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Political Centralization and Labour Coercion: Latin America and Russia in Comparative Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Mario Pastore  and
Herman Freudenberger
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Extract

Government requires coercion, if only to arrest free riding. Physical coercion alone may not suffice for this purpose, however, and ideological means may be needed as well. This basic principle underlies all government. In market economies the coercive capabilities of government may be expected to be financed out of taxes ultimately levied on factor owners' money incomes, that is, on wages, profits, and rent. On the other hand, in economies where markets have not developed due to high transactions costs individuals' contributions to the provision of public goods will take the form of payments in kind and labour services. In this case, the free rider problem suggests labourers will attempt to shirk; the government, therefore, will have to compel labourers to work and, therefore, will appear to be coercing labour even though it may only be seeking to curtail shirking.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 137 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1997

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References

Notes

* The authors want to thank participants in the panel on Forced Labour and Labour Markets, XI Congress, International Economic History Association, Milan, September 1994, for their comments and observations. Pastore is particulary indebted to Stanley Engerman, Lynn Hollen Lees, and Michael Gonzalez for their encouragement and suggestions. Responsibility for remaining errors or omissions are the authors' alone.

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5 Assadourian regarded Caves' model as ‘perfectly applicable’ to the colonial context but went no further. Assadourian, Carlos Sempat, El sistema de la economía colonial (Mexico 1983) 134.Google Scholar Furthermore, his clue was disregarded by disciples of him such as Juan Carlos Garavaglia, Mercado interna y economía colonial: Tres siglos de historia de la yerba male (Mexico 1983)Google Scholar and Whigham, Thomas, The Politics of River Trade: Tradition and Development in the Upper Plate, 1780–1870 (Albuquerque 1991)Google Scholar, who tried to extend his approach to other regions of Latin America. Brown, Jonathan's A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776–1860 (Cambridge UK and New York 1979)Google Scholar focused on staples and linkages both theoretically and empirically, but ignored the neoinstitutionalist literature. Knight, Alan, ‘Mexican Peonage: What Was It? And Why Was It?’, Journal of Latin American Studies 18/1 (1986) 41–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Baretta, Silvio R. Duncan and Markoff, John, ‘Civilization and Barbarism: Cattle Frontiers in Latin America’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 20/4 (1978) 587–620CrossRefGoogle Scholar, found support for Evsey Domar's thesis but also ignored the neoinstitutionalist literature. More recently, Salvatore, Ricardo, ‘Modes of Labor Control in Cattle Economies: California, Southern Brazil, and Argentina, 1820–1860’, Journal of Economic History 51/2 (1990) 441–451CrossRefGoogle Scholar eschewed both Domar's and the ‘modes of production’ approach for Brenner's ‘modes of labour control’ approach. Among the few contributions concerned with Latin America from a neoinstitutionalist perspective are Shane Hunt's ‘The Economics of Haciendas and Plantations in Latin America’, Discussion Paper no 29, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (October 1972)Google Scholar and Sadoulet, Elizabeth, ‘Labor-Service Tenancy Contracts in a Latin American Context’, American Economic Review 82/4 (1992) 1031–1043.Google Scholar

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7 It may also be expected to account more fully for the so-called ‘second serfdom’ in Eastern Europe. In addition, since a similar theoretical scheme produced an account of the western European manorial economy it would seem then that the proposed model ought to be able to account for medieval agrarian institutions in western Europe as well, so long as it takes into account objections that have been raised to previous versions of it. Discussion of these cases, however, lies outside the bounds of this paper.

8 Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge and New York 1988).Google Scholar

9 Rasler, Karen A. and Thompson, William R., ‘Global Wars, Public Debt, and the Long Cycle’, World Politics 35/4 (1986) 489–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Pastore, Mario, ‘Taxation, Coercion, Trade and Development: The Long Sixteenth Century Expansion and Seventeenth Century Crisis in Colonial Paraguay’, Journal of Latin American Studies 29/2 (Forthcoming, May 1997) and Pastore, ‘Trade, Coercion, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance: The Long Eighteenth Century Expansion in Paraguay’ (manuscript).Google Scholar

