The venal origins of development in Spanish America / Jenny Guardado, Georgetown University.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Guardado, Jenny, Author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in economics, choice, and society.

Cambridge studies in economics, choice, and society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political corruption--Latin America.

Political corruption.

Indigenous peoples--Crimes against--Latin America.

Indigenous peoples.

Spain--Colonies--America--Administration.

Spain.

Spain--Colonies--America--Officials and employees.

Spain--Colonies--America--Economic conditions.

Latin America--Economic conditions.

Latin America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 266 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Summary:

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 18th-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 demonstrates 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.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title page

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

1.1 Office-Selling in Spanish America

1.2 Does Office-Selling Lead to Venality?

1.3 The Consequences of Venality

1.4 Alternative Explanations

1.4.1 Postindependence Divergence?

1.4.2 Factor Endowments, Institutions … and Venality?

1.4.2.1 Subnational Institutions and Development

1.4.3 Connecting the Spanish Colonial Administration and Development

1.5 Roadmap

2 The Eighteenth-Century "Market" of Offices

2.1 Type of Offices for Sale

2.2 How Sales Took Place

2.2.1 Futuras and the Secondary Market of Offices

2.2.2 How Prices Were Set

2.2.3 The End of Sales

2.3 Main Drivers of Demand

2.3.1 Institutional Traits

2.3.2 Profit Opportunities and Prices

2.3.3 Individual Characteristics

3 Why Sell Offices?

3.1 The Case for Office-Selling

3.1.1 Sales to Incentivize Officials

3.1.2 Sales to Enhance Survival

3.1.3 Sales to Displace Social Groups or Actors

3.2 Why Sell? Empirical Evidence

3.2.1 Office-Selling for Wartime Revenue?

3.2.2 Economic Desperation?

3.2.3 Sell Offices to Solve Agency Problems?

3.2.4 Heterogeneity in Types of Positions Sold

3.2.5 Geopolitical Considerations

3.3 Weakening Viceroys &amp

Co-opting Local Elites?

3.3.1 Sales to Empower Local Elites?

3.3.2 Sales to Displace Traditional Recipients of Offices?

3.4 A Revenue-Governance Trade-Off

4 Office-Selling-Turned-Venality

4.1 "Ideal" Officials in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Spanish Empire

4.1.1 Dependence on Royal Favor

4.1.2 "Good" Character

4.1.3 Social Networks

4.1.4 Place of Birth

4.1.5 Unacceptable Behavior

4.2 Can Office-Selling Select "Good" Officials?.

4.2.1 Credit Constraints

4.2.2 Rent Availability

4.2.3 Improved Matching

4.2.4 Beyond Selection: Incentivizing Extraction

4.3 Uncovering Selection in the Data

4.3.1 Type of Purchasers in the Shadow of War

4.3.2 Wars, Province Profitability, and Types of Colonial Officials

4.4 Discussion

5 Captured Administration: Eighteenth-Century Audiencias and Corregidores

5.1 Audiencia Oversight in the Spanish Colonial Administration

5.1.1 Institutional Safeguards in Audiencias

5.2 Oversight and Office-Selling: Empirical Evidence

5.2.1 Geopolitics and Audiencia Quality

5.2.2 Unwilling or Unable to Rein-in Corregidores and Alcaldes?

5.3 Extractive Complementarities: Audiencias, Corregidores, and Alcaldes Mayores

5.3.1 Audiencia of Lima (Peru)

5.3.2 The Lima Faction

5.3.3 Beyond Lima

5.3.3.1 Audiencia of Charcas (Bolivia)

5.3.3.2 Audiencia of Quito (Ecuador)

5.3.3.3 Audiencia of Santiago de Chile

5.4 An Early "American" Government?

6 To Flee or to Fight: Indigenous Responses to Venality

6.1 The "Official View" of Uprisings

6.1.1 Visitadores, Viceroys, and the Church: Uprisings in Official Correspondence

6.2 Eighteenth-Century Uprisings &amp

Office-Selling in Spanish America

6.2.1 Descriptive Patterns

6.2.1.1 Uprisings Across Audiencias

6.2.2 Uprisings in Corregimientos and Alcaldías

6.2.2.1 Price Spreads to Measure Venality

6.2.3 The Intensification of Uprisings Postsales: Mexico, Bolivia, and Peru

6.2.4 Subsistence Crisis, Venality, and Uprisings in Mexico and Bolivia

6.2.5 From Corregidores and Alcaldes to Subdelegados: Uprisings in the Late Colonial Period

6.3 Uprisings in the "Periphery": Guatemala, Quito, and Santa Fe

6.3.1 Guatemala

6.3.2 Quito

6.3.3 Santa Fe (Colombia)

6.4 "Fleeing": An Alternative?

6.5 Fleeing and Fighting.

7 Colonial Venality and Nineteenth-Century State-Building

7.1 The Challenges of Independence

7.1.1 Continuity and Transformation in Local Governance Postindependence

7.1.2 Bridging Colonial and Postindependence States

7.1.2.1 Continuity in Fiscal and Labor Policies

7.1.3 Coerced Labor in Guatemala

7.1.4 Concertaje in Ecuador

7.1.5 Tributo in Bolivia

7.1.6 Continuity and Local Political Representation: The Case of Municipio Incorporation in Peru and Mexico

7.1.6.1 Venality and the Subnational Persistence of Conflict

7.1.7 Mexico: National Conflict Junctures

7.1.8 Peru: Perennial Conflict

7.1.8.1 Ethnic Segregation

7.1.8.2 How Colonial Venality Shaped Postcolonial State-Building

Local Elites

New States, Old Populations

External and Internal Conflict

Economic Geography

8 Conclusion: Corregimientos and Alcaldías in Spanish America Today

8.1 Indigenous Segregation

8.2 Limited Political Representation

8.3 Legacies of Venality and Living Standards Today

8.3.1 Descriptive Patterns

8.4 Colonial Jurisdictions or Other Factors?

8.5 Concluding Thoughts

8.5.1 Common Administrative Roots

8.5.2 The Cost of Venality

8.5.3 Spanish America in Comparative Perspective

Epilogue

Appendices

A.1 Appendix to Chapter 2

A.1.1 Estimating the Effect of War on Type of Officials and Prices

A.2 Appendix to Chapter 3

A.2.1 Exchange Rates

A.3 Appendix to Chapter 4

A.3.1 Estimating the Effect of War Length on Officials' Type

A.4 Appendix to Chapter 5

A.4.1 Estimating the Effect of Audiencia Composition on Lower-Level Prices

A.4.2 Construction of Education (Human Capital) and Collusion (Local Connections) Variables

A.5 Appendix to Chapter 6

A.5.1 Construction of Price Differential or Price Spreads

A.5.2 Uprisings Pre- versus Post-Office-Selling Estimation.

A.5.3 Estimation of Weather Patterns and Uprisings

A.6 Appendix to Chapter 7

A.6.1 Estimation of Municipio Creation and Venality

A.6.2 Estimation of Nineteenth-Century Uprisings and Venality

A.7 Appendix to Chapter 8

A.7.1 Estimation of Geographic Regression Discontinuity Results

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 17 Oct 2025).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-009-63511-5

1-009-63510-7

1-009-63513-1

OCLC:

1535171787