Following a study on the world flows of American products during early globalization, here the authors examine the reverse process. By analyzing the imperial political economy, the introduction, adaptation and rejection of new food products in America, as well as of other European, Asian and African goods, American Globalization, 1492–1850, addresses the history of consumerism and material culture in the New World, while also considering the perspective of the history of ecological globalization. This book shows how these changes triggered the formation of mixed imagined communities as well as of local and regional markets that gradually became part of a global economy. But it also highlights how these forces produced a multifaceted landscape full of contrasts and recognizes the plurality of the actors involved in cultural transfers, in which trade, persuasion and violence were entwined. The result is a model of the rise of consumerism that is very different from the ones normally used to understand the European cases, as well as a more nuanced vision of the effects of ecological imperialism, which was, moreover, the base for the development of unsustainable capitalism still present today in Latin America. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, and 13 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

For four centuries, the Camp Ashaninkas of the Peruvian Amazon have fought for their identity and independence in the face of Spanish colonialism and Peruvian national expansionism. Stefan Varese wrote about the Campa Ashaninkas in the mid-1960s, after three seasons of field research among them and three years of archival research. He titled his book La Sal de Los Cerros, after the invaded Mountain of Salt that had been the center of Campa Ashaninka trade and power for millennia. Salt of the Mountain makes Varese's classic work of anthropology available in English for the first time, updated with a new preface and introduction by the author. Varese conducted his research with an explicit commitment to letting the Campa Ashaninkas speak for themselves. Using their myths and cosmological interpretations as source material, Varese presents new readings of both colonial Spanish and modern Peruvian documents relating to the tribe. He chronicles the relentless success of European geographic annexation and the continuing failure of European cultural assimilation. Living among the Campa Ashaninkas, Varese found that their worldview rejects the modern notion that assimilation is inevitable, and he developed a deep respect for their fiercely independent spirit. For this reason, he calls his work an "approximation" rather than a description or history.