Enterprise in the shadow of silver: Colonial Andeans and the culture of trade in Potosi, 1570-170

This dissertation is a social history of trade in Potosi, Peru during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It draws on a wide array of evidence including notary records, legal cases, town council records, and royal decrees, to ferret out daily acts of buying and selling with the understanding that generally, women and the non-elite sectors of the Potosi population dominated petty trade in food and alcohol. These most basic economic transactions of colonial urban life, however diminutive their value, emerge as major influences on the development of economic and social customs in the colonial city.;The boom in silver production established Potosi as a hub of trade. The majority of the 100,000 or more inhabitants no longer produced food or alcohol for themselves, but purchased these items thus creating a world of petty enterprise in the shadow of the busy silver mines. Trade was the most common medium of interaction for Potosinos of various ethnic and class backgrounds. Women, as the majority of vendors and store operators, played a crucial role in the development of the city's culture of trade. Indigenous market women began to offer wheat bread along with potatoes, and Spanish women opened up taverns to sell Andean corn beer. The city's buyers and sellers also negotiated the means of exchange. Because of the increasing relevance of cash values, people relied not on barter, but on new credit strategies like pawning and loans.;Since many places of trade had a public character, these trade practices did not go unnoticed by Spanish rulers. The town council consistently integrated social and economics goals into its policing of petty trade to combat those practices that threatened the goals of the elite or the crown. Even so, strong socio-economic networks helped propel indigenous and African vendors to successful trading careers. In the changing colonial world of the metropolis of Potosi, daily trade reveals how Spanish ruling practices and economic demands affected quotidian life for thousands of urban residents and why urban residents responded to these challenges by creating a culture of trade that reflected both tradition and creative adaptation.