The Cocoa Trade in New Spain in the 18th Century

Author(s):  
Guillermina del Valle Pavón

In New Spain, cocoa was a staple food whose high demand at the beginning of the 17th century meant that cocoa beans were imported from Guatemala, Venezuela, and Guayaquil. The viceroyalty of New Spain became the largest world buyer of cocoa because it paid for the product with silver, which was the principal means of exchange at the time. The cocoa trade was monopolized by a small, powerful group of the Consulado (merchants’ guild) of Mexico City who contracted it, redistributed it to the rest of the viceroyalty, and shipped it to Spain. However, the Spanish Crown’s prohibitionist trade policy hindered the expansion of the cocoa trade to meet the demand in New Spain. As Spain intermittently suspended sailing between the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru, the supply of Guayaquil cocoa was limited to shippers who could obtain special licenses and those who smuggled it. When the monarchy required extraordinary funds to finance its wars in Europe, it granted permits to move Ecuadorian cocoa through the Pacific routes. However, it preferred the supply of cocoa from Caracas for geostrategic reasons, a factor that was used by Caracas shippers to raise prices. Mexican merchants preferred to import Ecuadorian cocoa because of its higher profitability. Trade in cocoa from this source was based on a confluence of complex kinship, community, and friendship networks. Finally, in 1789, the Guayaquil cocoa trade was authorized without restrictions, which significantly reduced the demand for Caracas cocoa. In addition, cocoa from Tabasco, Guatemala, and Maracaibo was traded in New Spain. The relationship between the Crown and the commercial elite of Mexico was characterized by a policy of continual ongoing negotiations. The cocoa trade was privileged in exchange for merchants’ contributions over and above regular fiscal payments.

Tlalocan ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 287-342
Author(s):  
Hans Roskamp ◽  
Cristina Monzón

Primordial titles form an important category in the extensive corpus of native documents from 17th and 18th century New Spain. Generally made by local scribes (carariecha) or regional specialists who combined information from older documents and oral tradition, they emphasize the foundation of the villages and the boundaries of their lands. These local histories were —and often still are— used whenever the territorial integrity of the community was threatened by their neighbors. The present article includes the transcription, translation and analysis of a primordial title written in the Tarascan or P’urhépecha language. The document, now kept in the National Library of Anthropology and History (BNAH) in Mexico City, originally comes from Tócuaro, a small village on the southern shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán.


Author(s):  
Eloy Cruz

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition of Mexico City was in between 1569 and 1820. Its task was to regulate the moral life of the society of New Spain and it was authorized to punish offenders. The crimes that were usually persecuted were acts against the Catholic faith (heresy, blasphemy, sorcery, and idolatry) or against accepted morality (indecency, bigamy, sexual harassment, homosexuality, and sedition). The Court placed limited attention to the sones de la tierra (sounds of the land) from 1766 to 1819. The sones were sung dances that were eventually considered unsuitable and were denounced for various reasons: the lyrics of the songs contained vulgar words or heretical or blasphemous concepts, the steps of dances were indecent, the choreography implied actions that parodied known acts of the Christian liturgy, or by some combination of these factors. The archive of the Inquisition of Mexico is practically the only source of information on music and street poetry in the cities and towns of the colony. The sones de la tierra are the origin of the current cultural music genre called son mexicano, the most significant part of the traditional music and poetry of the country. The sones de la tierra of the Baroque period and the current Mexican sones have three basic elements: music, poetry, and choreography. The music is based on recurrent rhythmic-harmonic patterns (ostinato) on which instrumental or vocal improvisations are made. Each determined pattern generates a son with a specific name. Thus, it is possible to speak of sones typical of the Baroque period (chacona, zarabanda, chuchumbé, and saraguandingo) or in present-day Mexico (bamba, maracumbé, petenera, and oaxacado). Some can be documented both in the 18th century and in the 21st century (matachines, fandango, panaderos, and zacamandú). The poetry of the sones is based on the active principle of the copla, a poetic form based on the octosyllabic quatrain in various modalities (seguidilla and décima). The current Mexican variants are directly related to the Spanish poetry of the Golden Age. The dance of the sones is performed mainly in couples who dance without having physical contact, using different steps whose main characteristic is the zapateado. The archive of the Inquisition of Mexico mentions some sixty sones. The complaints and interrogations of the Court provide information about the sung lyrics, the ways of dancing, the people who practiced them, their geographical distribution, and some social attitudes regarding their use. This information shows that the sones de la tierra were common throughout the territory of New Spain and were practiced by people of almost all social classes. The study of the sones de la tierra allows us to understand the existence and behavior of the different variants of the Mexican sones of today, which represent one of the fundamental elements of Mexican culture.


