Colombia is a South American country that has been inhabited by indigenous peoples and cultures since at least 12,000 BCE.
Precolonial and colonial history
Indigenous peoples in Colombia predominantly cultivated and managed the Colombian climate and geography to develop planting technique using terraces. The indigenous also cultivated grass to use as roofs for their houses, and fique fiber to sew their clothing and artifacts. They also cultivated local fruits and vegetables like yuca and potato for their diet. The indigenous peoples also were avid hunters and consumed processed local fauna. En Colombia: Historia de los Humedales en Bogota; La Dieta Muisca y los Humedales encolombia.com Accessed 19 September 2007.
Colombia's economy during the colonial era was extractive and exploitative, relying heavily on forced native labor. Domestic industry was constrained during the colonial period because the audiencia was bound to Spain as part of a mercantile system. Under this arrangement, the colony functioned as the source of primary materials and the consumer of manufactured goods, a trade pattern that tended to enrich the metropolitan power at the expense of the colony.Sturges-Vera.
Spanish colonizers in the New World sought quick riches in the form of precious metals and jewels. Consequently, mining for these items became the pillar of the economy for much of the colonial period. The extraction of precious metals—such as gold and copper—in the American colonies formed the basis of the crown's economy.
Spain monopolized trade with the colonies. The crown limited authorization for intercontinental trade to Veracruz (in present-day Mexico), Nombre de Dios (in present-day Panama), and Cartagena de Indias. Direct trade with other colonies was prohibited; as a result, items from one colony had to be sent to Spain for reshipment to another colony. The crown also established the routes of transport and the number of ships allowed to trade in the colonies. Merchants involved in intercontinental trade were peninsular-born Spaniards. Finally, the crown circumscribed the type of merchandise that could be traded. The colony could export to Spain only precious metals, gold in particular, and some agricultural products. In return, Spain exported to the colonies most of the manufactured goods that the colony's elites needed, as well as the commodity of African slaves. Domestic products supplemented these items only to a minor degree. The types of goods traded were constrained by the relatively small size and number of ships, so that only high-value, low volume goods could turn a profit.
Agriculture, which was limited in the 1500s to providing subsistence for colonial settlements and immediate consumption for workers in the mines, became a dynamic enterprise in the 1600s and replaced mining as the core of the Colombian economy by the 1700s. By the end of the 1700s, sugar and tobacco had become important export commodities. The growth in agriculture resulted in part from the increasing exhaustion of mineral and metal resources in the seventeenth century, which caused the crown to reorient its economic policy to stimulate the agricultural sector.
As commercial agriculture became the foundation of the Colombian economy, labor was a key factor. Agricultural enterprises that had access to forced labor of the encomienda, a crown grant of indigenous tribute and labor to particular Spaniards, were initially favored. Ownership of land itself was less important than access to labor. As the crown restricted the encomienda as an institution, private ownership of land with the mobilization of wage labor emerged in the landed estate, or hacienda. These landholdings were distinguishable by the manner in which the landholders obtained labor. Under a typical labor arrangement for an hacienda, indigenous laborers tilled the land a specified number of days per week or per year in exchange for access to small plots of land.
The encomendero, or recipient of the encomienda, extended privileges to de facto control of the land designated in his grant. In effect, the encomendero was a deputy charged by the crown with responsibility for the support of the indigenous people and their moral and religious welfare. Assuming that the land and its inhabitants were entirely at its disposal, the monarchy envisioned the encomiendas as a means of administering humane and constructive policies of the government of Spain and protecting the welfare of the indigenous people. The encomenderos, however, sought to employ the indigenous people for their own purposes and to maintain their land as hereditary property to be held in perpetuity. Most encomenderos were private adventurers rather than agents of the empire. The remoteness of the encomiendas from the center of government made it possible for the encomenderos to do as they pleased.
Under the influence of church figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas, the crown promulgated the New Laws in 1542 for the administration of the Spanish Empire in America. Designed to remove the abuses connected with encomiendas and to improve the general treatment of indigenous people, the laws called for strict enforcement of the existing regulations and freedom for the enslaved indigenous people, who were placed in the category of free subjects of the crown, and provided new regulations promoting the well-being of indigenous people. Encomenderos opposed the royal government's attempts to enforce these regulations. A formula was adopted according to which the laws would be "obeyed but not executed". In addition, the crown eventually granted modifications of the laws at the encomenderos''' request.
