Early history
Slides
Class activity
Market for governorships
Today, we’re looking at what happened when the Spanish Crown switched from appointing governorships in colonial Peru to selling them to the highest bidder. The motive for switching to sales was the Spanish Crown’s financial troubles due to foreign wars.
In groups of 2-3, find out the following:
- Look up the following colonial institutions in Peru: repartimiento, mita, and tributo; what were they, and how did they differ from one another?
- Use the following data on the sale of governorships in colonial Peru. Make a histogram of sales prices. What does the distribution look like?
- Look up a very valuable and very not-valuable province on Google. What does it look like today in terms of development?
- What factors made a governorship more or less valuable?
- What kind of buyers tended to get better/worse prices?
- How are prices changing over time?
| original | labels |
|---|---|
| audiencia | Spanish Audiencia |
| provincia | colonial province name |
| year | year of sale |
| name_approx | name of purchaser (approximate) |
| military | military career (or rank)? 1=yes |
| noble | holds either a knight or other nobility titles? 1=yes |
| rprice1 | real office prices (in pesos) 1 peso=272 maravedies |
| lrprice1 | log real office prices (in pesos) |
| suitindex | avg agricultural suitability in province (1=max suitability) |
| lz | log avg elevation |
| distlima | avg distance to Lima (based on center of districts in province) |
| mita | province to provice forced labor to mines? 1=yes |
| mine | gold or silver mine in province? 1=yes |
| reparto2 | assigned repartimiento quota (in pesos) in 1754 |
| lreparto2 | log assigned repartimiento quota (in pesos) in 1754 |