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Recent Trends in Quantitative History: Colonial Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

John J. TePaske
John J. TePaske*
Affiliation:
Duke University
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In 1968, in an article prepared for the American Historical Association Ad Hoc Committee on Quantitative Data (but not published until 1972), I discussed materials, opportunities, problems, and priorities for quantitative research in Latin American colonial history. Specifically, that article included a discussion of the evolution of quantitative studies on colonial Hispanic America, a description of the data available, possible topics for research, opinions on the future of quantification in the field, and an extensive bibliography. The present article is intended to complement that earlier piece—to discuss new factors giving impetus to quantitative history, to list some of the major contributions since 1968 in Latin American colonial history, to revise some old views, and to offer some new suggestions.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 1975 , pp. 51 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

This article is a greatly revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association at San Francisco in December 1973. I am indebted to the panelists at that session for suggestions and criticism: Bradley Benedict, Charles Berry, Paul E. Hoffman, and James Wilkie. I also wish to thank Ellen Lennox and Heath Tuttle of the Duke University Computer Center for their advice and counsel.

References

Notes

1. “Quantification in Latin American Colonial History,” in Val R. Lorwin and Jacob Price, eds., The Dimensions of the Past: Materials, Problems, and Opportunities for Quantitative Work in History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 431-501.

2. William O. Aydelotte, Quantification in History (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley Pub., 1971); Robert S. Byars and Joseph L. Love, eds., Quantitative Social Science Research on Latin America (Urbana, Ill. : University of Illinois Press, 1973); William I. Davisson, Information Processing: Applications in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970); Charles M. Dollar and Richard J. Jensen, Historian's Guide to Statistics: Quantitative Analysis and Historical Research (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971); Roderick Floud, An Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Historians (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973); and Edward Shorter, The Historian and the Computer: A Practical Guide (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971). bee also Samuel P. Hays, “Historical Social Research: Concept, Method and Technique,” Journal of Inter-Disciplinary History, 4: 475-82 (Winter 1974), a review of the books listed above. The Shorter work is the best introduction for the novice. Floud and Dollar and Jensen offer more detailed explanations of methodology and analysis.

3. William O. Aydelotte, Allan G. Bogue, and Robert W. Fogel, eds., The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972).

4. See particularly, D.K. Rowney and J. Q. Graham, eds., Quantitative History: Selected Readings in the Quantitative Analysis of Historical Data (Homewood, Ill. : The Dorsey Press, 1969), and Robert P. Siwerenga, ed., Quantification in American History: Theory and Research (New York: Atheneum, 1970).

5. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).

6. Quoted from William H. McNeill, “History with a French Accent,” Journal of Modern History, 44: 447 (December 1972). This is the issue devoted to Braudel's work.

7. Jaime Vicens Vives, Approaches to the History of Spain, trans. and edited by Joan Connelly Ullman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947), p. xix.

8. Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974).

9. See Time (17 June 1974), p. 98; and C. Vann Woodward, “The Jolly Institution,” The New York Review of Books, 21: 6 (2 May 1974).

10. Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650 (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1974).

11. Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971 and 1974).

12. William B. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1972).

13. Peter Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1545-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

14. Ward Barrett, The Sugar Hacienda of the Marqueses del Valle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970).

15. Herbert Klein, “Structure and Profitability of Royal Finance in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1790,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 53: 440-69 (August 1973).

16. Brian R. Hamnett, “The Appropriation of Mexican Church Wealth by the Spanish Bourbon Government—‘The Consolidación de Vales Reales, 1805-1809,‘ ”Journal of Latin American Studies, 1:85-113 (1969); Asunción Lavrin, “The Execution of the Law of Consolidación in New Spain: Economic Aims and Results,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 53: 27-49 (February 1973).

17. Paul E. Hoffman, “A Study of Florida Defense Costs, 1565-1585: A Quantification of Florida History,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 51: 401-22 (April 1973).

18. H. Bradley Benedict, “El saqueo de las misiones de Chihuahua, 1767-1777,” Historia Mexicana, 12: 24-33 (July-September 1972).

19. David Brading and Harry E. Cross, “Colonial Silver Mining: Mexico and Peru,”Hispanic American Historical Review, 52: 545-79 (November 1972).

20. Susan A. Soeiro, “The Social and Economic Role of the Convent: Women and Nuns in Colonial Bahia, 1677-1800,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 54: 209-32 (May 1974).

21. See particularly, David A. Brading, “Los españoles en México hacia 1792”; Elsa Malvido, “Factores de desploblación y de reposición de la población de Cholula (1641-1810); and Günter Vollmer, ”La evolución cuantitativa de la población indígena en la región de Puebla (1570-1810), Historia Mexicana, 23:126-44, 52-110, 43-51 (July-September 1973).

22. James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1972).

23. Stuart Schwartz, “Magistracy and Society in Colonial Brazil,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 50: 715-30 (November 1970).

24. David A. Brading, “Government and Elite in Late Colonial Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 53: 389-414 (August 1973).

25. Stephanie Blank, “Patrons, Clients, and Kin in Seventeenth-Century Caracas: A Methodological Essay in Colonial Spanish American Social History,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 54: 260-83 (May 1974).

26. M. A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler, “Creole Appointments and the Sale of Audiencia Positions in the Spanish Empire under the Early Bourbons, 1701-1750,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 4:187-206 (1972).

27. Magnus Mörner, La evolución de la hacienda y del colonato en el Cuzco desde el siglo xvii; Observaciones preliminares en torno a un proyecto de investigación,“ (Stockholm, 1971).

28. See Peter H. Smith, “Quantification and Latin American History,” Historical Methods Newsletter, 6: 53-62 (March 1973), and William P. McGreevey, “Recent Materials and Opportunites for Quantitative Research in Latin American History: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” LARR, 9: 2: 73-82 (Summer 1974).

29. McGreevey, “Recent Materials …,” p. 80.

30. Enrique Florescano and Isabel Gil, eds., Descripciones económicas generales de Nueva España, 1784-1817 (México, D. F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1973).

31. See Bakewell, Zacatecas and Taylor, Landlord and Peasant; and Jacques Barbier, “Elites and Cadres in Bourbon Chile,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 52: 416-35 (August 1972); David A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); and Brian Hamnett, Politics and Trade in Southern Mexico, 1750-1821 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

32. Richard Sinkin, “The Mexican Constitutional Congress, 1856-1857: A Statistical Analysis,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 53:1-26 (February 1973).

33. Peter H. Smith, “The Social Base of Peronism,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 52: 55-73 (February 1972).