ABSTRACT
In the 1830-90 period export-led growth caused a major restructuring of labour supply in order to create stable workforces. Manufacturing was of marginal importance in this period; urban production continued primarily on an artesanal, small-scale basis. The successful struggle against Spain for independence in the early nineteenth century did little to transform the structure of Peruvian production or its associated labour market patterns. Fragmentation and dispersion have been constant themes in the formation of the Peruvian labour movement. The Peruvian economy had by the 1920s become a classic enclave-based system orientated towards the world market. The economy and the process of proletarianisation remained trapped in the dominant framework of world market integration which had taken on its modern form after 1830. Enganche promoted the development of a rural proletariat on the coast and therefore played an important role in the overall process of proletarianisation.
