Chapter 1 details how silver mined in the Andes and New Spain (Mexico) was pivotal to trade with China and the rise of the first global commercial capitalism, and how the sugar and slave economy first proven in Portuguese Brazil spread along Atlantic America to support the rise of European power and prosperity. The chapter emphasizes the mix of wars and popular insurgencies after 1790—notably the risings in Saint Domingue and the Bajío region of New Spain—that assaulted the first global system. Revolutionary Haitian slaves ended plantation production, claimed the land, and focused on families; entrepreneurs responded by expanding sugar, coffee, cotton, and slavery in Cuba, Brazil, and the United States. Bajío insurgents took the land, focused on families, and undermined the silver production that had fueled Asian trades and filled European treasuries. Industrial capitalism rose in that crucible; the Americas and the world had to adapt.

Chapter 1 details how silver mined in the Andes and New Spain (Mexico) was pivotal to trade with China and the rise of the first global commercial capitalism, and how the sugar and slave economy first proven in Portuguese Brazil spread along Atlantic America to support the rise of European power and prosperity. The chapter emphasizes the mix of wars and popular insurgencies after 1790—notably the risings in Saint Domingue and the Bajío region of New Spain—that assaulted the first global system. Revolutionary Haitian slaves ended plantation production, claimed the land, and focused on families; entrepreneurs responded by expanding sugar, coffee, cotton, and slavery in Cuba, Brazil, and the United States. Bajío insurgents took the land, focused on families, and undermined the silver production that had fueled Asian trades and filled European treasuries. Industrial capitalism rose in that crucible; the Americas and the world had to adapt.

In the wake of Napoleon’s 1808 invasion of Iberia, Spaniards fought for independence at home while struggling to hold the empire together. That complex and conflictive process led to the 1812 Cádiz Constitution, a document offering citizenship and electoral participations to Hispanic and indigenous peoples, while limiting the rights of men of African origins as slavery expanded in Cuba. That charter shaped political visions and debates in the Iberian world—Spain, Portugal, and their Americas—into the nineteenth century even as military men took the lead in founding and ruling national states. Ironically, a charter designed to hold an empire together in trying times proved most influential, shaping politics in nations that broke away.