The Guaran}} and Their Missions A Socioeconomic History [Hardcover]

The thirty Guaran? missions of the R?o de la Plata were the largest and most prosperous of all the Catholic missions established throughout the frontier regions of the Americas to convert, acculturate, and incorporate indigenous peoples and their lands into the Spanish and Portuguese empires. But between 1768 and 1800, the mission population fell by almost half and the economy became insolvent. This unique socioeconomic history provides a coherent and comprehensive explanation for the missions' operation and decline, providing readers with an understanding of the material changes experienced by the Guaran? in their day-to-day lives.

Although the mission economy funded operations, sustained the population, and influenced daily routines, scholars have not focused on this important aspect of Guaran? history, primarily producing studies of religious and cultural change. This book employs mission account books, letters, and other archival materials to trace the Guaran? mission work regime and to examine how the Guaran? shaped the mission economy. These materials enable the author to poke holes in longheld beliefs about Jesuit mission management and offer original arguments regarding the Bourbon reforms that ultimately made the missions unsustainable.

Julia Sarreal's history of the eighteenth-century economic growth and decline of the thirty Guaran? Jesuit missions in present-day Paraguay brings a wealth of new data and innovative analysis to the rich historiography on this important Iberian borderland in South America. Joining an international community of scholars whose work has developed the history of the Guaran? missions, Sarreal's research shows how the Guaran? indigenous peoples shaped and experienced mission life. This book highlights the choices that the Guaran? faced following the expulsion of the Jesuits and the degrees of autonomy that they achieved in the growing market economy of the Bourbon administration. Sarreal provides a very good balance l³#