Panamá, Perú y el universo económico del Pacífico en la temprana globalización, 1580-1640

Abstract

This essay offers an analysis of the mode of participation of the Peruvian economy at the beginning of so-called early globalization. It starts from the fact that between 1580 and 1640 the Peruvian economy was self-sufficient, expansive and with a remarkable production of silver allowing the monetization of China’s and Europe’s markets. We note that the self-sufficiency and the mining and non-mining surpluses that come out of its internal economy abroad generated two opposite effects: the contraction of the official Panama-Portobelo-Seville transatlantic axis and the promotion of the informal mercantile economy of the new Mexican Pacific and the Philippine islands, next to the Asian global pole with its epicenter in China. We are in the presence of a game of oceanic forces, where we see that the mobilization of agents, goods and capital across the Pacific came to exert a gravitational force on the universe of the Hispanic-European Atlantic economy.

Keywords

• New Spain
• Peru
• China
• Portobelo
• Iberian Monarchy
• mercantile surpluses