Reaping Souls and Yerba Maté. Franciscans and Jesuits as Economic Experts in Transatlantic Spaces of Entanglements (1535-1750)
Final Report Abstract
As a result of Max Weber's famous thesis concerning the connection between Protestantism and Capitalism, the Netherlands and England have become the most popular regions for research on early-modern economic history. This project focused instead on Catholic priests and lay brothers of the Franciscan and Jesuit Orders in the Spanish Empire and asked how they gained economic knowledge through related practices and proclaimed themselves to be experts in a specialized form of knowledge through their social interactions. The working thesis of this project was that early modern economic history could not be properly described without taking into consideration the influence of Catholic clergymen, who had a great effect on contemporary semantics, institutions and practices of economy. This project investigated actors and practices in spaces of entanglement in the Atlantic world, most notably in Spain and its colonial cities and missions in the Jesuit and Franciscan provinces of "Paraguay," which today constitute Northern Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Southern Brazil, from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 18th century. This project is envisioned as part of a new cultural economic history, which contributes to sociopolitical discussions about the understanding of economics, especially the legitimization of economic experts, since the global financial crisis. The project has shown that there was a close connection between Jesuit and secular economic activities. The examined sources make it clear that the self-sufficiency of the Jesuits described in the Jesuits' self-portrayal and long accepted by researchers not only did not apply, but that a separation between the internal order and the secular economic sphere was hardly possible. Secular actors were also involved - directly or indirectly - in almost all of the Jesuits' economic activities. Thus, the Jesuits' trading activities and correspondence contributed to the interregional network between Córdoba and Santiago de Chile or Buenos Aires and Potosí. Likewise, by sending letters, procurators and missionaries across the Atlantic, the Jesuits created a transatlantic network and thus contributed to a globalized world. The study of Catholic orders and especially the Jesuits in South America is therefore an important part for the history of the emergence of global capitalism.
Publications
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Die Rückkehr der Weltweisen. Praktiken und Räume des Wissens, 173-188. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Knäble, Philip
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„Moralische Ökonomie“? – Zur Wirtschaftsethik der Schule von Salamanca am Beispiel von Martín de Azpilcueta und Leonardus Lessius. Saeculum, 69(1), 55-78.
Knäble, Philip
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Moral Economists: The Jesuit Mission in Paraguay and the Idea of Economic Growth in Early Modern Times. Palgrave Studies in Economic History, 155-172. Springer International Publishing.
Bete, David & Knäble, Philip
