Chinese Silk and Globalization along the Hispanic American Road, from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

PATRICK MANNING; MARIANO BONIALIAN; SERGIO TONATIUH SERRANO HERNÁNDEZ; DENNIS FLYNN

Asian Review of W orld Histories

Brill

Lugar: Leiden; Año: 2022 vol. 10 p. 33 - 55

2287-965X

This essay analyzes one of the main elements of the economic relationship betweenChina and colonial Latin America: the Chinese Silk Road. The road demonstrated abipolarity of early globalization, and its impact across the Pacific enhanced the materialculture of Hispanic American society from Mexico to Buenos Aires. The route ofcirculation was largely informal, due to prohibitions imposed by metropolitan Spaindesigned to guarantee the growth of European economic connections across theAtlantic Ocean. Quality variations and affordable prices made Chinese silks amongthe most valuable articles in Latin American markets before the nineteenth century,when British-Indian cotton emerged as the main textile of the global era.