Lords of the Land

Sugar, Wine, and Jesuit Estates of Coastal Peru, 1600-1767

By Nicholas P. Cushner

Paperback : 9780873954471, 225 pages, June 1980
Hardcover : 9780873954389, 225 pages, June 1980

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Table of contents

Preface

Introduction

I. The Setting: Physical and Social

 

Desert and Valleys
The Spaniards
Man-Land Relationship
Spanish Acquisition of Land
Indian Population Decline
Social Change

 

II. Land Acquisition

 

Early Postconquest Acquisitions
Jesuit Acquisitions
Sugar Haciendas
Process of Acquisition
Vineyards
Land Values
Censos
Land Patterns and Litigation
Colonial Context of Land Acquisitions

 

III. The Operation of Haciendas

 

Agricultural Systens
Farm Systems
Physical Layout
Cultivation and Processing of Sugar
Vineyards and Winemaking
Livestock
Equipment, Tools, and Sipplies
Farm Enterprises
Management
Farm Structures and Society

 

IV. Labor: Salaried and Slave

 

Mitayos and Yanaconas
Salaried Labor
Labor in Tucuman
Slaves in Tucuman
Slave Labor in Peru
Mortality and Reproduction
Rural Society

 

V. Production and Profit

 

Record Keeping
Investment, Expenses, and Return on Suagr Haciendas
Wine Production and Profit
Distribution and Markets
Agrarian Capitalism

 

VI. Finances: Colleges and Haciendas

 

Early Jesuits and Finance
Financing Colleges and the Seventeenth-Century Crisis
Financial History of San Pablo
Incomes and Expenses of Other Colleges
Financial Recovery

 

VII. The Trade Network

 

Peru and Tucuman
The Yerba Trade
The Livestock Trade
Cordoba and the Colleges
The Business Offices
The Obrajes of Quito
The Jesuits and Colonial Trade
Criticism of the Jesuits

 

VIII. Summary and Conclusion

Essay on Sources

Glossary of Spanish Terms

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Description

Lords of the Land presents the only study in English of the large, landed estates in colonial Peru. It focuses on the function of the estates and their linkages with the rest of Spanish America. Based almost exclusively on documents from archives in Rome, Madrid, and Lima (most hitherto unused), the book guides the reader through the agricultural cycles of Peru's great ecclesiastical estates and explains how they first developed, functioned, and distributed their products. Colonial labor forms, finance, and early trade networks are carefully detailed. Painstakingly researched and gracefully articulated, this book fills a major gap in the economic and agricultural history of colonial Latin America.

Nicholas P. Cushner is an Associate Professor at Empire State College, State University of New York. He received his Ph. D. from University College, University of London. He is the author of Landed Estates in Colonial Philippines (New Haven, 1976). Last year he received the SUNY/ESC Foundation Award for Outstanding Scholarship.