period, machinery imports doubled, animal products increased 170 per cent, vegetable products 133 per cent, and mineral products—including fuel and metals—more than fourfold. Apparently the growing industry of Mexico was already enabling it to supply itself with the cheaper articles of local consumption and at the same time increasing the demands for food, machinery, and raw materials.[1]
Turning from manufacture to internal trade, we find that in the country at large during the colonial period commerce went on in much the same channels as before the coming of the white man. The Indians manufactured their simple home-industry wares for local consumption and, to a lesser degree, for the trade of the city, where they were sold for the articles that each community did not produce for itself. The white population in the cities gradually came to act as middlemen for the local, as well as for the foreign trade.[2] Supplementing the regular local markets there were occasional fairs, notably at Jalapa, held chiefly for the goods coming from Europe and, at various times, at Acapulco, San Blas, and Mexico for the goods brought back from the Far East in the irregular trade of the Manila galleons.
Foreign merchants made their way but slowly into Mexico, even after the winning of the independence of the republic. By 1850 there were a number of French retail houses established in the larger towns of Mexico, especially in the dry goods business. The rest of the
