Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
历史的漫长阴影？殖民时期劳动制度对秘鲁经济发展的影响
The long shadow of history? the impact of colonial labor institutions on economic development in Peru
摘要
We examine a canonical case of forced labor: the mita and the encomienda in colonial Peru. The mita was a labor draft designed to provide workers for mines, churches, and public works in colonial Peru and Bolivia. The encomienda granted a select group of Spanish settlers the right to extract labor and tribute from indigenous peoples. We examine the impact of forced labor using a dataset of 500 indigenous settlements scattered across modern-day Peru. We find that forced labor gravely impacted the Peruvian communities subjected to it, but the effects nearly dissipated before the end of the colonial period (1532-1811). We test for a possible “reversal of fortune” in the postcolonial period by looking at an array of variables for the 19th to the 21st centuries (literacy, access to land, road density, and luminosity) and find no significant differences. The results hold when we examine the mita and encomienda separately. The mechanisms that caused its impact to fade were migration, growing outside options for indigenous labor, and opposition from the Crown and new Spanish settlers who lacked access to forced labor.
中文摘要
我们考察了强迫劳动的一个典型案例：秘鲁殖民时期的米塔制与监护征赋制。米塔制是一种旨在为秘鲁和玻利维亚殖民地的矿山、教堂及公共工程提供劳动力的劳役征调制度。监护征赋制则赋予特定西班牙殖民者群体向原住民榨取劳役和贡赋的权利。我们利用涵盖现代秘鲁境内500个原住民定居点的数据集，分析了强迫劳动的影响。研究发现，强迫劳动对遭受其害的秘鲁社群造成了严重冲击，但这种影响在殖民时期（1532-1811年）结束前已近乎消散。通过考察19至21世纪的一系列变量（识字率、土地获取权、道路密度及夜间灯光亮度），我们检验了后殖民时期是否存在可能的“命运逆转”，结果未发现显著差异。当分别考察米塔制和监护征赋制时，结论依然成立。导致其影响消退的机制包括：人口迁移、原住民劳动力外部选择机会的增加，以及西班牙王室与无法获取强迫劳动的新移民殖民者的反对。