Abstract
British-built railways dominate this chapter from their beginnings in the early 1860s to their rapid growth in the 1880s. Efforts to capture British capital investment from the late 1870s in Argentina form a second major topic: the government paid its foreign debt, suppressed provincial rebellions and opened up enormous new territories in southern Argentina to settlers and railways. The “Baring Crisis” of 1890 is a third major topic, an issue developing during the 1880s as a result of a speculative excess of British investment and a policy of cheap paper money by Argentine governments. The chapter describes the way attempts to intensify economic growth ended in calamitous collapse.
The controlling and directing agent of the whole process is the pressure of financial and industrial motives.
J.A. Hobson
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Notes
- 1.
The fate of the Lenihans is recounted in Cowper to FO 26 Jan. 1875 FO 6/330.
- 2.
Quoted in Standard 30 Nov. 1878.
- 3.
H.L. Beales. “The ‘Great Depression,’ in Industry and Trade.” Economic history Review Vol. 5, No. 1, 1934, 68, quoting A.J. Wilson. Resources of Modern Countries.
- 4.
W.W. Rostow. “Investment and the Great Depression.” Economic History Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1954, stressing how orders for rail-iron contributed to recovery.
- 5.
Money Market Review cited in Brazil and River Plate Post 23 Feb. 1877.
- 6.
J.E. Wadsworth, consul of Argentina in Leeds, quoted in South American Journal 26 May 1888, (referring to President Miguel Juárez Celman).
- 7.
Barnett to West 8 Oct. 1877. FO 118–169.
- 8.
St. John to Derby 15 Aug. 1876 FO 6/334.
- 9.
Bouwer to Barings 19 Dec. 1877 and 29 April 1878 HC 4-1-65.
- 10.
A cessation of construction in 1878 illustrated the lengthy period between raising the capital and constructing the railway; the investment having been made around 1873–1874 at the conclusion of the previous growth cycle. See Zalduendo, Inversiones Británicas, 321. Trade figures appear in José C. Chiaramonte. Nacionalismo y liberalismo económico, 1860–1880. Buenos Aires: Solar Hachette, 1971, 195; Ernesto Tornquist and Co. The Economic Development of Argentina in the Last Fifty Years. Buenos Aires: Tornquist, 1919, 276.
- 11.
St. John to FO 29 July 1876. FO 6/334.
- 12.
Roberto Cortés Conde. “Los regímenes de cambio en el mundo. El patrón oro y la experiencia argentina.” Mimeo. “The crisis resulted from the loss of gold [reserves] unmatched by an equivalent reduction in money in circulation.”
- 13.
Standard 31 Jan. 1878, quoting the London Mercator.
- 14.
He pledged, “[t]here are two million Argentines prepared to economise to the point of suffering hunger and thirst in order to respond to the supreme need to maintain our commitments to foreign [capital] markets.”
- 15.
The negotiation leading to the loan of 1876 is explored in Mariano Szafowal Samonowerskj. “¿Et tu, Banco de la Provincia, contra me? El caso del empréstito de 10 millones pesos fuertes que el Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires le otorgó al gobierno nacional en 1876.” In Pablo Gerchunoff, Fernando Rocchi, Gastón Rossi. Desorden y progreso. Las crisis económicas argentinas, 1870–1905. Buenos Aires, Edhasa, 2008, 310–319.
- 16.
Bouwer to Barings 13 Jan. 1877 HC 4-1-65. Bouwer’s activities are detailed in H.S. Ferns. “The Baring Crisis Revisited.” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, 1992, 243–247.
- 17.
Bankers’ Magazine, Vol. 50:2, 1890, 1261, referring to bond purchases by Barings in 1876.
- 18.
Accounts of the incident include Joslin, Banking, 44–50; Ezequiel Gallo. El gobierno de Santa Fe y el Banco de Londres y Rio de la Plata (1876). Buenos Aires: Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1972; Jones, British Financial Institutions, 216. See also FO 6/333 (St. John to Derby).
- 19.
The text of Avellaneda’s rebuttal of “fiscal privilege” appears in Brazil and River Plate Post 8 Jan. 1877.
- 20.
St. John, Reminiscences, 169–170.
- 21.
Bouwer to Barings 30 Oct. 1878 HC 4-1-65.
- 22.
On López and the tariff, see Chiaramonte, Nacionalismo. Tariff changes of this period assisted shoemakers using local leather and the newly developing sugar cane economy in Salta and Tucumán, but also favoured imported British railway goods.
- 23.
