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Wen 丨Sun Hu's study
Editor丨Sun Hu's study
1. From independence to reunification
Due to the long period of plunder by the Spanish colonizers, the reconstruction of the country was difficult.
After independence, Argentina's first task was to consolidate its political power and escort social and economic development.
In May 1810, under the influence of the French Revolution, 250 insurgents gathered in the municipal council of Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of La Plata, to depose the governor appointed by the Spanish colonists and submit to the parliament their opinions and lists of people who organized the local government.
The first committee, nominally comprising the provisional governments of present-day Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia La Plata, was formed.
Argentina freed itself from Spanish colonial rule and achieved political independence. However, the end of colonial rule did not mean the beginning of peace and construction.
After 1811, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, which had been de facto states in the War of Independence, broke away from the provisional government of La Plata, thus forming the national territory of what is now Argentina.
In 1816, the Argentine parties held a congress in Turkmenistan and proclaimed the establishment of the "United Province of La Plata", truly achieving de jure independence.
In 1826, the United Province of La Plata was reorganized into the "Federal Republic of Argentina" in accordance with the Constitution of 1819, and Bernardino Rivadavia was elected the first president.
The establishment of the Federal Republic was only the product of a temporary compromise of local interests and did not fundamentally change the rivalries and conflicts between the provinces of the country.
The 14 major cities were separated, resulting in the country's unity remaining only formal, and the political situation remained unstable.
In order to compete for the supremacy of the country, various forces have converged into two factions, one is the central unification faction representing the interest groups in the province of Buenos Aires, and the other is the federal faction representing the interests of the inland provinces.
The centralist unification faction in the province of Buenos Aires controls the port of Buenos Aires, which determines foreign export trade, but lacks enough goods for export.
They advocated the centralization of power, demanded that the power to appoint governors of various provinces be transferred to the central government, that the national government should exercise unified management, and that free trade be implemented in the economic field and that trade barriers between domestic provinces be broken.
The centralist Unionists sought to control the resources of the interior provinces under the central government and become the periphery of the sustainable development of Buenos Aires Province.
The Federalists, on the other hand, wanted to weaken the power of the central government, achieve broad autonomy for the provinces, and implement high tariffs in foreign trade to protect the province's export economy, gaining the same rights as the province of Buenos Aires.
The two factions fought and alternated power until the end of the 19th century, leading to a long period of political chaos in Argentina.
From 1829 to 1832, Juan Manuel de Rosas, supported by the Federalists, occupied Buenos Aires and became governor of the province of Buenos Aires.
In 1835, he became governor again, forced parliament to grant him "unlimited powers", established an autocratic rule, and seized Argentine diplomatic powers, becoming the first Caudillo ruler in South America.
During Rosas's reign, he supported the landlord class in massively plundering land, restoring church privileges, and sending police to manage education, causing suffering to the people.
He used terror to suppress the Central Unionists and his political opponents, killing a large number of political opponents.
In order to control foreign trade exports, he banned mainland businessmen from trading directly with foreign businessmen.
Frequently launched foreign wars, sent troops to invade Uruguay in 1839, participated in the siege of Montevideo in 1843~1851, attacked Bolivia, interfered in Uruguay's internal affairs, and refused to recognize the independence of Uruguay and Paraguay.
Rosas's dictatorship caused discontent among all strata of the country.
In 1852, the Rosas regime was overthrown by the Federalist Urquisa.
In 1854, Urquisa moved the capital from Buenos Aires to Paraná.
The conflict between the Federalists and the Central Unionists was intensified, and the two sides imposed economic sanctions on each other through trade blockades or heavy taxes, and armed conflicts broke out.
Finally, in the Battle of Paon, the centralist unionists in the province of Buenos Aires won.
In 1862, the centralist unionists moved the capital back to Buenos Aires. At this point, Argentina was officially named the "Argentine Republic".
Since then, successive presidents have taken various measures to ease the contradictions in the provinces of the country.
