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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
Most economic historians are probably familiar with Ernest Labrousse's model of the “Crisis of the Old Regime,” although it remains largely unknown to economists, sociologists, and other specialists in the social sciences. Yet Pierre Vilar feels that it is one of Labrousse's most important contributions to the “development of a science of history,” and considers that as an “instrument of analysis,” it can shed light not only on the “old style” crises of Western Europe but also on many essential aspects of the agrarian history of “underdeveloped” countries. We do not mean that contemporary “underdevelopment” and the “economy of the old regime” are one and the same. Rather, our intent is only to emphasize with Vilar that the “historical roles played in most of the world by meteorological abnormalities and agricultural cycles in the recent past have not been subjected to sufficiently methodological and reasoned study.”
Translated by John Gitlitz
1. See, Ernest Labrousse, Fluctuaciones económicas e historia social (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1962).
2. Pierre Vilar, “Réflexions sur la ‘crise de l'ancien type’, ‘inégalite des reclotes’, et ‘sous-développement,‘” in Conjonctures économiques et structures sociales, Hommage à Ernest Labrousse (Paris: École Practique des Hautes Études, VI section, 1974), pp. 37–38.
3. See, for example, Raúl Prebisch, “El desarrollo económico de América Latina y sus principales problemas,” Boletín Económico para América Latina 7, no. 1 (feb. 1962). (The original article was published in 1949.) Anibal Pinto Santa Cruz, “La concentración del progreso técnico y de sus frutos en el desarrollo latinoamericano,” El Trimestre Económico, no. 125 (enero-marzo 1965):3–89.
4. See, for example, Celso Furtado, La formación económica del Brazil (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1962), p. 73 and pp. 164–67. It is interesting to note that Samir Amin, although working within a very different theoretical framework, comes to similar conclusions in this respect. See his L'accumulation a l'echelle mondiale (Paris/Dakar: Editions Anthropos, 1970), p. 521.
5. For example, a precapitalist mentality has been attributed to Argentine landlords of the pampas region. See Aldo Ferrer, La economía argentina (México: F.C.E., 1965), pp. 185–86.
6. See G. Haberler, “Términos del intercambio y desarrollo económico,” in Economía del comercio y desarrollo, ed. James Theberge (Buenos Aires: Amorrortu, 1971), pp. 377–87; P. T. Ellsworth, “The Terms of Trade between Primary-Producing and Industrial Countries,” in Economic Policy for Development, ed. I. Livingstone (Hardmonsworth: Penguin Books, 1971), pp. 197–214. A. I. MacBean attempts to demonstrate that terms of trade fluctuations have not seriously affected (in either the short or long run) the growth of national income in underdeveloped countries. See his, Export Instability and Economic Development (Cambridge, Mass.: 1966). However, Alfred Maizels immediately demonstrated that MacBean's proof rested on a statistical fallacy. Note his commentary in American Economic Review (June 1968):575–80.
7. Cardoso and Faletto, Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina (México: Siglo XXI, 1969).
8. Theotonio dos Santos, La crisis norteamericana y América Latina (Santiago de Chile: Prensa Latinoamericana, 1971), the first part, chapter 3, and particularly pp. 81–85.
9. Ibid., pp. 64–65.
10. See, Amartya Kumar Sen, La selección de técnicas, un aspecto del desarrollo económico planificado (México: F.C.E., 1969), pp. 92–99.
11. Albert O. Hirschman, “Enfoque generalizado del desarrollo por medio de enlaces, con referencia especial a los productos básicos,” El Trimestre Económico 44, no. 73 (enero-marzo 1977):100–236. Compare also with studies using the “staple approach” method as applied to Canada and Australia.
12. Joan Robinson, Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth (New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1962), p. 34.
13. We have analyzed production and export series data, measured in terms of physical volume, for wheat, corn, and flax in Argentina. We have also examined coffee exportation in Brazil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and El Salvador. G. L. F. Beckford found a similar trend (Gompertz curve) for cacao exports in Ghana and Nigeria and for rubber exports from Malaya and Indonesia. See, Beckford, “Secular Fluctuations in the Growth of Tropical Agricultural Trade,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 8, no. 1 (Oct. 1964):80–94.
14. As is well known, Kuznets was the first to note that a logistic function exactly describes the secular trend in production for a variety of products. See S. Kuznets, Secular Movements of Production and Prices (Boston: 1930). See also Harold T. Davis, The Analysis of Economic Time Series (Bloomington: Cowles Commission, 1941), pp. 15–24.
