Miners, Merchants, and Farmers in Colonial Colombia (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780292735613)

The inhabitants of the department of Antioqu僘 in north-central Colombia have played a unique role in that country's economic history. During the colonial period Antioque placer miners supplied a substantial portion of New Granada's gold exports. Their nineteenth-century descendants pioneered investments in lode mining, colonization, international commerce, banking, stock raising, tobacco, and coffee. In the twentieth century, Antioques initiated the industrialization of the regional capital, Medell匤.

Many theories have been set forth to account for the special energy and initiative of Antioques. They range from ethnic and psychological interpretations (Antioques are descended from Jews or Basques; they are driven to succeed because of status deprivation) to historical explanations that emphasize their geographic isolation, mining heritage, or the coffee-export economy. In Miners, Merchants, and Farmers in Colonial Colombia, Ann Twinam critiques these theories and sets forth her own revisionist interpretation of Antioque enterprise. Rather than emphasize the alien or deviant in Antioque psychology or culture, Twinam re-creates the region's late colonial economic and social structure and attributes the origins of Antioque enterprise to a particular mix of human and natural resources that directed the region's development toward capital accumulation and reinvestment.

Although the existing limitations of their colonial environment may have forced Antioques along enterprising pathways initially, the continuation of Antioque investments to the present day suggests that their adaptation to a specific economic reality became a way of life transcending the historical conditions that created it.