Plebeian Consumers - Global Connections, Local Trade, and Foreign Goods in Nineteenth-Century Colombia

Plebeian Consumers is both a global and local study. It tells the story of how peasants, day workers, formerly enslaved people, and small landholders became the largest consumers of foreign commodities in nineteenth-century Colombia, and dynamic participants of an increasingly interconnected world. By studying how plebeian consumers altered global processes from below, Ana María Otero-Cleves challenges ongoing stereotypes about Latin America's peripheral role in the world economy through the nineteenth century, and its undisputed dependency on the Global North. By exploring Colombians' everyday practices of consumption, Otero-Cleves also invites historians to pay close attention to the intimate relationship between the political world and the economic world in nineteenth-century Latin America. She also sheds light on new methodologies and approaches for studying the material world of men and women who left little record of their own experiences.

List of contents

Introduction: a global view on local consumption; 1. Consumers, citizens, and the republican project; 2. From ferias to tiendas: consumers and the import trade; 3. Zarazas, Bayetas, and Bogotanas: adapting Foreign textiles to popular consumers' demands; 4. Machetes, axes, and Foreign tools: demanding consumers, active citizens; 5. Books, hats, and 'Foreign' coats: the paradoxes of cosmopolitan consumption; 6. Soap, pills, and toiletries: domesticating foreign goods; Epilogue: a story of global capitalism from the periphery; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.

About the author

Ana María Otero-Cleves is Lecturer in the History of Latin America at the University of York. She was the winner of the Toynbee First Book Manuscript Workshop Competition in 2022. This is her first book.

Product details

• Authors: Ana María Otero-Cleves
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 31.01.2026
• EAN: 9781009435604
• ISBN: 978-1-009-43560-4
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Series: Cambridge Latin American Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; South America, Capitalism, HISTORY / Latin America / General, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, Economic history, General and world history, Latin America – Mexico, Central America, South America, History of the Americas, Relating to Latin / Hispanic US American people