Online Seminar: A new relation between trade and empire: the first commercial treaties in Latin America (1810s-1830s)

Online Zoom Seminar.

Abstract

The crisis of the Iberian empires during the Napoleonic wars marked a fundamental transition in relations between trade and empire. The effectiveness of their "mercantilist" institutional support for long-distance trade fell short, and from 1808-10 the Ibero-American actors had to rely even more on other subjects capable of guaranteeing some protection to their “global” commercial initiatives. These relations were, at different times, fixed by treaties, which re-founded the ties between trade and a new type of empire, this time informal. If the Spanish-American actors, for example, contributed to push the world towards free trade by opening their ports to all friendly and neutral subjects, this nevertheless contributed to fueling rivalries over the reconfiguration of the American space. These rivalries were reflected in the attempts, mainly by Britain and the United States, then also by France and other subjects, to obtain suitable formulations of such treaties to their economic and strategic interests, in exchange for recognition of the new states and necessary political synergies. And this experience provided, in general, a model and a tool for nineteenth-century imperialism.

Presenter: Deborah Besseghini (University of Turin)

Deborah Besseghini is a postdoctoral researcher and adjunct professor at the University of Turin, and adjunct professor at the University of Milan, Italy. She had been visiting researcher at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Laboratoire Mondes Américains, in Paris, and external professor in the Universidad de Tucumán and the Universidad Nacional del Sur, in Argentina. She earned her PhD at the University of Trieste. Involved in several international research groups, both in Europe and the Americas, she authored essays in Spanish, English and Italian, mostly on informal imperialism.

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