| Résumé: | This paper locates the need for the creation of New Spain's Consulate within the frame of the mercantile economic expansion that took place in the viceroyalty in the middle of the sixteenth century. The authorization for its creation in Mexico City is attributed to the central role played by its merchants as financiers in the mining industry, coining, and silver mining in particular, as well as to the shortage of money faced by the Spanish Crown at the end of the sixteenth century. Mercantile corporations allowed the consolidation of the commercial monopoly of New Spain's capital, thus giving rise to conditions that ensured commerce across the Atlantic and the growing flow of silver to the metropolis.
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