Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America
John Tutino
2011, Duke University Press
698 pages
JOHN TUTINO is one of the heavyweights of Mexican history and this volume – a tour de force in the study of the region’s society and economy – is both timely and bold. Tutino examines how settlement and commerce in the Bajío basin northwest of Mexico City transformed it into an engine of global capitalism and a laboratory of social and cultural change that would eventually foster the forces that gave rise to the Independence revolution of 1810. Therein may lie the lesson for readers who pay careful attention to detail, for with the rise of capitalism and its subsequent transformation comes the creation of new classes and class forces that bring with them revolutionary change. Watch this space. – GO’T
