The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America: Volume 1, The Colonial Era and the Short Nineteenth Century (Hardcover)

The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America provides access to the current state of expert knowledge about Latin America's economic past from the Spanish conquest to the beginning of the twenty-first century. It includes work from diverse perspectives, disciplines, and methodologies from qualitative historical analysis of policies and institutions to cliometrics, the new institutional economics, and environmental sciences. Each chapter provides a comparative analysis of economic trends, sectoral development, or the evolution of the institutional and policy environment. Volume one includes the colonial and independence eras up to 1850, linking Latin America's economic history to the pre-Hispanic, European, and African background. It also synthesizes knowledge on the human and environmental impact of the Spanish conquest, the evolution of colonial economic institutions, and the performance of key sectors of the colonial and immediate post-colonial economies. Finally, it analyses of the costs and benefits of independence.