Wool Trade and Commercial Networks in Buenos Aires, 1840s to 1880s

Abstract

Between the 1850s and 1880s, Argentina became one of the chief suppliers of wool to the expanding world markets. Most of this wool was grown in the fertile sheep-runs of the richest province in the country, and was sent to Europe through its capital city and port, Buenos Aires.After the colonial experience of being mainly an entrepôt in the legal and contraband trade between the Viceroyalty of the River Plate and the rest of the world, Buenos Aires had seen its commercial opportunities flourish after Independence, and had found in its rural hinterland the staples to export, hides and salted beef. A mercantile class, at the rise of the century more interested in commercial pursuits than in productive activities related to the rural areas, had, nevertheless, sought in the late colonial era the benefits of cattle-raising, which provided the new staples, first to complement and later to replace the chief export of colonial Buenos Aires, bullion from Potosí.