DOI: 10.5064/f6np22c9
title: Data for: “Elite preferences, administrative institutions, and educational development during Peru’s aristocratic republic (1895–1919),” in: State and nation making in Latin America and Spain: Republics of the possible

description: &lt;b&gt;This is an Active Citation data project. Active Citation is a precursor approach to&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href="https://qdr.syr.edu/ati"&gt;Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI)&lt;/a&gt;. It has now been converted to the ATI format. The assembled project can be viewed at:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href="https://qdr.syr.edu/atipaper/elite-preferences-administrative-institutions#annotations:group:2Nopp9mx" &gt;https://qdr.syr.edu/atipaper/elite-preferences-administrative-institutions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h3/&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Project Summary&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This project explores local-level variation in Peruvian education over time. Against prominent scholarship that traces the failure of public goods provision to ethnic diversity and social inequality, the author shows that in Peru schooling (which had languished for the first 80 years after independence) developed precisely during the period at which social and economic inequality was growing most sharply. The author shows how that successful development depended on the centralization of education policy, but even more importantly on the purging of local elites from positions in education administration. He then shows that the gains seen in Peruvian public education (roughly during the period between 1900 and 1920 known as the Civilista Era) faltered thereafter, tracing this to a decision made by state leaders to return local administration to elite hands; this decision was driven by the instability brought on by a wave of revolts between 1915 and 1924 in many heavily indigenous regions. The project thus challenges claims that public good provision and state development in Latin America are socio-economically determined, demonstrating that the design of administrative institutions can empower or disempower local elites resistant to educational development, and that national elites were firmly committed to educational development, and to state-building more generally. Peru’s 1902 Censo Escolar plays several parts in the investigation. Using data at the local level on male school enrollment and literacy, the author assesses in statistical terms the state of sub-national variation in education before the Civilista Era (these consist of simple OLS regressions with various independent variables, and several different indicators of educational development as the dependent variable). The author also uses the quality and degree to which of census data is unevenly missing from this register as an indicator of the spatial reach of state authority. Third, the narrative portion of the Censo, which describes the process of its administration, is used to shed light on state capacity. Drawing on government documents from archives in Peru, the author discusses a series of more preliminary investigations of educational quality in the decade before 1902, showing that these prompted concerns about education and a renewed commitment by the central state to ensuring progress on this front. The author draws on these primary sources as well to explore the broader process of state-building, administrative reform, and educational development in Peru.&lt;p/&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Data Abstract&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The primary documents used were collected largely in 2004 during dissertation fieldwork in Lima, where the author spent time in various archives and document collections, and in Harvard’s Widener Library. The main type of primary documents used are government documents from 1876-1930, specifically ministerial annual reports, of which the full set available in all the archives were consulted. Secondary source materials, in the form of books and articles by historians and anthropologists, are also used. Most of these studies focus on particular regions of Peru, and provide useful information about local administration, local state development, and the state of education. Thus the full project has three components: 1. Statistical analysis of data from the 1902 educational census; the author transcribed the data from the original document into a Stata-ready format, and ran analyses to explain subnational variation in educational development. 2. Historical description of the organization of the education bureaucracy and shifts over time; this is based on archival research conducted in Peru, which included an examination of all ministerial annual reports for the period in question as well as a review of other available documents from the ministries of education and interior. 3. Explaining the shifts in bureaucratic organization; this is based largely on secondary source texts; the work of historians and anthropologists.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Logic of Annotation and Activation&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Since most of the primary source citations are to documents for which the author possesses no scanned copies, the activation will rely more heavily on hand-written notes – typically excerpts copied from the original documents – taken while in the Peruvian archives. One central document (the 1902 educational census) was scanned and a PDF of it will be shared.&lt;p/&gt;
description: Standard QDR access will be provided since the primary materials are 100+-year-old government documents and the use of secondary source materials follows fair-use standards.