Abstract
This initial chapter offers the general framework for the collective research project whose results are presented in this volume. It summarizes central proposals from conventional and current interpretations of Latin America during the first export era that have moved us to undertake this endeavor. Then, it describes the set of parameters that contributors employ in order to assess the economic contribution of exports in the seven study cases that conform this volume. They include descriptive indicators (nominal and real value series, terms of trade) and a set of analytical parameters on exports, like their direct contribution to economic growth, their purchasing power and return value, positive externalities, linkages with industrial and other activities, and energy transition.
I would like to thank El Colegio de México and particularly Dr. Erika Pani, dean of the History Department, for their continuous support to all my research endeavors. I also thank the participants in this volume for their enthusiastic collaboration and their commitment to this collective project. Many colleagues commented previous versions of the overall framework and of particular chapters, in events that include the III Jornadas of the Mexican Economic History Association (Mexico City, 2015), the XVII World Economic History Conference (Kyoto, 2015), and the V Congreso Latinoamericano de Historia Económica (CLADHE V) (Sao Paulo, 2016). My sincere appreciation to all of them. I would also like to acknowledge the research assistance of Mario Alberto Naranjo, who has accompanied and facilitated my labor throughout this project. Finally, I wish to thank the collaboration of Francisco Blancarte in the translation or revision of the English versions of some of the chapters in this volume. The usual disclaimer applies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
More about the characteristics and timing of this phenomenon in O’Rourke and Williamson (1999).
- 2.
- 3.
Many publications deal with Latin America on a country-by-country basis. However, their aim is not necessarily to compare between cases or to mount them up in order to arrive to a more embracing appraisal. For this reason, they consist of chapters that do not always share common analytical parameters or even deal with the same issues. For some examples, see Cárdenas, Ocampo, and Thorp (2000), Coatsworth and Taylor (1998).
- 4.
Of course, this is not the first time that somebody proposes an inductive approach to assess the differential effects of patterns of development upon a group of countries. However, such an undertaking is usually suggested in current analysis and with the aim of finding the appropriate development policies, rather than in studies with a historical perspective. See, for instance, Fishlow (1987, p. 317).
- 5.
This is important because, as Packenham has put it, some of these premises and hypotheses “fail to specify or imply types of data that would disconfirm them”, incurring in “nonfalsificationism” (Packenham, 1992, p. 41).
- 6.
In the words of Albert Fishlow, “An unusual consensus both in the method of analysis and in the development strategy… expanded over the region” (Fishlow, 1987, p. 293).
- 7.
About economic culture and the way it is shaped, see Krugman (1995).
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
The first edition of this book was published in 1994.
- 11.
We focus on these so-called paradigms because they provide the more articulated interpretations about Latin American development during the export era. When it seems pertinent, we refer to other hypotheses and try to assess their validity for the cases and period under study. Thus in some chapters we address questions such as Dutch disease, the relation between terms of trade and deindustrialization, “induced” energy transition, among others. However, we do not deal here with broader paradigms, such as Marxism, modernization theory, or neo-institutionalism, since they do not specifically intend to explain Latin American development. For a review of some of these approaches, see So (1990), Peet and Hartwick (1999).
- 12.
It should be noted that some works within this tradition were more careful than others in terms of identifying specificities and shades. So, for instance, Cardoso and Faletto suggest varying results depending on different initial conditions, even though they refer to “two extreme situations” within which all the rest within the vast Latin American specter would hold. Cardoso and Faletto (1971, pp. 48–51).
- 13.
Some scholars adopted a critical stand towards the, at the time, still dominant interpretations on the Latin American export era since the 1980s and suggested analytical paths that are kindred to those that we put forward in this volume. Worthy of mention among them are Ocampo (1984) and Cortés Conde and Hunt (1985).
- 14.
See, for example, the argument according to which if Mexico had adopted “more nationalistic economic measures” in the construction of railroads (such as the investment of resources and the fabrication of inputs), by 1910 its GDP would have been much lower, but “in the historical long run, however, the short run costs of slower initial growth might have paid high dividends” (Coatsworth, 1981, p. 189). The problem is, however, whether it is realistic to think that measures that were more nationalistic would have allowed Mexico to build, with its own resources and technology, a national railroad system at that time.
- 15.
Among them is the so-called Dutch disease, an undesirable effect of export success with negative effects upon growth that have been identified in some nations during some phases of the export era. See Meisel Roca (2010).
- 16.
In this sense, we follow up on the work of scholars that have recently tried to examine how some of the “key ideas of the dependency theorists might fit into the modern literature on comparative development” (Conning & Robinson, 2009, p. 360).
- 17.
Prebisch’s work was originally published in English in 1950. Hans Singer confirmed this diagnostic almost simultaneously. See Singer (1950).
- 18.
This expression has been used for Colombia in the 1920s, where the sudden success of coffee exports would have induced an appreciation of RER and with it a loss of competitiveness for the rest of exports, particularly for banana exports (Meisel Roca, 2010). It is also often applied to the current case of oil-exporting countries (Ismail, 2010).