11 Esper, Thomas, The Land and Government of Muscovy: A Sixteenth Century Account (Stanford 1967).Google Scholar

12 Vives, Jaime Vicens, An Economic History of Spain (Princeton 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weisser, Michael R., ‘The Agrarian Depression in Seventeenth Century Spain’, Journal of Economic History 42/1 (1982) 149–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pietschmann, Richard, Nueva coronica y buen gobierno: Codex peruvien illustree (Paris 1936)Google Scholar; Bushkovitch, Paul, The Merchants of Moscow, 1580–1695 (Cambridge UK and New York 1980).Google Scholar

13 Different progression rates are observed even in Mexican and Peruvian mines. On this issue see, for Mexico, David A.Brading, and Cross, Harry E., ‘Colonial Silver Mining: Mexico and Peru’ in: Peter, Bakewell, John, Johnston, and Meredith, Dodge eds, Readings in Latin American History 1 (Durham 1985) 129–156Google Scholar; for Upper Peru, see Tándeter, Enrique, ‘Trabajo forzado y trabajo libre en el Potosi Colonial tardio”, Desarrollo Económico (January—March 1983) 511–548Google Scholar; and Zulawski, Ann, ‘Wages, Ore Sharing, and Peasant Agriculture: Labor in Oruro's Silver Mines, 1607–1720’, Hispanic American Historical Review 67/3 (1987) 405–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On progressions in frontier agricultural areas see for Mexico, among others, Deeds, Susan, ‘Rural Work in Nueva Vizcaya: Forms of Labor Coercion on the Periphery”, Hispanic American Historical Review 69/3 (1989) 425–449, and for Paraguay: Mario Pastore, ‘Taxation, Coercion’CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 For a more detailed discussion of this issue see Mario Pastore, ‘Frontier Agrarian Institutions and Development: Military Organization, Property Rights Structure and Economic Activity in Colonial Paraguay’, paper presented at the Free and Unfree Labour Conference, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, Wassenaar, The Netherlands, 14–16 January 1995.

15 Sherman, William L., Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth Century Central America (Lincoln 1979).Google Scholar

16 Brading and Cross, ‘Colonial Silver Mining’.

17 On Nueva Vizcaya see Deeds, , ‘Rural Work’. On Venezuela, see Robert Ferry, ‘Encomienda, African Slavery and Agriculture in Seventeenth Century Caracas’, Hispanic American Historical Review 61/4 (1981) 609–635.Google Scholar

18 Tándeter has found that the late-colonial silver mines of Upper Peru would probably not have been profitable without the indigenous labor subsidy, and the same may be said of the mercury mines. Klein, furthermore, notes an inverse relation between the rate of silver production and indigenous welfare. See Tándeter, , ‘Trabajo forzado’, and Klein, Herbert, Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Society (2nd ed., New York 1992). However, Brading and Cross’ ‘Colonial Silver Mining’ and Zulawski's ‘Wages, Ore Sharing, and Peasant Agriculture’ have suggested that the importance of coerced labor may have been exaggerated as concerns both Mexico and Peru.Google Scholar

19 See Pastore, ‘Frontier Agrarian Institutions’.

20 On the role of the rate of discount see Levy, Margaret, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley 1989).Google Scholar

21 Spalding, Karen, De indio a campesino: Cambios en la estructura social del Perú colonial (Lima 1974).Google Scholar

22 Tiryakian, ‘Campillo's Pragmatic New System’.

23 On nineteenth and twentieth century forms of the phenomenon see Bauer, Arnold, ‘Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression’, Hispanic. American Historical Review 59/1 (1979) 34–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 See Mörner, Magnus, ‘African Slavery in Spanish and Portuguese America: Some Remarks on Historiography and the Present State of Research’ in: Wolfang, Binder ed., Slavery in the Americas (Erlangen-Nürnberg 1993) 67.Google Scholar

25 See Russell Menard and Stuart Schwartz, ‘Why African Slavery? Labor Force Transitions in Brazil, Mexico, and the Carolina Lowcountry’ in: Wolfang Binder ed.. Slavery in the Americas, 96.

