In this paper we examine a proposal regarding the organization of the system of primary education in Chile submitted by then Deputy Manuel Montt. This project represented a long overdue initiative in support of the diffusion of education in Chile and a radical way of viewing its organization. To the extent that this project included considerations regarding the funding of this system, it also seems relevant to the organization of Chile's fiscal framework. Although Montt's proposal was ultimately discarded, the related discussions represent an interesting setting for fundamental debates regarding the foundation of the fiscal system of 19th century Chile.

This article surveys the situation of the shipping cartels (conferences) which regulated transatlantic migrant transport from the European Continent to the United States. The focus of the article is to identify the internal and external pressures underlying these agreements and the strategies employed to neutralize these pressures. The author reaches the conclusion that a pool agreement was essential for the effectiveness of the Conference, which was both a means of horizontal integration regulating the competition between shipping companies and a means of vertical integration to gain control over the transatlantic migrant agent network selling the ocean passage tickets. The author also correlates the efficiency of the agreements with steerage fares and migration costs.

In this essay I analyze the impact of the many constitutions Colombia drafted during the nineteenth century on its economic development. Some prototypical constitutions are chosen as they became building blocks of the legal structure of the country. I try to show that constitutional and legal instability played a more important role in the lack of development than the Spanish legacy. While commercial, political and religious monopolies were inherited and constituted the ideological base of the conservatives, many of them were dismantled by the liberal reforms. The loss of the political order which the Spanish had maintained for three centuries was followed by the painful search for a new political code, for which the Creole elites were responsible. The excesses of concentration or diffusion of power produced the pendulum movements between centralism and federalism which were essential causes of the political disorder during the nineteenth century, which held back the country's economic performance.

This paper studies the links between the evolution of Spain's balance of payments and Spanish-American economic diplomacy along 1917 and 1918. The development of these relations may be useful to explain a great deal about the downturn in Spanish foreign commerce during the last year of WWI. After their entrance into the conflict, the United States toughened their commercial policies and made the Spaniards work hard to keep both their international trade and the freedom of their merchant marine. Contacts between the two countries dealt also with the repatriation of Spain's foreign debt and the use of its extraordinary profits to make loans to the Allied nations. The negotiations ended up in March and August, 1918 with the signing of two bilateral agreements, whose consequences can be followed using the monthly figures of trade between America and the Iberian Peninsula.

This article documents and interprets the Spanish trade in American cotton which developed between the 1740s and 1790s. Following an analysis of the historiography concerning the trade, it provides data on the quantities imported, the state, ginned or unginned, in which it was imported, its origins in the American empire, the shipping arrangements made for its transport, the charges for its freight and the prices which were paid for it in Spain. It shows the growth of the trade to be related to growing demand for raw cotton during the early stages of Catalan industrialization, the meeting of which was facilitated by the reforms introduced in the Hispanic colonial system.