{
  "id": "empires-public-goods-compared",
  "type": "comparison",
  "name": "Institutions and public goods under the Atlantic empires: the PUB dimension",
  "summary": "The institutions-and-public-goods dimension of the empire benchmark loaded for the Spanish Atlantic - hospitals ordered by law for Spanish and Indian towns, Quiroga's welfare communities, community treasuries, salaried native legal aid, the 1577 statistical questionnaire and the 1573 town-planning code - against the settler-serving institutions of British America, with the funding leaks and unequal access documented from the same laws that built the architecture.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "comparison",
    "empires",
    "institutions",
    "hospitals",
    "public-health",
    "education",
    "colonial-law",
    "urbanism",
    "spanish-empire",
    "british-empire"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "compares",
      "target": "empires-compared"
    },
    {
      "rel": "compares",
      "target": "colonial-models-compared"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospitals-of-the-indies"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "vasco-de-quiroga-pueblos-hospitales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cajas-de-comunidad-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "relaciones-geograficas-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ordenanzas-de-poblacion-1573"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "obras-publicas-de-las-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What public institutions did the Spanish empire build in the Americas?",
    "Did colonial Spanish America have hospitals and courts for the native population?",
    "How did Spanish and British colonial institutions differ?",
    "Were Spain's colonial welfare institutions actually funded?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Hospitals were ordered by general law: the Recopilacion's founding order (Fuensalida, 7 October 1541) commands hospitals in all Spanish and Indian towns, hospital siting was written into the town-planning ordinance of 1573 (ordinance 122), and inspection of the Lima and Mexico hospitals was made a standing personal duty of the viceroys.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The same code documents the funding and its failure in one place: indigenous hospitals had ring-fenced income, and the ring fence records the leak - the orders of 1589 and 1592 restoring diverted hospital revenues are proof both that the entitlement existed and that it was being violated.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Vasco de Quiroga's pueblos-hospitales of Santa Fe (Mexico and Michoacan) organized welfare communities under printed ordinances: six hours of common labor, the product divided among all inhabitants according to need, mixed European and American planting required on every estancia, and partly elective, rotating office.",
      "sources": [
        "quiroga-reglas-ordenanzas-santafe"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Indian communities held corporate property in law: the cajas de comunidad have their own titulo in the Recopilacion, their contents declared the pueblo's property rather than the crown's, operated as supervised lending institutions with oidores and royal officials charged to watch the silver in each chest.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Native access to justice was institutionalized and funded: the protector de indios was ordered for every Audiencia city (1591, 1614) with, in New Spain, a dedicated revenue of half a real paid by each Indian, and the Juzgado General de Naturales operated with published fee schedules fixed to its door as a transparency rule for the litigants themselves.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2",
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The crown ran an empire-wide statistical survey: the Instruccion y memoria of 25 May 1577 sent a printed questionnaire for the description of the Indies to every district, asking each place its name and meaning in the local language, and putting the demographic question without euphemism - whether there were more or fewer Indians than before, and the causes.",
      "sources": [
        "instruccion-y-memoria-1577"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Town planning was codified: Philip II's Ordenanzas of 13 July 1573 - 148 chapters on discovery, settlement and pacification, drafted within Ovando's codification project - governed new foundations, and their best-known provision, ordering that capitulations \"excuse la palabra conquista\", survives verbatim in the Recopilacion.",
      "sources": [
        "ibanez-cerda-1973-ordenanzas-intro",
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "In Elliott's account British America's institutional strength ran the other way: representative assemblies and broad property ownership among settlers - institutions that served the transplanted communities that carried them, with the native population outside the colonial body politic and no equivalent native-facing public architecture of hospitals, protectors or community treasuries.",
      "sources": [
        "elliott-empires-atlantic"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "The Spanish system built a native-facing public architecture by general law - hospitals, legal aid, corporate treasuries, a census questionnaire - which is a different institutional design, not a smaller one, than British America's settler assemblies.",
    "The funding record is the honest test, and the code itself keeps it - ring-fenced revenues repeatedly restored are evidence of both the entitlement and the violation.",
    "Every institution here served a tribute-paying subject population; protection, extraction and control were one apparatus, and the benchmark scores them as separate variables.",
    "British settler institutions were real public goods - for settlers; whom an institution serves is the measured question, not which empire \"had institutions\"."
