Colombian connections

Speaking on the launch of her new book Plebeian Consumers: Global Connections, Local Trade, and Foreign Goods in Nineteenth-Century Colombia Dr Ana María Otero-Cleves, from our Department of History, says people of the new Colombian republic were in fact savvy buyers, demanding high-quality products, and forged strong relationships with UK and US suppliers to ensure they got the products they needed.

 

Fascinating

Ana, who herself hails from Colombia, explained: “When researching my book,  I found it fascinating that the common perception of 19th century Colombia is that we were primarily producers of commodities, selling things like coffee, tobacco and bananas to Europe and the global north.

“But the country bought a lot of imports too, and they weren't just luxury items for the South American elites. Colombia was importing  items for everyone: peasants, market women, former slaves, you name it. This book is an insight into how these plebeian consumers became active agents of global trade” 

Ana’s research revealed a colourful and fruitful relationship developed between the people of Colombia and traders in the European manufacturing hotspots, such as Manchester in the UK,  

UK suppliers were careful to ensure their products were adapted to meet their South American customers’ needs, challenging the commonly-held view that European traders simply offloaded their surplus stock to South America.

“Suppliers would work very hard to win their Latin American market, tailoring things like colours, designs, and sizes,” said Ana. “I even found correspondence requiring that the colour purple was not sent to a particular area, because it was known the colour was unpopular there.”

Machete

She says an example of this was the common farming tool commonly known as the Machete. A US-designed model was manufactured specifically with the Colombian market in mind, having taken into account user’s views to ensure customer satisfaction

Ana said: “To me this showed the consumer was not in any way ‘passive’, with little idea of what was best for him or her, I found they were very aware of what they wanted and needed, and demanded it, despite being poor.”

Influence

Ana adds that UK manufacturers were also aware of the threat of the United States’ growing influence as manufacturers. A threat they dealt with by ensuring their South American customers’ needs were met.

“I found correspondence asking why Colombians kept buying their textiles from Manchester, which is a long way from Cartagena or Barranquilla , when the US was much closer. The answer was because the UK manufacturers  knew how to tailor their product for the market. They only began to lose the Latin American market after the first world war.” 

Resonate

For Ana, the findings resonate with our view of Latin America’s place in the world today, and provide an insight into the wider concept of citizenship for Colombian people in the 19th century.

“I’m a historian who deals with the present all the time.These findings are an invitation to reconsider perceptions of Latin America as a very dependent region in the 19th Century - and that translates to contemporary debate about the place of Latin America in the world.”

Inform

She says her work as a historian can also inform current generations about the notion of citizenship, and the diverse ways in which freedoms can be expressed. The people of 19th Century Colombia, she says, were expressing their citizen’s rights by being assertive in politics and in the marketplace 

“We often think of citizenship as a concept that’s restricted to being able to vote,” she says. “But in reality citizenship takes place everywhere, it’s in our newspapers and our opinions, and it’s in the marketplace.

“I grew up in Colombia in the 90s and for me citizenship is not just about voting, it’s about taking to the streets, claiming my rights in different spaces and I think that concept of citizenship really connects to my work.”