Book "Colombia Manual Comercial e Industrial"
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The book Colombia Manual Comercial e Industrial (Colombian Business and Industrial Handbook), published in 2012, can be downloaded from Banco de la República’s Repository and the Virtual Library.
Interested in exploring trade possibilities with Colombia, the Department of Commerce sends Mr. P. L. Bell to study the situation of agriculture, industry, mining, and commerce in Colombia. It seems that he was in the country in 1918 and 1919. The report was published in 1921.
Bell's "handbook" combines economic geography, economic history, and analysis of the sectors and regions with the greatest potential for development in the following years. The surprising thing about the work is its detail, making it very useful for an economic historian. It divides the country into nine economic zones and describes the productive activity in each of them: the size of the livestock herd, products sown and hectares per crop, population, main industries, banks, foreign trade, and most frequent wages for different occupations. A good economic history project would be to use all this data to build national accounts for 1918-1919.
Miguel Urrutia Montoya
(Foreword)
