Some books become the measure of future publications. Earl J. Hamilton’s American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain 1501 – 1650 was such a book. Armando de Ramón and José Manuel Larraín’s Orígenes de la vida económica chilena may prove to be another. The relationship between the two studies is interesting because the Chilean authors study prices in Santiago as a response to Hamilton’s earlier study of prices in Spain. Santiago, of course, was on the periphery rather than in the center of the empire, but with this study we have a perspective of both the inside and the outside of the imperial economy.
Although 150 years of price movement is the central theme of this work, the variety of other themes is noteworthy. These include production, consumption, trade, weights and measures, government policy, and social patterns. In the area of production, not only are major activities such as farming and cattle raising included, but so are fishing, salt gathering, brick making, and artisanry. Picturesque descriptions alternate with indexes and graphs. The amplitude of themes and data, therefore, helps price movements to be understood within the context of the whole economy.
The authors’ study of food prices is a good example of their method. They consider population, export demand, and natural phenomena as their main variables. When Santiago’s population was small in the seventeenth century and exports were mainly hides, tallow, and hemp, the land was used mostly for grazing. By the following century a larger population, combined with a replacement of cattle by wheat exports, changed land’s use to intensive agriculture. Demand and land usage are reflected in price trends. Weather caused fluctuations, but earthquakes provoked complete discontinuity. A devastating quake in 1647 followed by an Indian uprising initiated a twenty-year period of scarcities and high prices. Another quake in 1687, this time in Peru, created an enormous demand for Chilean farm products and inflated food prices for another twenty years. Although the study of multivariables appears in other works on prices, the impact of natural disasters documented in this work is unique.
Scarcities caused problems in the colonial economy, but so did abundance. Frequently, agricultural production was so great that prices tumbled down to below cost. In the cases of both abundance and scarcity, political institutions decided to rectify the problems of the market. The Santiago Cabildo tried price fixing and export control, but when such regulations negatively affected supply and prices in Peru, the viceroy intervened. Producers and traders demonstrated enormous ingenuity to evade the regulations of both. Tensions between the private economy and political institutions receive thorough treatment in this work.
In general, the authors deepen our awareness that Chile belonged to a regional South American economy during the colonial period. Prices and land use in Santiago depended as much upon Peruvian interests as local ones. The authors do not explore sufficiently, however, the influences the Río de la Plata region had upon the Santiago economy. Within Chile itself the authors concentrate on the Central Valley to the exclusion of the northern mining and the Concepción farming regions. Future studies of these areas are needed to determine the extent to which they influenced the Santiago economy.
In a final section of their work, Ramon and Larraín explain their sources and methodology. They derived most price and consumption statistics from the account books of convents and hospitals. Cabildo, notary, and Contaduría Mayor records offered additional information. From these sources they made price and consumption indexes. A comparison of the relative importance of food, clothing, and housing offers conclusions which will surprise many scholars.
The most important contribution of this work may be that it will encourage other historians to undertake similar studies elsewhere in Latin America. Enrique Florescano began this work in Mexico, but little has been done elsewhere. Such a study demands enormous work in archives. Armando de Ramón and José Manuel Larraín, however, show that this task is not only possible, but that it is the beginning of a major revision in Latin American historiography.
