Stimulated by the comercio libre reglamento of 1778, Veracruz merchants lobbied for a consulado de comercio for their port and received that privilege in 1795. Each year thereafter until independence the secretary of the consulado (a post held by three peninsulares in succession) wrote a report “sobre alguno de los objetos propios del instituto del consulado,” as the 1795 cédula required. Sixteen of these memorias consulares have been compiled and introduced by Javier Ortiz de la Tabla Ducasse, the author of a 1978 study of the overseas commerce of Veracruz for 1778-1821.
Ortiz de la Tabla’s introduction is a short monograph detailing the origin and functions of the consulado of Veracruz, commenting on the memorias consulares, and providing biographical sketches of the three secretaries who wrote them. The memorias are both informative reports on commerce and agriculture and detailed proposals for reform. They provide a wealth of data not only on the commerce of Veracruz during this important period of reform, trade liberalization, and war, but also on agrarian conditions in the immediate region. Perhaps the greatest value of the collection is its clear dissection of the region’s agrarian problems and agricultural underdevelopment. In the commentary and reform proposals of the three secretaries, this collection documents in one poor Mexican province the Age of Enlightenment—its rationality, optimism, and prejudices.
