Wool Trade and Commercial Networks in Buenos Aires, 1840s to 1880s
Between the 185os and i88os, 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 entrepot 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 Potosf. A tight intertwining of interests of port and province was the most immediate result of that initial drive, as capital and efforts were turned towards production. From then on, the international market became the main stimulus for the expansion of production in Buenos Aires, but this, in turn, was achieved only by the local development of an economic and social structure that could respond to such an incentive. A long process of capitalist organization of the rural areas was set in motion.