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Recent Materials and Opportunities for Quantitative Research in Latin American History: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

William Paul McGreevey
William Paul McGreevey*
Affiliation:
The Smithsonian Institution
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In 1968, I was offered the opportunity to prepare a brief survey of resources and prospects for quantitative research in Latin American history by the ad hoc committee on quantitative data of the American historical association. I was at first charged with treatment of the whole period 1500-1960, but the willingness of John TePaske to undertake a lion's share of the task ended in limiting my responsibility to ‘only’ the 19th and 20th centuries. The results of that survey, as indeed those of professor TePaske's work, are available in the collection of papers edited by Val R. Lorwin and Jacob price, the dimensions of the past. In the notes which follow I will try to avoid repeating any of the presentation in that work and will instead try to build a bridge between that effort of five years ago and developments in this field of research in the past few years.

Type
Topical Review
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , 1974 , pp. 73 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

This article was originally presented in a session on quantification in Latin American history, held at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association at San Francisco in December 1973. Another paper on quantification, dealing mainly with the colonial period, was read by Dr. John J. TePaske, Duke University. Brief comments on the two papers were made by Professors Charles Berry, Wright University, H. Bradley Benedict, Paul E. Hoffman, Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge), and James W. Wilkie, UCLA. The session was chaired by the Editor of LARR. Professor TePaske plans to publish an article on quantification in Latin American history in a subsequent issue of LARR. Ed.

References

Sources

1. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1972.

2. Cf. McGreevey, “Recent Research on the Economic History of Latin America,” LARR, 3: 2:107 (1968).

3. Maria Luiza Marcilio. La Ville de São Paulo: Peuplement et Population, 1750-1850 (l'Université de Rouen, 1972), and “Tendances et Structures des Menages dans la Capitainerie de şão Paulo….” L'Histoire Quantitative du Bresil de 1800 a 1930 (Colloques Internationaux de Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, No. 543, 11-15 Oct. 1971), pp. 157-165.

4. Rene Salinas Meza and Robert McCaa, “La documentación histérico-demográfica del ‘Norte Chico’ ” (unpub. ms. presented at CELADE Working Group Meeting on Demographic History, Santiago, Chile, 23-27 July 1973).

5. CELADE (Centro Latinoamericano de Demografía) sponsored a year-long review of the potential for work in Latin American demography which ended in a working group meeting in July 1973. Among the many documents prepared for that meeting were “Documentos útiles para la demografía histórica en América Latina: Resumen de Informes,” and Julio Morales Vergara, ed., “Bibliografía de demografía histórica,” CELADE Series B, No. 35, July 1971.

6. A recent product of the group is the collection of papers by Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean, I (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), which includes a methodological essay on their past work in Mexico, new estimates of the pre-Columbia population of Hispaniola, and a critical review of population studies of highland Colombia.

7. See Eduardo Arriaga and Kingsley Davis, “The Pattern of Mortality Change in Latin America,” Demography, 6:3:223-242 (1969), which summarizes and draws certain conclusions from the important monographs prepared by Arriaga. Earlier work by Collver on birth rates also made use of sophisticated techniques for estimating vital rates from imperfect census data.

8. See his Problems in Stable Population Theory (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton 1958), which contains a proof of the theorem of weak heteroscedasticity, an important theoretical advance, according to Ansley Coale.

9. Examples of such studies include the following: Herbert S. Klein, “The Colored Freedmen in Brazilian Slave Society,” Journal of Social History, 3:1:30-52 (Fall, 1969); “The Trade in African Slaves to Rio de Janeiro, 1795-1811: Estimates of Mortality and Patterns of Voyages,” Journal of African History, 10:4:533-549 (1969); and “The Internal Slave Trade in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: A Study of Slave Importations in Rio de Janeiro in 1852, HAHR, 51:4:567-585 (1971); Peter Eisenberg, ”Abolishing Slavery: The Process on Pernambuco's Sugar Plantations,“ HAHR, 52:4:580-597 (Nov. 1972). A number of works on slavery combine a concern with slavery per se and the demography of slave societies. In part these concerns have come together because of the often exaggerated and poorly supported claims that have been made in the past about the institution.

10. See, for example, some of the unpublished papers of Professor John Coatsworth, who has done excellent work on the Mexican railways during the Porfiriato, including his “Nineteenth Century Transport Innovation in Latin America: The Case of Mexico,” presented at the 1972 meeting of the AHA; and the doctoral dissertation of Professor David Denslow of the University of Florida, (which I have seen only in early drafts), and which treats sugar production and railway innovations in the Brazilian Northeast and Cuba. Two excellent papers by Professor Shane Hunt of Princeton University, “Price and Quantum Estimates of Peruvian Exports, 1830-1962,” and “Growth and Guano in Nineteenth Century Peru,” have been circulated by the author and draw in some respects on methodological advances made by the ‘new economic history.‘ An effort along these lines by Clark Reynolds is mentioned below.

