In 1970, Barbara and Stanley Stein released their slim but influential work, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America. The arguments they made nearly fifty years ago continue to inform their works, including the four hefty volumes they have released in the past dozen years. For the Steins, Spain was always an underdeveloped country, subordinate and dependent on England and France, the hegemonic powers of Europe. Backwardness, however, did not relegate Spain to being irrelevant because of the enormous wealth of the Spanish colonies. Just like the greater powers reduced Spain to a satellite, Spain subordinated its colonies, imposing a colonialism that syphoned seemingly unlimited precious metals back to the Iberian “Metropole.” Indeed, the Steins argue implicitly that it is the Spanish colonies and their treasures that should be placed at the center of analysis of early modern Europe.

The 664 pages of the present volume are focused primarily on the two years 1808 to 1810 that began with Napoleon’s entry into Spain and the collapse of the Spanish monarchy, and continued through Father Miguel Hidalgo’s Revolution in Mexico. Joseph Bonaparte’s ascension to the throne sparked pro-Fernando VII autonomy movements throughout the empire, both in Spain and Spanish America. No single Spanish voice reigned supreme after 1808, and yet, as the Steins argue, the Iberian juntas that formed were all motivated to ensure the continued control of the Spanish colonies, to avoid losing the source of Spain’s imperial finances. The best means of ensuring their continued attachment, however, became the subject of intense debate. Competing groups in Iberia and America attempted to shape the outcome.

During the final third of the eighteenth century, Spanish policymakers introduced trade reforms to liberalize the commercial policies that had regulated exchange with the colonies since the early conquest era. So-called comercio libre gradually introduced after 1765 was opposed vehemently by the “monopoly merchants” of Andalusia and their partners in Mexico and Peru, who saw the overthrow of Ferdinand VII as an opportunity to scale back some of the liberalization. Others, such as the merchants of Havana and Caracas, wished to open trade still more, to allow foreign ships to enter their ports freely. Such issues became central in the peninsular struggles for control between the competing regional juntas in the brief era under examination. The Steins follow these debates with meticulous detail, as they see in these trade policies the central issue determining the survival of the Spanish empire. Indeed, this massive book examines many dozens of the principal actors and interest groups in both Spain and the colonies, especially Cuba and Mexico, as they jockeyed for influence and dominance during these two challenging years of uncertainty.

Ultimately, the Junta de Cádiz garnered (or retained) the most influence, bolstered by allies in New Spain especially. Protected by geography and English ground and naval forces, Spain’s busiest port and richest merchants survived comparatively unscathed by the French occupation. The Cádiz merchant community provided a substantial percentage of the resistance (Fernandista) government’s revenues, giving them the most influential voice in policymaking, though one could argue whether anyone in Iberia held sway in the colonies. Cádiz’s might is unfortunate in the eyes of the authors, as, for them, the Cádiz merchants (and their allies in Mexico) were the most reactionary interest group in the empire.

Throughout the book (indeed, dominant in all their works, going back to their 1970 classic), the wealthy “monopoly merchants” of Andalusia are depicted as commercial parasites, devoid of entrepreneurial spirit and unabashed in their use of political and financial muscle to blackmail and bribe anyone who might threaten the status quo, a colonial commercial system designed to produce easy and excessive profits for them. The dominance of the Junta de Cádiz by 1810, then, produced predictable results.

In too many ways, the central arguments of this book seem dated, or at least the underlying theories do. Dependency theory shapes the way that the Steins depict Spain’s international relations and its imperial structure. Several decades of historical work have painted a much more nuanced picture of the Consulado merchants than the caricature presented here. The depiction of early modern Spain as backwards and underdeveloped is reminiscent of earlier Black Legend interpretations, but is rejected by many modern historians.

But perhaps this is irrelevant, for the greatest strength of this book is not so much in its arguments as in its truly remarkable, magisterial use of archival sources. No historical actor is introduced without multiple pages of accompanying biographical background. The analysis of every event is placed in an extraordinarily rich and detailed historical context. The authors’ 100 pages of notes are overwhelmingly archival citations from the twenty-three archives that they consulted in the book’s production. Their mastery of the details, familiarity with the players, and command of the interrelated historical events make this monograph (and their earlier three related ones) the unquestioned definitive source for Spain’s political economy in the early modern era, an encyclopedic yet delightful legacy of this remarkable historical team, Barbara and Stanley Stein.