'Meticulous research, an imaginative use of evidence, and informed speculation characterize [this book]. Focusing on the British textile trade with South America, Llorca-Jaña offers the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of the commercialization of a key product, drawing on rich new qualitative and quantitative sources … a significant contribution to the study of the emergence of a global economy in the early nineteenth century …' Colin M. Lewis, London School of Economics and Political Science
'Llorca-Jaña's book goes farther than any other in filling the knowledge gap regarding Britain's export trade with the newly independent countries of South America. The work shines a bright new light on a statistical dark age. It is breathtaking in its mining of previously untapped primary sources, especially the records of merchants. Not since Platt's classic study has there been a contribution as substantive as this one.' William Summerhill, University of California, Los Angeles
'Manuel Llorca-Jaña has produced a fine monograph about the textile trade in the Southern Cone of Latin America, pre-eminently Argentina and Chile, and British mercantile activity there during the early nineteenth century … an impressive piece of scholarship. The bibliography alone is immense. The book is … the result of painstaking research in British public and business archives, during which no stone seems to have been left unturned … a pleasurable read because Llorca-Jaña has an easy style: his prose is clear and lucid and his arguments are clearly defined.' Robert G. Greenhill, Journal of Latin American Studies
'In this exceptional monograph, Manuel Llorca-Jaña argues that the southern cone of Latin America (what is today Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile) in the nineteenth century was a large, dynamic, and competitive market for British textiles … an enormous achievement and a substantial increase in our understanding of the early nineteenth century in Latin American trade.' Peter Sims, Economic History Review