Jara is one of the pioneers in the development of a modern economic and social history in the French “annales” tradition. Here he presents a reedition of two of his classic studies, written some 30 years ago: “Los asientos de trabajo y la provisión de mano de obra para los no-encomenderos en la ciudad de Santiago, 1586–1600” and “El salario de los indios y los sesmos del oro en la tasa de Santillán,” both based largely on notarial records and related to Jara’s famous Guerre et société au Chili, which has had three Spanish editions. His studies on both the Indian and the non-Indian early Chilean labor sector are further related to the two-volume Fuentes para la historia del trabajo en el reino de Chile: Legislación, 1546–1810, edited with Sonia Pinto in Santiago, 1982-83. All these publications show the author’s importance in the field of colonial labor history and the persistent interest in his contributions.
The book under review is preceded by a newly written introductory note on “Historia económica y archivos notariales,” in which Jara insists on the importance of notarial record files, reviews a number of older and contemporary scholars, and inserts some autobiographical references. The most recent work he refers to is James Lockhart’s Spanish Peru (1968) and its Spanish version (1982). Here the problem of the book becomes evident. Reeditions of classic studies are useful, but after three decades, it is necessary to make a careful evaluation of their historical role. Since then, many related, careful studies have been published, but Jara prefers to fight old battles without reference to subsequent developments and trends. As he seems quite aware of what is going on in the international arena of Latin American history, I can only suppose that he does this with his interpretation of the Chilean situation of the discipline in mind. However, this book is useful as a classic, and is better printed than the originals.