15. Joseph Schumpeter, Business Cycles, A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (New York and London: McGraw Hill, 1939); see above all chap. 4 in vol. 1, pp. 130–92.
16. See, Michel Kalecki, Estudios sobre la teoría de los ciclos económicos (Barcelona: Ariel, 1970; first published in 1930–33), particularly pp. 21–40; by the same author, “Tendencia y ciclos económicos: una reconsideración,” The Economic Journal (June 1968), and reprinted in “Homenaje a M. Kalecki,” special issue of Economía y Administración (Chile: Universidad de Concepción, 1970), pp. 39–55.
17. According to Arun Bose, “a parable or fable in economic theory is a model in which artificial assumptions are introduced relating to objects (entities) that are not observable or are imagined in order to predict a result which will survive even after we abandon the assumptions.” Economía marxiana y postmarxiana (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1976), pp. 23–24.
18. Oskar Lange, Teoría de la reproducción y acumulación (Barcelona: Ariel, 1970).
19. Bose, Economía marxiana, pp. 24–25. Naturally, here we are referring to the logical possibility of verification. It may be that in many cases the lack of sources will make any real proof difficult or even impossible, and thus limit the reach of theoretical propositions.
20. Concerning this type of model see Witold Kula, Théorie économique du systeme feodal (Paris: Mouton, 1970), above all chaps. 1 and 2. (Siglo XXI has published a Spanish translation.)
21. See Andre Piatier, Estadística y observación económica, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Ariel, 1967), 2:135–39.
22. It strikes me that the most typical works adopting this posture are those of Ruy Mauro Marini, Dialéctica de la dependencia (México: Editorial ERA, 1974), and of Vania Bambirra, El capitalismo dependiente latinoamericano (México: Siglo XXI, 1974). See my critique of Marini in Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos (San José, Costa Rica) 10 (enero-abril 1974):149–53.
23. F. H. Cardoso, “The Consumption of Dependency Theory in the United States,” LARR 12, no. 3 (1977):7–24, provides an excellent summary of the theory's original critical position and evaluates its most recent evolution.
24. This is the period that was most typical of an expanding agro-export economy. About 1914 the geographic limits of agricultural expansion were reached.
25. See, Douglas North, “Ocean Freight Rates and Economic Development, 1750–1913,” Journal of Economic History 18 (1958).
26. The relatively early process of import substitution was favored by high tariffs (established for fiscal reasons), by rapid urbanization (which stimulated the construction industry, etc.), and by the relatively large size of the internal market, etc. Concerning tariffs, see C. F. Díaz Alejandro's excellent study, chap. 5 of Essays on the Economic History of the Argentine Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). On the import substitution process see, Vásquez Presedo, El caso argentino (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1971), chap. 5, and Adolfo Dorfman's classic study, Historia de la industria argentina (Buenos Aires: Solar/Hachette, 1970; 1st edition, 1942).
27. Improvement in cattle quality and development of frozen beef exports demanded that cattlemen have available alfalfa fields for feeding the cattle. As the planting of alfalfa on virgin land required prior cultivation of cereals or flax for three or four years, the cattlemen opted to give the land in tenancy for various years, with the tenant committing himself to leave the land, at the termination of the contract, planted with alfalfa.
28. M. Gutelman, Structures et reformes agraires (Paris: F. Maspero, 1974), pp. 89–92.
29. The 1921, 1932, 1948, and 1958 laws concerning tenancy and sharecropping regulated contract duration and other aspects. In 1943, supplementary legislation postponed and froze rents, continuing in effect until 1967 when derrogated by Law No. 17253. Because of inflation, the real level of rents was reduced considerably.
30. This continued to be true in spite of policies unfavorable to the landowners, such as the postponement and freezing of rents, mentioned above. The nature of the cattle farm was such that even with very low yields per unit of area, the overall profit level could continue to be considerable.
31. See the data on loans, discounts, and advances on current accounts in El Banco de la Nación Argentina en su cincuentenario (Buenos Aires, 1941), fols. 257–58, and Joseph S. Tulchin's study, “El crédito agrario en la Argentina, 1910–1926,” Desarrollo Económico 18, no. 71 (oct.–dic. 1978):381–408.
32. See the data on Law No. 9644 and resulting loans in Banco de la Nación, fols. 263–64, and in the Censo Agropecuario Nacional de 1937.
33. See, James R. Scobie, Revolución en las Pampas, Historia social del trigo argentino, 1860–1910 (Buenos Aires: Solar/Hachette, 1968), chap. 6; Héctor Pérez Brignoli, Agriculture capitaliste et commerce des graines en Argentine (1880–1955), Etude d'histoire économique, tesis de 3er ciclo (Université de Paris I, 1975), 2 vols.
