The Colonial Spanish-American City: Urban Life in the Age of Atlantic Capitalism

Abstract

As Jay Kinsbruner’s title and subtitle suggest, the focus of his study is colonial Spanish American “urban life” in what he calls the “Age of Atlantic Capitalism.” According to the author’s implicit definition of this time period and the themes on which he concentrates, it seems that this age begins in the mid – eighteenth century, running up to and beyond the late colonial period. This period also coincides with the great majority of the author’s previous research on urban themes, including pulperos (small retail grocers), petty capitalism, and race relations in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico.In the opening chapters Kinsbruner briefly discusses the Iberian origins of Spanish American colonial cities, as well as pre-Columbian urbanism. He also provides some background on the founding of colonial cities and suggests (as with the founding of cities in the Iberian reconquista) that the conquistadors founded many Spanish American cities where they would be most useful to control particular regions, populations, or valuable natural resources. They were not spontaneous urban settlements established solely as a result of economic factors. Many survived over time and gradually evolved over the next two centuries into the eighteenth-century cities that Kinsbruner examines more closely.The author throws down the gauntlet to potential adversaries who may disagree with his assertion that “the colonial Spanish-American city evolved during the Age of Atlantic capitalism and was itself a circumstance of that capitalism.” This apparently “implies challenges to those who believe that the colonial economy was not essentially capitalist but one in which very few people owned the means of production” (p. xi). He states that it is wrong to believe “the rest of the people were the immiserated plebeians” (p. xi) and that there was almost nobody in between the elite and the plebe or underclass. The author is particularly incensed by the use of the term plebeian in colonial sources and its continued use among modern historians citing these same sources. He argues that, due to market forces and capitalism at work, “[i]n fact, if not in perception, many if not all of the people of urban colonial Spanish America were precisely in a lower-middle or a middle class” (pp. 96 – 97). The author thus appears to impose on late colonial Spanish American cities the misguided contemporary North American belief that almost everyone is part of a large, all-inclusive middle class. His belief, though certainly heartfelt, has not been convincingly demonstrated in this study.Leaving aside his opinions regarding the use of “plebeians” and the demographic dominance of the urban middle class, the author does marshal very illuminating examples of urban middle-sector and upper-class entrepreneurial activity. Especially noteworthy are the brief case studies of small-scale urban shopkeepers in the late colonial period. If these petty capitalists were as numerous as Kinsbruner shows them to have been, however, it raises one’s curiosity as to how this full-blown phenomenon evolved from the earlier centuries of Latin America’s colonial urban experience. What were the socioeconomic and political changes that created this fertile ground for the “age of Atlantic capitalism” to develop and become so prevalent in the late stages of the colonial period? The author relates the end of the story in detail and we are left wondering about the antecedents.Class is the prime focus of this study, while the importance of socio-racial differences in the urban setting is given relatively little attention. For example, the author discusses colonial urban centers’ relationships with their hinterlands from a Spanish-centric perspective, where “[i]n terms of political and social influence the lines between urban and rural early became indistinct” (p. 31). Regarding the Spanish elite, this is indeed valid, but what of the influence of Indian tribute, forced delivery by Indians of specific items to Spanish urban elites, and the varieties of forced native labor that inevitably flowed from rural areas to cities? Elsewhere Kinsbruner does consider regatones (Spaniards and their black slaves or free castas). Although he labels them “resourceful entrepreneurs” (p. 76), my experience with colonial Guatemalan sources suggests their role was more one of interloper and middleman. They often used force to shake down indigenous vendors bringing products to market.While this study might have benefited from looking more at class structure and the early and midcolonial antecedents of urban capitalism that evolved into the urban society depicted, there is much to praise. Kinsbruner is an assiduous collector of useful bibliography and makes excellent use of published late-colonial travel accounts and diaries. This work will be most useful to undergraduates, as they will find the author’s often controversial opinions thought-provoking.