| Resumo: | This text studies the correspondence between the circulatory flows of goods and the business networks established by the Merchants’ Guild of Guadalajara. It shows how, in a time of corporate struggles caused by the opposition of the Merchants’ Guild of Mexico City to its upstart rivals, these networks nevertheless kept their business among their members in spite of all antagonisms. This in turn configured spatial business networks that reorganized the markets of New Spain. With an analysis of tax records, we can see how ties were strengthened between small groups of merchants belonging to the merchants’ guilds of Guadalajara, Veracruz and Mexico City, with other groups of merchants from the countryside supplying local consumption in Guadalajara. This text observes how merchants who had occupied positions in the guild and those close to them concentrated their activities in import/export firms based in the city of Guadalajara and specialized themselves in terms of branch of trade and origin of merchandise, a phenomenon that may have favored trust as a crucial element in the development of business networks.
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