Indigenous Origins of Colonial Institutions

Abstract

Differences in colonial institutions appear to explain divergent patterns of political and economic development across former colonies. However, the origins of colonial institutions are not well understood. This article hypothesizes that variation in colonial labor institutions can be explained by both pre-colonial indigenous governance and the resource promise of colonies. We derive the hypotheses using a game-theoretic framework that emphasizes constraints facing profit-maximizing colonists. We test the hypotheses using an original dataset of natural resources and labor and tribute institutions from the pre-colonial and colonial periods for 455 sub-national territories in the Americas. The data are consistent with the hypotheses. Existing arguments about the national origin of colonists receive mixed support from the data. The article suggests that political and economic development today is a consequence of both natural resources and indigenous institutions, and therefore predates European colonialism.

Does Land Abundance Explain African Institutions?

“…The results here suggest that the institutional upheaval of colonial rule could not sweep away what came before it. Though the global reversal is plainly visible, my results are consistent with other recent findings that the effects of colonial rule were heterogeneous (Banerjee and Iyer, 2005;Olsson, 2009), varied according to local conditions (Arias and Girod, 2011;Bruhn and Gallego, 2012), and that the evidence for an intra-African reversal is weaker than for a global reversal (Hopkins, 2009;Huillery, 2011).…”

Long-term effects of the Inca Road

“…The literature on historical institutions has mainly focused on colonial institutions. This holds true for Africa (see Michalopoulos and Papaioannou, 2013;Englebert, 2000;and Bolt and Bezemer, 2009) and also for Latin America (see Angelesand and Elizaldey, 2017;Arias and Girod, 2011;and Acemoglu et. al.…”

Unveiling the Cosmic Race: Racial Inequalities in Latin America

“…Many Indigenous and Black populations were used for forced labor in head-tax systems as the encomienda, repartimiento, mita, 11 and later in the plantations or mines as slaves (Loveman 2014). Though it is tempting to argue that racial disparities originated solely as a response to the colonial order, some scholars show evidence that labor disparities based on ethnicity and race can be tracked by pre-colonial social hierarchy and the ability of the local elites to coerce local labor (Arias and Dirod 2014).…”