Abstract
Two basic methodological conceptions derived from the Latin American Dependency School are taken as the starting-point of our work. First of all, it is conceived that the question of the historical origins of international economic inequalities should be primarily posed as the question of the historical origin of different socio-economic structures, and not as a question of the divergent quantitative growth of the same underlying economic variables. It is only by understanding how these different structures arose that we can hope to understand the specific laws of motion that tend to produce what are commonly conceived as ‘international economic inequalities’. Secondly, it is conceived that the historical origins of the socio-economic formations which are usually called ‘underdeveloped’, ‘dependent’ or ‘peripheral’ capitalist formations are not independent of the historical process by which the advanced capitalist nations have reached maturity. Rather, one must conceptualise advanced and dependent capitalism as arising out of the same historical process. From the point of view of the study of dependent capitalist formations, this implies that one must search for a basic dependence of their laws of motion on their articulation within the world capitalist economy.
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Notes
Sergio Elias Ortiz (ed.), Escritos de dos economistas coloniales (Bogotá, 1965) pp. 125–7, 130.
See also David Bushnell, El Régimen de Santander en la Gran Colombia (Bogotá, 1966) pp. 19–20.
Gabriel Giraldo Jaramillo (ed.), Relaciones de Mando de los Virreyes de la Nueva Granada: Memorias Económicas (Bogotá, 1954) p. 165;
Jaime Jaramillo Uribe, Ensayos sobre Historia Social Colombian (Bogotá, 1968) pp. 71–5;
Germán Colmenares, Cali: terratenientes, mineros y comerciantes, siglo XVIII (Cali, 1975) pp. 76–7, chs 3 and 4.
Juan A. Villamarin, ‘Haciendas en la Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia, en la época colonial’, in Haciendas, Latifundios y Plantaciones en América Latina (Mexico, 1975) p. 373;
Margarita Gonzalez, El Resguardo en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (Bogotá, 1970) pp. 72–3;
Orlando Fals Borda, El Hombre y la Tierra en Boyacá (Bogotá, 1973) pp. 82–3;
Juan Friede, El Indio en la lucha por la tierra (Bogotá, 1972) pp. 91–7.
Bushnell, op. cit., pp. 113–17; José Manuel Restrepo, Historia de la Neuva Granada, Tomo I (Bogotá, 1952) pp. 137–8, 141, 145, 164, 179.
For a development of the idea of the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’ in Bogotá, see Frank R. Safford, Commerce and Enterprise in Central Colombia, 1821–1870 (Ph D thesis, Columbia University, 1965) ch. 2. For a characterisation of the capitalists of the time, see the analysis of the concept of ‘producer-speculator’ in section 3 below.
Giraldo Jaramillo (ed.), op. cit., pp. 64–5, 75–6, 122, 177; Anthony McFarlane, ‘El Comercio exterior del virreinato de la Nueva Granada’, Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, 1971–2, pp. 94–106.
For forceful expressions of free trade thought, see the writings of Antonio de Narvaez and José Ignacio de Pombo in Ortiz (ed.), op. cit., especially pp. 41–60, 123–34, 137–44, and Pedro Fermin de Vargas, Pensamientos Políticos (Bogotá, 1968) pp. 19–20, 94–102.
Frank R. Safford, Aspectos del siglo XIX en Colombia (Medellín, 1977) pp. 237–9, and Commerce ..., ch. 4;
Luis Ospina Vásquez, Industria y Protección en Colombia, 1810–1930 (Bogotá, 1955) ch. III.
Calculated from the 1835 (Fernando Gomez, ‘Los Censos colombianos antes de 1905’, in Miguel Urrutia and Mario Arrubla, Compendio de estadisticas históricas de Colombia (Bogotá, 1970) Table 3 and 1912 (Official Publication)) population censuses. In intermediate periods, calculations are in the 1.3–1.8 per cent range. According to Fernando Gomez (Análisis de los censor de población en el siglo XIX (thesis, U. de los Andes, 1969) ch. 3) a consistency analysis of the 1835, 1843, 1851 and 1870 censuses gives a population growth of 1.7 per cent.
In 1801–10, legal gold production was $ 2.3 million a year (José Manuel Restrepo, ‘Memoria sobre amonedación de oro y plata en la Nueva Granada’, in Historia de la Nueva Granada, (Bogotá, 1963) Vol. II pp. 455, 459). On the other hand, in its highest point (1802–4), merchandise exports through Cartagena were $ 784.500 a year (Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada (Bogotá, 1942) Vol. 1, p. 230). However, this was a period between two international wars and the value of exports can thus be considered exceptional (Ortiz, (ed.), op. cit., pp. 72–4, 95–9). Excluding illegal gold production, but including merchandise exports through all Colombian ports, however, total exports were probably no less than $ 3 million.
Safford, Commerce ..., chs. 5 and 6; Luis Eduardo Nieto Arteta, Economía y cultura en la historia de Colombia (Bogotá, 1973) chs 17, 18, 20.
Alle M. Sievers, The Mystical World of Indonesia: Culture and Economic Developmentin Conflict (Baltimore, 1974) pp. 104–5, 142.
John Parker Harrison, The Colombian Tobacco Industry, from Government Monopoly to Free Trade, 1778–1876 (PhD thesis, University of California, 1951) pp. 290–1, 296–7; Safford, Commerce ..., pp. 241–5.
Salomón Kalmanovitz, Desarrollo de la Agricultura en Colombia (Bogotá, 1978) p. 18;
Absalón Machado, El Café: de la aparcería al capitalismo (Bogotá, 1977) ch. 4, p. 338.
Nevertheless, Mariano Arango (Café e Industria, 1850–1930 (Bogotá, 1977) p. 125) claims that labour productivity was very similar in both forms of production.
Mariano Arango, ‘Comentarios al Trabajo de Absalón Machado’, in El Agro en el desarrollo histórico colombiano (Bogotá, 1977) pp. 233–40; Safford, Aspectos ..., pp. 274–5.
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© 1981 Paul Bairoch and Maurice Lévy-Leboyer
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Ocampo, JA. (1981). Export Growth and Capitalist Development in Colombia in the Nineteenth Century. In: Bairoch, P., Lévy-Leboyer, M. (eds) Disparities in Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04707-9_10
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