34. John Williams, El comercio internacional argentino en un régimen de papel moneda inconvertible, 1880–1920, trans R. Prebish (Buenos Aires: Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1922).
35. See Ricardo M. Ortiz, Historia económica de la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ed. Plus-Ultra, 1971), 2da edición, tomo 1, p. 329; John Williams, El comercio, pp. 835ff; A. G. Ford, El patrón oro: 1880–1914 (England and Buenos Aires: Instituto di Tella, 1966), pp. 157ff.
36. Lucio Geller, “Política cambiaria argentina, 1899 y 1914.” X Reunión anual de la Asociación Argentina de Economía Política, Mar del Plata, 3–5 November 1975. Mimeographed.
37. Ibid., pp. 14–32.
38. We should also note that beginning with the 1890s a degree of regional specialization emerged on the pampas, responding in part to ecological conditions. Wheat predominated in the west and south, corn in the north, and alfalfa in the west, where cattle were wintered. The center-east was used above all for raising cattle, and the belt around the federal capital for dairy and truck farming.
39. Production costs can be studied by two methods: parity prices, and direct surveys of producers. A study using the former for the period 1935–57 is Antonio J. Vilá, Precios de paridad para productos agrícolas en la Argentina, 1935–57 (Buenos Aires: Asociación Argentina de Productores Agrícolas, 1958). There are also official statistics for the period beginning in 1960. For the earlier period there are as well a few extremely detailed agricultural surveys. Among the most important are: Hugo Miatello, Investigación agrícola en la Provincia de Santa Fe (Buenos Aires: Anales del Ministerio de Agricultura, vol. 1, 1904); Ricardo Huergo, Investigación agrícola en la región septentrional de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1904); Investigación parlamentaria sobre agricultura, ganadería, industrias derivadas y colonización, ordenada por la Cámara de Diputados de la Nación en 1896, various vols. (Buenos Aires, 1896–99). The last focuses principally on the first years of the twentieth century. Unfortunately the gap between these years and 1935 is difficult to fill. It seems that there were no studies of production costs during this period.
40. Investigación parlamentaria, anexo B, p. 56. The calculus does not include tenants' plots, and it assumes a farm unit of 100 hectares and average yields of 10 qt/ha. The salaries of the farmer and his family were also included.
41. Miatello, Investigación, p. 298. The calculus is based on a 100 has. unit, but does not take into account the salaries of the farmer and his family.
42. Investigación parlamentaria, anexo B., pp. 57–58. Yields of 27 qt/ha are assumed. Otherwise the conditions are the same as those in note 40.
43. Miatello, Investigación, p. 410. Yields of 30 qt/ha and 100 has. units, farmed directly by the owners, are assumed. The salaries of the farmer and his family are not included.
44. Average production costs per hectare were considered (Investigación parlamentaria, Anexo B, p. 68) as well as average rents of 5 pesos (paper) per hectare (p. 208).
45. Huergo, Investigación agrícola, pp. 207, 210–11. The western end of the north of Buenos Aires province was used as an example. Rents were much higher along the border with Santa Fe, and in the case of corn actually reached 36 percent of total costs. Ibid., p. 208.
46. Miatello, Investigación, p. 298. The calculus is applied to wheat. See our comments in note 41.
47. Ibid., pp. 298, 361, 410. We do, however, have some data for Santa Fe. For the period from 1899 to 1904, railroad transport costs for an average distance of 100 kms represented at the shipping port 8 percent of the total costs per quintal for wheat, 6 percent for flax, and 9 percent for corn.
48. For an analysis of usurious credit and its impact on precapitalist peasant economies, see Amit Bhaduri, “A Study in Agricultural Backwardness under Semi-Feudalism,” The Economic Journal 83, no. 329 (Mar. 1973):120–37, and Tulchin, “El crédito agrario.”
49. Censo Agropecuario Nacional de 1937: Economía rural, apendixes 4 and 5.
50. For data on land costs in Buenos Aires province over the period from 1902 to 1964, see Anuario de la Sociedad Rural Argentina (Buenos Aires), no. 1 (1928), p. 360; Censo Agropecuario Nacional de 1937; D. Fienup and others, El desarrollo agropecuario argentino y sus perspectivas (Buenos Aires: Instituto Di Tella, 1972), pp. 352–55.
51. Miatello, Investigación, p. 122.
52. Juan Alvarez, “La huelga de agricultores,” La Nación (Buenos Aires), 11 August 1912, p. 8.
53. Lázaro Nemirovsky, Estructura económica y orientación política de la agricultura en la República Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1933), pp. 107 and 110.
