Access to new plants and consumer goods such as sugar, tobacco, and chocolate from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards would massively change the way people lived, especially in how and what they consumed. While global markets were consequently formed and provided access to these new commodities that increasingly became important in the 'Old World', especially with regard to the establishment early modern consumer societies. This book brings together specialists from a range of historical fields to analyse the establishment of these commodity chains from the Americas to Europe as well as their cultural implications.

Access to new plants and consumer goods such as sugar, tobacco, and chocolate from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards would massively change the way people lived, especially in how and what they consumed. While global markets were consequently formed and provided access to these new commodities that increasingly became important in the 'Old World', especially with regard to the establishment early modern consumer societies. This book brings together specialists from a range of historical fields to analyse the establishment of these commodity chains from the Americas to Europe as well as their cultural implications.

Die in diesem Band versammelten Essays sind dem Historiker und Lateinamerikanisten Friedrich Katz (1927-2010) gewidmet. Sie fussen auf einem Symposium, das im Herbst 2011 zu seinen Ehren in Wien abgehalten wurde, und vereinen unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf sein Leben und Werk. Friedrich Katz war einer der grossen Sozialhistoriker zur lateinamerikanischen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Seine Arbeiten zur Mexikanischen Revolution zahlen zu den grundlegenden Werken uber dieses Thema. Er verstand es, in quellenkritischer Tiefe die Besonderheiten Mexikos in die Weltgeschichte einzuschreiben. Andererseits verschlug eben diese Weltgeschichte ihn selbst als Kind von Wien uber Berlin, Paris und New York nach Mexiko, nach 1945 wieder nach Wien und Ostberlin und schliesslich nach Chicago. The essays collected in this volume are dedicated to the historian and Latin Americanist Friedrich Katz (1927-2010). They are based on a symposium held in his honour in Vienna in the autumn of 2011 and bring together varying perspectives of his life and work. As one of the great social historians of our time, Friedrich Katz had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sources relevant to Latin America's twentieth century history. His studies of the Mexican Revolution rank foremost among contributions to the field. More than anyone before he succeeded in relating the specifics of Mexico's history to the broader processes of global history. That same global history impacted repeatedly on Katz' own life: he was forced to leave Vienna as a child and moved with his family to Mexico, via Berlin, Paris and New York; he returned to Vienna after 1945 only to leave again for East Berlin before finally settling in Chicago.