The two volumes reviewed conclude this multi-volume history of the Argentine nation between 1862 and 1930. The Historia económica contains six essays on economics and finance, industry and commerce, agriculture, livestock, mining and petroleum, and communications. The second volume, in two parts, includes twenty-six contributions, one on each province and territory, in addition to sections on the police, the Malvinas and Atlantic Islands, and the Antarctic. In all, twenty-six historians have participated in the two volumes, including among others Carlos Melo, Francisco Romay, Andrés Allende, and Leoncio Gianello.
A reviewer of the first volume in the series noted that its “emphasis is primarily although not exclusively on administrative and political history,” and that the “approach tends to follow the ‘classical school’ . . .” (HAHR, August 1966, pp. 335-336). These statements also apply to the books reviewed here. Thus the volume on economic history hardly mentions social structure, income distribution, sources and destination of revenues, wages and prices, or the position of foreign capital within the economy and the relationship of the elite to it. By the same measure, one need not be surprised that the bibliography and the footnotes omit journals like Desarrollo Económico or recent works such as that by Roberto Cortés Conde on industrial development prior to 1914. The contents of these volumes, however, deserve comment even within the limitations of the historical school to which they belong.
First, more uniform criteria would have helped. The sections on the provinces do not include or focus upon similar material or even the same time periods. Although the title announces a span from 1862 to 1930, many of the essays dwell at length on the colonial period. The essay on agriculture, for example, dedicates only 27 of 106 pages to events after 1875. Bothersome also is the inclusion of a bibliography for only a portion of the essays. Although the series purports to be a basic historical summary, party affiliations of individuals are not always given. For example, Juan B. Justo is not identified as a Socialist, an omission which might mislead the uninformed reader.
Second, the bibliographies and footnotes do not always aid the reader to explore even the standard literature in a particular field. The work of Noel Sbarra on barbed wire is not cited; neither are the books by A. G. Ford on the gold standard or Simon G. Hanson on the meat-packing industry, although other titles in English are included.
Lastly, it is tiresome to read series of one-sentence paragraphs containing the trivia that make up the bulk of the text, particularly the sections covering the provinces. It seems unnecessary to record the fact that Ludovico Dubrowsky, a Salesian priest, blessed the first drilling rig in Argentina on December 1, 1907 (Vol. III, p. 537) or that the name of the second prompter during the 1879 drama season in Santiago del Estero was Don Francisco Garvia (Yol. IV, Part 1, p. 409) or that in 1931 the clock of the church of San Francisco in Jujuy was moved to the town of San Pedro (Vol. IV, Part 2, p. 122), even granted that the two last mentioned items might have been the most important events in those provinces during the year. Furthermore, the failure of the essay on Santa Fe to mention Lisandro de la Torre or the Partido Demócrata Progresista, lends a particular quality of unreality to Argentine history.
Despite these handicaps, the two volumes do have some redeeming features. A few of the contributions, notably Melo’s on the province of Córdoba, are solidly researched and present valuable reference material. Many of the tables and the almost complete list of provincial governors appear in one volume for the first time. But perhaps the most striking impression that comes from reading these books is that they dramatize the pressing need for basic historical investigation, particularly at the provincial level, by the “classical” as well as other schools.
