PROPERTY, POLITICAL ECONOMY AND COMMODITY FRONTIER AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF BUENOS AIRES DURING THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS (1776-1835)

The dissertation analyses the multiple meanings that the economic concept of property acquired in the Río de la Plata between the 1770s and 1830s, and it seeks to evaluate how reformists and administrators practically implemented these ideas or tried to. The sources employed are administrative reports, economic treaties, legislative texts, newspaper articles, parliamentary debates, and private correspondence. Those texts are examined with an intellectual history approach that first seeks to delineate their ideological connections. However, second, and most importantly, it wants to carefully contextualise their meanings in relation to the socio-economic context where these ideas were meant to transform social reality. This goal reflects the epistemological role that political economy assumed during the 18th century, representing a “science” that described contemporary societies and their internal and external interconnections in economic and political terms. Following the progressive expansion of a market-oriented commercial society in the countryside of Buenos Aires, and the deepening of its interdependence with the expanding capitalist global market, the number of reflections on the local economy and how to improve it increased, and we detailed how “land property” was a central concept in these debates. The pace of economic expansion and the agricultural development model implied that land became a crucial element for institutionalising a market-oriented commercial society, the goal of every actor involved in Buenos Aires’ political and intellectual life during this period. The double dimension of land property is evident in this story and will emerge during the narrative. On the one hand, the imperial and then provincial state promoted the territorialisation of power and the expansion of its (commodity) frontier to appropriate more territory and value it in the global capitalist market. On the other, governments attempted to redefine the rules governing individual land appropriation and enjoyment, promoting the maximisation of individual labour while allocating rights to the economic and political interests that supported them. Studying the intellectual arguments accompanying the increasing economic interdependence between Buenos Aires and the outside world reveals that “land property” was a fundamental concept as it was considered one of the best means to encourage the expansion of a market-oriented commercial society and its stability. The comparison between the intellectual and the material worlds highlights the discrepancy between the two, as the reformers’ dreams rarely materialised. However, notwithstanding the multiple old and new forms of land tenancy characterising the Río de la Plata, economic expansion and market integration did not stop. Therefore, the idea of property, not its institutional form, significantly contributed to local economic expansion and the institutionalisation of a capitalist commercial society in Buenos Aires and the surrounding Pampas.