A revealing report produced by the French intelligence services of the beginning of eighteenth-century explores the production of luxury and fashion commodities and their distribution on a global scale. According to Jean de Monségur the main competitors in New Spain arrived through China commercial routes. On one hand, we intend to explore if the trade market in Mexico was reflecting or not European fashions, in particular French fashion so in vogue among European elites. On the other hand, some cultural aspects must be taking into account to discern how entangled Europe, Asia and the Americas were in 1700s underlying economic prestige and social status as in Europe. How cultural and symbolic message matters? Was New Spain contributing to develop an emerging hybrid consumer society?, Acknowledgements The Open Access of this research has been sponsored and financially supported by GECEM (Global Encounters between China and Europe: Trade Networks, Consumption and Cultural Exchanges in Macau and Marseille, 1680-1840), a project hosted by the Pablo de Olavide University (UPO) of Seville (Spain). The GECEM Project is funded by the ERC (European Research Council) Starting-Grant, ref. 679371, under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, www.gecem.eu. The P.I. (Principal Investigator) is Professor Manuel Perez-Garcia (Distinguished Researcher at UPO). This work was supported by the H2020 European Research Council. This research has also been part of the academic activities of the Global History Network (GHN) in China www.globalhistorynetwork.com. This research has been also supported by research funding from Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Agencia Estatal de Investigación/Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), HAR 2016-78026-P). This chapter’s roots are in the research project ‘Dressing the New World’, awarded in 2015 by the EU Commission Marie Curie Sklodowska Individual Fellowship Horizon 2020 (EU project 661517–DRESSING THE NEW WORLD)

This introduction summarizes the main ideas that this book develops, which are central to understanding American globalization from the perspective of the history of consumption. It points out the relevant role of states and political economies, maybe greater than in Europe, in the distribution and introduction of European, Asian and African products in the New World, which partly explains why this process is characterized by the combination of coercion, commercial transactions and emulation. But this research also emphasizes the agency of the original American peoples in the hybridization of consumption patterns resulting from the conquest and colonization, as well as the relevance of "horizontal" relationships among the subalterns themselves, due especially to the crucial role played by enslaved populations of African origin. However, the interactions among so many populations led not to homogeneous fusion but instead to great social and regional disparities. Given the depth and dramatic character of the transformations underway, these changes in consumption patterns must also be associated with profound alterations in the original ecosystems.

In this particular case study, a fiscal source had provide the information to study the effects of income distribution on consumption and demand in mid-eighteenth-century Madrid. As a result of centuries of relations between East and West, Madrid exhibits the dynamics of consumption of an imperial capital served by products from every corner of the world. Many of these overseas products played a central role as social markers, especially in urban populations. However, what we can infer from the data is the evidence of a well-defined stratified purchase where each social class underscores a particular pattern of consumption and a moderate spread of certain commodities among the middle classes.

This study aims to analyze the introduction of firearms in the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay during the seventeenth century. Examination of monarchy's sources will highlight the establishment of different intermediaries and mechanisms generated by Jesuits in order to furnish firearms to Guaraní natives. Furthermore, this chapter examines the obstacles that arose in this process of distributing firearms: the fathers of the Society of Jesus clashed, in fact, with the Spanish monarchy over the topic of firearm possession, a circumstance that conditioned the training and formation of the Guaraní militias during this period. The objective of this chapter is, therefore, to investigate the effectiveness of the defense of one border in the Spanish empire, developing a model that could be applied to other colonial spaces.

This chapter shows that the introduction of Eurasian and African products in Latin America should be understood as one more phase in a longer wave of globalization across Eurasia, which had one of its pillars in the so-called medieval Islamic green revolution, of which Iberia was a cross-roads. Contrary to the model of ecological imperialism established by Crosby, the idea is defended that American globalization also meant the rise of very dynamic and hybrid ecosystems that would produce a new equilibrium and economic growth. The result is a more nuanced and constructive conception of ecological imperialism, which implied, on the other hand, a qualitative leap in the history of humanity that made America the main stage and the laboratory for the long-run development of unsustainable forms of exploitation. The complex mechanisms of diffusion and rejection of those products are also studied to underline how violence is inseparable from commerce or persuasion, as well as to what extent they are linked to deep social structural changes. The outcome is a path to consumerism that differs from the models normally used to understand what happened in Europe and a proposal to understand the history of consumption as inextricably associated with ecological history.

A revealing report produced by the French intelligence services of the beginning of eighteenth-century explores the production of luxury and fashion commodities and their distribution on a global scale. According to Jean de Monségur the main competitors in New Spain arrived through China commercial routes. On one hand, we intend to explore if the trade market in Mexico was reflecting or not European fashions, in particular French fashion so in vogue among European elites. On the other hand, some cultural aspects must be taking into account to discern how entangled Europe, Asia and the Americas were in 1700s underlying economic prestige and social status as in Europe. How cultural and symbolic message matters? Was New Spain contributing to develop an emerging hybrid consumer society?

Early globalization travelled in cordages and ships' sails made with thousands of tons of European hemp. The new American geographies could have served to increment its cultivation, increasing what Pomeranz defines as ghost acreage, to supply the huge demand for European cannabis. The sources for Spanish America show, in fact, a firm will to increase the cultivation of hemp to be used in naval vessels. However, a wide historical record of failures and frustrations seems incompatible with classical explanations such as European mercantilist resistance to the crop¿s transfer to the Americas. Therefore, it seems reasonable to turn to other scientific disciplines, including botany and agronomy, in order to reinterpret the scarce introduction of hemp cultivation in South America.