The Many Meanings of Poverty: Colonialism, Social Compacts, and Assistance in Eighteenth-Century Ecuador (review)
Cynthia Milton examines the nuances of poverty in colonial Ecuador. She skillfully analyzes what it meant to be poor in a society where the term was applied to many people of apparently different economic circumstances. Building on the work of scholars such as Silvia Arrom, who has studied similar issues in Mexico, Milton also discusses how attitudes towards the poor changed in the eighteenth century after the Bourbons replaced the Habsburg dynasty.