- 19.
According to Bulmer-Thomas, it was Clark Reynolds who pioneered the use of this concept, in Reynolds (1965).
- 20.
For another work sharing this idea see Cárdenas (1987, pp. 25–28).
- 21.
In fact, some authors assess that not only luxury items were purchased abroad but even those consumed by workers in enclave economies, which were “very often brought directly from the metropolis” (Bambirra, 1978, p. 76).
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
The resulting papers will be included as part of a special issue of the Revista de Historia Económica—Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, to appear in 2018. In some cases, a reconstruction of export statistics was not necessary, as previous works had provided this information. This is the case of Ocampo (1984), for Colombia, Kuntz-Ficker (2007, 2010) for Mexico, and Rayes (2013, 2015) for Argentina.
- 25.
The only exception to this rule is Bolivia. As export-led growth continued until the post-World War II period, there was no need for an epilogue that was separate from the balance.
References
Bambirra, V. (1978). El capitalismo dependiente latinoamericano (7th ed.). México: Siglo XXI.
Bértola, L., & Ocampo, J. A. (2012). El desarrollo económico de América Latina desde la Independencia. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Bértola, L., & Williamson, J. (2006). Globalization in Latin America before 1940. In V. Bulmer-Thomas, J. Coatworth, & R. Cortés Conde (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of Latin America (Vol. II: The long twentieth century, pp. 11–56). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bulmer-Thomas, V. (2014). The economic history of Latin America since independence (3rd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bulmer-Thomas, V., Coatsworth, J., & Cortés Conde, R. (2006). The Cambridge economic history of Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cárdenas, E. (1987). La industrialización mexicana durante la gran depresión. México: El Colegio de México.
Cárdenas, E. (2015). El largo curso de la economía mexicana. De 1780 a nuestros días. México: El Colegio de México - Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Cárdenas, E., Ocampo, J., & Thorp, R. (Eds.). (2000). An economic history of twentieth-century Latin America (Vol. 1: The export age: The Latin American economies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Oxford: Palgrave.
Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1971). Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina. Ensayo de interpretación sociológica (3rd ed.). México: Siglo XXI.
Chilcote, R. H. (1994). Dependency: A critical synthesis of the literature. In J. I. Domínguez (Ed.), Latin America’s international relations and their domestic consequences (Vol. 6, pp. 114–139). New York and London: Garland.
Coatsworth, J. (1979). Indispensable railroads in a backward economy: The case of Mexico. The Journal of Economic History, 39(4), pp. 939–960.
Coatsworth, J. (1981). Growth against development: The economic impact of railroads in Porfirian Mexico. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
Coatsworth, J. (2008). Inequality, institutions and economic growth in Latin America. Journal of Latin American Studies, 40(3) (August), pp. 545–569. In http://www.jstor.org/stable/40056706
Coatsworth, J., & Taylor, A. (1998). Latin America and the world economy since 1800. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
Conning, J., & Robinson, J. (2009). Enclaves and development: An empirical assessment. Studies in Comparative International Development, 44, pp. 359–385.
Cortés Conde, R., & Hunt, S. (1985). The Latin American economies: growth and the export sector 1880-1930. New York: Holmes and Meier.
Dos Santos, T. (2002). La teoría de la dependencia: balance y perspectivas (M. Bruckmann Maynetto, Trans.). México: Plaza & Janés.
Dos Santos, T. (2011). La crisis de la teoría del desarrollo y las relaciones de dependencia en América Latina. In C. Gutiérrez (Ed.), El pensamiento sobre el desarrollo en América Latina. Textos del siglo XX y XXI (pp. 145–177). BUAP: México.
Farmer, B. (1999). The question of dependency and economic development: A quantitative analysis. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Fishlow, A. (1987). El estado de la ciencia económica en América Latina. Investigación Económica, 46(181), pp. 293–330.
Franco, P. (1999). The puzzle of Latin American economic development. Lanham; New York; London; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gales, B. et al. (2007). North versus South. Energy transition and energy intensity in Europe over 200 years. European Review of Economic History, 11, pp. 215–249.
Gómez Galvarriato, A., & Williamson, J. (2009). Was it prices, productivity or policy? Latin American industrialization after 1870. Journal of Latin American Studies, 41(4), pp. 663–694.
Guajardo, G. (2007). Tecnología, Estado y ferrocarriles en Chile, 1850–1950. Madrid y México: Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles-CEIICH-UNAM.
Haber, S. (Ed.). (1997). How Latin America fell behind. Essays on the economic histories of Brazil and Mexico, 1800–1914. Stanford, CA: Stanfotd University Press.
Haber, S. (2006). The political economy of industrialization. In V. Bulmer-Thomas, J. Coatsworth, & R. Cortés Conde (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of Latin America. (Vol. II: The long twentieth century, pp. 537–584). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Herranz-Locan, A. (2011). The role of railways in export-led growth. The case of Uruguay, 1870–1913. Economic History of Developing Regions, 26(2), pp. 1–32.