Bouwer to Barings 1 Jan. 1878. HC 4-1-65.
- 24.
The campaign is described in Perry Richard Owen. “The Argentine Frontier: The Conquest of the Desert, 1878–1879.” Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1971.
- 25.
Egerton to Salisbury 31 Mar. and 7 Apr. 1880. FO 6/359.
- 26.
The speech is quoted in Standard 14 Apr. 1880.
- 27.
The Bankers’ Magazine Vol. 50:2, 1890, 1253.
- 28.
The formation of the coalition is traced in Rock, State Formation, 64–72. See also Paula Alonso. Jardines secretos, legitimaciones públicas. El Partido Autonomista Nacional y la política argentina de fines del siglo xix. Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2010. A recent account of the 1880 rebellion is Sabato, Buenos Aires en Armas.
- 29.
Roca to Congress May, 1881. Quoted in Brazil and River Plate Mail 26 June 1881.
- 30.
Philip Guedalla. Argentine Tango. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1932, preface.
- 31.
Alberdi, Bases, 24.
- 32.
Zalduendo, Inversiones Británicas, 269 reports the Western paid excessive 9 per cent profits to an inner ring of shareholders led by Riestra that led to financing problems and a takeover of the company management by the province.
- 33.
Hutchinson, Buenos Ayres, 35.
- 34.
Robert Crawford. Across the Pampas and the Andes. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1884, 44.
- 35.
Hutchinson, Buenos Ayres, provided several examples of fortunes being made from buying land following the development of the Western Railway.
- 36.
Hutchinson, Buenos Ayres, 84.
- 37.
Standard 19 Aug. 1880.
- 38.
Cited in La Prensa 24 Oct. 1889. In 1889, Foreign Office files reported on a proposal for a “Gibbon Wakefield Colony” in Entre Rios but furnished no details. See Correspondence Respecting Emigration to the Argentine Republic. FO 881/5963.
- 39.
H.H. Woodgate. “Reminiscences of a Land-Buyer.” Central Argentine Railway Magazine March 1922.
- 40.
Winthrop R. Wright. British-owned Railways in Argentina. Their Effects on Economic Nationalism, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974, 44.
- 41.
As described in Fair’s obituary. See Standard 24 Dec. 1899.
- 42.
Details of the concessions and construction appear in Zalduendo, Inversiones Británicas, 310, 319, 336. The literature includes Wright, British-owned Railways in Argentina; Colin M. Lewis. British Railways in Argentina, 1857–1914. A Case Study of Foreign Investment. London: Athlone Press, 1983; López and Waddell, Nueva historia del ferrocarril.
- 43.
Brazil and River Plate Mail 23 Apr. 1866.
- 44.
On conditions in Britain leading to falling profits, see R.J. Irving. “The profitability and performance of British railways, 1870–1914.” Economic History Review New Series, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1978, 46–66.
- 45.
On shareholders, see Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 411. From this enumeration, the shareholders appeared typical of the investor constituencies identified as “elites and gents” analysed in Lance Edwin Davis and Robert A. Huttenback. Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860–1912. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 200. Data on the mid-1890s provide evidence of concentrated ownership. See C.A. Jones. “Who invested in Argentina and Uruguay?” Business Archives, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1982, 1–24.
- 46.
Brazil and River Plate Mail 22 May 1876.
- 47.
An example appears in Brazil and River Plate Mail 23 Jan. 1877. British speculators attacked the fiduciary standing of the Argentine government in attempts to downgrade prices of Argentine bonds.
- 48.
Rumbold, Silver River, 134. See also Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 412–413 on high rates and company greed.
- 49.
On the Eastern Railway, see Brazil and River Plate Mail, 3 Feb., 9 June 1881.
- 50.
Railway Times and Joint Stock Chronicle 3 Mar. 1882.
- 51.
Construction progress is noted in Standard 1 Mar. 1882 and 29 Sept. 1883, and in Railway Times and Joint Stock Chronicle 3 June 1883; 29 Sept. 1883.
- 52.
Standard 25 Mar. 1884. Lengthy supplements detailing the work underway by gangs of men up to 400 strong appear in Standard 20–24 Feb. 1885.
- 53.
Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 405–406.
- 54.
Émile Daireaux. La Vie et les Moeurs á la Plata. Tome 1: La Societé des Villes. Paris: Hachette, 1889, 271.
- 55.
