Comerciantes y estrategias mercantiles en los intercambios transoceánicos de la Lima Borbónica, 1700-1821

Abstract

This article offers a diachronic view of the strategies employed by Bourbon Lima merchants that participated in the transoceanic exchanges of the viceregal capital of Peru. The text is structured around the experiences of six Basques who were members of the limeño merchant elite. These merchants belonged to two different generations that were faced with quite different challenges: three of them were born in the 1680s and witnessed the decline of the system of fleets to Tierra Firme; the other three were born half a century later and experienced both the recovery of colonial trade via the Cape Horn route and its final demise at the beginning of the nineteenth century