Zoom-Link: univienna.zoom.us/j/63643107815; Meeting-ID: 636 4310 7815  |  Kenncode: 603862

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the obrajes, or textile manufactures, played a key role in the Andean region of the Viceroyalty of Peru and in Central New Spain (i.e. Mexico). They provided cheap woollen clothes for the subaltern classes; they lay at the centre of productive chains connecting farming, agriculture and manufacture; they formed the basis of local, regional and inter-regional trade; and they shaped the elites’ and subalterns’ imaginaries of work, domination and inter-ethnic relations. Individual manufactures employed from a few dozens to up to five or six hundred operarios. Taken as a whole, the obrajes and smaller textile mills employed tens of thousands of workers in their heyday in the seventeenth century and remained a significant presence even in the eighteenth century, when demographic factors, the liberalization of trade and increasing competition from within and beyond the Spanish empire led to a significant shrinking of their activities. The presentation highlights broad aspects in the history of the colonial obrajes, with a view to trigger the conversation among social and economic historians at the WISO. In particular, it focuses on: 1. The conceptualisation of the obraje; 2. Labour coercion; and 3. Fiction in accountancy.