Luz María Méndez Beltrán has been studying various phases of Chile’s economic history for more than three decades. Her early work examined the Tribunal de Minería in its transition from the colonial to the national period. Next she explored international trade, with a particular interest in the exchange between Valparaíso and Philadelphia. The current study builds on past work, but with a considerably expanded scope. In La exportación minera, Méndez examines the impact on regional development of copper, silver, and gold exports from 1800 to 1840. It is an ambitious work, both in its use of sources and in its revision of early-nineteenth-century Chilean economic history.
Whereas many historians have observed a sluggish Chilean economy in this period, Méndez shows that a strong mining sector indicates a flourishing northern economy. For each decade she studied, the value of mineral exports doubled or better. Since mining was such a dynamic...
