Miners, Merchants, and Farmers in Colonial Colombia

The inhabitants of the department of Antioqua in north-central Colombia have played a unique role in that countrys economic history. During the colonial period Antioqueo placer miners supplied a substantial portion of New Granadas gold exports. Their nineteenth-century descendants pioneered investments in lode mining, colonization, international commerce, banking, stock raising, tobacco, and coffee. In the twentieth century, Antioqueos initiated the industrialization of the regional capital, Medelln. Many theories have been set forth to account for the special energy and initiative of Antioqueos. They range from ethnic and psychological interpretations (Antioqueos 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 Antioqueo enterprise. Rather than emphasize the alien or deviant in Antioqueo psychology or culture, Twinam re-creates the regions late colonial economic and social structure and attributes the origins of Antioqueo enterprise to a particular mix of human and natural resources that directed the regions development toward capital accumulation and reinvestment. Although the existing limitations of their colonial environment may have forced Antioqueos along enterprising pathways initially, the continuation of Antioqueo 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.