A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776-1860
1979
First Published
320
Number of Pages
Part of Series
This book surveys Argentina's development from the establishment of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata within the Spanish-American empire to the building of the first railways in the independent nation. Two aspects of Argentina's development receive special attention. First, the author examines the international markets for Argentina's products, taking into account the industrial revolution then under way in Europe and the United States. Second, he discusses the influence of traditional native technology on Argentine production and transport. In addition to describing commercial development at the port of Buenos Aires, the study discusses the expansion of ranching and farming onto the virgin pampas. Although the prosperity of Buenos Aires was not duplicated in the interior provinces, the export trade did permit commercial recovery from depression and civil war throughout Argentina. The author concludes that the conventional dependent or neo-colonial theory of Latin American development does not apply to Argentina's economic expansion. The staple theory of economic growth proves to be more accurate, for the linkages produced by the export trade actually diversified domestic economic activity and broadened entrepreneurial and labour opportunities in Argentina.
Author
Jonathan C. Brown
Author · 4 books
From the University of Texas at Austin Department of History: Jonathan C. Brown has published four single-authored books: A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776-1860 (1979); Oil and Revolution in Mexico (1993), Latin America: A Social History of the Colonial Period (2nd ed., 2005), and A Brief History of Argentina (2nd ed., 2009). Two of these books have been translated and published in Latin America. His first book on Argentina, published by Cambridge University Press, won the Bolton Prize. Brown also edited a collection of essays on workers and populism in Latin America and co-edited books on the Mexican oil industry and on Argentine social history.
