Ernesto Bassi (Cornell): The Plight of the San Antonio and the Viceroy’s Shattered Capitalist Dreams
| Dates: | 21 April 2021 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 18:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Speaker: | Ernesto Bassi |
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Part of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies research seminar series 2020/21.
This event will be via Zoom. Here is the link: https://zoom.us/j/94462492930
Abstract: In March 1789, as the frigate San Antonio was entering the port of Cartagena, it sank, forcing its sailors and the 158 slaves it was transporting to swim to shore. While all slaves and sailors reached the shore safely, the wreckage marked the final stage of a tragic journey that resulted in numerous lives lost, heavy financial losses, and the demise of viceroy Antonio Caballero y Góngora’s scheme to use New Granada’s raw materials to obtain enslaved Africans to work in newly discovered mines in New Granada. The tragedy of the San Antonio turned Caballero y Góngora’s envisioned virtuous cycle of prosperity into a reality of death and debt. The plight of the San Antonio offers one example of both the visions of economic development of Spanish authorities in the Americas and the ultimate fate of many of those visions. In centering the failed expedition of the San Antonio and the demise of Caballero y Góngora’s dreams of prosperity for New Granada, this presentation reveals a hidden side of the recent reinterpretations of the rise of capitalism. By highlighting the viceroy’s shattered capitalist dreams, I seek to develop a broader conceptual scope for the rise of capitalism; one that gives places that ended up failing in their bid to become key sites of capitalist development their due place in the narrative of the rise of capitalism.
Speaker
Ernesto Bassi
Role: Associate Professor, History Department
Organisation: Cornell University
Travel and Contact Information
