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Merchant Letters and the Making of a Colonial Book Market

When examining the overseas book trade, the merchant letters from the San Francisco Xavier, which sailed under the alias La Perla, happened to be a real treasure trove for studying the colonial book market. In 1779, the Spanish register ship La Perla was on its way from Callao in Peru to Cádiz in Spain via Cape Horn under the ship master Don Josef Perez Muente when captured by British privateers. Spanish-British relations were strained after the Seven Years’ War, and the two powers were repeatedly at war, as in 1762 and also in 1779. At this time, the state of Iberian commerce was profoundly transforming. Lima had lost its status of exclusivity after the introduction of further regulations on ‘free trade’ (comercio libre), which made the trade more direct, frequent, and liberal. A decree in 1778, just the year before La Perla’s last voyage under the Spanish flag, had ended the monopoly of primary ports, including those of Lima’s port Callao as well as Cádiz, and allowed for the opening of further ports to the Spanish-American trade. Despite these changes, the old route between Callao and the southern port of Cádiz was of primary importance for the transoceanic trade, which remained one of the richest.

The Cargo and the Merchant Letters

La Perla, on its way from the Pacific coast of Peru back to Spain, carried silver, gold, copper, wool, cocoa, and cascarilla – typical American commodities – and a big bunch of letters from Limeño merchants to their Spanish business partners. The nearly 2,000 letter envelopes give clear evidence of the state of information and the mercantile practices in the Viceroyalty of Peru. As Xabier Lamikiz has shown in his comprehensive study Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, based on the inventories of general commercial articles in demand (nota de efectos aparentes), merchants sent lists of articles across the sea to increase sales, meet demand, and diversify the product offer. In La Perla, numerous such inventories were directed to Spain to bring Peruvian consumer demands close to European manufacturers. Between the lines of professional correspondence and personal information about common friends, etc., I was happy to read detailed lists of book orders – something rarely handed down at that time. The Peruvian merchants engaged in book consignments by specifying which titles were in high demand and with specific requests of how to deliver their orders from Europe.

Ordering Books Across the Atlantic

The requests for books were very explicit and detailed. As for cloth designs, which were specified by sending patterns, requested book editions were clearly defined. Not only were the author and title specified in meticulous instructions, but the printing place, format, and binding were also requested in several cases. Referring to the local demand, Miguel Pizano in Lima asked for 68 book titles from his business partner in Cádiz, altogether almost 500 copies, among these the works of the Spanish Benedictine monk and intellectual of Enlightenment Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, the French best-selling novel Telemaco by François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénélon, and a range of dictionaries of various languages from French to Italian to Greek and Latin. Well-defined instructions on the packaging were also enclosed: The books were to be sent to Lima, insisting ‘to look for the books with all diligence and send them as quickly as possible, preferring always the latest corrected and extended version’. (Razon de los libros que se me han de vuscar con toda diligencia y enviarlos quanto antes prefiriendo siempre la de ultima ediccion corregida y aumentada), "Carta de Miguel Pizano (Lima) a Diego Felipe Pizano (Cádiz)." TNA. HCA 30.275, 341, 1779.

Until the eighteenth century, a specialisation in books barely existed in the trade to the Americas as, in general, professional merchants did not specialise in certain commodities but traded with a range of similar product offerings. Little do we know about the practices of the transatlantic book trade, but the letters from La Perla reveal merchants’ everyday customs: how they requested, negotiated, paid for the commodities and packed the ware for shipping across the ocean. Analysing the book on its overseas itinerary to Peru, the cultural object appears as a commodity treated very much like other goods: valued and packed in boxes, annotated on lists, and reviewed at customs. Though, taxes for books differed. Contrary to groceries and organic materials, books did not require an immediate departure or complicated packaging but could simply be put together in boxes and chests. Rectangular in shape and made from solid wooden planks, the box protected the – in the majority already bound – books quite well, especially when cloth or leather coated the inside. In between a motley variety of import goods, books were regularly sent across the Atlantic between Europe and the Americas.

Merchant letters, as those on La Perla, were part of the communication between far-distanced places. Updated information on trade was getting ever more important, as for example on price patterns. While the price for imported commodities was not cheap in late colonial Lima, transportation costs could not always be taken into account. This attests the – probably exaggerated – complaint of Spanish merchants on the many register ships fifteen years before: Due to the bad situation of the Lima market, they had to sell their merchandise there at the same prices as in Spain or even at a loss. Merchants in Cádiz shipped goods to Peru without knowing the prices there but based on their knowledge and experience. They could not rely on exact price information, as prices fluctuated faster than ships could travel. At the Peruvian shore, an agent thus had to sell the merchandise at the highest price possible, trying to make profits. As with other goods, book prices from the other side of the sea must have been mostly uncertain, as up-to-date information was often lacking, and business was made based on the expectation of profit. In general, book prices were subject not only to shipping costs but to trends and business fluctuations similar to other commodities on the market, as we can read on the ‘excessive price increase’ (ecsesibo de los precios à que há ascendido esta especie), "Carta de Joaquín de Lavena (Lima) a Juan Martín de Aguirre (Cádiz)." TNA. HCA 30.311, 965, 1779.

