Latino Studies and Economics Co-Host Guest Lecture on Early Modern Origins of Global Economy

University of Virginia

Brian Owensby

The Latin American and Latino Studies Program and the Department of Economics have teamed up to host an exciting guest lecture by Brian Owensby, professor of history and director of the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation at the University of Virginia, titled "Rethinking the Global Origins of Modern Economy: Gain and Reciprocity in Imperial Paraguay, 1537-1820." The talk will take place at 3 p.m., Friday, Nov. 19, in Willard J. Walker Hall 427. The event is free and open to the public. 

Owensby will discuss his book, New World of Gain: Europeans, Guaraní, and the Global Origins of Modern Economy, soon to be released by Stanford University Press.

In the centuries before Europeans crossed the Atlantic, social and material relations among the indigenous Guaraní people of present-day Paraguay were based on reciprocal gift-giving. But the Spanish and Portuguese newcomers who arrived in the 16th century seemed interested in the Guaraní only to advance their own interests, either through material exchange or by getting the Guaraní to serve them. This book tells the story of how Europeans felt empowered to pursue individual gain in the New World, and how the Guaraní people confronted this challenge to their very way of being. Although neither Guaraní nor Europeans were positioned to grasp the larger meaning of the moment, their meeting was part of a global sea change in human relations and the nature of economic exchange. 

Owensby uses the centuries-long encounter between Europeans and the indigenous people of South America to reframe the notion of economic gain as a historical development rather than a matter of human nature. Owensby argues that gain — the pursuit of individual, material self-interest — must be understood as a global development that transformed the lives of Europeans and non-Europeans, wherever these two encountered each other in the great European expansion spanning the 16th to 19th centuries.