Jeremy Adelman - Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

1999 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Printed in the United States of America

CIP data appear at the end of the book

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Adelman, Jeremy

Republic of capital: Buenos Aires and the legal transformation of the Atlantic world / Jeremy Adelman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780804764148

1. Buenos Aires (Argentina)Economic conditions19th century. 2. Buenos Aires (Argentina)CommerceHistory19th century. 3. PropertyArgentinaHistory19th century. 4. Constitutional historyArgentina. 5. ArgentinaPolitics and government17761810. 6. ArgentinaPolitics and government18101817. 7. ArgentinaPolitics and government18171860. I. Title.

HC178.B9A34 1999

320.98212dc21

98-48249

CIP

This book is printed on acid-free, recycled paper.

Original printing 1999

Last figure below indicates year of this printing:

08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99

This book is an effort to address several constituencies of readers who, like continents, live in almost separate intellectual worlds. Argentines, Latin Americans, North Americans, and students of the Atlantic world; historians, social scientists, and scholars of political literatureeach tends to treat the other with a healthy dose of skepticism, sometimes with good reason. Other times, unwitting neglect prevails. An effort to navigate these wide expanses between the continents in our overly professionalized world runs the risk of being an unwelcome intrusion, irritating more than inspiring, bothering more than provoking. Certainly, in the course of writing Republic of Capital I have often lost sight of my audiences, and confused the storyor storiesI was trying to tell. I was, for very long periods of time, at sea. While aware that I could reach land eventually by taking any tack and sticking to it, I preferred to float, not wanting to lose a potential relationship with any shore.

To keep my head straight, I have needed good navigational aides. To support me when I feared that this venture was pointless, I relied on many friends and colleagues. In England, the late D. C. M. Platt, Patrick OBrien, Colin Lewis, Brian Hamnett, and Simon Collier (before he left for Vanderbilt University) were all early supporters of this project. Conversations with Lucy Riall, Cathy Crawford, and Steve Smith (who reminded me that I was not not tackling the stormy issue of class-formation), as well as other colleagues at the University of Essex, were most helpful. Early presentations at Essex, Cambridge, and the Institute of Latin American Studies in London helped clear my thoughts. At my dissertation defense in Oxford in 1989, Malcolm Deas suggested that I unpack the role of the state in the comparative development of the Argentine and Canadian economies. Little did I know that I was already on a path that might lead to some partial answers to his queries. A decade later: this book.

Peter Blanchard of the University of Toronto, who introduced me to Latin American history, was always ready to come to my financial assistance with what turned out to be compelling letters of support. I only hope I can do the same for my own students.

The move to the United States in 1992 stimulated some rethinkingas well as befuddlement. More time at sea. New friends here were important in revising my thoughts and updating my charts. Conversations with Steve Aron, Dirk Hartog, Bill Jordan, Phil Nord, Ted Rabb, and Dan Rodgers in Princetons History Department were important, especially as my mooring with political economy began to loosen. Ongoing conversations with Arcadio Daz-Quiones prompted me to reread foundational texts that I had read with the over-surgical eye of the social scientific historian searching the skies for data. Many others commented on parts of this text and helped me over rough waters: Sheri Berman, Katherine Bliss, Miguel Centeno, John Coatsworth, Ariel de la Fuente, Richard Graham, Donna Guy, Charlie Hale, Michael Jimnez, Jessica Korn, Roberto Madero, Karl Monsma, Gustavo Paz, David Rock, and Nina Tanenwald. Presentations at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, New York University, Stanford University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Iowa proved enormously useful. I am grateful to students and friends at these institutions for their time and comments. Katrina Roberts reacquainted me with Borges.

Roberto Pitalucca, Fabian and Alejandro Herrero, and Karen Caplan were all incredibly helpful research assistants when I hit land.

Porteo shores are where I racked up my biggest intellectual debts. Colleagues in Buenos Aires offered unflinching friendship and support. Hilda Sabato opened the doors of PEHESA at the Universidad de Buenos Aires twice . Victor Tau Anzotegui did the same at the Instituto de Historia del Derecho Ricardo Levene, also twice . All four occasions allowed me to ventilate some ideas and steered me away from some treacherous currents. I am grateful to the participants for the good humor with which they received this frighteningly ambitious project. Many other friends helped along the way: Jos Carlos Chiaramonte, Gaston Doucet, Juan Carlos Garavaglia, Jorge Gelman, Noem Goldman, Gabriela Gresores, Juan Carlos Korol, Carlos Mayo, Zacaras Moutoukias, Jorge Myers, Ricardo Salvatore, Pepe Nun, and Beatrz Sarlo. Pilar Gonzlez shared her pearls of wisdom. Elizabet Cipoletta was a true friend and stalwart supporter when working at the Archivo General de la Nacin was so difficult that it made many of us believe that official destructive neglect was deliberate. Susana Giambiagi and her family were, and continue to be, closest of friends, and few of these chapters were composed without my recalling moments with them in Buenos Aires. These were the friends who allowed me to look at Buenos Aires from offshore in the first place. I am aware that many foreign scholars study Argentina and Latin America to partake in academic debate at home, often willfully or carelessly (I dont know which is worse) overlooking research and historiographies within the regionindeed often passing over their own dependence on Latin American scholarship. I hope I have not done that here. Indeed, it is my appreciation for Argentinas travails and its scholars that has compelled me to try to project these histories to audiences who may not be aware of their complexity or importance.

Four people read this book in earlier drafts from cover to cover: Stanley Stein, my friend and colleague at Princeton, has inspired me with his peerless ability to find the smallest of shoals while keeping his eye on the global map; Samuel Amaral spotted a list of errors and misunderstandings; Tulio Halpern Donghi offered a long reflection on the first draft of this work, and nearly inspired me to take to the seas again, not out of despair, but realizing that there was so much more to discover; and my mother, Margaret Adelman, my favorite writer of the Atlantic world, spent hours, days, and I fear weeks going over my log and picking out its inconsistencies and infelicities.

Books, like expeditions at sea, especially when they take so long, cost money. The British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation covered several summer trips to Buenos Aires while I taught at the University of Essex. The History Department, the Program in Latin American Studies, and the University Committee for Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences at Princeton University financed return trips to the archives. But this project would never have survived without the initial help of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, whose post-doctoral fellowship enabled me to spend two years in Buenos Aires from 1989 to 1991. Let me express by deepest gratitude to Canadian taxpayers whose support of research and the arts provide a model of cosmopolitan enlightenment. The Philip and Beulah Rollins Preceptorship at Princeton enabled me to take a years leave to finish the manuscript. I am thankful, finally to John and Pat Coatsworth for their companionship, and the staff of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies while I was a visiting fellow at Harvard in 199697. It was there that the fragmented pieces for the mosaic of audiences finally began to fall into place.