Carneros y Chuño: Price Levels in Nineteenth-Century Peru
A MONG other dark legacies, nineteenth-century Peru remains an example of statistical "dark ages." The Peruvian state was essentially prestatistical; until recently, it lacked the need and capacity for systematic collection of economic, social, and demographic indicators on so nominally a governed people. The challenge of unearthing and preparing usable data thus falls to modern students of Peru. In the past decade, historians have managed to create from scratch fruitful new estimates of Peruvian foreign trade and export activities like mining. They have revised figures on such elusive quantities as the expansion of the public sector and its internal and external debts. New statistics on demographics, land tenure, business and monetary history, tariffs, labor force, and gross national product have appeared.' Most of these ad-