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 Introduction Setting the Stage in the fifty years preceding the First World War,Argentina experienced one of the highest sustained growth rates in the world. Wool for Belgian and French carpet factories, wheat for British flour mills, and beef for British consumers enabled the country’s full integration into the world economy and constituted important foundations for economic expansion. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Argentina had risen from a poor and backward region into one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Between 1869 and 1914 foreign labor and capital poured into the country. Thousands of immigrants arrived and found work as sharecroppers and peones (farmhands ), although a significant number also stayed in urban areas working in construction, transportation, meat-packing plants, and the service sector. Despite attempts by the authorities, most Europeans settled in coastal areas, some of them never leaving Buenos Aires. In 1914 half the city’s population was foreign born. Not only labor but capital came into the country. Between 1880 and 1913 British investment in Argentina increased twenty times. Besides public loans and banking, British capital flowed into transportation, in particular railroads. By 1914 thousands of kilometers of tracks connected the pampas and important cities in the rest of the country with the port of Buenos Aires. In any case, Argentina’s economic miracle created a nation of contrasts. The comparative advantage of the Argentine pampas for the production of  introduction grainsandmeatplacedtheareaattheforefrontofthisdramaticexpansion.But while Buenos Aires and the pampas prospered, many provinces stagnated. During an early-twentieth-century visit, American traveler and self-declared vagabond Harry Franck confessed to have wandered the city’s streets “in a semi-dazed condition” surprised to find in “the Argentine capital to-day the largest Spanish-speaking city on the globe, second only to Paris among the Latin cities of the world, equal to Philadelphia in population, resembling Chicago in extent as well as in situation, rivaling New York in many of its metropolitan features,and outdoing every city of our land in some of its civic improvements.” Franck, however, highlighted the contrasts between the city and the rest of the country that resulted from “the general South American tendency to dress up the capital like an only son and trust that the rest of the country will pass unnoticed, like a flock of poor relatives or servants.”1 However, there were some exceptions. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the provinces of Tucumán and Mendoza emerged as flourishing centers, in the Argentine northwest and the Cuyo region respectively .2 The spread of viticulture gave a significant boost to Mendoza’s economy, while sugar production was at the heart of Tucumán’s prosperity. The main engine behind these provinces’ economic expansion was Argentina ’s domestic market, which experienced an impressive growth during the last decades of the nineteenth century as a result of European immigration.3 Assistance from the national authorities through modern infrastructure, increased credit, and high tariffs provided the fuel for this engine. By 1914 annual wine production was about four million liters and, although Mendoza never lost its preeminent position in Argentina’s wine industry, vines were already being cultivated in three provinces: San Juan and small areas in Catamarca and La Rioja.4 Similarly, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century Tucumán became Argentina’s main sugar producer and remained in that role despite the expansion of the sugar industry to other provinces,such as Jujuy and Salta. In 1914 Tucumán produced 270,000 tons of sugar and sugarcane plantations extended over 91,000 hectares. In the words of Harry Franck, San Miguel de Tucumán had become “a town that lives, breathes, and dreams sugar.” Sixty years before Franck’s visit to their province, few Tucumanos could have imagined that the area was destined to become “the City of Sugar.”5 The province of Tucumán is located in the Argentine northwest, about 1,300 kilometers from the port of Buenos Aires. The smallest province in Map 0.1. Regions and provinces of Argentina  introduction Argentina, its 22,000 square kilometers are crossed by rivers and streams; altitudes range from 30 to 3,000 meters. In the early 1850s Tucumán’s fertile soils produced tobacco, maize, wheat, rice, sugarcane, alfalfa, and oranges. The province’s economic prosperity rested not only on a diversified productive structure but also on an active local market that was complemented by trade with both domestic and foreign markets. Aside...

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