Continuity and crises, 1789-1797 -- War and the colonies : Aranda and Godoy -- The late proyectistas -- Reorganizing New Spain's external trade: the effects of comercio libre, 1788-1796 -- A hegemony threatened : Mexico City and Veracruz after 1789 -- Mining and its fissures -- Export...

The British and the Spanish had long been in conflict, often clashing over politics, trade, and religion. But in the early decades of the eighteenth century, these empires signed an asiento agreement granting the British South Sea Company a monopoly on the slave trade in the Spanish Atlantic,...