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The Rise of Capitalism on the Pampas:
The Estancias of Buenos Aires, 1785-1870
National Period
The Rise of Capitalism on the Pampas: The Estancias of Buenos Aires, 1785-1870. By Samuel Amaral. Cambridge Latin American Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Maps. Tables. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xviii, 359 pp. Cloth, $59.95. At the outset of this detailed study of livestock estates, Samuel Amaral proposes to depict how estancias spearheaded Argentina's transition from colonial mercantilism to capitalism. He suggests that after 1810, rural producers bred cattle and raised crops by allocating resources according to market conditions. Amaral posits that producers pursued "freedom rather than privilege" in the process of seeking profits. Yet the influence of mercantilism on rural production appears weak in the late colonial period, as Amaral's first chapter indicates. His analysis of the account books of one colonial cattle-raising enterprise reveals sound entrepreneurial responses to market demand and to profits. On the question of institutional development, Amaral's conclusions are convincing. He devotes an entire chapter to the evolution of the Rural Code of 1871, which codified private property rights on the Pampas. He concludes that the code turned "habits and customs . . . into legislation" (p. 154) rather than establishing new precedents.
Central to the book is the question of how nineteenth-century Argentine estancieros expanded livestock production by 400 percent at a time when cattle prices were declining. As technology changed little in the period, Amaral attributes growth to improvements in management and to the introduction of efficiencies in estate production. He credits profit-seeking landowners with diversifying production into cattle by-products, not just hides, and sheep raising. Yet in concentrating on the livestock estate exclusively, Amaral seems to neglect how the entire economic complex evolved on the Pampas. He does not discuss the meat-salting factories, cattle drivers, carters, and rural shopkeepers who contributed to the efficiencies. They relieved the estanciero of the costs of processing and marketing.
This book will delight the historian who appreciates the collection of rare statistics [End Page 214] from unpublished sources. Amaral has plumbed British, French, Belgian, and United States sources for Argentine trade statistics not collected elsewhere. He has researched among probate records and account books for inventories and the financial structure of the estancia. In all, he provides 65 figures, 54 tables, and 3 statistical appendixes. Even so, Amaral's manipulation of statistics often confounds the reader with paragraph after paragraph of complicated inference. He admits the possible weakness of his own figures by modifying his hypotheses with qualifications such as "maybe," "perhaps," "estimated," and "probable." In a discussion of profit rates in cattle raising, he writes, "These figures were obtained by rearranging data from models, not from actual accounts and inventories" (p. 227).
Finally, Amaral devotes considerable attention to the contentious issue of labor relations on the estancia. He rejects the emphasis on "social relations of production" that Jorge Gelman, Ricardo Salvatore, Carlos Mayo, and this reviewer have given to the subject; he ignores altogether the work of historians of the gaucho like Ricardo RodrÃguez Molas and Richard Slatta. Instead, labor relations are treated as a function of the employer's needs rather than a contested area of negotiation between two parties. Amaral concludes that there was no shortage of workers on the Pampas; in fact, "underemployment" was the general condition. Workers' preferences played no role in the seasonality of work, and peons did not withhold their labor from owners. "Peons themselves could not pick and choose between working or not working," according to the author (p. 42). Thus, Amaral subjects free and slave labor on colonial estancias to a 20-year amortized formula to prove that owners acted rationally in paying 300 pesos to buy a slave rather than 50 pesos to hire a peon yearround.
Despite the book's impressive collection of numbers, the reader looks in vain for a substantive discussion of wages. Amaral includes no entry for "wages...
The Rise of Capitalism on the Pampas: The Estancias of Buenos Aires, 1785-1870 (review)
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