Early Modern Globalized World: Gifts, Trifles, and Friendship

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The progress of the history of globalization is uneven depending on the time and place. This article addresses a specific moment of the development of globa-lization in the early modern period. It analyzes varieties of exchange systems in representations of encounters in America and Asia described by a number of early modern authors, such as Columbus, Caminha, Cortés, Pigafetta, De Léry, Xavier, Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Ixtlilxochitl. Examples from Mexico, Sonora, Texas, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Japan, the Philippines, and the Caribbean, among others, coexist. The need for an intellectual framework in the field of Hispanism that accepts this type of analysis as legitimate is imperative, since the humanities in academia are increasingly engaged in global exchanges.

Keywords: globalization patterns, gift exchange, friendship, potlatch, early modernity, Iberian Studies, Columbus, Caminha, Cortés, Pigafetta, De Léry, Francis Xavier, Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Ixtlilxochitl.

Juan Pablo Gil-Osle more