10 - The rural economy and society of Spanish South America

Summary

The rural history of Spanish South America finally began to receive some attention from scholars during the 1970s. Even now, far more research is devoted to the large estates than to smallholders and comunidades. See Magnus Morner, ‘The Spanish American hacienda: A survey of recent research and debate’, HAHR, 53/2 (1973), 183–216; articles by Reinhard Liehr in H. J. Puhle (ed.), Lateinamerika: Historische Realität und Dependencia-Theorien (Hamburg, 1976), 105–46, and H. Pietschmann in G. Siebenmann (ed.), Die lateinamerikanische Hacienda: Ihre Rolle in der Geschichte von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Diessenhofen, 1979), 37–48. Interesting perspectives are provided by Cristóbal Kay, ‘Desarrollo comparativo del sistema señorial europeo y del sistema de hacienda latinoamericano’, Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 31 (1976), 681–723. Agricultural productivity and technology during the colonial period have until now received very little attention. An old but still important study of the legal aspects is J. M. Ots Capdequí, El régimen de la tierra en la América española durante el período colonial (Ciudad Trujillo, 1946).

A general survey of Peruvian rural history is provided by V. Roel Pineda, Historia social y económica de la Colonia (Lima, 1970). More recent monographs include R. G. Keith, Conquest and Agrarian Change: The Emergence of the Hacienda System on the Peruvian Coast (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); M. Burga, De la encomienda a la hacienda capitalista: El Valle de Jequetepeque del siglo XVI al XX (Lima, 1976); Keith A. Davies, Landowners in Colonial Peru (Austin, Tex., 1984), which deals with Arequipa; S. E. Ramírez-Horton, Provincial Patriarchs: Land Tenure and the Economies of Power in Colonial Peru (Albuquerque, N.Mex., 1986), which deals with Lambayeque province; and M. Mörner, Perfil de la sociedad rural del Cuzco a fines de la colonia (Lima, 1978).