to work.The foregoing is not meant to imply that Owensby does not discuss such crucial aspects as the lead-up to the Guaraní War, when a large part of the mission population rebelled against the king, surrendering seven of the most prosperous missions to the Portuguese as part of the Treaty of Madrid (1750). Owensby dedicates two chapters to the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 and its aftermath to show how new ideas of utility and the triumph of economic rationality over other aspects of rule destroyed the mission towns. Chapter 7 is an acute analysis not only of the missions but also of the late eighteenth-century reform project of the Spanish Bourbon monarchy in general.In its attempt to use the Guaraní missions to make larger points about the history of capitalism, the last chapter veers from Paraguay to a discussion of how intellectuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth century (mis)interpreted the Jesuit missions for their own ends. Owensby uses interpretations from the British Isles to reveal the disdain that most thinkers had for the missions as a counterexample to the emerging European system of commerce and individual gain.Through his exploration of the Paraguayan missions, Owensby makes the case that European notions of economic gain were not inevitable and that societies could be organized in better ways to bring about greater well-being. This book is important not only for its erudition about the Paraguayan missions but also for its understanding of the European colonial enterprise and economic thought in general.