54. Ibid., p. 110.
55. Miatello, Investigación, p. 300.
56. Concerning these characteristics of peasant economics, see A. V. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy, eds. Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay and R. E. F. Smith (Homewood, Ill.: Irvin, 1966); Teodor Shanin, “The Nature and Logic of the Peasant Economy,” Journal of Peasant Studies 1, no. 2 (Jan. 1974):63–80, 186–206.
57. Emilio Lahitte, Informes y estudios de la División de Estadística y Economía Rural (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1908), p. 315.
58. We are referring to preference policies adopted by the United Kingdom following the Imperial Conference at Ottawa in 1932. Between 1932 and 1935 Great Britain signed seventeen bilateral trade agreements fixing quotas on its traditional suppliers.
59. The best known example of these policies was the famous Roca-Runciman treaty. For a careful analysis of this pact, see Pedro Skupch's article in Marta Panaia et al., Estudios sobre los orígenes del peronismo 2 (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 1973), pp. 36–44.
60. It is worth remembering that price and income elasticity of the demand for beef in Argentina were very low. See Alieto A. Guadagni, “Estudio econométrico del consumo de carne vacuna en al Argentina en el período 1914–1959,” Desarrollo económico 3, no. 4 (enero-marzo 1964) and Alieto Guadagni and Alberto Petreceolla, “La función de demanda de carne vacuna en la Argentina en el período 1935–1961,” El Trimestre Económico (abril–jun. 1965).
61. It should be noted that industrial expansion between 1880 and 1930 occurred at a rate practically equivalent to that achieved in the following period. The most recent studies tend to argue for much greater continuity in the industrialization process than has traditionally been maintained. See, Lucio Geller, “El crecimiento industrial argentino hasta 1914 y la teoría del bien primario exportable,” El Trimestre Económico (México), no. 148 (oct.-dic. 1970):763–811; Ezequiel Gallo, “Agrarian Expansion and Industrial Development in Argentina (1880–1930),” Documento de Trabajo no. 70, Instituto Di Tella, Buenos Aires, 1970. Mimeograph.
62. Horacio Giberti, El desarrollo agrario argentino (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1964), pp. 72–79; CIDA, Tenencia de la tierra y desarrollo socioeconómico del sector agrícola argentino (Washington, D.C.: Unión Panamericana. O.E.A., 1965), pp. 104–5.
63. Relatively low food prices seem to have been one of the basic conditions for Argentine industrial growth.
64. On these points see Fienup et al., El desarrollo agropecuario; for a more critical analysis, Guillermo Flichman, La renta del suelo y el desarrollo agrario argentino (México: Siglo XXI, 1977).
65. See, for example, Robert M. Stern, “The Price Responsiveness of Primary Producers,” Review of Economics and Statistics (May 1962):202–7; Helen C. Farnsworth and William O. Jones, “Response of Wheat Growers to Price Changes: Appropriate or Perverse?” Economic Journal 66 (June 1965):271–87.
66. The choice also depends on geographic zone. In the cattle raising zone (the center and east of Buenos Aires Province), tenancy was always important in cattle production.
67. See Wilfred Malenbaum, The World Wheat Economy, 1885–1939 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 26.
68. On this method, see Oscar Varsavsky and Eric Calcagno, América Latina, modelos matemáticos (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1971); Osvaldo Néstor Feinstein, “Modelos económicos cuantitativos y experimentación numérica,” San José, Costa Rica, 1977. Mimeograph.
69. This proposal is somewhat similar to the procedure adopted by Ernest Labrousse (see Labrousse, Fluctuaciones, pp. 181–229) to study the evolution of “unit rent,” that is, the rent per unit of area. Labrousse, however, uses different hypotheses regarding yields (because he lacked precise production estimates) and the costs involved in each kind of farm. By counterposing these with the movement in product prices one obtains acceptable estimates of changing incomes. These aid in understanding concrete cases.
70. Unlike in the Argentine case, the bibliography available on this theme is very limited. A large part of what follows is based on Carolyn Hall, El café y el desarrollo histórico-geográfico de Costa Rica (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Costa Rica/Universidad Nacional, 1976); Ciro F. S. Cardoso, “La formación de la hacienda cafetalera en Costa Rica (siglo XIX),” Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos no. 6 (set.-dic. 1973):22–48.
