During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Argentina achieved self-sufficiency in sugar and Tucumán became the country’s main sugar producer. In this well-written and thoroughly researched book, José Antonio Sánchez Román explores the origins and evolution of Tucumán’s sugar industry, paying particular attention to the mechanisms instituted by provincial and national authorities to support the industry as well as to sugar industrialists’ strategies to achieve and secure those benefits. The author accurately points out that the development of the sugar industry was complementary to the export sector and should be understood as Tucumán’s way to participate in the economic bonanza of turn-of-the-century Argentina. The study stresses the central role played by government protection in the expansion of the industry through credit, railroads, and tariffs. Sánchez Román convincingly argues that the most important engine behind sugar expansion in the province was the availability of credit rather than the arrival of...

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