Agrarian Puerto Rico

César J. Ayala is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898–1934 (1999) and co-author of Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898 (2007). Laird W. Bergad is a Distinguished Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at Lehman College, City University of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Slavery and the Demographic and Economic History of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1720–1888 (1999) and co-author of Hispanics in the United States: A Demographic, Social, and Economic History 1980–2005 (2010).

• List of figures; List of tables; List of maps; Introduction; 1. The myth of the disappeared legion of proprietors; 2. The coffee economy; 3. The sugar industry; 4. The tobacco industry; 5. Economic transformation and demographic change; 6. Land concentration/fragmentation using land-tax records; 7. Rates of land ownership in rural Puerto Rico; 8. Land tenure patterns using census data; 9. Land use; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

'Ayala and Bergad provide an original reading of twentieth-century Puerto Rican history based on a detailed analysis of extensive local tax and census records to 1940. They show that the US colonial government did not carry out a restructuring of land tenure in favor of US capitalists, which is the traditional argument, but maintained both the pre-conquest landowners and the land and labor system, which existed under Spain. Their reconstruction also provides an excellent social and economic history of the island in this period. This work will have a major impact on interpreting both Puerto Rican history and the evolution of the American empire in the twentieth-century.' Herbert S. Klein, Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University