Between 1868 and 1874, President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who called himself "a provincial, a Buenos Aires of the provinces", adopted a "neutral position".
On the one hand, it advocates a centralized political system, and on the other hand, it declares respect for the autonomy of the provinces.
Sarmiento sought to work with large landowners and livestock owners and chaebols from business and finance to form alliances with dissidents in the city of Buenos Aires and other provincial groups to form the "National Autonomous Party" to form conservatives.
The struggle between the two factions gradually eased, the differences of interests gradually narrowed, the chaotic situation of local power conflicts in Argentina was brought under control, and the trend of unified nation-states gradually strengthened.
In 1892, Luis Saenz Peña, a conservative supporter, was elected president, and until 1916, the Argentine regime was largely in the hands of conservatives representing the interests of two thousand families in Argentina.
Argentina has entered a new period of stable development.
Second, the state of economic development
After Argentina's independence, the economy was still influenced by the colonial economic system.
The large-scale property system has been the main form of land occupation in Latin America since the colonial period, characterized by large landowners owning large amounts of land.
In the 16th century, Spanish colonists established a feudal land system in Argentina - the "entrusted guardianship system".
In 1720, the abolition of the trusteeship system in Latin American colonies was announced, and local colonists gradually turned their fiefdoms into hereditary property, on the basis of which a new system of large estates began to form in Latin America, that is, the large estate system and plantation system.
Each estate was ruled by a family, mostly descendants of Spanish nobles and officials, and was economically self-sufficient and closed.
The land area of large estates is usually more than 1,000 hectares, and some reach hundreds of thousands of hectares.
Typical large estates are generally divided into farmland, pastures, forests and other areas, and the grain, cotton, meat, wood, bricks, lime, salt, etc. required by the estate are produced by themselves, while many estates also provide a certain amount of grain and other agricultural and sideline products for nearby mining areas or towns.
The estates housed houses, peasant villages, shops, churches, post offices, academies and hospitals, thus forming an independent political, economic and religious complex that served as the basis for Argentina's long-standing internal discord in the political economy.
At the beginning of the 19th century, after Argentina's independence, the large landowners who had taken power were more free to plunder the land of Indian villages;
A large number of generals and new bureaucrats who emerged during the War of Independence were rewarded with large tracts of land, adding a new group of landowners to the old native-born white landowners.
After Rosas, who represented the interests of the livestock owners, came to power, he resorted to such means as plundering the land of the Indians, auctioning off the state-owned land that had been implemented under the "long-term lease system", and confiscating the property of political enemies, so that a large area of land fell into the hands of large livestock owners and large manor owners at low prices or even free of charge, satisfying their thirst for land.
In 1830, 8.6 million hectares were still in the hands of 539 manor owners, and by 1840 it had been concentrated in 293, of which 160 livestock owners occupied 5.4 million hectares.
The independence of the state has not changed the system of ownership of large real estate in rural areas, but on the contrary, the system of large real estate has achieved new development.
The long-term existence of the feudal large-scale property system has prevented Argentina from forming a unified national market, and has generally formed three relatively independent economic zones - the northwest-central market of Peru relying on the Potosí silver mine as the main market, the western region with the Chilean market and the coastal area along the river centered on Buenos Aires.
The Buenos Aires region, located in eastern Argentina, is the most economically backward.
At the beginning of the 17th century, with the development of the Potosí silver mines in Upper Peru, a large number of people lived in the mining area, which led to a great increase in local demand for daily necessities and production tools, and the development of animal husbandry and handicrafts, making the northern region the most economically prosperous region in Argentina.
Another example is that the province of Tucumán sold the cotton and wool textiles produced in Potosi for silver, exchanged for European smuggled industrial products in Buenos Aires, and resold them to the mainland, becoming indispensable daily necessities for local residents.
Due to the depletion of mining resources and the depressed trade in the mining areas, trade in the inland provinces gradually shifted to the Buenos Aires area.
