The Cacao Economy of the Eighteenth-Century Province of Caracas and the Spanish Cacao Market

Bibliographic Data

ID2827482
AuthorsEugenio Piñero (corresponding author)
Year1988
Volume68
Issue1
Pages75
Publication date1988-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2516221
OpenAlexW4252793858
LanguageEN
Citations received18

W Hi Then the Europeans established their colonies in the New World, the economic activities of any given colony often centered around a single staple. In agriculture, these staples (tobacco, cotton, cacao, sugar, and others) were principally produced for export to the metropolis. The unit through which the metropolis-colony relationship was to be filtered, according to the mercantilist ideal, was the plantation or, in some cases, the hacienda. The plantation would link the colonists with the international market and with the metropolis. Although there were other economic activities, they were to be either complementary to the plantation system or reduced to subsistence endeavors without links to the plantation. Beginning in the seventeenth century, cacao constituted one of the main staples of the province of Caracas. During that century, cacao jockeyed for a predominant position, and with the advent of the Caracas Company in 1728 it was established as the main product of the region. The company was created, with monopolistic powers, to ship cacao to the Spanish market and to curb contraband.' The influence of this resource-intensive commodity on the economy of the region was impressive. The entrepreneurs shifted the elements of production-land, labor, and capital-from other staples to cacao cultivation. The center of production progressively developed several link

Agricultural economics · Agriculture · Business · Capital (architecture) · Commodity · Economics · Economy · Geography · Market economy · Monopolistic competition · Monopoly · Position (finance) · Production (economics) · Subsistence agriculture · Historical Studies in Latin America · Historical Studies on Spain · Regional Development and Innovation

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