On company structure relevant to Argentine railways, see Myra Wilkins. “The Free-Standing Company, 1870–1914: an important type of British direct foreign investment.” Economic History Review, Vol. 41, No. 2, 1988, 276; Colin M. Lewis. “Britain, the Argentine and Informal Empire: Rethinking the Role of the Railway Companies,” in Brown, Informal Empire, 99–123 (notably 108–111). Charles Jones argued that the power shift to London created a more “imperialist” relationship in which the British developed greater power to direct Argentine economic development. See Jones, “‘Business Imperialism’ and Argentina, 1875–1900: A Theoretical Note.” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, Nov. 1980, 442. Argentines occasionally noted the switch away from local control. In former days, remarked an observer, British managers living in Argentina were in full charge, “not like now when only the clerks come and the owners stay at home.” Santiago Calzadilla, 1891, cited in Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 492.
- 56.
Joslin, Banking in Latin America, 6; also Zalduendo, Inversiones Británicas, 302.
- 57.
Carlos Diaz Alejandro. Essays on the Economic History of the Argentine Republic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, 288.
- 58.
South American Journal 7 Jan. 1888, quoting Railway Times.
- 59.
Darbyshire, Argentine Republic, 106.
- 60.
Quoted in Barsky and Djenderijian, Expansión Ganadera, Introduction.
- 61.
A listing of leading companies, thirty in all, with data on capital and profits, appears in J. Fred Rippy. British Investments in Latin America, 1822–1949: A Case Study in the Operations of Private Enterprise in Retarded Regions. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1966, 73, 159–167.
- 62.
On tramways, see Raúl García Heras. Transportes, negocios y política: la compañía Anglo-Argentina de Tranvías, 1876–1981. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1994; also Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 356–357; James R. Scobie. Buenos Aires. De la Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974, 167, 174.
- 63.
At an annual general meeting of the Trust, the chairman noted its original intent was to revive the Mercantile Bank of Buenos Aires liquidated in the early 1870s. South American Journal 31 Jan. 1888. A detailed account of this transition appears in Charles A. Jones. International Business in the Nineteenth Century. The Rise of a Cosmopolitan Bourgeoisie. Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1987, 129–133, 172–173.
- 64.
Leandro Gutiérrez and Juan Carlos Korol. “Historia de empresas y crecimiento industrial en la Argentina. El caso de la Fábrica Argentina de Alpargatas.” Desarrollo Económico, Vol. 28, No. 111, Oct.-Dec. 1988, 401–423. On the company’s early years, see also Review of the River Plate 29 June 1963.
- 65.
As noted in Davis and Huttenback, Pursuit of Empire, 94.
- 66.
W.E. Curtis in Harper’s Magazine Nov. 1887. Quoted in Standard 8 Dec. 1887.
- 67.
The development of El Espartillar from the 1880s is noted in Rippy. British Investments, 164. The author also notes the later history of the Las Cabezas Estancia Company of Entre Rios founded in 1876, whose average profits exceeded 11 per cent throughout the period 1882–1949. El Espartillar and Las Cabezas are mentioned in Darbyshire, Argentine Republic, 40; also Jorge Navarro Viola. El Club de Residentes Extranjeros: breve reseña histórica en homenaje a sus fundadores. Buenos Aires: Coni, 1941, 116–117.
- 68.
Larden, Argentine Plains, 6, 43–44.
- 69.
On Drabble, see Damus, Railways, 111–114; Jones, British Financial Institutions, 4. Jones places Drabble fourth among twenty-five leading shareholders of businesses in the Rio de la Plata with a portfolio valued at £183,000 in 1895 in ten companies. See Jones, Who Invested, 11 (Table 7).
- 70.
Estanislao Zeballos, an early detractor, referred to the River Platers as the Círculo Argentino by which he meant a coterie of millionaires controlling the Argentine railways. See Fernando Rocchi. Chimneys in the Desert. Industrialization in Argentina during the Export Boom Years. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006, 196.
- 71.
Standard 25 Nov. 1879.
- 72.
Standard 27 Apr. 1907. On Fleming’s treatment of widows, see J. Monteith Drysdale. One hundred Years Old, 1838–1938. A Record of the First Century of St. Andrew’s Scotch School, Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: English Printery, 1938, 220.
- 73.
Standard 13 Mar. 1879.
- 74.
For employment contracts, see Damus, Railways, 221.
- 75.
