ABSTRACT
Historians who have turned their attention to economic conditions in late colonial Peru have tended to accept, with varying degrees of emphasis, the opinion of contemporary commentators that the loss of Upper Peru to the new viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776 and the opening of the port of Buenos Aires to direct trade with Spain in 1778 condemned the old viceroyalty to economic decline or, at best, to economic stagnation. Its textile industry, too, declined in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, as cheap, high quality European manufactures, imported through Buenos Aires, made their way into the provinces of Cuzco and Arequipa in exchange for agricultural produce supplied to the mining centers of Upper Peru. The mining industry provided direct employment for perhaps a mere 1 percent of the population of Peru in the late colonial period, counting both workers and owners.
