The title of this set of essays and accompanying documents is deceptively narrow. A multidimensional study of the prominent, late eighteenth-century Mexico City merchant, Francisco Ignacio de Yraeta, it represents a signal advance in the rapidly expanding literature on colonial Latin American merchants and their businesses. It also contributes meaningfully to the now blossoming field of Mexican family history. Making full use of a remarkably complete set of family letters and account books that runs almost unbroken from the 1750s to independence and beyond, the research group coordinated by María Cristina Torales Pacheco, who also authored three of the five contributions, examines in turn Yraeta’s personal life and family relationships, mobilization of capital and business organization, colonial mercantile operations, role in European and Hispano-American commerce, and trade with the Philippines. The final two essays were composed by Tarsicio García Díaz and Carmen Yuste.
Yraeta’s career is most illustrative of the patterns and practices that previous works on mercantile communities have pointed out. A young immigrant from the Basque provinces, Yraeta labored some years as a commercial assistant in both New Spain and the Philippines. He was eventually recruited into a Mexico City merchant house by a fellow Basque, who may also have been a distant relative, and soon married his daughter, later inheriting the business. Yraeta avoided fragmentation of the family’s holdings through a company agreement with the widow. He soon began to sponsor the immigration of a series of relatives from his home region. Some became trusted associates, others fell by the wayside, and yet others were educated as priests and returned to the Basque homeland to occupy posts and to represent family interests, often with Yraeta’s guidance. Through companies and correspondence accounts, Yraeta assembled an elaborate commercial network in which hard coin was rarely directly exchanged. He methodically diversified his investments, most notably into sugar growing and certain financial instruments and bonds. He joined brotherhoods which celebrated his fatherland and religiosity, but which also could provide loans, and cautiously pursued other posts and honors. He engineered advantageous marriages for his three daughters: one to his designated successor, a nephew from Spain; another into the Icaza family, a close business ally with relatives in the important Guayaquil cacao trade; and the final daughter with a prominent oidor of the Audiencia of Mexico.
Though the authors’ organization of Yraeta’s career around five distinct themes retards a full understanding of the interconnections among these different aspects of his life and business activities, and sometimes even the sequence of events, these essays as a unit constitute a notable contribution to our understanding of the late colonial elite social and business world. They also call into question the effectiveness and centrality of the Bourbon commercial reforms. The accompanying second volume consists of appendixes, including a lengthy yearly compilation of events in Yraeta’s life, New Spain, and the rest of the world; an extensive sampling of the personal documents and letters which provided the evidence for the study; and a fine set of photos of portraits, buildings, maps, documents, and products from the time.