Jakubs, British in Buenos Aires, 30, 119–126, 160–170, 191, 206, 296. Additional data appear in the consular marriage register. See “British Consulate at Buenos Aires from: 6th May 1850 To: 11th December 1902.” Examples of such marriages in the 1880s include men whose biographies are explored in Damus, Railways, 148–169 (Frank Foster, Malcolm Graham and Thomas Gregory provide examples). The 1890s witnessed several high society marriages between new British and older Anglo-Porteño families. In 1897, James Agar, whose family imported agricultural machinery, married Maria Bagley, whose family had manufactured biscuits; Harry Scott, a senior manager of the Southern railway married Frances Lumb of the old mercantile family.
- 76.
On the hospital, see Standard 22 Jan., 11 Aug. 1886.
- 77.
On Spanish and Italian associations, see Fernando Devoto and Alejandro Fernández. “Mutalismo étnico, liderazgo y participación política. Algunas hipótesis de trabajo.” In Diego Armus, ed. Mundo urbano y cultura popular. Estudios de historia social argentina. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1990, 136–139.
- 78.
Standard 7 July, 1877; 21 May 1887.
- 79.
Walter Heald. Private Diary of Walter Heald. John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. Heald played a version of the game allowing kicking and carrying the ball. The creation of two British Masonic lodges in Buenos Aires, the Excelsior in 1854 and the Star of the South in 1864, both with strong sporting ties, are noted in Víctor Raffo. Los orígenes británicos del deporte argentino: atletismo, cricket, fútbol, polo, rugby durante las presidencies de Mitre, Sarmiento, y Avellaneda. Buenos Aires: Víctor Raffo, 2004, 56; on freemasonry, see also Navarro Viola, Club de Residentes Extranjeros, 59–66.
- 80.
The Diocesan Magazine, preceded by the South American Missionary Magazine of the 1880s and the Ark of Faith of 1896 document the growth of Anglicanism and the spread of small British enclaves outside Buenos Aires.
- 81.
See Standard 7 Sept. 1889, reported an attempt to calculate the Scottish population of Buenos Aires by comparing the number of Scottish weddings and baptisms against city-wide figures. The exercise yielded an estimate of the Scottish population of 3–5000.
- 82.
Railway Times and Joint Stock Chronicle 14 Apr. 1880.
- 83.
On polo, see Standard 29 Sept. 1875. On sports see Raffo, Deporte. Mention of cricket recurs throughout the nineteenth century but only from the 1860s on a regular, organised basis.
- 84.
Standard 7 Dec. 1884.
- 85.
Standard 23 Mar. 1917.
- 86.
Zeballos as guest speaker at St Andrew’s Society, in Standard 1 Dec. 1906.
- 87.
See The Engineer, quoted in Standard 29 Sept. 1881.
- 88.
Egerton to Granville 19 June 1881. FO 6/365.
- 89.
Diocesan Gazette and Magazine (1915), 73. For the town’s beginnings as a railway centre, see Standard 6 July 1884. Calling it “Crewe” compared it with the major railway junction in north-west England.
- 90.
The sequence of foreign investment is explored in Irving Stone. “British Long-term Investment in Latin America, 1865–1913.” The Business History Review, Vol. 43, No. 2, 1968, 323. Stone’s figures refer to Latin America as a whole, although investment occurred preponderantly in Argentina. They illustrate major increases in government loans, railways and ports and docks in 1875–1885, a period in which British investment in Argentine railways tripled from £5 to £15 million.
- 91.
On the port, see Scobie, Buenos Aires, 72–90, who suggests British support helped Madero without playing any decisive role. Port improvements in the Riachuelo district followed a few years later. On the London Bank’s investment in the Madero project, see its annual report for 1890 in Bankers’ Magazine 1891, vol. 51, 138.
- 92.
Brazil and River Plate Mail 23 Feb. 1875.
- 93.
Casey’s story leading to his bankruptcy in 1890 and eventual suicide is told in Landaburu, Irlandeses.
- 94.
Memorandum of 15 Oct. 1883. C.A. Jones. The River Plate Trust Company Archives. Oxford: Oxford Microfilm and Publishing Services Limited. N.D. Vol. 1.
- 95.
Brazil and River Plate Mail 4 Apr. 1881. The Mail refers to non-existent square acres. It meant square leagues, in which case the purchasers acquired around 150,000 acres.
- 96.
See Bouwer to Baring 1, 14 Feb. 1884. HC 4-1-65. Bouwer talked figuratively of a “quintupling” of the money supply. Cortés Conde reported an increase from 18.7 to 24 million gold pesos in 1883 and a reduction in gold reserves from 9.4 million to only 4.5 million in 1884. See Cortés Conde, Patrón Oro.
- 97.
Bankers’ Magazine, Vol. 47, 1887, 48.