11. The need for an organized approach to the application of this and other quantitative techniques is indicated by the paucity of response among Latin Americanists in the “Summary of Responses: AHA Quantitative Data Committee Questionnaire,” the results of which were presented by QDC Chairman Allan Bogue at the December 1972 meeting of the committee. Only five Latin Americanists had responded to the questionnaire: These included John TePaske, R. M. Levine, J. S. Tulchin, Jaime E. Rodríguez-O., and W. J. Fleming. Obviously, there are other historians of Latin America conducting quantitative research; some organizational effort is in order to bring them to each other's attention, especially given the advantages of division of labor and economies of scale in this kind of research effort.

12. See Miguel Urrutia and Mario Arrubla, eds., Compendio de estadísticas históricas de Colombia, Dirección de Divulgación Cultural, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, pp. 31-105 (Bogotá, 1970).

13. A new edition of Wilkie's now classic work has been published by the Univ. of California Press.

14. D. A. Brading and Harry E. Cross, “Colonial Silver Mining: Mexico and Peru,” HAHR, 52:4:545-579 (Nov. 1972). Brading's earlier work, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810, (N.Y., Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971), also makes able use of simple descriptive statistics.

15. Alan T. Udall, “Migration and Employment in Bogotá, Colombia” (unpub. Ph.D. diss., Yale Univ., 1973), creates a new series of annual gross and net migration rates into the city, 1946-64, and reviews related evidence from the 1920s onward.

16. Summaries of urban historical data appear in Richard E. Boyer and Keith A. Davies, “Urbanization in 19th Century Latin America: Statistics and Sources,” Supplement to the Statistical Abstract of Latin America (Latin American Center, Univ. of California, Los Angeles, July 1973), and Richard Morse, et al., The Urban Development of Latin America, 1750-1920 (Center for Latin American Studies, Stanford Univ., Stanford, 1971). For the period since 1950, International Population and Urban Research (IPUR), Univ. of California, Berkeley, has published estimates of the size of all the world's metropolitan areas and has issued a number of analyses by Professor Kingsley Davis and other members of the IPUR staff.

17. Jeffry R. Gibson, “A Demographic Analysis of Urbanization: Evolution of a System of Cities in Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica,” Latin American Studies Program Dissertation Series, No. 20, (Sept. 1970); David R. Radell, “Historical Geography of Western Nicaragua: The Spheres of Influence of León, Granada, and Managua, 1519-1965” (unpub. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1969); Paul Singer, Desenvolvimento econômico e evolução urbana: Analise da evoluçâo econômica de São Paulo, Blumenau, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte e Recife (Companhia Editôra de São Paulo, Universidade de São Paulo, 1968); and Luis Unikel, La dinámica del crecimiento de la Ciudad de México (Fundación para Estudios de la Población, México, D. F., 1972).

18. Professor Chi-Yi Chen summarizes a wealth of data on Venezuelan urban and regional development in “Distribución espacial de la población venezolana: diagnóstico y perspectiva,” (unpub. ms. of a paper presented at the First Latin American Meeting on Policies of Migration, Urbanization and Population Distribution, Sochagota, Colombia, Sept. 1973), and to be published by the Centro Regional de Población, Bogotá. Studies of urban industrial development by François Chevalier, “Les origines d'un Pôle de Developpement Industriel: pour une étude globale du cas de Medellin, Colombie,” Melanges de la Case de Velazquez, 9:633-651 (1973), and Warren Dean, The Industrialization of São Paulo, 1880-1945 (Univ. of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1969), examine the relationship between manufacturing growth and such factors as entrepreneurship, transportation, and expansion of coffee exports for a global view of the urbanization process. Alejandra Moreno Toscano's unpublished paper, “Cambios en los patrones de urbanización en México, 1810-1910,” Center Discussion Paper No. 28, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Center for Latin American Studies, Dec. 1971), develops the relationship between the growth of the economy of the western United States and the gradual reorientation of regional development in Mexico. A more formalistic treatment is offered by Luis Unikel and Gustavo Garza, “Análisis demográfico de la urbanización en México: 1900-1970,” Revista de Economía Política, 9: 2:5-45 (1972), who analyze urban population change by city size classes. The extent of the literature on this subject is indicated by the 600 item bibliography prepared by Luis Unikel, “Bibliografía sobre desarrollo urbano y regional en México,” Demografía y Economía, 6: 3:377-408 (1972), which unfortunately is not annotated.

