created a web of institutions designed to exploit the
indigenous peoples. The full gamut of encomienda , mita ,
repartimiento , and trajin was designed to force indigenous
people’s living standards down to a subsistence level and
thus extract all income in excess of this for Spaniards. This
was achieved by expropriating their land, forcing them to
work, offering low wages for labor services, imposing high
taxes, and charging high prices for goods that were not
even voluntarily bought. Though these institutions generated
a lot of wealth for the Spanish Crown and made the
conquistadors and their descendants very rich, they also
turned Latin America into the most unequal continent in the
world and sapped much of its economic potential.
… TO J AMESTOWN
As the Spanish began their conquest of the Americas in the
1490s, England was a minor European power recovering
from the devastating effects of a civil war, the Wars of the
Roses. She was in no state to take advantage of the
scramble for loot and gold and the opportunity to exploit the
indigenous peoples of the Americas. Nearly one hundred
years later, in 1588, the lucky rout of the Spanish Armada,
an attempt by King Philip II of Spain to invade England,
sent political shockwaves around Europe. Fortunate though
England’s victory was, it was also a sign of growing English
assertiveness on the seas that would enable them to finally
take part in the quest for colonial empire.
It is thus no coincidence that the English began their
colonization of North America at exactly the same time. But
they were already latecomers. They chose North America
not because it was attractive, but because it was all that
was available. The “desirable” parts of the Americas,
where the indigenous population to exploit was plentiful and
where the gold and silver mines were located, had already
been occupied. The English got the leftovers. When the
eighteenth-century English writer and agriculturalist Arthur
Young discussed where profitable “staple products,” by
which he meant exportable agricultural goods, were
produced, he noted:
It appears upon the whole, that the staple