THE CAMBRIDGE ECONOMIC HISTORY
OF LATIN AMERICA

The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America provides access to the current state of expert knowledge about Latin America’s economic past from the Spanish conquest to the beginning of the twenty-first century. It includes work from diverse perspectives, disciplines, and methodologies from qualitative historical analysis of policies and institutions to cliometrics, the new institutional economics, and environmental sciences. Each chapter provides a comparative analysis of economic trends, sectoral development, or the evolution of the institutional and policy environment.

   Volume Ⅱ treats the “long twentieth century” from the onset of modern economic growth to the present. It analyzes the principal dimensions of Latin America’s first era of sustained economic growth from the last decades of the nineteenth century to 1930. It explores the era of inward-looking development from the 1930s to the collapse of import-substituting industrialization and the return to strategies of globalization in the 1980s. Finally, it looks at the long-term trends in capital flows, agriculture, and the environment.

   Volume Ⅰ treats the colonial and independence eras up to 1850.

Victor Bulmer-Thomas is the Director of Chatham House, the London home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and Professor Emeritus at the University of London. From 1992 to 1998, he was Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies (now the Institute for the Study of the Americas) at London University. He is the author of The Economic History of Latin America since Independence (Second edition, 2003) and editor of Regional Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Political Economy of Open Regionalism (2001).

John H. Coatsworth is Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs in the Department of History at Harvard University. In addition to serving as the Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies since its founding in 1994, he chairs the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies. His recent books include Latin America and the World Economy since 1800, edited with Alan M. Taylor (1998), and Culturas encontradas: Cuba y los Estados Unidos, edited with Rafael Hernández (2001).

Roberto Cortés Conde is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History of Spain. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he has published numerous books and scholarly articles. His most recent books include La economia argentina en el largo plazo (siglos xix y xx) (1997); Transferring Wealth and Power from the Old to the New World: Monetary and Fiscal Institutions in the 17th through the 19th Centuries (2002), edited with Michael D. Bordo; and Historia económica mundial (2003).

THE CAMBRIDGE ECONOMIC HISTORY
OF LATIN AMERICA

VOLUME I

The Colonial Era and the Short Nineteenth Century

VOLUME II

The Long Twentieth Century

THE CAMBRIDGE
ECONOMIC HISTORY
OF LATIN AMERICA

VOLUME II

The Long Twentieth Century

Edited by

VICTOR BULMER-THOMAS
Royal Institute of International Affairs

JOHN H. COATSWORTH
Harvard University

ROBERTO CORTÉS CONDE
Universidad de San Andrés

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
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www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521812900

© Cambridge University Press 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2006

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The Cambridge economic history of Latin America / edited by Victor
Bulmer-Thomas, John H. Coatsworth, Roberto Cortés Conde.
v. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: v. 1. The colonial era and the short nineteenth century –
v. 2. The long twentieth century.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-81289-4 (hardback : v. 1)
ISBN-10: 0-521-81289-5 (hardback : v. 1)
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-81290-0 (hardback : v. 2)
ISBN-10: 0-521-81290-9 (hardback : v. 2)
1. Latin America – Economic conditions. 2. Latin America – Economic policy.
I. Bulmer-Thomas, V. II. Coatsworth, John H., 1940– . IV. Cortés Conde, Roberto.
V. Title: Economic history of Latin America.
HC125.C29    2006
330.98 – dc22    2005015006

ISBN-13 978-0-521-81289-4 (hardback : v. 1)
ISBN-10 0-521-81290-9 (hardback : v. 1)
ISBN-13 978-0-521-81290-0 (hardback : v. 2)
ISBN-10 0-521-81290-9 (hardback : v. 2)
ISBN-13 978-0-521-85716-1 (hardback : set)
ISBN-10 0-521-85716-3 (hardback : set)

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America began with conversations among colleagues, later the editors, but would never have passed from idle chatter to intellectual and material substance without the collaboration of numerous scholars and institutions. The editors wish to thank the distinguished contributors to these two volumes for the chapters they contributed, for traveling great distances to discuss them, and for responding with dispatch and good cheer to requests to review texts, check citations, and correct translations.

   Most of the papers that became chapters in these two volumes were presented in original and then revised form at one or more of three meetings. First draft papers were presented and discussed at the Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in Washington, DC, in September 2001 and at the Institute for Latin American Studies (now the Institute for the Study of the Americas [ISA]) at the University of London, hosted by ISA Director James Dunkerley, in February 2002. Revised papers, and some additional chapter drafts, were discussed at a presidential session of the Congress of the International Economic History Association (IEHA), organized by IEHA president Roberto Cortés Conde, in Buenos Aires in July 2002.

   This project could not have come to fruition as it has without the generous support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The editors wish to thank the Foundation for its support and to acknowledge with special thanks the efforts of David Lorey, whose vision and hard work, in addition to his own distinction as a historian of Mexico, helped to make the Hewlett Foundation’s program on U.S.–Latin American Relations a major contributor in the reconstruction of academic institutions and intellectual networks in the western hemisphere in the past decade. The Hewlett Foundation grant was administered without cost to the project by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, whose assistance is also gratefully acknowledged.

   The editors also wish to thank Frank Smith of Cambridge University Press (CUP) for his encouragement and patience, CUP’s anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions, and Daniel Gutierrez of Harvard University for his hard work and expert editorial assistance.

   While these volumes were still in preparation, the editors learned of the death of Enrique Tandeter from pancreatic cancer on April 24, 2004, at the age of fifty-nine. Enrique died seven months after the death of his wife, historian Dora Schwarzstein, also from cancer and at an even younger age. Enrique was a scholar of exceptional rigor and intelligence, whose research contributed in fundamental ways to our understanding of the social and economic history of the Andes during the colonial era. All who knew Enrique and Dora remember them for their warmth and sophistication, their courage in the face of exile and tragedy, the high standards of integrity and professionalism they set for themselves and their students, and their joy in the achievements of their talented children, Leah and Frederico.