Chimneys in the Desert: Industrialization in Argentina During the Export Boom Years, 1870-1930 (Social Science History) - Hardcover

Rocchi, Fernando

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804750122 ISBN 13: 9780804750127

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

This book offers new topics and new perspectives on the economic history of Argentina before the 1930 Depression. It focuses on the evolution of early industrialization in a country primarily associated with cattle-ranching and agriculture, and single-mindedly characterized as a case of a successful export economy. Taking an original approach, the book cross-examines traditional economic issues such as production and finances, and new cultural patterns, such as consumption, the role of women, paternalism, and ideology.

The first years of Argentina’s industrialization, from the 1870s to the 1920s, coincided with a time of great innovation, a brisk turn from tradition, and quick modernization. This book shows that industry not only helped Argentina’s economy along, but spearheaded its modernization. It challenges the long-lasting “canonical version” that industry was a victim of a capital market and a state extremely hostile to manufacturing. Access to financing for industrial endeavors was much easier than previously thought, while the state supported industry through tariffs.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Fernando Rocchi is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina.

Fernando Rocchi is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina.

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This book offers new topics and new perspectives on the economic history of Argentina before the 1930 Depression. It focuses on the evolution of early industrialization in a country primarily associated with cattle-ranching and agriculture, and single-mindedly characterized as a case of a successful export economy. Taking an original approach, the book cross-examines traditional economic issues such as production and finances, and new cultural patterns, such as consumption, the role of women, paternalism, and ideology.
The first years of Argentina’s industrialization, from the 1870s to the 1920s, coincided with a time of great innovation, a brisk turn from tradition, and quick modernization. This book shows that industry not only helped Argentina’s economy along, but spearheaded its modernization. It challenges the long-lasting “canonical version” that industry was a victim of a capital market and a state extremely hostile to manufacturing. Access to financing for industrial endeavors was much easier than previously thought, while the state supported industry through tariffs.

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This book offers new topics and new perspectives on the economic history of Argentina before the 1930 Depression. It focuses on the evolution of early industrialization in a country primarily associated with cattle-ranching and agriculture, and single-mindedly characterized as a case of a successful export economy. Taking an original approach, the book cross-examines traditional economic issues such as production and finances, and new cultural patterns, such as consumption, the role of women, paternalism, and ideology.
The first years of Argentina s industrialization, from the 1870s to the 1920s, coincided with a time of great innovation, a brisk turn from tradition, and quick modernization. This book shows that industry not only helped Argentina s economy along, but spearheaded its modernization. It challenges the long-lasting canonical version that industry was a victim of a capital market and a state extremely hostile to manufacturing. Access to financing for industrial endeavors was much easier than previously thought, while the state supported industry through tariffs.

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CHIMNEYS IN THE DESERT

Industrialization in Argentina During the Export Boom Years, 1870-1930By FERNANDO ROCCHI

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2006 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-5012-7

Contents

List of Figures.........................................................................................................ixList of Tables..........................................................................................................xAcknowledgments.........................................................................................................xiiiAbbreviations...........................................................................................................xviiIntroduction: Industrialization in an Agrarian Economy..................................................................11. The First Factories: The Dawn of Argentine Industry, 1870s-1890s.....................................................162. The Market as an Object of Desire: The Rise of Domestic Industrial Consumption.......................................493. The Victory of Big Business: Industrial Growth in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century.........................864. Only One Argentina: The Creation of a National Market for Manufactured Goods.........................................1255. Tension and Harmony in the Industrial Family: Entrepreneurs and Workers in Argentina's Factories.....................1526. Money and Factories: The Myths and Realities of Industrial Financing.................................................1777. The Empire of Pragmatism: Politics and Industry in the Period 1880 -1930.............................................204A Midway Industrialization: Concluding Remarks..........................................................................237Appendices..............................................................................................................249Notes...................................................................................................................259Bibliography............................................................................................................343Index...................................................................................................................385

