The Guatemalan Merchants, the Government, and the Provincianos, 1750-1800

Abstract

D URING THE LAST HALF of the eighteenth century, the Spanish government directed its attention to increasing production in America and to stimulating maximum commerce within the empire. But in the audiencia of Guatemala the government was confronted with a monopoly-an undesirable weed in an atmosphere of liberalized commerce-which already had taken deep root and was in full flower before the implementation in America of laws enacted to increase productioni and trade. This was a monopoly comprised of a phalanx of creoles and peninsulars, closely knit by ties of marriage, blood, and commercial interest,1 which had received the stimulus for its growth from the commercial climate of the first half of the century. The textile revolution in Europe had created an unprecedented demand for indigo, piracy in the Caribbean was fast waning, and the Spanish merchant marine had undergone expansion partly as a result of the Proyecto of 1720 and stimulative legislation enacted during the 1730'S.2 These

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