Editorial Unimagdalena

Description in English: In the final decades of the 18th century, a thought began to spread in Spanish America that reacted against monopolies, the exclusivity of the metropolis, and favored merchants, excessive regulations, and the privileges that increased prices and made exchanges difficult. The old mercantilism restricted the expansion and prosperity of the colonies, making it difficult to introduce new economic actors from both sides of the Atlantic INSERT INTO the market. Thus, the ideas that constituted a “liberal mercantilism” and an agrarianism oriented towards commercial crops made their way: an opening still within the empire. The reformist ideas coming from Europe were adopted, reworked, and enriched in light of the conditions of America. Creole thought—and “creoleized” to the extent that some Spanish employees contrasted their mandates with reality—was expressed in representations and memoirs, in controversies about the monarchy's economic policies, in corporate practices, in reports from high officials of the royal audiences, the mayoralties, the trade consulates, and the councils, and gave rise to a corpus of principles, analyses, and deductions that correspond to the birth of political economy in Ibero-America. This book brings together fourteen texts that deal with the emergence of reformist economic thought in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and its historical contextualization, introducing elements for a better understanding and the opening of new discussions.