Hora, R. (2010). Historia económica de la Argentina en el siglo XIX. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Ismail, K. (2010). The structural manifestation of the ‘Dutch Disease’: The case of oil exporting countries. International Monetary Fund. Retrieved on March 2017, from https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2010/wp10103.pdf
Kalmanovitz, S. (1983). El desarrollo tardío del capitalismo: un enfoque crítico de la teoría de la dependencia. México: Siglo XXI.
Krugman, P. (1995). Cycles of conventional wisdom on economic development. International Affairs, 71, pp. 717–732.
Kuntz-Ficker, S. (2007). El comercio exterior de México en la era del capitalismo liberal, 1870–1929. México: El Colegio de México.
Kuntz-Ficker, S. (2010). Las exportaciones mexicanas durante la primera globalización, 1870–1929. México: El Colegio de México.
Kuntz-Ficker, S. (Ed.). (2015). Historia mínima de la expansión ferroviaria en América Latina. México: El Colegio de México.
Kuznets, S. (1970). Crecimiento y estructura económica. Barcelona: Ed. Gustavo Gili.
Love, J. L. (2005). The rise and decline of economic structuralism in Latin America: New dimensions. Latin American Research Review, 40(3), pp. 100–125. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3662824
Marini, R. M. (2008). América Latina, dependencia y globalización. Bogotá: CLACSO, Siglo del Hombre Editores.
Meisel Roca, A. (2010). Enfermedad holandesa y exportaciones de banano en el Caribe colombiano, 1910–1950. Cuadernos de Historia Económica y Empresarial(26). Cartagena, Colombia: Banco de la República.
Moreno Brid, J., & Pérez Caldentey, E. (2009). Trade and economic growth: A Latin American perspective on rhetoric and reality. Mexico: CEPAL-Naciones Unidas.
Ocampo, J. A. (1984). Colombia y la economía mundial 1830–1910. Bogotá: Siglo XXI.
Ocampo, J. A. (2008). Los paradigmas del desarrollo en la historia latinoamericana. In O. Altimir, E. Iglesias, & J. Machinea (Eds.), Hacia la revisión de los paradigmas del desarrollo en América Latina (pp. 19–57). Santiago de Chile: CEPAL-SEGIB.
O’Rourke, K., & Williamson, J. (1999). Globalization and history. The evolution of a nineteenth-century Atlantic economy. Cambridge and London: MIT Press.
Packenham, R. A. (1992). The dependency movement. Scholarship and politics in development studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Peet, R., & Hartwick, E. (1999). Theories of development. New York: Guilford.
Pérez, G. (2007). Nos dejó el tren: la historia de los ferrocarriles colombianos y los orígenes del subdesarrollo. Bogotá: Cisnecolor.
Prebisch, R. (1986, Oct-Dec). El desarrollo de la América Latina y algunos de sus principales problemas. Desarrollo Económico, 26(103), pp. 479–502.
Rayes, A. (2013). En las puertas del Dorado. Las exportaciones argentinas, 1890–1913. Buenos Aires: Universidad Torcuato di Tella.
Rayes, A. (2015). La estadística de las exportaciones argentinas, 1875-1913. Nuevas evidencias e interpretaciones. Investigaciones de Historia Económica, 11(1), pp. 31–42.
Reynolds, C. (1965). Development problems of an export economy: The case of Chile and copper. In M. Mamalakis & C. W. Reynolds (Eds.), Essays on the Chilean economy (pp. 201-361). Homewood, IL: Irwin.
Rubio, M., et al. (2010). Energy as an indicator of modernization in Latin America, 1890–1925. The Economic History Review, 63(3), pp. 769–804.
Salvucci, R. (2006). Export-led industrialization. In V. Bulmer-Thomas, J. Coatsworth, & R. Cortés Conde (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of Latin America (Vol. II: The long twentieth century, pp. 249–292). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Seers, D. (1987). Teoría de la dependencia: una revaluación crítica. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Singer, H. (1950, March). The distribution of gains between investing and borrowing countries. American Economic Review, 11, pp. 473–485.
So, A. (1990). Social change and development: Modernization, dependency, and world-system theories. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Travieso, E. (2015). Transición energética bajo una era de exportaciones: el caso de Uruguay, 1900–1950. Paper presented in the International Seminar La era de las exportaciones (pp. 1–37). México: El Colegio de México.
Williamson, J. (2010, September). When, where, and why? Early industrialization in the poor periphery, 1870–1940. NBER Working Paper 16344.
Wrigley, E. (2010). Energy and the English industrial revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zanetti, O., & García, A. (1987). Caminos para el azúcar. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kuntz-Ficker, S. (2017). Latin America’s First Export Era: Reassessing Its Economic Contribution. In: Kuntz-Ficker, S. (eds) The First Export Era Revisited. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62340-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62340-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62339-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62340-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)