Author(s):  
Timothy Matovina

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the only Marian apparition tradition in the Americas—and indeed in all of Roman Catholicism—that inspired a sustained series of published theological analyses. Theologians in each successive epoch since the mid-seventeenth century have plumbed the meaning of Guadalupe for their times. Their theological works are grounded in two realities: the first is the relationship between Guadalupe and her faithful, and the second is her power to shape their lives and their world. Theologies of Guadalupe examines the way theologians have understood Guadalupe and sought to orient her impact in the lives of her devotees. It also examines Guadalupe’s meaning in everyday devotees’ lives and the spread of Guadalupan devotion over nearly half a millennium. Chapters of this study successively examine core theological topics in the Guadalupe tradition developed in response to major events of Mexican history: conquest, attempts to Christianize native peoples, society building, independence, and the demands for justice of marginalized groups. The successive chapters also narrate how, amid the plentiful miraculous images of Christ, Mary, and the saints that dotted the sacred landscape of colonial New Spain, the Guadalupe cult rose above all others and emerged from a local devotion to become a regional, national, and then international phenomenon. From patristic-based theological writings in the colonial era down to contemporary formulations shaped by the emergence of liberation theologies in Latin America, the theologies under study here reveal how Christian concepts and scriptures imported from Europe developed in dynamic interaction with the new contexts in which they took root.


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 2502
Author(s):  
Bogumiła Urbańska ◽  
Hanna Kowalska ◽  
Karolina Szulc ◽  
Małgorzata Ziarno ◽  
Irina Pochitskaya ◽  
...  

The content of polyphenols in chocolate depends on many factors related to the properties of raw material and manufacturing parameters. The trend toward developing chocolates made from unroasted cocoa beans encourages research in this area. In addition, modern customers attach great importance to how the food they consume benefits their bodies. One such benefit that consumers value is the preservation of natural antioxidant compounds in food products (e.g., polyphenols). Therefore, in our study we attempted to determine the relationship between variable parameters at the conching stage (i.e., temperature and time of) and the content of dominant polyphenols (i.e.,catechins, epicatechins, and procyanidin B2) in chocolate milk mass (CMM) obtained from unroasted cocoa beans. Increasing the conching temperature from 50 to 60 °C decreased the content of three basic flavan-3-ols. The highest number of these compounds was determined when the process was carried out at 50 °C. However, the time that caused the least degradation of these compounds differed. For catechin, it was 2 h; for epicatechin it was 1 h; and for procyanidin it was 3 h. The influence of both the temperature and conching time on the rheological properties of chocolate milk mass was demonstrated. At 50 °C, the viscosity and the yield stress of the conched mass showed its highest value.


