Barrán and Nahum’s Historia rural del Uruguay moderno has reached volume V. I believe that this is the first HAHR review of any volume in this important series and, since a companion volume on the same period is coming out, even this review necessarily has to be limited. The argument of La prosperidad frágil, 1905-1914 is that the stable peace after 1904 combined with the excellent markets for Uruguayan exports and the inflow of foreign capital produced prosperity, the optimism which undergirded Batllismo’s new economic model, and further transformation of Uruguay’s ranching sector. Nevertheless, this prosperity could not last because it depended on continuing favorable coincidence of world factors beyond Uruguay’s control—each chapter describes another type of dependency—some of which were bound to become adverse, and because of the resistance of traditional sectors of the economy to Batllismo’s policies.
One obvious criticism of Barrán and Nahum is that their use of numbers is crude. Their calculations on gold outflow, the profits of intermediaries, the profitability of cattle and sheep ranching are based on estimates, not on account books of ranchers and intermediaries or primary sources on foreign investment. Inclusion or exclusion of items is determined by common sense assumptions rather than accounting or international payments’ formulas. The authors, though, are self-confident about their analysis, to the point where a number of their conclusions go beyond the evidence. They point out that the second frigorífico in Uruguay, which began operations in 1912, opened new markets for meat and brought a shift away from sheep toward cattle. From this they conclude that the large ranchers, who were anti-Batllista, were strengthened over “la clase media rural” who depended on sheep and that this was reflected in the political crisis of 1913 over Batlie’s plan for a plural executive. Explanations of Uruguay based on anti-Batllista large-scale cattle ranchers dominating middle-class sheep farmers are sure to enter the literature and while full judgment of this aspect of Barrán and Nahum’s analysis will have to await their next volume, it should be pointed out now that the people they are talking about were all ranchers who grazed both sheep and cattle on natural pasture and that the major effort during this period to rally rural interests against Batlle came immediately after World War I when there was fear that the year’s wool clip could not be sold abroad. The political opposition and all rural organizations called for the issuance of paper currency based on wool, a measure which Batlie’s government rejected.