19. I am far from familiar with this literature; however, the following citations have come to my attention: David Bushneil, “Voter Participation in the Colombian Election of 1856,” HAHR, 51:2:237-249 (May 1971); Joseph L. Love, “Political Participation in Brazil, 1881-1969,” Luso-Brazilian Review, 7:2:3-24 (Dec. 1970; “External Financing and Domestic Politics: The Case of São Paulo, Brazil, 1889-1937,” In: Robert E. Scott, ed., Latin American Modernization Problems: Case Studies in the Crises of Change (Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1973), pp. 236-259, and Rio Grande do Sul and Brazilian Regionalism, 1882-1930 (Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford 1971); Steven W. Sinding, “The Evolution of Chilean Voting Patterns: A Re-examination of Some Old Assumptions,” The Journal of Politics, 34:774-796 (1972); Richard N. Sinkin, “The Mexican Constitutional Congress, 1856-1857: A Statistical Analysis,” HAHR, 53:1:1-26 (Feb. 1973); Peter H. Smith, “Continuity and Turnover within the Mexican Political Elite, 1900-1971” (unpub. ms. of paper presented at the IV International Congress of Mexican Studies, Santa Monica, Cal., 1973), and “The Social Bases of Peronism,” HAHR, 52:1:55-73 (Feb. 1972).

20. Carlos F. Díaz Alejandro, Essays on the Economic History of the Argentine Republic (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1970).

21. Albert Fishlow, “Origins and Consequences of Import Substitution in Brazil,” Economic Theory and Mathematical Economics Series (Acadamic Press, N.Y. and London, 1972), pp. 311-365, and “The Rise of Brazilian Industrialization Before the Second World War” (unpubl. ms., 1970), two works which apply the author's previous experience in development economics and U.S. economic history to the analysis of the Brazilian historical experience. Carlos Manuel Pelaez, “As Consequencias Econômicas da Ortodoxia Monetaria, Cambiel e Fiscal no Brasil entre 1889-1945,” Revista Brasileira de Economia, 25:3:5-82 (July-Sept. 1971), brings to bear monetary and trade theory in the analysis of state policy. Some parallel work by Professor Nathaniel Leff, “Long-term Brazilian Economic Development,” The Journal of Economic History, 29:3:473-493 (1969), may also be mentioned. Douglas Graham has analyzed immigration and labor supply in “Internal and Foreign Migration and the Question of Labor Supply in the Early Economic Growth of Brazil” (unpub. ms. of paper presented at LASA Meeting, Madison, Wis., May 1973). Annibal Villanova Villela and Wilson Suzigan, Politica do Governo e Crescimento da Economia Brasileira, 1889-1945 (IPEA/INPES, Rio de Janiero, 1973), present a wealth of detail on the government sector.

22. Leopoldo Solís, La realidad económica mexicana: retrovisión y perspectivas (Siglo Veintiuno Editores, México, 1970), presents revised national income estimates reaching back to 1895; Donald B. Keesing, “Structural Change Early in Development: Mexico's Changing Industrial and Occupational Structure from 1895 to 1950,” The Journal of Economic History, 29:4:716-738 (Dec. 1959), analyzes the skill-intensiveness of various occupations and shows how industrial development and reduced manufacturing employment went hand in hand.

23. See D. C. M. Platt, Latin American and British Trade, 1806-1914 (Harper & Row, N.Y., 1973), p. 82.

24. In an unpublished paper, “Mercado de trabajo, 1880-1914,” Professor Roberto Cortés Conde presents new series on labor force, real wages, and related variables. He is also a participant in and co-editor for an international comparative project which will yield critical bibliographies and essays on six countries over the period 1830-1930. His co-editor on that project is Professor Stanley J. Stein, Princeton Univ.

25. The Mexican Economy: Twentieth Century Structure and Growth (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1970).

26. Marcello Carmagnani, Sviluppo Industriale e Sottosviluppo Economico: Il Caso Cileno (1860-1920) (Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Torino, Italy, 1971).

27. Enrique Florescano, Precios del maíz y crisis agrícolas en Mexico (1708-1810) (El Colegio de México, México, 1969).

28. Arnold J. Bauer, “Expansion económica en una sociedad tradicional: Chile Central en el siglo XIX,” Historia (Instituto de Historia, Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago), 9: 137-235 [1970]); “The Hacienda ‘El Huique’ in the Agrarian Structure of Nineteenth-Century Chile,” Agricultural History, 46:4:455-470 (Oct. 1972), and with Ann Hagerman Johnson, “Distribution of Land and Rural Income in Modern Chile: 1854-1965” (unpub. ms. of paper presented at the Symposium on Landlord and Peasant ni Latin America and the Caribbean, Cambridge, England, Dec. 1972. The foregoing studies present Chilean data; Bauer reviews a somewhat larger problem in his “The Church and Spanish American Agrarian Structure, 1765-1865,” The Americas, 28:1:78-98 (July 1971).

29. Of particular interest is the comparative analysis of sugar estates in Mexico and Brazil, conducted jointly by a geographer and an historian: Ward J. Barrett and Stuart B. Schwartz. “Two Colonial Sugar Economies: Morelos, Mexico, and Bahia, Brazil: a comparison” (unpub. ms., Univ. of Minn., n.d.). Both authors have contributed individual quantitative studies, including Ward Barrett, The Sugar Hacienda of the Marqueses del Valle (Univ. of Minn. Press, Minneapolis, 1970).