Argentina

Abstract

THROUGHOUT most of the colonial period the Rio de la Plata area, from which Argentina was to be formed, was a backwater of the Spanish empire. The most important centres of economic activity were located in the interior provinces of the north-west and the northern littoral from which food, livestock and other goods were supplied to the mines of Upper Peru. Buenos Aires and the coast were linked somewhat hazardously to this region through a countryside dominated by nomadic, often hostile, Indian tribes. External trade from Buenos Aires was restricted, Lima being the official entrepot, but by the eighteenth century contraband, particularly in silver, had assumed substantial importance. In an effort to control the trade and to counter the military threat to this exposed flank of the empire, the Spanish set up the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata in 1776. This included not only Argentina, but also parts of what were to become Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. The opening of trade through Buenos Aires gave a tremendous stimulus to the coastal economy, merchants prospered, and the city’s population grew from 12,000 in 1750 to 50,000 by the end of the century.