Genealogies of Economic Growth in the Spanish Empire: Back to History

Completely overturning this traditional portrait, the authors suggest that during the early modern period Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Latin America indeed took a different path when compared to other European and American countries. However, this divergence was not caused (and therefore cannot be explained) by underdevelopment. Paradoxically, what was common to all former Spanish territories was not “failure” but instead “success.” Local peripheral groups became integrated into (and benefited from) colonial structures, forming larger commercial circuits, purchasing offices and ecclesiastical benefits created or sold by the Monarchy, and participating in wider markets of public debt. Also all these areas shared a relative resilience to the economic downturn, which characterized other Mediterranean countries during the same period. Rather than decaying, Spanish controlled territories blossomed or, so was at least, the situation in the seventeenth century.