- 98.
South American Journal and Brazil and River Plate Mail 10, 24 Jan. 1885. The two periodicals merged in 1884. The Journal subsequently defined its target readers as Contractors, Engineers, Consuls, Railwaymen, Tramway and Gas Companies.
- 99.
On the Roca-Rocha duel using the power of the banks, see Gerchunoff, Rocchi, Rossi, Desorden y Progreso, 44–75. Other data on the interplay of finance and politics appear in Rock, State Building, 118–119.
- 100.
On the Pellegrini negotiation, see Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 403 and Ferns, Baring Crisis Revisited, 249, claiming Roca’s control of the Argentine Congress prevented opposition to the Pellegrini agreement ending in its rejection.
- 101.
South American Journal 21 Mar. 1885.
- 102.
Standard 11 Feb. 1886.
- 103.
The distribution of benefits by provinces and regions is explored in Gerchunoff, Rocchi, Rossi, Desorden y Progreso, 122–162, showing how the Littoral provinces led by Córdoba cornered the lion’s share.
- 104.
John Proctor. “Argentina: Her Past and Present.” Bankers’ Magazine, Vol. 51, 1891, 458. Ferns, Baring Crisis Revisited, 249 estimates foreign investment at £45 million in 1885 and £150 million in 1890. See also J. Fred Rippy. “The British Investment ‘Boom’ of the 1880s in Latin America.” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 29, No. 2, 1947, 281–286, estimating British rail investment in Argentina alone at £65 million by 1890.
- 105.
Zalduendo, Inversiones Británicas, 327.
- 106.
A comparison with the US system to regulate paper money issues appears in Roberto Cortés Conde. Dinero, deuda y crisis. Evolución fiscal y monetaria en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1989, 199–202.
- 107.
On the derailing of the Guaranteed Bank law of 1887, see Proctor, Argentina, 459. The government’s abandonment of the controls over gold reserves is noted in La Prensa 10 Oct. 1888. The reasons for the “gold premium” are debated. Some authorities argued it resulted from a rising trade deficit prompting an outflow of gold, and others from the increase in the money supply. For discussion, see Ford, Gold Standard, 142.
- 108.
Proctor, Argentina, 463.
- 109.
Competing issues of cédulas became a feature of “the disordered, anarchic competition between the nation and the province for European funds.” They marked another phase in the interregional conflicts of previous decades. See Gerchunoff, Rocchi, Rossi, Desorden y Progreso, 85–122.
- 110.
Proctor, Argentina, 458. “Gullible” Europeans included people like a former employee of the Gibson estancia near Chascomús. David R. Gull, an Orkney Islander, went out to Los Yngleses in 1865 to manage sheep. Returning to Scotland, in the 1880s he lost all his money, having invested it in cédulas. The story is recalled in the Standard 15 Feb. 1923.
- 111.
For warnings about cédulas, see South American Journal 5 Feb. 1887, 21 Jan. 1888. As a sample of some of the other abuses, landowners were allowed cédula credit of up to 50 per cent of the assessed value of their land: they submitted the assessments, predictably inflated and falsified. Secondly, many cédulas were issued in paper currency, meaning they depreciated with the rise of the gold premium. Thirdly, no cédulas had government guarantees.
- 112.
On subsidised immigration in 1888–1891, see Juan A. Alsina. La inmigración en el primer siglo de independencia, Buenos Aires: F.S. Alsina, 1910, 51.
- 113.
Dillon’s activities are reported in South America Journal 4 Feb. 1888.
- 114.
1772 passengers are listed in “Irish Emigrant Ships to Argentina.” My survey of the first 500 names revealed 269 males, 226 females and approximately 43 families with 2 or more children.
- 115.
Letter from Lomas de Zamora. In Correspondence Respecting Emigration to the Argentine Republic. FO 881: 5963, 31, n.d. (1889).
- 116.
See Bridgett to Pakenham, 19 Mar. 1891. FO 118/220, reporting the return of the settlers to Buenos Aires by rail; also Michael John Geraghty, “Argentina: Land of Broken Promises,” Buenos Aires Herald 17 March 1999. Reproduced by http://www.irlandes.org/dresden.htm (Irish Society of Latin American Studies). The SS Dresden story, as commemorated by descendants of the immigrants, is accessible in http://descendientesdresden.blogspot.com.
- 117.
