Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T19:24:11.328Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Evolution of the Textile Industry of Puebla 1544–1845

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Jan Bazant
Jan Bazant
Affiliation:
El Colegio de México, Mexico City
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article deals with an important chapter in the economic history of Mexico. Throughout its history Puebla was an industrial center. Well into the 19th century it was the prime center of the country's chief manufacture — textiles. The city became the commercial and industrial capital of New Spain within a few years of its foundation. I shall concentrate on the ways in which the several branches of the textile industry were organized, comparing their development with that of the textile industries of medieval and early industrial Europe.

Type
Comparative Perspectives in Economic Development
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , October 1964 , pp. 56 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 de Terreros, Manuel Romero, Las Artes lndustriales en la Nueva España (Mexico City, P. Robredo, 1923), p. 47.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 120.

3 Ibid., p. 137.

4 Quintana, Miguel Angel, “Papel Histórico de Puebla en el progreso industrial de la Nueva España y México”, Boletín de la SMGE, t. LXII, p. 347.Google Scholar

5 Veytia, Mariano Fernández de Echeverría y, Historia de la Fundación de la ciudad de la Puebla de los Angeles, Libro 1 (Puebla, 1962), p. 125.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Echeverría y Veytia.

6 de la Barca, Madame Calderón, La Vida en Mexico (Porrùa, 1959), pp. 358–62.Google Scholar

7 Fr. Clavijero, J., “Breve Description de la Provincia de México de la Cía. de Jesùs”, in Tesoros Documentales de México, ed. Cuevas, P. Mariano (1944), pp. 324 ff.Google Scholar

8 Chevalier, François, Formation des Grands Domaines au Mexique au XVle et XVlIe Siécles (=; Travaux et Mémoires d'Institut d'Ethnologie No. 56) (Paris, 1952).Google Scholar

9 Chevalier, François, Significatión Social de la Fundación de la Puebla de los Angeles (=; Centro de Estudios Históricos de Puebla, Publ. No. 6) (Puebla, 1957).Google Scholar

1 Pueblo a través de los Siglos (Ed. “El Sol de Puebla”, Puebla, 1962), esp. p. 11.

11 Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario de la Nueva España, t. XVI, pp. 5–21. Hereafter cited as Epistolario.

12 Puebla a través de los Siglos, p. 14.

13 Chevalier, Significatión Social…

14 Pirenne, Henri, Histoire Economique de L'Occident Médiéval (Desclee de Brouwer, Bruges, 1951), p. 198.Google Scholar

15 Leicht, Hugo, Las Calles de Puebla (Puebla, 1934), pp. 276–279;Google ScholarVillaseñor, P. Lopez de, Cartilla Vieja de la Nobilisima ciudad de Puebla (1781) (UNAM, 1961).Google Scholar

16 P. López de Villaseñor, op. cit.

17 Cf. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. III (Cambridge, 1963), p. 17.Google Scholar

18 Epistolario, t. IV, pp. 123–128.

19 Echeverría y Veytia, op. cit., pp. 299–300.

20 See Thrupp, Sylvia L., “The Gilds”, in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. III (1963), pp. 230–280.Google Scholar

21 James, John, History of the Worsted Manufacturer in England (London, Longman and Roberts, 1857), pp. 29–32.Google Scholar

22 Livermore, Harold, A History of Spain (New York, Farrar, Strauss Cudahy, 1958), pp. 186 ff.Google Scholar

23 Ibid.,

24 Epistolario, t. IV, pp. 94–102.

25 Borah, Woodrow, Silk Raising in Colonial Mexico (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1943), p. 43.Google Scholar

26 Epistolario, t. XV, pp. 141–155.

27 Aiton, A.S., Antonio de Mendoza, First Viceroy of New Spain (Durham, Duke University Press, 1927), pp. 28 ff.Google Scholar

28 Borah, op. cit., pp. 36–37.

29 Ibid., p. 35.

30 Ibid., p. 97.

31 Hume, Martin A.S., Spain: Its Greatness and Decay 1479–1788 (Cambridge University Press, 1940), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar

32 Cited in Pujol, J. Carrera, Historia de la Economia Espanola (Barcelona, 1943), Vol. I, p. 529.Google Scholar

33 D. Antonio Bermudez de Castro, Theatro Angelopolitano (1746), cited in León, N., Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVIII, Va. Parte A-Z (Mexico City, 1908), pp. 121–354;Google Scholar

34 For a short account of economic conditions and policy in Spain at this time see Hamilton, Earl J., “The Decline of Spain”, Economic History Review, VIII (1938),Google Scholar reproduced in Carus-Wilson, E.M., ed., Essays in Economic History, I (1954).Google Scholar See also discussion of the internal peace of New Spain in, Luis Chávez Orozco, Conflicto de Trabajo con los Mineros del Real del Monte, Ano de 1766 (Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, Mexico City, 1960), p. 10.