1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Provan

It is well known that the seeds from which the modern discipline of OT theology grew are already found in 17th and 18th century discussion of the relationship between Bible and Church, which tended to drive a wedge between the two, regarding canon in historical rather than theological terms; stressing the difference between what is transient and particular in the Bible and what is universal and of abiding significance; and placing the task of deciding which is which upon the shoulders of the individual reader rather than upon the church. Free investigation of the Bible, unfettered by church tradition and theology, was to be the way ahead. OT theology finds its roots more particularly in the 18th century discussion of the nature of and the relationship between Biblical Theology and Dogmatic Theology, and in particular in Gabler's classic theoreticalstatementof their nature and relationship. The first book which may strictly be called an OT theology appeared in 1796: an historical discussion of the ideas to be found in the OT, with an emphasis on their probable origin and the stages through which Hebrew religious thought had passed, compared and contrasted with the beliefs of other ancient peoples, and evaluated from the point of view of rationalistic religion. Here we find the unreserved acceptance of Gabler's principle that OT theology must in the first instance be a descriptive and historical discipline, freed from dogmatic constraints and resistant to the premature merging of OT and NT — a principle which in the succeeding century was accepted by writers across the whole theological spectrum, including those of orthodox and conservative inclination.


Author(s):  
Ginta Pērle-Sīle

The subject of this article is a court case between Aumeisteri nobleman Berhard Magnus von Wulf (1732–1784) and the minister of Palsmane and Aumeisteri parishes Friedrich Daniel Wahr (1749–1827) about the suspension of the minister from his duties from 1775 to 1779. The aim of the research is to approach the court case as evidence of the different opinions of several social groups where extreme colonial ideas in Vidzeme meet Enlightenment ideas from Western Europe. At the same time, the court case is a source of contextual information for a better understanding of the development of Wahr’s literary and folkloristic heritage. The research is based on studies of documents found in the Latvian State History Archive that are approached using the culture-historical and comparative methods, thus trying to contextualize certain events in a specific place and time. The results of the research show the Palsmane and Aumeisteri society as typical of the second part of the 18th century. The existence of specific social groups, particularism, and the implementation of colonial attitudes by the local nobility are also evident. The attitude of Wahr towards Latvian peasants shows the influence of Enlightenment, especially his efforts in education. The relationship between the parish and its minister incorporates evidence of a syncretic praxis with pagan and Christian traditions. In the light of political events of that particular time, i. e. peasant rebels in Vidzeme, the court case allows Wulf’s accusations to be treated as an opportunity to decrease the implementation of Enlightenment ideas, thus safeguarding the local nobility’s power. At the same time, the court case is a source of biographic, private, and daily life details. The broad range of the parish territory which was often challenging to navigate, the modest means of the minister, and distancing of the local nobility on the one hand, along with the influence of enlightenment ideas, on the other hand, are the most probable grounding for Wahr’s folkloristic and literary work.


2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1446-1451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indrani Roy ◽  
Joanna D. Haigh

Abstract The solar cycle signal in sea level pressure during 1856–2007 is analyzed. Using composites of data from January–February in solar cycle peak years the strong positive signal in the region of the Aleutian low, found by previous authors, is confirmed. It is found, however, that signals in other regions of the globe, particularly in the South Pacific, are very sensitive to the choice of reference climatology. Also investigated is the relationship between solar activity and sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific. A marked overall association of higher solar activity with colder temperatures in the tropical Pacific that is not restricted to years of peak sunspot number is noted. The ENSO-like variation following peak years that has been suggested by other authors is not found as a consistent signal. Both the SLP and SST signals vary coherently with the solar cycle and neither evolves on an ENSO-like time scale. The solar signals are weaker during the period spanning approximately 1956–97, which may be due to masking by a stronger innate ENSO variability at that time.


2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
Vladimir Milisavljevic

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on different aspects of the hermeneutical problem in post-Kantian philosophical 'constellation'. In this domain, the problem of the relationship between the text and its commentary is theorized in terms of the antithesis between 'Spirit' and 'Letter', which clearly has religious roots. Therefore, the first part of the paper examines the historical origins of this antithesis, as well as its application in philosophical discussions which developed by the end of the 18th century about the problem of finding the 'true' interpretation to Kant's philosophy. The second part of the text, which is to be published in the next issue of this review, brings the duality of spiritual and literal interpretation into closer connection with the topics of Kant's moral philosophy.


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