A phrase used in Jenner to Wallace 26 Apr. 1889. FO 118–213. Data on British and Irish migrants in 1889–1890 are contained in FO 118/213 (1889) and FO 118/220 (1891). The British legation estimated total British and Irish migrants at 5697 in 1889. See also FO 881/5963 “Correspondence concerning Emigration to the Argentine Republic.”
- 118.
“General Information for Intending Emigrants to the Argentine Republic.” London: HM Stationery Office, August 1890. FO 6/423.
- 119.
Quoted in J.H. Williams. Argentine Trade under Inconvertible Paper Money, 1880–1900. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920, 64.
- 120.
Standard 7 June 1887. The reference to John Law recalls the infamous early eighteenth-century Scottish financier. See Robert Minton. John Law. The Father of Paper Money. New York: Association Press, 1975.
- 121.
Standard 22 June, 19 July, 22 Aug. 1889.
- 122.
La Prensa 25 Sept. 1890.
- 123.
The province sold the railway to a Syndicate headed by Sir Alexander Henderson for 41 million gold pesos. The syndicate then sold it to a British company for the 41 million plus an additional 5.8 million gold pesos (£1 million) paid as commission to the Syndicate in deferred shares. At a later date, the British company added this commission to the sum it claimed as “recognised capital” (the basis for calculations of its profits). The Argentine government refused to accept the commission as recognised capital because the province did not receive this money in the 1890 transaction. Details are published in Review of the River Plate 27 May 1910.
- 124.
Standard 21 Mar. 1890. The hiving off of the Western Railway is described in The Times Book on Argentina. London: Times Publishing Co Limited, 1927, 75.
- 125.
South American Journal 11 Aug. and 30 Oct. 1888.
- 126.
The fate of Barings is traced in Ferns, Baring Crisis Revisited, 251–273; also Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 458; Marichal, Debt Crises, 149–150. The South American Journal reported financial problems at Barings in November 1888 soon after the rise in bank rate by the Bank of England. See South American Journal 22 Nov. 1888.
- 127.
Proctor, Argentina, 464.
- 128.
“Manifesto of the Revolution.” Enclosure No. 5 in Pitkin to Blaine. Record Group 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts: Argentina [R-G-84]. U.S. Department of State, Washington D.C.
- 129.
On politics and government under Juárez Celman, see Alonso, Partido Autonomista Nacional, 221–345. The president’s position bore some resemblance to twentieth-century Latin American populist leaders, whose inflationary policy and promotion of sectional interests drained away their authority to leave them ripe for overthrow by military coup.
- 130.
On the Funding Loan of 1890, see Gerchunoff, Rocchi, Rossi, Desorden y Progreso, 178–182.
- 131.
Pellegrini interview with La Nación 15 Nov. 1890. Facsimile in Gerchunoff, Rocchi, Rossi, Desorden y progreso, 315.
- 132.
On the costs of servicing the debt, see Gerchunoff, Rocchi, Rossi, Desorden y Progreso, 254.
- 133.
The standard history of the rebellion in Santa Fe is Gallo, La pampa gringa.
- 134.
Leading studies of economic conditions in the early 1890s include, Williams, International Trade, 95–140; Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 439–458; Ford, Gold Standard, 119–40; on wheat, see James R. Scobie. Revolution on the Pampas: Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860–1910. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964.
- 135.
Railway Times 28 Mar. 1891.
- 136.
Reported in Standard 4 June, 4 Aug. 1891. A few workers from British India went mostly to sugar plantations in north-western provinces of Argentina.
- 137.
Gutiérrez and Korol, Alpargatas, 419.
- 138.
The strike is reported in La Prensa 30 Oct. 1888, and the soup kitchen in Standard 17 May 1891.
- 139.
Standard 4 Mar., 2 Oct. 1891.
- 140.
Examples appear in the Review of the River Plate 25 Feb. 1893. Bullying treatment of the British Compañía de Aparatos de Sanidad del Rio de la Plata in Rosario in October 1893 is recorded in FO 118/227. In one incident, British workmen were forced at gunpoint to clear out military latrines.
- 141.
Fortnightly Review quoted in Standard 26 Nov. 1890.
- 142.
Standard 14 Sept. 1891.
- 143.
Ferns, Britain and Argentina, 465, 488. Salisbury’s position is noted in Standard 14 July 1891 and 21 Feb. 1893.
- 144.
Review of the River Plate 4 Mar. 1893.
- 145.
St. Andrew’s Gazette 28 Feb. 1894.
- 146.
South American Journal 25 Feb. 1899.
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Rock, D. (2019). Bankers and Investors. In: The British in Argentina. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97855-0_5
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