Bernardo García Martínez

Travelling from New Spain to Mexico: Mapping Practices of Nineteenth-Century Mexico

affluent residents frequently purchased and resold salt at astronomically high prices. Through their repeated interactions with the state inside and outside social spaces such as the almacén, locals resisted state action, claiming their rights as citizens, community residents or landowners. Salt and the Colombian State is well researched and insightful. Rosenthal convincingly portrays the state as an economic actor and shows how fiscal management and policies impact local and regional webs of politics and social relations. Drawing on a rich and substantial body of official reports, correspondence, budgets, receipts and newspapers, he captures and depicts a state in the process of institution-building. While the thick description of state–society relations serves to support Rosenthal’s goal of a ground-level analysis, others may miss a more thorough theoretical discussion tying his study to works conceptualizing the state as an actor. Readers interested in nineteenth-century Colombia or state-building in Latin America, more generally, should read this book.