Michael T. Hamerly’s Historia social y económica de la antigua provincia de Guayaquil, 1763-1842 is an important contribution to Ecuadorean historiography. It is a well-researched study that concentrates on social and economic history, a little-developed field in Ecuador. The monograph also emphasizes the importance of the coast and, thus, serves to balance a historiography that is heavily influenced by highland writers.
The core of the work consists of five chapters, which treat the demographic, economic, and social history of the province of Guayaquil during a century of transition. Hamerly demonstrates that the area experienced a demographic revolution, principally as a result of internal migration from the highlands. The Bourbon commercial reforms, which crippled the primitive textile industry of the sierra, induced a rapid expansion of the coastal economy. As a result, highlanders moved west, quadrupling the population of the province of Guayaquil between 1765 and 1842. The author argues that it was this new labor force rather than a natural increase in population that allowed Guayaquil to prosper and to become a major exporter of cacao, tobacco, timber, and other tropical products.
Despite Spanish and later Gran Colombian opposition, Guayaquil became the world’s leading exporter of cacao early in the nineteenth century. It was this prosperity, together with a growing discontent over royal restrictions, which, in Hamerly’s view, led Guayaquil to declare independence in 1820. He implies that had the Crown appeased the guayaquileños, the port and the province would have remained loyal to Spain. This would have been a great blow to the independence movement because, according to Hamerly, Guayaquil was the largest port on the Pacific.
The author devotes two chapters to a description of the province and the city of Guayaquil. Although useful and informative, this section does not place Guayaquil in historical perspective. Instead, it concentrates on a discussion of the boundaries of the province and a minute description of different sections of the city. Hamerly assumes that readers are acquainted with the political history of the area and does not provide an adequate setting for the study.
The principal strength of the Historia social y económica is the valuable information that it supplies both in the text and in numerous tables. Hamerly has examined many scattered, ill-organized, or often disorganized, manuscript collections in order to gather the material on which the study is based. In this respect, he has provided a much-needed documentary basis for many aspects of Ecuadorean history. The principal drawback of the book is the author’s reluctance to utilize the data fully. The work suffers from insufficient analysis. This is particularly true of the chapters on society, which are principally descriptions and, in some instances, are virtually catalogs of information.
In spite of these weaknesses, Hamerly’s work is an important addition to the scant literature of Ecuador’s coastal lowlands. He is to be congratulated for including an excellent essay on sources and for compiling the many tables and charts that will aid future scholars.
