This book represents the first attempt to write an economic history of Uruguay, from its colonial origins to the present, and employs the framework of stages of development which Aldo Ferrer applied to the economic history of Argentina. This is a laudable and courageous enterprise, but I regret that I cannot commend its execution with equal enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the author has given us an economic history uninformed by economic analysis. There is little discussion of the factors of production and inadequate attention to the internal obstacles to Uruguayan economic development, except in the sphere of public policy. The work is replete with statistics, tables and charts, but totally devoid of citations revealing their sources; nor is there any explanation of the basis for such important computations as the author’s estimates of changes in national income for 1726-1968. As history, the book is episodic and frequently confusing and the brief attempts at integration are inadequate; as economic history, it lacks both comprehensiveness and analytic precision and power.
Although at times a useful summary of recent writings on the Uruguayan past, the work is not always a reliable guide to the questions it discusses and contains many errors of detail. At the same time, there are major errors of omission and interpretation, such as the author’s failure to comprehend the importance of contraband in the eighteenth century, European capital and entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century, and the issues of employment and agrarian reform in the twentieth century.
On balance, this is a work of uneven utility. It is strongest when summarizing periods in which there has been good recent research, such as the early nineteenth century, and it is occasionally valuable for its discussion of a subject on which nothing serious has been written, such as Uruguayan industrialization in the late nineteenth century. Ironically, the book presents a more satisfactory account of the eighteenth century than it does of the twentieth century, where the complexity of the issues overwhelms and eludes the author and his political biases intrude upon his judgements. Lastly, it is a work which is more valuable as a history of government policy and legislation on economic matters, than as an economic history of Uruguay. Although not the major work of synthesis the title promises, this volume can be read with profit, but should be used with care.
