When I first introduced myself to Luis Eduardo Nieto Arteta in the summer of 1946, almost the first question that he put to me was, “Well, what do you think of my book?” We were sitting by his desk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On my reply that I regarded it as the foundation for any study of the economic history of Colombia, he tipped back his chair and smiled with appreciation of a compliment sincerely meant.
When this work appeared in its first edition in 1942, it represented a striking departure in Colombian historical writing. Followed later by some formidable work of similar quality of Indalecio Liévano A., Economía y Cultura was directed toward an understanding of the economic and social foundations of the nineteenth century. Turning his back on the customary concern of Colombian historians for either attacking or defending or glorifying protagonists in history, the author wrote a balanced, thoughtful, and lucid account of the economic evolution of Colombian society. He read meaning into the documents and into the statistics of the time. He gave background and perspective to a whole century of Colombian history that hitherto had seemed a confusing array of próceres, presidents, constitutions, and civil wars.
One of the most significant features of his work was that he brought to the attention of his countrymen and Americans nineteenth-century figures who were not only men of affairs but remarkable political and economic philosophers. Men like Miguel Samper, Salvador Camacho Roldán, and Aníbal Galindo possessed uncommon discernment and force. Out of the forgotten pages of the Memoria de Hacienda, he extracted significant facts, ideas, and quotations, showing that Colombia’s nineteenth century was as intelligible as colonial times and was endowed also with deeds and writings of gifted individuals.
The value of Nieto Arteta’s work lies not in its completeness—for it does not pretend to be a comprehensive history—but rather in the fact that it presents a stimulating, well-documented interpretation containing ideas that every research scholar will value and no scholar can afford to ignore. A few of these ideas are the differences between the economies of the Oriente and the Cundinamarca-Tolima area, the significance of the opening of the mountainsides to cultivation, and the struggle between protectionism and free trade interests.
The untimely death of Nieto Arteta in 1956 robbed Colombia of a historian gifted with a remarkably forceful mind and with a clear, mid-twentieth-century point of view. The reappearance of his major work is testimony to the growing recognition of his importance.
