Réseaux personnels et autorité coloniale : les négociants de Buenos Aires au XVIIIe siècle

Personal Networks and Forms of Colonial Authority : The Mercantile Milieu in Buenos Aires during the 18th Century. Beginning in 1760, a number of entirely ordinary political disputes involving the problem of contreband goods - provide us with an opportunity to study the practices and strategies linking specific group of persons, and the history, over three generations of four interconnected families. This reconstructed network of personal relations constitutes field for the analysis, on the one hand, of the motivations of economic agents, and, on the other hand, of the functioning of institutions. The network and its machinery based on family relations articulate social space in which the "organization" of enterprises and the structures of political power interact with each other. The present study attempts to clarify this articulation through an analysis of 1) the roles played by members of the suites of various representatives of the Crown; 2) the mechanisms which informed the business affairs of large body of contractors; and 3) the role of honor family relations and inheritance in the strategies of the actors monopolizing the controlling functions of the economy and of politics.Moutoukias Zacarias, Vignal-Ramos Annie. Réseaux personnels et autorité coloniale : les négociants de Buenos Aires au XVIIIe siècle. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 47ᵉ année, N. 4-5, 1992. pp. 889-915