This well-documented monograph describes the evolution of the colonial landowning class in the southwestern part of Peru, focusing on the city of Arequipa. It is of particular interest because the region had a relatively large population of European origin, which depended on the ownership of farms and vineyards of modest size rather than on the large estates typical of many other regions. The book goes a long way toward giving us an understanding of how and why this pattern evolved.
Many of the elements in the overall picture are already familiar. The granting of encomiendas; the development of ancillary income-generating enterprises attached to them; the decline of the conquered Indian population; the shift from reliance on Indian tributes to ownership of land; and the acquisition of land through grants, purchase, and title settlements were all characteristic of other regions in Spanish America where dense Indian populations existed before the conquest. Davies attributes the distinctive elements primarily to geographical circumstances—particularly the limited amount of irrigable and cultivable land in the valleys where Spaniards settled—and to the peculiar characteristics of the wine economy. As he shows, the initial land grants made at Arequipa in 1540 were almost all for less than 50 acres, and most of the heredades which developed through the consolidation of land grants in the Vitor Valley were between 50 and 75 acres. “Estates” of this size were feasible because the growth of viticulture gave them a greater income than that of much larger estates in some other regions.
The profitability of the heredades declined after the 1580s, primarily due to competition from other areas (particularly the lca region and the valleys further south) and the resulting decline in prices. During this period, the heredades shifted from dependence on drafted Indians to slave labor, and the marketing of the wine was increasingly taken over by merchants, putting the landowners at a further disadvantage. These economic difficulties did not destabilize the landowning elite, however. In spite of the decline in income, heredades were less likely to be sold off than divided up to provide for multiple heirs, thus decreasing their average size and preventing the disappearance of landowning families that was often characteristic of regions with larger estates. Davies also suggests that the regional landowning class became increasingly endogamous, as families found it more and more difficult to marry their children oft to wealthy or prestigious outsiders.
Two minor reservations. I think the author’s focus on Spanish society leads him to underestimate the extent to which the dependence of the early settlers on the established political, social, and economic arrangements of the Indian population initially limited their “capitalist” inclinations. I also suspect that Indian de population was more severe and had more of an impact on the evolution of the regional economy than the book suggests (pp. 24, 26-27). These are peripheral points, however. On the whole, the book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the development of commercial agriculture and regional landowning classes in Latin America.
