Venal Origins is a comparative and historical study of the roots of spatial inequalities in Spanish America. The book focuses on the Spanish colonial administration and the eighteenth-century practice of office-selling – where colonial positions were exchanged for money – to analyze its lasting impact on local governance, regional disparities, and economic development. Drawing on three centuries of rich archival and administrative data, it shows how office-selling exacerbated venality and profit-seeking behaviors among colonial officials, fostering indigenous segregation, violent uprisings, and the institutionalization of exploitative fiscal and labor systems. The enduring legacies from their rule remain visible today in the form of subnational authoritarian enclaves, localized cycles of violence, and marginalized indigenous communities, which have reinforced and deepened regional inequalities. By integrating perspectives from history, political science, and economics, Venal Origins provides a nuanced and empirically grounded analysis of how colonial officials shaped – and still influence – subnational development in Spanish America.

The previous chapters reveal that purchasers have markedly lower social status and fewer connections to the Crown. For critics of office-selling, this lack of social status constituted prima facie evidence of their “undeserving” nature and the “ambitious” behavior they will exhibit in office. Yet, this is not necessarily the case: Low-status purchasers may not act differently or may be simply seeking for an opportunity to advance socially. This chapter tests the validity of these claims by combining data on the individual characteristics of buyers with the timing and profitability of the position they sought. Statistical exercises reveal that, in line with its detractors, office buyers with “worse” traits flocked to positions that offered higher profit potential and at times in which the Crown was more desperate and less likely to vet them. From the point of view of the colonial populations, this was negative selection: Sales abetting those with the most to gain financially and the least ability to rein in to enter the colonial administration. Namely, venal officials. These findings set the stage for future chapters exploring the consequences of this change for the colonial administration.

This chapter describes the market for high-level colonial offices in eighteenth-century Spanish America. It starts by providing an overview of the territorial and institutional organization of the Spanish Empire at the time as well as the positions that constituted the “supply”: their number, rank, and institutional attributes. The rest of the chapter then focuses on the determinants of demand through the analysis of office prices, buyer characteristics, and the profitability of certain positions versus others. Estimates show how, all else equal, positions with greater rank and power as well as those more profitable, drew higher prices on average. It also finds that individuals of higher social status or more connected to the Crown – of military, nobility, or Spanish origin – were heavily “subsidized” to occupy office vis-à-vis those lacking those traits. Altogether, this is consistent with office prices revealing important information about the expected returns of certain positions versus others.

The first consequence of sales was to facilitate the capture of the colonial administration by local elites, enabling self-dealing across its ranks. By examining the composition of audiencia councils, the chapter shows that the value of offices under their watch (corregimientos, alcaldias) exponentially increased with the share of purchasers in the audiencia, consistent with laxer oversight. The effect is driven by the audiencias, where the Crown was less concerned about the quality of its members as they faced lower geopolitical threats. It is also driven by the influx of audiencia members with strong local connections that would particularly benefit from colluding with lower-level officials. This statistical evidence helps substantiate historical accounts of profitable complementarities between audiencia members and corregidores and alcaldes in the territories (now countries) of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile. These networks and connections would prove difficult to eradicate, even after the end of sales.

Two centuries after independence, is colonialism still a valid explanation for Spanish America’s inequities and lagging economic performance? This chapter makes the case that the legacies of colonialism run at a deeper and much more local level than commonly acknowledged and publicly discussed. In particular, factoring-in the administrative practices of the Spanish Empire reveals how eighteenth-century office-selling undermined local governance in numerous ways: Shaping the spatial distribution of authoritarian and ethnic enclaves; the recurrence of violent conflict in certain areas; and ultimately, the under-provision of public goods leading to subnational differences in living standards we observe today. The chapter also outlines the limits of current explanations – focused on factor endowments, national institutions, or postcolonial state-building – to explain local-level differences. The chapter concludes with a roadmap describing the rest of the book.

Aside from elite collusion and administrative capture, the arrival of venal officials spelled the end of the Pax Hispannica – primarily in the key Viceroyalties of Peru and Mexico but also in its other territories. Through the collection of eighteenth-century local-level uprising data, the chapter shows that provinces in high demand during sales exhibited a disproportionate number of uprisings per capita vis-à-vis those less demanded. Administrative venality also exacerbated subsistence crises created by eighteenth-century weather events such as drought in Mexico or El Niño(a) in Peru and Bolivia. In addition to more uprisings, provinces ruled by more venal officials also saw greater geographic segregation of the indigenous population. By the 1770s, provinces more exposed to venality show stronger signs of displacement of indigenous populations away from their original sixteenth-century locations. Together, these findings show that as the colonial era approached its end, different areas of the empire already had different “governance baggage” depending on their earlier exposure to venality: with those more exposed experiencing more uprisings and more displacement than those less so.

Why did the Spanish Crown sell offices? The chapter explores the rationale behind the sale of important executive, judicial, and fiscal positions across the colonial administration. The Crown’s justification for sales was that of a measure of last resort to meet urgent fiscal needs created by European wars. Based on the analysis of the pattern of sales and the fiscal situation of the Crown at the time, this chapter argues that this account falls short in two ways. First, proceeds from sales were not destined to fund war directly, nor was office-selling the only financing option available to the Crown. Instead, and second, the timing, frequency, and type of positions sold reveal that the Crown was more selective than commonly acknowledged. Namely, privileging the sale of positions that allowed it to seize economic surplus from the colonial (indigenous) populations without jeopardizing the territorial integrity of the empire by selling geopolitically sensitive posts. These findings question the extent to which office-selling was the sole product of the Crown’s irrationality, or to create buy-in by local elites, or as a way to chiefly weaken the power of viceroys at the time.

Did the period immediately after independence erase or reverse the legacies of the colonial era? While much changed in Spanish America throughout the nineteenth century, this chapter challenges the idea that the consequences of venality, particularly at the local level, were stamped out with independence. Through a detailed examination of archival and administrative sources, the analysis unveils the continuation or revitalization of labor and fiscal policies from the colonial era; limits to the formation of new representative governments in provinces more exposed to venality; the persistence of grievances devolving into conflict; and in some countries, the continued segregation of the indigenous population. Part of this continuity lies in the strong influence of the colonial administration for the configuration of states that emerged: while much changed in terms of territory, much less changed in terms of population. Overall, these findings make the case that the legacies from earlier venality constrained the state-building paths these countries could follow in the nineteenth century.

The final chapter brings the findings to the current context of Spanish American countries. Two centuries after independence, rural conflict is a rarer occurrence than in the 1800s; yet, the spatial segregation of indigenous minorities and the limits to political representation remain. Relying on contemporary data from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, the chapter shows that subnational territories with more intense office-selling in the past exhibit greater childhood malnutrition and stunting as well as low weight at birth. This is unlikely to be driven by alternative factors – such as the mere presence of indigenous populations or postcolonial developments – as the differences are visible with fine-level data only comparing localities straddling the borders of former colonial jurisdictions. Sides of the border with greater venality have today lower public good and economic well-being vis-a-vis neighboring ones, consistent with effects running through local governance. The chapter closes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the study of corruption; the Spanish Empire; as well as for understanding other contexts where office-selling also took place (China, France, and Iran).