Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of land concentration prompted by the distribution of disentailed church land during the second half of the 19 th century on the accumulation of human capital in early 20 th century Colombia1. Using existing primary sources on the process of land disentailment and the 1912 National Census at the municipal level, descriptive statistics and econometric evidence show a significant and negative relationship between the amount of disentailed land during the 1870s and literacy and school enrolment rates of males in 1912.