ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the changes that have taken place in the economic and regional structure of Colombia. It analyzes the interrelations between expansion of the microeconomy and the process of (re)centralization at the national level of government institutions and the implications for regional development. In many respects, nineteenth-century Colombia can hardly be described as a single national society. As coffee production and trade and industry developed, new economically powerful groups came to the fore, seeking to improve the conditions of accumulation. As economic and physical integration took place within regions and gradually also between economic centers of the most developed regions, this reduced the effective protection of regional markets. The development of the coffee export complex and the process of early industrialization had significant political implications. The importance of foreign enterprises in the verticalization of the regional economy needs little elaboration, as the topic has been well covered in the literature.
