What are the origins of colonial forced labor? While extensive research investigates the effects of colonial forced labor on contemporary political and economic development, little is known about the origins of colonial forced labor. Based on historical accounts, we offer a simple formal model that emphasizes constraints facing profit-maximizing colonists. The model provides a novel explanation for colonial forced labor by demonstrating that local and foreign forced labor depended on different factors. Colonists used local, indigenous forced labor when they encountered an indigenous political administration that was already coercing labor. However, colonists used foreign forced labor, like African slavery in the Americas, when indigenous labor was not already organized and natural resources were present. Original data from 439 subnational territories covering the Americas support the hypotheses across a variety of model specifications. This study implies that differences in political and economic development today may predate European colonialism.
Indigenous Origins of Colonial Institutions* Available to Purchase
We thank Sondra Appelson, Meagan Barrera, Bradford Crist, Alfonso Echazarra, Richa Goyal, Trevor Kosmo, Amanda Lo, Ben Rosenblum, Karl Schuettler, Virginia Smith, Marie Tranvouez, and Andrew Wojtanik for their research assistance. We are also grateful to Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Ricardo Fagoaga-Hernandez, Rebecca Friedman, Jennifer Gandhi, Avner Greif, Alexander Kuo, David Laitin, Ev Meade, Romans Pancs, Sebastian Saiegh, Luis Fernando Medina, Gabriela Soto-Laveaga, William Sundstrom, Gabriela Torres-Mazuera, Eric Van Young, Leonard Wantchekon, Joel Watson, Meir Walters, Chris Woodruff and Noam Yuchtman for their feedback. We also thank participants at the Social Science and History Workshop at Stanford University and the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies’ Seminar and Writers’ Workshop at UCSD, the APSA and the EHA Meetings in 2010, and the Political Economy Seminar at UC Berkeley. The research also benefited from the financial or institutional support from the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UCSD, the Carlos Ill-Juan March Institute (IC3JM), and Georgetown University.
Arias LM, Girod DM (2014), "Indigenous Origins of Colonial Institutions*". Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Vol. 9 No. 3 pp. 371–406, doi: https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00013135
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