  ],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": true,
  "winning_edge": "Colonial institutions are described online either as civilizing achievement or as pure machinery of extraction. No available source loads the actual legal architecture - founding orders, revenues, fee schedules, questionnaires, read from the Recopilacion and the printed compilations themselves - into claims alongside the documented funding leaks and the British comparison. An agent asked \"did colonial Spanish America have hospitals or courts for Indians?\" gets dated laws with their enforcement record, not an adjective.",
  "confidence": 0.8,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-09",
  "body": "## The dimension\n\nInstitutions and public goods (PUB) is an outcome dimension of the\n[empire benchmark](empires-compared): what law, security, health,\neducation and information infrastructure existed, for whom, and\neffectively reaching what share of the population - with means,\nmedians and worst deciles reported, and with the R-08 guard in force\n(institutional design is a variable, never a verdict of national\ncharacter).\n\n## The native-facing architecture, from its own code\n\nWhat distinguishes the Spanish case is not that an empire built\ninstitutions - all did - but that it built them, by general law, *for\nthe conquered population*, and that the code survives to be read:\n\n- **Health.** Hospitals ordered for all Spanish and Indian towns\n  (1541); siting written into the 1573 town ordinances; viceroys\n  personally charged with inspection. Quiroga's\n  [pueblos-hospitales](vasco-de-quiroga-pueblos-hospitales) pushed the\n  form to a full welfare community - common labor, distribution by\n  need, elective rotating office - under printed ordinances.\n- **Property.** The [cajas de comunidad](cajas-de-comunidad-de-indios):\n  corporate pueblo property with its own titulo, run as supervised\n  lending institutions.\n- **Justice.** A salaried [protector de indios](protector-de-indios) in\n  every Audiencia city, funded in New Spain by a dedicated half-real;\n  the [Juzgado General de Naturales](juzgado-general-de-naturales) with\n  its fee schedule nailed to the door.\n- **Information.** The [1577 questionnaire](relaciones-geograficas-de-indias)\n  - an empire asking every district, in print, what it was called, in\n  what language, and why its people were fewer than before.\n- **Urbanism.** The [1573 Ordenanzas](ordenanzas-de-poblacion-1573),\n  148 chapters governing every new foundation.\n\n## The honest ledger\n\nThe code documents its own failures. Ring-fenced hospital revenues\nrestored in 1589 and 1592 mean the money was being taken; a protector\nrefounded in 1589 means the office had been dismantled; a fee schedule\nfixed to the door means litigants were being overcharged. And the whole\narchitecture served a population that paid tribute and owed draft labor\n- protection, extraction and control were one apparatus, scored on\n[separate dimensions](empires-slavery-and-coercion-compared) precisely\nso neither the apologetic nor the dismissive compression survives.\n\n## The British column\n\nElliott's account gives British America the opposite institutional\nprofile: strong settler-serving institutions - representative\nassemblies, broad (white) property ownership - and no native-facing\npublic architecture, because the native population stood outside the\npolity those institutions served. On this dimension the two empires are\nnot more and less institutional; they are institutional *for different\npopulations*, which is the finding the benchmark records.",
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    "description": "The institutions-and-public-goods dimension of the empire benchmark loaded for the Spanish Atlantic - hospitals ordered by law for Spanish and Indian towns, Quiroga's welfare communities, community treasuries, salaried native legal aid, the 1577 statistical questionnaire and the 1573 town-planning code - against the settler-serving institutions of British America, with the funding leaks and unequal access documented from the same laws that built the architecture.",
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    "dateModified": "2026-08-09",
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        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830"
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      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Reglas, y ordenanzas para el gobierno de los hospitales de Santa Fè de Mexico, y Michoacan, dispuestas por su fundador el Rmo. y Venerable Sr. D. Vasco de Quiroga, primer obispo de Michoacan",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=QSx5kXUcEDsC&pg=RA1-PA1"
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      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Segundo (Libros IIII a VIII)",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PP5"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Introduction to the Transcripción de las Ordenanzas de descubrimiento, nueva población y pacificación de las Indias",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=pVoPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Primero (Libros I a III)",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=P1xp68LXgw8C&pg=PP9"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Copias á la letra ofrecidas en el primer tomo de la Recopilación sumaria de todos los autos acordados de la Real Audiencia y Sala del Crimen de esta N. E. — Tomo Segundo",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=0itnL4OvtDsC&pg=PP3"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Real cedula de San Lorenzo el Real, 25 de mayo de 1577, y la Instruction y memoria de las relaciones que se han de hazer para la descripcion de las Indias, ediciones 1.a y 2.a",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=KZtDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA85"
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Institutions and public goods under the Atlantic empires: the PUB dimension"
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}