Making a New World - 9780822349891

Making a New WorldFounding Capitalism in the Bajo and Spanish North America\nAuthor(s): John Tutino\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Duke University Press, United States\nImprint: Duke University Press\nISBN-13: 9780822349891, 978-0822349891\nSynopsis\nMaking a New World is a major rethinking of the role of the Americas in early world trade, the rise of capitalism, and the conflicts that reconfigured global power around 1800. At its center is the Bajo, a fertile basin extending across the modern-day Mexican states of Guanajuato and Quertaro, northwest of Mexico City. The Bajo became part of a new world in the 1530s, when Mesoamerican Otoms and Franciscan friars built Quertaro, a town that quickly thrived on agriculture and trade. Settlement accelerated as regional silver mines began to flourish in the 1550s. Silver tied the Bajo to Europe and China; it stimulated the development of an unprecedented commercial, patriarchal, Catholic society. A frontier extended north across vast expanse.