The final chapter sets the preceding papers in the wider context of the general social and economic history of Latin America in the independence period, and in this way it provides a useful framework within which to place each of the individual essays. After a consideration of some of the theoretical problems underpinning any definition of the peasantry, Magnus Mörner poses some major questions concerning the nature of Latin American economic development and the attempts at diversification in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. His analysis of the differing characteristics of each of the major crops or crop/livestock combinations considered in this volume highlights some of the general theoretical issues raised in the Introduction. He stresses, for example, how the ecological and demographic variables associated with coffee production have allowed the development of a great variety of forms of social and economic organization and modes of production. This contrasts markedly with the case of sugar cultivation, where the technological imperative has been so much more compelling, and where a more uniform system of production and labour relations has been evolved. Clearly ecology and demography are two major explanatory variables to be considered in any analysis of the process of agrarian change. Their importance is emphasized in the final part of the discussion, on the evolution of the traditional hacienda, when Mörner considers the nature of the relations between ‘landlords’ and the internal and external peasantry.