We thank Carlos Marichal, William Summerhill, and the editors of the HAHR for taking up the debate on how to assess the governance structures under lying Spanish rule in the Iberian Peninsula and the American colonies and (more generally) the current use of institutional explanations in social sciences and history as determinants of differential economic development. Both commentators seem perfectly comfortable with our actual numbers and our attempt to draw attention to the understudied intracolonial transfers, so we will waste no time restating our basic findings. Yet, with great insight Marichal and Summerhill question several important aspects of our interpretation of these features. The issues raised are large, but in the interest of being concise we will offer only a few short comments for future debate.
Although Marichal agrees with our critique of the characterization of Spanish absolutism as all-powerful and rigid, he in turn feels that our concepts of...
