Daniel Nemser, University of Michigan

Iberian Empire Logistics and the Road to Racial Capitalism, Daniel Nemser

This paper traces the emergence of two opposing logics of circulation in colonial Mexico in the early seventeenth century, a key period in the rise of racial capitalism. The first, which I call logistics, aimed to make circulation governable through the construction of durable infrastructures designed to secure commodity flows. The second, which I call fugitivity, names forms of circulation characterized by ungovernability. which were becoming associated with the “Black maroon.” These circulatory logics intersect along the camino real linking Mexico City to the port of Veracruz, where maroons raided wagons carrying silver and other valuable commodities, impacting merchants, the crown, and the operations of global commerce as such.