“Soft Gold” Before the Gold Rush: Sea Otter Pelts in the “Competitive Expansion” of Merchant Capitalism and the Creation of a Pacific Ocean Economy by Arturo Giráldez, Analiese Richard

“…Originality: The growth of this Pacific trade throughout the eighteenth century fueled geopolitical rivalries that led to the colonization of California with a system of missions and military garrisons (presidios) and, eventually, to a new ecology as a result of plants and animals brought from New Spain before the Gold Rush and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Many, including Marx and Engels, have claimed that the Gold Rush contributed significantly to the dynamics of industrial capitalism; nevertheless, we argue that its conditions of possibility were laid out centuries earlier via the complex geopolitical and ecological connections through which this Pacific economy was articulated. …”
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