Recent Research on the Economic History of latin America

period of critical change. Older established intellectual traditions are slowly giving way to the new. Two decades ago most scholars in the field came from two groups: North Americans trained as historians, interested principally in the role of United States foreign policy and economic penetration in the area; Latin Americans trained in a legal tradition and concerned with a description of institutions and political events, which often only bordered on the kind of economic history even then being written in Europe and the United States. To these two sources of scholarly personnel have been added two others: Latin American economists (tecnicos, as they have come to be called) who have searched their past for causes of current development problems, and North American economic historians seeking to present a more unified, satisfying and quantitative analysis and description of the economic past of the area. These categories are perhaps too tightly drawn; nonetheless, they do help clarify some aspects of recent research in the economic history of Latin America.