Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico

Honorable Mention, Bolton Memorial Prize, Conference on Latin American History

A government monopoly provides an excellent case study of state-society relationships. This is especially true of the tobacco monopoly in colonial Mexico, whose revenues in the later half of the eighteenth century were second only to the silver tithe as the most valuable source of government income. This comprehensive study of the tobacco monopoly illuminates many of the most important themes of eighteenth-centur...