Chapter One

The First Factories: The Dawn of Argentine Industry, 1870s-1890s

The First Industrial Setting

By the 1890s, the landscape of Buenos Aires had experienced noticeable transformations, and its skyline had been transformed by the presence of a new type of building: the factory. Adrin Patroni, a labor union activist, wrote a report in 1897 depicting the grimy life of workers in an industry that "without dispute, only twenty years ago ... was unknown in here." As a result, the city of "Buenos Aires has changed its appearance; once, it was only distinguished by the great number of belfries, but very soon, very tall chimneys dominating the landscape could be seen wherever one looked." The newspaper La Nacin, mostly unsympathetic to the bustling industrial activity, had made a similar comment three years before:

Those who used to take a stroll along the outskirts of the capital city must have noticed what we assert; at every corner one meets the erect chimneys of masonry, tall and sharp, culminated in a tuft of smoke, the unequivocal sign of a national industry.

Another publication, also noted for its lack of enthusiasm for manufacturing-The Review of the River Plate, a local magazine for the British community in Buenos Aires-went further in complaining about the inconveniences that the new buildings caused:

The fact of a large extension of manufactured goods in our midst is not to be gainsaid. One has to ascend to some point in the city of Buenos Aires from which he can command an extensive view ... to become convinced of the fact that this has at least begun to be a manufacturing city. The number of new factory chimneys is astonishing, and an unwelcome evidence, if further evidence were desired, is to be found in the extension of the soot plague, especially in the southern districts, and in the center when the south wind blows.

If factories were evident across the landscape, their products were not as obvious in the stores. In the 1890s, many of the items manufactured in Argentine factories copied foreign models and were sold as if they had been made abroad. As the same journal noted,

For the truth of it is that every manufactured article in this city is sold, not for what it is, but for what it imitates; and the art of imitation is carried to a very high pitch of perfection indeed.

As a consequence, domestic goods turned out to be quite invisible to unquestioning eyes.

Industry either existed or did not exist, according to what the observer perceived. This simultaneous visibility and invisibility has led to different conclusions in scholarly research. For social and urban historians, industry was of paramount importance; for all other academics, especially those interested in economics, it was insignificant. This chapter will untangle this confusion by showing that these conflicting conclusions arose from the complexities and paradoxes permeating early Argentine industrialization.

Argentine factories were virtually nonexistent until the 1870s. In 1876, the scientist Ricardo Napp explained the reasons for such an absence: "No industry can prosper in a country with only one inhabitant for each 2 square kilometers, where the labor force is very expensive, and where there is no capital and technological knowledge." Between the year when Napp described the manufacturing prospects of the new nation and 1900-around the time when the first observers mentioned in this chapter spoke-industrial output had grown seven-fold and was especially perceptible in the city of Buenos Aires (see Table 1.1 and Figure 1.1).

The rise of factories in the last quarter of the nineteenth century resulted from a see-saw movement comprising two opposing forces both supportive of industry: depressions and demand growth. The deeper incorporation of Argentina into the world market in the mid-nineteenth century changed the national history. Cycles of world capitalism began to set off booms and depressions in the local economy. Argentina experienced an economic boom from the 1850s to the 1870s thanks to the export of wool. This affluence spurred the arrival of immigrants to a country with a scarce population and where the promotion of European immigration became an obsession. Everybody in power shared the motto created by Juan Bautista Alberdi, the man who wrote the outline of the National Constitution of 1853, in effect until 1949-"Gobernar es poblar" (to govern is to populate). By 1869, according to the data from the first national census, foreigners already composed 11 percent of the population. But the number reached 50 percent in the city of Buenos Aires and 17 percent in the region most benefited by the export growth.

A recession in 1866 that hit the wool international market, however, halted this long-lasting period of prosperity. But this recession was mild compared to the one the country experienced, as did most of the world, in 1873. The tenacity of the 1873 crisis, which lasted until 1877, halted the arrival of foreign capital, drove government incomes downward, and jeopardized the process of state formation. But...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804750122
• ISBN 13: 9780804750127
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland