The Spanish Empire and its legacy: fiscal redistribution and political conflict in colonial and post-colonial Spanish America
Abstract
The comparative history of the Americas has been used to identify factors determining longterm economic growth. One approach, new institutional economics (NIE), claims that the colonial origins of respective institutional structures explain North American success and Spanish American failure. Another argues that differences in resources encountered by Europeans fostered divergent levels of equality impacting on institutions and growth. This paper challenges the theoretical premises and historical evidence of both views offering a historicized, statistically and economically validated explanation for the institutional and economic development of Spanish America. First, it revises the structure of the fiscal system challenging the characterization of Spain as an absolutist ruler. Secondly, an analysis of fiscal data at regional levels assesses the performance of the Imperial state. It shows the existence of massive revenue redistribution within the colonies, disputing the notion of a predatory extractive empire based on endowments as the source of original inequality. Finally, we discuss how a contingent event, the imprisonment of the Spanish king in 1808, contributed to the disintegration of a 300-year-old empire. The crisis of legitimacy in the empire turned fiscal interdependence between regions into beggar-thy-neighbour strategies and internecine conflict. We conclude by arguing for a reversal of the causality from weak institutions causing economic failure to fiscal (and economic) failure leading to political instability.Download Info
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Article provided by Cambridge University Press in its journal Journal of Global History.
Volume (Year): 1 (2006)
Issue (Month): 02 (July)
Pages: 241-267
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Grafe, Regina & Irigoin, Maria Alejandra, 2006. "The Spanish Empire and its legacy: fiscal re-distribution and political conflict in colonial and post-colonial Spanish America," Economic History Working Papers 22467, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
- N0 - Economic History - - General
- O54 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean
- F54 - International Economics - - International Relations and International Political Economy - - - Colonialism; Imperialism; Postcolonialism
- J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
- O52 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe
- B1 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Vinokurov, Evgeny, 2009. "EDB Eurasian Integration Yearbook 2009," MPRA Paper 20917, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Irigoin, A & Grafe, R, 2012. "Bounded Leviathan: or why North & Weingast are only right on the right half," MPRA Paper 39722, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Roberto Bonfatti, 2009.
"Decolonization: the Role of Changing World Factor Endowments,"
2009 Meeting Papers
895, Society for Economic Dynamics.
- Roberto Bonfatti, 2008. "Decolonization: the Role of Changing World Factor Endowments," STICERD - Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers Series 001, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
- Gareth Austin, 2008. "The 'reversal of fortune' thesis and the compression of history: Perspectives from African and comparative economic history," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(8), pages 996-1027.
- Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2010. "Latin American Growth-Inequality Trade-Offs: The Impact of Insurgence and Independence," NBER Working Papers 15680, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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