11 - Aspects of the internal economy: Labour, taxation, distribution and exchange

Summary

There are no satisfactory surveys of the Spanish American colonial economies. A provocative, thoughtful, but dated Marxist interpretation is Sérgio Bagú, Economía de la sociedad colonial: Ensayo de historia comparada de América Latina (Buenos Aires, 1949). Also somewhat dated is Emilio A. Coni, Agricultura, comercio e industria coloniales (siglo XVIXVIII) (Buenos Aires, 1941). A more modern but less stimulating study is Demetrio Ramos, Minería y comercio interprovincial en Hispanoamerica (siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII) (Valladolid, 1970). More recently, see Juan Carlos Vedoya, Historia social y económica de la colonia, siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII (Tandil, Arg., 1985). A useful synthesis of the economies of Lower and Upper Peru in the colonial period is Jaime R. Ríos Burga, Ciclos productivos en el espacioperuano colonial, siglos XVIXIX: Una aproximación a una sintesis cuantitativa (Lima, 1986), while a significant contribution for New Spain and Peru in the late colonial period is Nils Jacobsen and Hans-Jürgen Puhle (eds.), The Economies of Mexico and Peru during the Late Colonial Period, 1760–1810 (Berlin, 1986). A well-documented economic history of colonial Paraguay is Juan Bautista Rivarola Paoli, La economia colonial (Asuncion, 1986). Much useful material on economic institutions can still be found in C. H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (New York, 1947). A study with a very different emphasis, as the title suggests, is the short book by Stanley J. and Barbara H. Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic Dependence in Perspective (New York, 1970).