Drawing upon economic history, cultural studies, intellectual history and the history of science and medicine, this collection of case studies examines the transatlantic transfer and transformation of goods and ideas, with particular emphasis on their reception in Europe. It critiques and enriches Atlantic History and the history of consumption by highlighting a degree of resistance to unfamiliar goods and information as well as the asymmetrical and violent nature of many types of exchange. It considers agents who forged networks and relations within and beyond the Spanish Empire, including Jesuit missionaries, Sephardic merchants, African laborers and farmers from Oaxaca to Santo Domingo to the Piedmont. While uniting increasingly homogenous and connected societies, the expansion of European horizons also generated diverse interests and divergent material cultures.
1. Global Goods in the Spanish Empire: State of the Art and Prospects for Research; Bethany Aram PART I: CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL CONSTRAINTS 2. The Early Modern Food Revolution: A Perspective from the Iberian Atlantic; Maria de los Angeles Perez Samper 3. The Difficult Beginnings: Columbus as a Mediator of New World Products; Consuelo Varela 4. Accommodating America to Europe: Renaissance Missionaries between the Ancient and the New World; Antonella Romano 5. America and the Hermeneutics of Nature in Renaissance Europe; Maria Portuondo 6. The Diffusion of Maize in Italy: From Resistance to the Peasants' Defeat; Giovanni Levi PART II: THE SOCIAL USE OF THINGS 7. Taste Transformed: Sugar, Spice and the Sixteenth-Century Hispano-Burgundian Court; Bethany Aram 8. Diet, Travel and Colonialism in the Early Modern World; Rebecca Earle 9. Asian Silk, Porcelain and Material Culture in the Definition of Mexican and Andalusian Elites, c.1565-1630; Jose Luis Gasch 10. Interest and Curiosity: American Products, Information, and Exotica in Tuscany; Francisco Javier Zamora Rodriguez PART III: CONNECTED AND CONTRASTING SOCIETIES 11. Mexican Cochineal and the European Demand for a Luxury Dye, 1550-1850; Carlos Marichal Salinas 12. Hispaniola's Turn to Tobacco: Products from Santo Domingo in Atlantic Commerce; Antonio Gutierrez Escudero 13. Global trade, environmental constraints and local conflicts: The case of early modern Hispaniola; Igor Perez Tostado 14. The Resilience and Boomerang Effects of Chocolate: A Product's Globalization and Commodification; Irene Fattacciu 15. Globalization, Iberian Empires and Cross-Cultural Consumption in a World Context, c. 1400-1700; Bartolome Yun-Casalilla Selected Bibliography