71. Hall, El café, pp. 47–49.
72. Ibid., pp. 84ff; Yolanda Baires Martínez, Las transacciones inmobiliaries en el Valle Central y la expansión cafetalera de Costa Rica (1800–1850), Avances de investigacion No. 1, Proyecto de Historia Económica y Social de Costa Rica, Universidad de Costa Rica, 1976.
73. Note also that Costa Rica specialized in highland coffee of a soft variety, that is, the coffee of highest quality. This “qualitative” specialization implied also a need for maximum care in the entire process of cultivating, harvesting, and shelling.
74. The Costa Rican “colonial heritage” did not leave behind forms of forced labor or a dependent peasantry. The very scant development and marginal character of the area permitted, in contrast, the emergence of a relatively egalitarian society, although one in which equality was made possible by generalized poverty.
75. After 1840 a number of entrepreneurs were able to conceive and perfect a variety of processing machines. These techniques were imitated later in other countries where coffee became an important crop. See Ciro F. S. Cardoso, “La formación,” p. 37 and the same author's “Historia económica del café en centroamérica (siglo XIX): estudio comparativo,” Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos, No. 10 (enero-abr. 1975):36–41.
76. On this point, and for a detailed description of the cafetaleros as a social group, see Samuel Stone, La dinastía de los conquistadores (San José: EDUCA, 1975).
77. Given the lack of capital, coffee expansion at first seems to have been financed through buying land by mortgaging future harvests. At least in the Protocolos Notariales of San José for 1800–1850 a number of transactions of this type are registered.
78. Hall, El café, chap. 3
79. Cardoso, “La formación,” p. 31; “Historia económica,” pp. 24–27.
80. See Cardoso, “Historia económica”; David Browning, El Salvador, la tierra y el hombre (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1975).
81. See, Cardoso, “Historia económica”; Julio C. Cambranes, Aspectos del desarrollo económico y social de Guatemala, a la luz de las fuentes históricas alemanas (Guatemala: Universidad de San Carlos, 1975); Sanford Mosk, “Economía cafetalera de Guatemala durante el período 1850–1918,” Economía de Guatemala (Guatemala: Seminario de Integración Social Guatemalteca, 1958), pp. 161–82.
82. The argument that we are developing suggests that on the frontier the economic cost of land is nil.
83. See Héctor Pérez Brignoli, “Las variables demográficas en las economías de exportación: el ejemplo del Valle Central de Costa Rica (1800–1850),” Paper presented at the seminar on “Modos de producción y dinámica de la población,” Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM, Cuernavaca, April 1978.
84. The extent to which single crop characteristics had come to predominate is revealed even more clearly when one notes that between 1920 and 1930 the cultivation of bananas was reduced because of a series of factors we do not need to examine here.
85. We should also emphasize the development of the cooperative movement, above all in the beneficio. See Hall, El café, p. 165.
86. Ministerio de Agricultura y Oficina del Café, Costos de producción del café en Costa Rica (San José, 1968).
87. Note that there is a fundamental difference between these results and those found by the CIDA studies for agriculture in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru. In these it was shown that, for 1950–60, upon increasing unit size, productivity per unit of area was drastically reduced. “Medium” sized farms were those that used resources most intensively. See Solon L. Barraclough and Arthur L. Domike, “Agrarian Structure in Seven Latin American Countries,” in Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1970), pp. 41–94.
88. See Carlos Merz, “Reflexiones sobre estructura, ritmo y dinámica de la economía de los países de Centroamerica,” Revista del Instituto de Defensa del Café (San José) (enero 1948):475–92.
89. Above all, regular rain when the plant is flowering and dry weather for the harvest. In the Boletín de Fomento (feb. 1911), p. 150, are found statistics for 1854–1910 that show the importance of these factors on coffee harvest volume.
90. See Carolyn Hall, Cóncavas. Formación de una hacienda cafetalera, 1889–1911 (San José: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, 1978); Gertrude Peters Solórzano, “La formación territorial de las grandes fincas de café en la Meseta Central: estudio de la firma Tournon (1877–1955),” (Tesis de grado, Universidad de Costa Rica, 1979).
91. Shortly after we finished this text we had the happy surprise of receiving a draft from Guillermo Flichman and Francisco Garra, “Una vez más acerca del problema de la asignación de recursos en el sector agropecuaro pampeano (o por qué Pergamino no es Iowa),” Buenos Aires, draft for discussion, 1978. Mimeograph. It uses a methodology similar to the one we have proposed. [Now published, along with Francisco Garra, “La programación lineal en agricultura. El modelo ‘PERGAMIN’,” Estudios CEDES 1, no. 4/5 (1979).—Ed.]
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