Networks, Intermediaries, and Censorship

Via the merchants and their network, the Spanish printing market extended across the Atlantic to serve the clientele in the American Viceroyalties. Through regular correspondence, merchants acted as intermediaries between the European printing shops and the Peruvian clients for the purchase of all sorts of goods, including books. Commodities, silver and gold, and the envelopes were sent altogether on the ships which crossed the Atlantic regularly. For individual orders, a correspondent merchant in Cádiz served the overseas clients, as did Matías Landaburu for María Josefa Zugasti in Lima. The Limeño lady had specific ideas about the quality and price of the goods she ordered, and she also determined the printing places where the titles for her order had to be procured from. According to the instruction in the letter, Landaburu was to assign middlemen to obtain the titles for her listed in the attached note. Among the titles ranged various works of theology, and also five maps of Europe, America, Africa, Asia, and a spherical model of the Earth. "Carta de María Josefa Zugasti (Lima) a Matías de Landaburu (Cádiz)." TNA. HCA 30.276, 582, 1779.

The import book trade complemented the domestic print market with numerous titles. As I have shown in my analysis of A Colonial Book Market, the Peruvian book trade – and the Spanish-American trade as a whole – formed part of the European market at the time. Reading the merchant correspondence in La Perla, the letters demonstrate a far-flung commercial network, which enabled the trade of books to the Peruvian Viceroyalty. The letters prove that books from different European printing centres and of all subjects made their way across the Atlantic and became readily available in Peru. Titles from Lyon, Paris, Naples, and Lisbon were frequent in the consignments. However, books of both foreign origin and in foreign languages caused suspicion at the customs clearances. The Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition followed the purpose of controlling all books on the market and in private possession. Knowing about the suspiciousness of new, and in particular French titles, the Peruvian merchants gave clear indications for using particular care when requesting such selections. (Que por lo que haze a los libros u obras nuevas o añadidos como Franzeses, se tendrá cuidado que esten todos aprobados), "Carta de Miguel Pizano (Lima) a Diego Felipe Pizano (Cádiz)." TNA. HCA 30.275, 341, 1779.

Devotion, Fiction, Songs: Spanish Chapbooks at Sea

In addition to the merchant letters, the confiscated cargo also contained a curious collection of five prints, which can best be described as sueltos (loose printed leaves) – precious pieces of Spanish literature at the time. Three are adorned with woodcut illustrations, and the short texts are printed in columns. Since the topics range from devotional prayers (gozos from a prayer book) to fictional pieces (romances) to funny songs (divertidas chanzonetas), the printed wares cannot easily be categorized as a literary genre but are rather grouped by their cheap print production and the broad audience they targeted, thus called Spanish chapbooks. Without any reference to the publication date, the intercepted prints were products of the workshop of José /Joseph Padrino in Calle Genova in Seville, which was active since the mid-eighteenth century. When La Perla sailed to Peru in 1779, someone must have packed in a sample of these cheap printed commodities. We can only speculate whether the five prints served as entertainment on board during the long hours of sailing or whether they were part of the cargo to find customers and new clients in Lima who wanted to order more prints of this sort from Seville. While per se ephemera and thus only partly conservated, the sueltos are becoming a new research subject due to the possibility of digitizing the material and creating online print collections. They can tell us much about the popular literature and aesthetics at the time beyond bound books. Have a look at the online collections: Mapping Pliegos by the Spanish National Research Council CSIC and Spanish Chapbooks by the Cambridge Digital Library.

30/312#1357D El Renegado de Francia. Nueva relacion, y curioso romance. Con licencia. En Sevilla, por Joseph Padrino, en calle Genova

It was a particular archival experience to open the late colonial merchant letters with their original red seals and the dust, pounce, and sand between the neatly folded pages. It is hard to imagine that the messages contained in these carefully written lines never arrived at its destination but instead landed in the archive and thus also in my hands. I was working under the supervision of Randolph Cook in the cellars of The National Archives in Kew in December 2018, when the archivists were in the process of re-ordering the letters of La Perla. I would not have been able to find the book orders in between the many letters if not following the research traces of the historian Xabier Lamikiz, who knows the sources best, and so kindly shared his research notes with me. Reading the letters in the archivists’ space, Elvira Bronheim pointed me to the sueltos contained in a then-unnumbered bundle, and I would love to learn more about them. While I was very happy to work with the original letters in TNA, the digitalization of these materials means the opening of a great source for researchers investigating the economic and cultural history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic and beyond.

This case study was written by Agnes Gehbald, based on her book “A Colonial Book Market: Peruvian Print Culture in the Age of Enlightenment”, Cambridge University Press 2023, paperback 2025. https://bit.ly/3NEXFbA

Literature:

Antonio García Baquero. Cádiz y el Atlántico. 1717-1778. Cádiz: Diputación de Cádiz, 1988.

Antonio García Baquero. La Carrera de Indias: suma de la contratación y océano de negocios. Sevilla: Algaida, 1992.

Agnes Gehbald. A Colonial Book Market: Peruvian Print Culture in the Age of Enlightenment. Cambridge: CUP, 2023.

Agnes Gehbald, and Nora E. Jiménez, eds. Libros en movimiento: Nueva España y Perú XVI–XVIII. Zamora, Michoacán: Colegio de Michoacán, 2021.

Xabier Lamikiz. Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World: Spanish Merchants and Their Overseas Networks. London: The Royal Historical Society, Boydell Press, 2010.

Xabier Lamikiz. "The Transatlantic Flow of Price Information in the Spanish Colonial Trade, 1680-1820." In Merchants and Profit in the Age of Commerce, 1680-1830, edited by Pierre Gervais, Yannick Lemarchand and Dominique Margairaz. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014, 95-113.

Patricia H. Marks. "Confronting a Mercantile Elite: Bourbon Reformers and the Merchants of Lima, 1765-1796.“ The Americas 60: 4 (2004), 519-558.

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