Profile of Modern Businessmen in Guanajuato during the Late 19th Century
The goal of this report is to present the cases of the most prominent businessmen in the city of Guanajuato, Mexico, in the second half of the 19th century, whose careers took a decisive turn by benefiting from scientific and economic developments. These factors changed traditional companies for modern ones by adapting and innovating the use of technology in the production processes of the entity, such as drainage barrels in mining, bleaching and printing in the textile industry, diversification of agricultural production with the export of tuberoses; expansion of trade to other national and international spaces, and the improvement of the entity's communications with the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone and the use of electricity.
The analysis of business trajectory allows to observe the change in strategies and the creation of networks to innovate and expand the productive activities in which they invested—through personal links—participating in limited companies or in anonymous associations where ties coexisted with agents of traditional mentality, family businesses, foreigners, or professionals such as engineers, with whom they formed boards of directors and founded new companies, acting not only as capitalists but having active participation (using notarial sources).
The businessman that lived at the end of the 19th century in Guanajuato, was an economic agent in transformation, with a mind open to change, with particular and differentiated strategies, in a place where the basis of the economic structure continued to be the network built since the beginning of their trajectories, in which family ties were essential (applying the method of social network analysis).
