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Colonial Origins of Inequality in Hispanic America? Some Reflections Based on New Empirical Evidence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2010

Rafael Dobado González  and
Héctor García Montero
Rafael Dobado González*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Historia e Instituciones Económicas II, Facultad de Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad Complutense, Campus de Somosaguas, 28223 Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid. rdobado@ccee.ucm.es
Héctor García Montero*
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutensehgarciahist@yahoo.es
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Abstract

This paper attempts to contribute to the ongoing debate on the historical roots of the high economic inequality of contemporary Iberian America. Our approach, which is basically empirical, departs from the mainstream scholarship. We show new data on wages and heights in several viceroyalties that (1) suggest relatively medium-to-high levels of material welfare among the commoners in Bourbon Hispanic America; and (2) allow us to build indexes of economic inequality. An international comparison of those indexes casts some doubts on the widely accepted view that Viceroyal America’s economy was exclusively based on extremely unequal or extractive institutions, as it has been popularized by the influential works by Engerman and Sokoloff and Acemoglu et al.

Resumen

Este trabajo pretende contribuir al debate sobre las causas históricas de la alta desigualdad económica en la Iberoamérica contemporánea y lo hace en forma básicamente empírica, lo que es bastante inusual. En él se muestran nuevos datos sobre salarios y estaturas de varios virreinatos que: (1) sugieren niveles de bienestar material relativamente medios o altos para grupos no privilegiados de la Hispanoamérica borbónica; y (2) permiten la construcción de índices de desigualdad económica. La comparación internacional de esos índices arroja dudas sobre la verosimilitud del ampliamente extendido supuesto de que la economía de la América española se basada exclusivamente en instituciones extremadamente desiguales o extractivas, que ha sido popularizada por los influyentes trabajos de Engerman y Sokoloff y Acemoglu et al.

Keywords

anthropometricscolonialisminequalitywagesHispanic American economic historyI39J30N30N36antropometría, colonialismodesigualdadsalarioshistoria económica de Hispanoamérica
Type
Articles/Artículos
Information
Revista de Historia Economica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History , Volume 28 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue on Latin American Inequality , September 2010 , pp. 253 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Instituto Figuerola de Historia y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid 2010

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