"Arribadas maliciosas": comercial networks in the contraband trade in port of Buenos Aires, early seventeenth century

Abstract

The present article proposes to understand the merchant networks in Buenos Aires of seventeenth century from a new interpretation. Irregular trade, which ran away from the monopoly standards defended by Spanish legislation, was structuring for the consolidation of the economic activity in the Buenos Aires’ port. Historiography on the subject focused on the debate about the legality and illegality of these commercial practices and, as a consequence, addressed the practice of the governors, agents of royal power, as elements of repression and combat of what was designated as contraband. The idea of this article is to map the relations between the agents linked to the irregular commerce in Buenos Aires in the middle of the seventeenth century. For this purpose, we collect the relationships compiled in the Proceso Grande, a legal action initiated by the governor Hernandarias de Saavedra aiming to denounce porteño agents involved in irregular commerce. This process generated a hundred pages and described the business practices and the merchants involved in the activity. From this rich documentation, we tried to establish the connections of the commercial network, following the division of the two factions that disputed the commerce. With this, we were able to spatialize the commercial network relations, to break the idea that Hernandarias had fought against smuggling and to smash the dynamics of commercial and family relations of both groups, fundamental elements that structure societies of Ancien Régime.