The institution of the hacienda with its associated mita (ancient tribute) system of labor began in the late sixteenth century. After 1590 the crown started to grant titles of landownership to colonists who paid the crown for the land and reserved the right to use indigenous labor on their haciendas. Under an agrarian reform in 1592, the crown established resguardos, or reservations, for the indigenous people to provide for their subsistence; the resulting concentration of indigenous people freed up land to be sold to hacendados. The purchase of land as private real estate from the crown led to the development of latifundios.
The new hacendados soon came into conflict with the encomenderos because of the ability of the latter to monopolize indigenous labor. The Spanish authorities instituted the mita to resolve this conflict. After 1595 the crown obliged resguardo indigenous people to contract themselves to neighboring hacendados for a maximum of fifteen days per year. The mitayos (indigenous people contracted to work) also were contracted for labor as miners in Antioquia, as navigational aides on the Río Magdalena, and as industrial workers in a few rare cases. Although the mitayos were considered free because they were paid a nominal salary, the landowners and other employers overworked them to such an extent that many became seriously sick or died.
Because the mitayos could not survive their working conditions, the crown sought an alternate source of cheap labor through the African slave trade. The crown sold licenses to individuals allowing them to import slaves, primarily through the port at Cartagena. Although the crown initially restricted licenses to Spanish merchants, it eventually opened up the slave trade to foreigners as demand outstripped supply. The mining industry was the first to rely on black slaves, who by the seventeenth century had replaced mitayos in the mines. The mining industry continued to depend on slave labor into the eighteenth century. Despite the decline of the mining industry, slavery remained the key form of labor; from the second half of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth century, plantation-style agriculture rose in prominence and raised the demand for slave labor on sugar plantations and ranches. Minor segments of the economy also supported slavery and used slaves as artisans, domestic servants, and navigational aides. By the end of the 1700s, the high price of slaves along with increasing antislavery sentiment in the colony caused many to view the system as anachronistic; nonetheless, it was not abolished until after independence was achieved.
1819–1902 Colombia's contemporary economy, based on coffee and other agricultural exports, did not emerge until after independence in 1819, when local entrepreneurs were free to capitalize on world markets other than Spain.Steiner & Vallejo, p. 144.
Although colonialism fostered minimal domestic economic growth, small entrepreneurial efforts began to take shape, so that by the nineteenth century well-defined economic enterprises existed. The economy at that time was based primarily on mining, agriculture, and cattle raising, with contributions also by local artisans and merchants.
Socioeconomic changes proceeded slowly; the economic system functioned as a loosely related group of regional producers rather than as a national entity. Land and wealth were still the privileges of a minority. Forced labor continued in the mines, and various labor arrangements existed on the haciendas, such as sharecropping and low-wage labor. In each case, those owning the land benefited and those working the land remained impoverished.
In the late nineteenth century, tobacco and coffee export industries developed, greatly enlarging the merchant class and leading to population expansion and the growth of cities. The concentration of economic activity in agriculture and commerce, two sectors that focused on opening channels to world markets, continued slowly but steadily throughout the nineteenth century.
1902–1967
Following the War of the Thousand Days (1899–1902), Colombia experienced a coffee boom that catapulted the country into the modern period, bringing the attendant benefits of transportation, particularly railroads, communications infrastructure, and the first major attempts at manufacturing. The period 1905–15 has been described as the most significant growth phase in Colombian history, characterized by an expansion of exports and government revenues, as well as an overall rise in the GDP. Coffee contributed most to trade, growing from only 8 percent of total exports at the beginning of the 1870s to nearly 75 percent by the mid-1920s. Beyond its direct economic impact, the expansion of coffee production also had a profound social effect. In sharp contrast to mining and to some agricultural products such as bananas, which were grown on large plantations, coffee production in Colombia historically developed on very small plots of land. As a result, it generated an important class of small landowners whose income depended on a major export commodity. Large amounts of foreign capital found their way into both private investment and public works during this period because of the strong performance of coffee and other exports.Steiner & Vallejo, p. 144-45.
The rapid growth and development of the economy in the early twentieth century helped to strengthen the country so it was largely resistant to the Great Depression that began in 1929. Colombia continued to produce raw materials, and, although coffee prices collapsed during the Depression, output continued to expand. Nonetheless, social and economic improvements were uneven.Steiner & Vallejo, p. 145.