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Foreign Predominance Among Overseas Traders in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: A Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Carlos Marichal
Carlos Marichal*
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico
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Abstract

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Type
Commentary and Debate
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , 1986 , pp. 145 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. Eugene W. Ridings, “Foreign Predominance among Overseas Traders in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” LARR 20, no. 2 (1985):3–27.

2. The references in the historical and sociological literature to the alliance of native landowners and foreign merchants are legion. One much-cited interpretation of the “alliance” can be found in the classic work by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina (Mexico, 1969), chaps. 2–4. A recent work analyzing the formation of the Latin American nation-states from the perspective of the concept of “oligarchy” is Marcello Carmagnani, La grande illusione delle oligarchic: stato e societá in America Latina, 1850–1930 (Turin, 1981).

3. Two pioneering collective studies that reshaped views on the role of Latin American haciendas and plantations are Haciendas, latifundios y plantaciones en América Latina, edited by Enrique Florescano (Mexico, 1975), and Land and Labor in Latin America: Essays on the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Kenneth Duncan and Ian Rutledge (Cambridge, 1977). The recent studies on Mexican haciendas alone have merited several important review articles, for example: Eric Van Young, “Mexican Rural History since Chevalier: The Historiography of the Colonial Hacienda,” LARR 18, no. 3 (1983):5–61; Freidrich Katz, “Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: Some Trends and Tendencies,” Hispanic American Historical Review (HAHR) 54, no. 1 (1974):l-47. Additional references to henequen plantations in Yucatán can be found in Gilbert Joseph, “From Caste War to Class War: The Historiography of Modern Yucatán (c. 1750–1940),” HAHR 65, no. 1 (1985):111–34. Pioneering work on the transformation of haciendas in the Bajío region and in San Luis Potosí has been done by David Brading in Haciendas and Ranches in the Mexican Bajío: León, 1700–1860 (Cambridge, 1978), and Jan Bazant, Cinco haciendas mexicanas (Mexico City, 1975).

4. The full quotation from Ridings is: “First, the relative absence of native overseas merchants meant that Latin Americans were excluded from a vital step toward all forms of entrepreneurship. They lacked the capital and business experience that could result in the establishment and native control of banks, insurance companies, factories, and other forms of large-scale enterprise” (p. 4).

5. Galmarini provides lists of the shareholders and partners in various of these business ventures that demonstrate the predominance of native merchants. See Hugo Raúl Galmarini, Negocios y política en la época de Rivadavia: Braulio Costa y la burguesía comercial porteña (1820–1830) (Buenos Aires, 1974).

6. Additional information on the activities of the Buenos Aires merchants can be found in two essays by Samuel Amaral, “Comercio y crédito: el Banco de Buenos Aires, 1822–1826,” América (Buenos Aires) 2, no. 4 (Apr. 1977):4–49, and “El empréstito de Londres de 1824,” Desarrollo Económico 23, no. 92 (1984):559–88; see also Sergio Bagú, El plan económico del grupo rivadaviano, 1811–1827 (Rosario, 1966); Armando O. Chiapella, El destino del empréstito Baring (Buenos Aires, 1975); Ernesto Fitte, Historia de un empréstito: la emisión de Buenos Aires de 1824 (Buenos Aires, 1962); and Juan Carlos Vedoya, La verdad sobre el empréstito Baring (Buenos Aires, 1971).

7. Information on the activities of “creole” merchants of Buenos Aires in the leather and jerked beef trade during this period can be found in two works by Andrés Carretero, Los Anchorena: política y negocios en el siglo XIX (Buenos Aires, 1970) and La llegada de Rosas al poder (Buenos Aires, 1971); see also Jonathan Brown, A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776–1860 (Cambridge, 1981), 95, 116–21, 174–84. Most of the exports from Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, and Corrientes were handled by local “native” merchants. The largest exporter in the 1840s and 1850s was José de Urquiza, who owned not only huge ranches but several important commercial firms, shipping concerns, and interests in local banks and insurance firms that he helped establish. See Antonio P. Castro, Nueva historia de Urquiza: industrial, comerciante y ganadero (Buenos Aires, 1942).

8. Hilda Sábato, “Wool Trade and Commercial Networks in Buenos Aires, 1840s to 1880s,” Journal of Latin American Studies 15, pt. 1 (May 1983):49–81.

9. See Octavio Garrigós, El Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, 1874); Nicolás Casarino, El Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1822–1922 (Buenos Aires, 1923); and Horacio Cuccorese, Historia del Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, 1972). For succinct information on the professions of the early presidents and directors of the bank, see León Pomer, La guerra del Paraguay: gran negocio (Buenos Aires, 1968), 286–90. For additional information on the commercial and industrial transactions financed by this bank in the 1850s and 1860s, see José Mariluz Urquijo, “Fomento industrial y crédito bancario en el estado de Buenos Aires,” Trabajos y Comunicaciones 19 (1969):105–44. This journal is published by the Facultad de Humanidades at the Universidad de La Plata.

10. On the early history of the “Ferrocarril Oeste,” see Eduardo Zalduendo, Libras y rieles (Buenos Aires, 1975), 265–79. The annual reports of this firm were usually published in an appendix to the annual publication. See Departamento de Hacienda de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Memoria for 1857–1890.

11. Margarita Urias, Guillermo Beato, Rosa Maria Meyer, Shanti Oyarzabal, María Teresa Huerta, María Dolores Morales, Mario Cerutti, and Roberto Hernández, Formación y desarrollo de la burguesía en México: siglo XIX (Mexico City, 1978).

12. David Walker, “Business as Usual: The Empresa del Tabaco in Mexico, 1837–44,” HAHR 64, no. 4 (1984):705.

13. On Manning Mackintosh, see Barbara Tenenbaum, “Merchants, Money, and Mischief: The British in Mexico, 1821–1862,” The Americas 25, no. 3 (Jan. 1979):317–39. On the Beísteguis, see Rosa Ma. Meyer, “Los Beístegui, especuladores y mineros,” in Urias et al., Formación y desarrollo de la burguesía en México, 131. British historian D. C. M. Platt has frequently criticized the tendency of some historians to overemphasize the importance of foreign merchants in nineteenth-century Latin American economic evolution. For example, see his Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914 (London, 1972), chap. 3, especially p. 39; also his recent article, “Las finanzas británicas en México, 1821–1867,” Historia Mexicana 126 (Oct.-Dec., 1982):226–61.

14. See Mario Cerutti, Burguesía y capitalismo en Monterrey, 1850–1910 (Mexico City, 1983); M. Cerutti, Economía de guerra y poder regional en el siglo XIX, published by the Archivo General del Estado de Nuevo León (Monterrey, 1983); and M. Cerutti, “El préstamo prebancario en el norte oriental de México: la actividad de los grandes comerciantes de Monterrey, 1855–1890,” Banca y poder en la historia de México, 1800–1925, edited by Leonor Ludlow and Carlos Marichal, just published by Editorial Grijalbo (Mexico City, 1986).