Historia de la provincia de Buenos Aires. Vol. 3. De la organizacion provincial a la federalizacion de Buenos Aires (1821-1880)

Abstract

The province of Buenos Aires has played an outsized role in Argentine history. Its agricultural riches, complemented by significant industrial expansion beginning in the mid-twentieth century, have dominated the nation's economic life from colonial times to the present. Its demographic weight, containing between 35 and 40 percent of Argentina's population, has made it an essential electoral prize.The two volumes under review here are part of an ambitious six-volume collection of essays that cover the province's history from the time of Spanish conquest and colonization to the early twenty-first century. Both volumes begin with an introductory essay followed by 13 individual contributions. Hilda Sabato provides the introduction to volume 3 and Juan Manuel Palacio, the overall director of the project, introduces volume 4. These introductions give useful overviews of the material included in each volume, allowing the reader, if he or she chooses, to select those essays of greatest personal interest. The essays themselves are divided into two parts, the first with broad overviews of politics, society, and the economy, the second with chapters that focus on more specific subsets of these larger categories.The contributors to volume 3 face the challenge of describing a province that for the period covered included the capital city of Buenos Aires and whose borders were still being defined. For the most part, these challenges are met successfully, with a nice mix in the essays between information on the city and the province. Specific essays in the second part focus on the tension between local and national politics, the establishment of a justice system, public finance, the military and its involvement in internal and external wars, the frontier and the indigenous population, the distribution of land, the church, literature and public opinion, forms of sociability, and art and architecture.Volume 4, which covers the 63 years after Buenos Aires became the federal capital, is freed from the complication of intermingling porteño with provinciano history. Also, by 1880 the province's territorial limits were more or less set. Nonetheless, as several essays show, the links between the national capital and the province remain strong. Attempts are made to mold the new provincial capital of La Plata into a significant counterweight to the power and dominance of the national capital, attempts that fall short.The first part of volume 4, like that of volume 3, contains essays on politics, economy, and society, as well as one on culture and the world of ideas. Essays in the second part deal with the rural economy, rural commerce, public financing and banking, immigration, daily life and sociability, workers and the labor movement, provincial cities, and the two political parties that dominated in the period, the Radicals and the Conservatives. Just as the rule of Juan Manuel de Rosas and the struggle for national consolidation ran as a leitmotif through the essays in volume 3, the background to the rise of Juan Perón and Peronism are common ingredients of the essays in volume 4.Evaluating these volumes poses a significant challenge for the reviewer. Practical limits make it impossible to assess each of the 28 contributions. To highlight even a few among the many leads to invidious comparisons. In general terms, the two volumes are well conceived, well organized, and comprehensive. The compilers have done a careful job of assembling the contributors, who are well aware of the other essays in the volume and often refer to them in their own work. There is some overlap and repetition, inevitable in such an enterprise, but for the most part this is kept to a minimum. The essays themselves are well organized and presented in a straightforward and jargon-free manner, making them accessible to the general reader. Each essay also has a bibliography of a dozen or more items, usually with reference to some English-language works as well as Argentine classics and the latest work on the subject. No particular ideological axes are ground and no major historiographical battles fought.In 1941, the noted Argentine historian Ricardo Levene edited volumes on the Historia de la provincia de Buenos Aires y formación de sus pueblos. This new edited collection is a more than worthy successor, bringing to bear new research, new insights, and new historical questions in essays from the nation's leading historians. Those who are interested in the history of Argentina's most important province, a history that often has been overshadowed by that of the capital city, will find these volumes an invaluable resource.