26 Menard and Schwartz, ‘Why African Slavery’, 98.

27 Indigenous slavery existed in Brazil in defiance of government regulations but became legal in São Paulo towards the late seventeenth century — according to Nazzari, Muriel, ‘Transitions Toward Slavery: Changing Legal Practice Regarding Indians in Seventeenth Century Sāo Paulo’, The Americas 49/2 (1993) 131–155 — as a result of the fact that rights of creditors began to receive more emphasis than those of borrowers, a transition characteristic of the general movement towards commercial society. Indigenous enslavement was not abolished in Brazil until the eighteenth century.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Schwartz, Stuart, ‘Indian Labor and New World Plantations’, American Historical Review (1978).Google Scholar

29 The context within which state coercion of indigenous labour reemerged and was accentuated in Paraguay in the 1820s is referred to in Mario Pastore, ‘Trade Contraction and Economic Decline: The Paraguayan Economy Under Francia, 1810–1840’, Journal of Latin American Studies 26/3 (1994)Google Scholar, which suggests that the state became the main holder of slaves at about the same time and for similar reasons. The interested reader may also consult Josefina Plá, Hermano negro: La esclavitud en el Paraguay (Madrid 1972)Google Scholar; Cooney, Jerry W., ‘Abolition in the Republic of Paraguay’. Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gessellschaft Laterinamerikas 11 (1974) 149–166Google Scholar; and Williams, John Hoyt, ‘Observations on the Paraguayan Census of 1846’, Hispanic American Historical Review 55/4 (1976) 424–437CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Williams, , ‘Black Labor and State Ranches: The Tabapý Experience in Paraguay’, Journal of Negro History 62/4 (1977) 378–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Engerman, Stanley, ‘The Economics of Slavery and its Aftermath: Some Implications of Recent Findings’, paper presented at the Escravidāo Congreso Internacional (São Paulo, June 1988) 10.Google Scholar

31 Engerman, ‘The Economics of Slavery and its Aftermath’, 10–11.

32 Mōner, ‘African Slavery’, 66.

33 Ibid., 62.

34 Ibid., 63.

35 Ibid., 62.

36 Mōrner, ‘African Slavery’, 57–58. Comparable amounts were sent to Arabia and the Middle East over the ten centuries that those trades existed. Engerman, ‘The Economics of Slavery’, 6.

37 Ibid., 58.

38 See Hellie, Richard, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 For corroboration of this proposition one may look at the example of neighbouring Poland where the magnates held the peasantry in almost total enslavement despite a very weak central government.

40 See Kahan, Arcadius, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knoul: An Economic History of Eighteenth Century Russia (Chicago 1985).Google Scholar

41 Ibid.

42 See Madariaga, Isabel de, Russia in tlie Age of Catherine tlie Great (New Haven 1981).Google Scholar

43 This issue is discussed, in what concerns Russia, by Diestelmeier, Friedrich, Soziale Angst: Konservative Reaktionen auf Liberale Reformpolitik in Russland unter Alexander II, 1855–1866 (Bern 1985)Google Scholar and in what concerns the United States before the Civil War, by Schafer, Judith Kelleher, Slavery, the Civil War, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (Baton Rouge 1994).Google Scholar

44 Confino, Michael, Domaines et seigneurs en Russie vers la fin du XVIII sièle: Etude de structures agraires et de mentalites economiques (Paris 1963).Google Scholar

45 Dukes, Paul, A History of Russia: Medieval, Modern, Contemporary (New York 1974).Google Scholar

46 Galenson, David, While Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge UK 1984).Google Scholar

47 Engerman, ‘The Economics of Slavery’. As an administrator of a Latin American coffee plantation in 1900 ruefully lamented, ‘[…] even with good wages one has to drag [the workers] to work’. Cited in Bauer, ‘Rural Workers’.

48 Confino, Domaines et seigneurs.

49 Tiryakian, ‘Campillo's Pragmatic New System’.

50 Fogel, Robert and Engerman, Stanley, Time on the Cross: The. Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston 1974).Google Scholar

51 Confino, Domaines et seigneurs.

52 Freudenberger, Herman and Cummins, Gaylord, ‘Health, Work, and Leisure Before the Industrial Revolution’, Explorations in Economic History 13/1 (1976) 1–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

53 Koval'cenko, Ivan Dmitrievich, ‘The Peasant Economy in Central Russia in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century’ in: George, Grantham and Carol, Leonard eds, Agrarian Organization in the Century of Industrialization: Europe, Russia, and North America II (Greenwich, Conn, and London 1989) 455–475, Research in Economic History supplement 5.Google Scholar

54 Ibid.

55 Batchelder and Freudenberger, ‘On the Rational Origins’.