Italian silks in Cadiz. Lucca fabrics in the Spanish-American market of the late seventeenth century

Abstract

Among the multitude of products that filled the holds of the Carrera de Indias ships in the second half of the 17th century, flooding colonial markets, there were Italian silk textiles from the small republic of Lucca. Based on unpublished archival sources, this essay shows the attempt by Lucca silk manufactures to enter the Spanish-American market via Cadiz. The analysis of the correspondence between a local silk workshop and its partners in Cadiz reveals extensive commercial connections stretching from the Mediterranean to the Spanish Indies, involving the movement of both people and goods. Within the historiographical debate on the reasons for Northern Europe manufacturing supremacy in transatlantic trade at the expense of the Mediterranean regions (and Italy), the investigation reveals the obstacles to the success of Lucca luxury production in Spanish colonial trade, highlighting the strategies and practical functioning behind such exchanges.