Ranchers, rural people, and the state in post-colonial Argentina.

Abstract

This thesis concerns relations between dominant classes and state power in peripheral areas of the world economy. It argues that landed upper classes producing export staples will often rely heavily on privileged access to local and provincial political power within the regions where their estates are located. This is especially likely to be the case in a new or rapidly expanding agrarian export sector. If the productive region is located in a national state that claims sovereignty over a larger territory and the national state interferes with provincial or local political institutions, the landed upper class is likely to come into conflict with national state elites. These ideas are used to analyze relations between the large ranchers of Buenos Aires Province and national state elites of Argentina in the early nineteenth century. The ranchers relied on their provincial political power to gain control of land and rural people. The national state interfered with the provincial and local power of the large ranchers in two principal ways. The first was through massive conscription of rural people for a war with Brazil, which temporarily destroyed ranchers' local power over rural people, causing the flight of ranch workers and rampant crime. The second was through projects to make the city of Buenos Aires the national capital and divide the rest of the province into two new provinces. These projects, especially the proposed division of rural Buenos Aires, threatened to end the privileged access of large ranchers to the provincial state and give provincial power to the rural middle class. The resulting conflict between the Buenos Aires dominant class and national state elites was an important cause for the collapse of the Argentine state in 1827. The thesis is based on the correspondence of rural authorities, records of congressional debates, petitions sent to the government, newspapers, census data, and other sources. It consists mainly of qualitative historical interpretation, but also includes some quantitative analyses.