Capitalism, Christianity, and Slavery: Jesuits in New Spain, 1572-1767

The Jesuits arrived in New Spain in the 1570s and soon became participants in a dynamic world of silver capitalism at the center of the early modern global economy. They launched money-making enterprises to sustain their missions, churches, and schools (colegios) that relied upon enslaved African producers alongside indigenous workers in complex labor arrangements. The diversity of labor at the Jesuit-run Santa Lucia and Xochimancas estates contrast with the heavier reliance on enslaved African labor at Jesuit sugar plantations in Brazil. The article analyzes a key eighteenth-century Jesuit text, the Instrucciones a los hermanos jesuitas administradores de haciendas, to show how the Jesuits in New Spain conceived of their management of enslaved people and negotiated the contradictions between the spiritual and secular challenges of the boom era of silver capitalism.