2 - The export economy 1777–1809

Summary

The diversification of production

The activities which supported the society of Caracas were those of a plantation—ranch economy producing primarily for export. The diversification of the production base of this economy is the most striking characteristic of its evolution between 1777 and 1810. The fact that it did occur remains a major unexplained enigma of the colony's development. It would seem that by the beginning of our period structural distortions had so taken over the economy that no radical departure from a dependence on cacao could take place.

Monoculture is the best word to describe the export economy in existence when the Intendency came into full operation in 1777. The caraqueño economy had always been oriented primarily towards export production; its population base had been too small and its agricultural resources were too limited to support a large internal market. But it had not always been a virtual monoculture: in the seventeenth century wheat, cotton, livestock and tobacco had been produced and exported in quantity along with cacao. With the ascendancy of cacao in the middle of the seventeenth century Caracas was swept down the path towards one-crop domination. Under the rule of the Caracas Company (1730–84) the process was carried out to its fullest extent. By the 1770s the volume of cacao production had almost doubled since the 1720s, implying the spread of production at the cost of other crops. Furthermore, cacao represented, by the later years, over 85% of the colony's exports.