The Second Conquest of Latin America: Coffee, Henequen, and Oil during the Export Boom, 1850-1930

The Second Conquest of Latin America: Coffee, Henequen, and Oil during The Export Boom, 1850-193o. Edited by STEVEN C. TOPIK and ALLEN WELLS. Critical Reflections on Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1998. Map. Tables. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Viii, 271 pp. Cloth, $25.00. Paper, $13.95.

Between 1850 and the Great Depression, much of Latin America experienced a degree of economic and social change unparalleled since the sixteenth century. New investments, new forms of communication, and new exports brought greater integration into the world economy. As a result, markets increasingly displaced custom and religion as social and economic arbiters, divisions between the public and private became more defined, and commodity relations penetrated work and exchange. Second Conquest surveys the production histories of three of the exports closely associated with these changes: coffee, "typical of the food crops that dominated the first part of the export boom"; henequen, "the sort of agricultural product with industrial applications that became increasingly important toward the end of...