Buenos Aires, which is dominated by foreign trade, prospered along the river, and a unified domestic market began to take shape.
The weakening of the inland economy has forced Argentina to adjust its economic outlet and market direction, from focusing on trade between Latin American countries to focusing on international trade with Western European countries, and animal husbandry has become the focus of economic development.
During the colonial period, Argentina already had trade with the international market.
However, Spain forbade trade between colonies and practiced a policy of monopoly on trade.
By the 18th century, the capitalist economies of Britain, France, the Netherlands and other countries had developed, and in order to break the Spanish monopoly on trade in the La Plata region, the smuggling trade began.
To this end, a new triangular trade triangle between Europe and Brazil and Argentina was formed, and Argentina joined the Atlantic Economic Circle earlier.
Britain and other countries smuggled and trafficked European industrial products in exchange for cowhide for the European market, opening the so-called "cowhide civilization" period in Argentina's history.
The Pampas prairie region is a natural pasture, and the production of bison, skins and cured beef has become the main source of economic resources for the region.
The owners of large estates in the Pampas began to domesticate wild cattle in the 20s of the 18th century, and animal husbandry switched from primitive hunting to captivity.
At the same time, the silver mines of Potosí on the Pacific coast began to weaken, and after independence, Bolivia banned the export of silver from Buenos Aires, and the main economic exchanges in the northwest were broken, and economic activities with the interior were almost interrupted.
This led directly to the decline of the northern Argentine economy, and the economic center shifted from the northwest to the Pampas, where livestock and animal processing industries were developed.
After the mid-18th century, the trade interest of Britain, France and other countries in Argentina gradually shifted to commerce and agriculture.
Spurred on by the smuggling trade, large estate owners began to cultivate indigo, cotton and other agricultural cash crops.
The increased demand for meat in the world market has given Argentina the opportunity to develop its cured meat industry.
The slave-producing cotton plantation economy of the southern United States and the development of sugar cane and coffee plantations in the West Indies and Brazil led to a surge in demand for hard-cured meat, which provided a market for the cured meat industry in Argentina and promoted its development.
In the 80s of the 18th century, large curing plants appeared in Argentina, and the main goods traded with foreign countries were changed from cowhides to cured meat.
The economy of the Atlantic coast began to develop, and the demand of the international market drove the development of the national economy of Argentina.
The demand for food and industrial raw materials in European countries after the Industrial Revolution has surged, and it is urgent to expand the sales market of their industrial products.
Argentina, which is sparsely populated, fertile and economically backward, has become the preferred target for economic penetration in European countries, and the Pampas prairie, with its fertile land and natural pastures, has been further developed and utilized.
In the 50s of the 19th century, Argentina began to adopt fence grazing, introduced European excellent livestock breeds, and increased the amount of livestock raised and slaughtered.
In the 80s of the 19th century, the invention of refrigeration technology solved the problem of storage and antiseptic of meat, so that the long-distance transportation of meat became a reality.
Argentina is increasingly linked to world markets, and the direction of the country's economy is increasingly shaped by export trade.
In the 19th century, the demand for wool in the world market increased, and the sheep industry showed great development.
During this period, Argentina also exported indigo and cotton to Britain, importing essential goods such as textiles, tableware, hardware, glass, pottery and coal.
After a long struggle, the interests of the provinces gradually converged, they reached consensus among themselves, and the Argentine Republic was established and unification was achieved.
The Argentine State, established through the modern national independence movement, as the embodiment of the sovereignty of the nation-State, has played a key role in promoting and maintaining national unity and political stability, which is a prerequisite for modern economic growth.
Under the influence of the European economy, Argentina has gradually become a supplier of agricultural and animal husbandry products and a sales market for industrial products in capitalist countries.
During this period, Argentina became a country dominated by a livestock economy, and the production of livestock (especially sheep farming) required a more intensive use of land, labor and capital, which led to the construction of land transportation and ports.
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