We welcomed foreign fabrics and we were left naked: Cotton textile artisans and the first debates on free trade versus national industry in Mexico (1821--1846).

摘要

This dissertation provides a new perspective on the origins and structure of modern industry in Mexico after its independence in 1821 by arguing that cotton textile artisans played an active role in shaping the discourse and practices of the new country's political economy, in the struggles between free traders and advocates of national industry. In developing this argument, the dissertation situates artisans in the history of cotton textiles in Mexico, from their pre-colonial origins up to the American invasion of 1846. After Independence, artisans were part of a broad coalition that included elite entrepreneurs and politicians, who advanced national industry as an alternative economic project to free trade in the first debates over trade policy and the role of industry. These debates were strongly influenced by the prevailing theories of political economy, in particular those of Adam Smith, that the free-trader Mexican elites embraced after Independence. Artisans also undertook technological initiatives to renew their means of production to meet the challenge posed by British imports, the main beneficiaries of early free trade policies.;Most histories of these events portray Mexico's artisans as traditional producers, "unable to innovate and therefore destined to disappear." In contrast, this dissertation highlights cotton textile artisans as active agents who helped undermine the hold of free trade policies with initiatives to support textile manufacturing in Mexico. The standard accounts, developed by historians of Mexico beginning in the nineteen thirties, follow the classical success and failure narratives, first, of the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in the colonial period, and, after Independence, of Industrial Revolution. By demonstrating the active role of artisans in shaping this history, my dissertation problematizes these accounts and the assumptions embedded in them.;The first free trade debates in Mexico belong to a remote period in history but are also oddly at home today in that country, where current debates echo the struggles of artisans and their supporters against free trade policies after independence. And, in spite of the fatalistic predictions of traditional historians, cotton textile artisans continue to make a significant contribution to Mexican culture and identity.