35 Zavala, Silvio, Ordenanzas del Trabajo, Siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico City, Edit. Eleda, 1947), p. 202.Google Scholar

36 Hamilton, op. cit. For a recent and very able discussion of the problem, see John H. Elliott, “The Decline of Spain”, in Past and Present, no. 20 (November 1961); also a book by the same author, Imperial Spain 1469–1716 (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1963), pp. 172–91 and 279–95.Google Scholar

37 Carrera Pujol, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 417.

38 Archivo del Ayuntamiento de Puebla, t. 221 (1583–1621), t. 224 (1621–1807). Cited hereafter a AAP.

39 Hugo Leicht, op. cit., pp. 276–79.

40 Bermùdez de Castro, op. cit., p. 189.

41 Zavala, Ordenanzas, p. 207.

42 AAP, t. 234, Expediente 2.

43 Bermúdez de Castro, op. cit., p. 190.

44 Cited in Priestly, Herbert Ingram, José de Gálvez, Visitor-General of New Spain, 1765–1771 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1916), p. 18.Google Scholar

45 Chevalier, Formation des Grands Domaines au Méxique.

46 Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter cited as AGN), Sectión de bandos.

47 AGN, reproduced in Orozco, Luis Chávez, ed., Documentos para la Historia Económico de México, Vol. VII (published by Secretario de la Economía Nacional, 1935), pp. 25–33.Google Scholar Absenteeism from work on Monday is still common in some parts of Mexico.

48 The easiest way of solving labor shortage in New Spain consisted in lending small amounts of money to Indians who could then be forced to work to pay off their debt.

49 Flon, Manuel de, Noticias Estadísticas de la Intendencia de Puebla, 1804, in Relaciones estadísticas de Nueva España de principios del S. XIX (Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 1944), p. 54.Google Scholar This report refers to conditions in 1803.

50 AAP, t. 224, Exp. 26, ff. 226–235.

51 The best study is Franco Borlandi's, “Futainiers et Futaines dans l'ltalie du Moyen Age”, in Eventail de I'Histoire Vivante. Hommage a Lucien Febvre (Paris, Armand Colin, 1953).Google Scholar

52 See also the luxurious list of cloth and jewels which Cortes sent to Spain in 1519, printed in Lucas Alaman, Disertaciones (Ed. Jus, 1942), t. I, pp. 395 ff.

53 Variations in the size of pieces made before the Conquest are described in Othón de Mendizábal, Las Artes Textiles Indigénas y la Industria Textil Mexicana (Vol. VI of his Obras Completas), pp. 257–496.

54 Gariel, A. Carrillo y, El Traje en la Nueva España (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1959), p. 24.Google Scholar

55 AAP, t. 231, L. 2695, Exp. 2.

56 Echeverria y Veytia, op. cit., p. 301. Fray Juan Villa Sánchez, in his important chronicle, Puebla Sagrada y Profana, edited by Fr. Javier de la Pena in 1835, also states that weavers in 1746 bought thread from the spinners. See the facsimile edition of 1962, pp. 39–40. Some weavers may have employed spinners for wages: see references to “the good old times” for weavers in Clamores del tejedor (1820), reproduced in Quintana, José Miguel, ed., Las Artes Grdficas en Puebla (Mexico City, 1960), pp. 109–11Google Scholar, and in Antuñano, Ampliatión, Aclaración y Correccion a los principales puntos del Manifiesto sobre el Algodon manufacturado y en greña, edited by Orozco, Luis Chavez (Parnia, 1955), pp. 63, 74.Google Scholar

57 Echeverráa y Veytia, op. cit., p. 301.

58 Potash, Robert A., El Banco de Avío de México, Fondo de Cultura Ecñnomica (Mexico City, 1959), pp. 20–23.Google Scholar (Translation of an unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1953.)

59 Flon, op. cit., p. 54. See above, n. 48.

60 AAP, t. 234, L. 2700, Folios 268–284.

61 Potash, op. cit., p. 24.

62 They were selling cloth to merchants in 1813. Pueblo Sagrada y Profana, p. 105.

63 J. M. Quintana, op. cit.

64 Antunano, Ampliación …, p. 73.

65 Ibid., p. 17.

66 Leicht, op. cit.