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D. C. M. Platt: The Anatomy of “Autonomy”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Stanley J. Stein  and
Barbara H. Stein
Stanley J. Stein
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Barbara H. Stein
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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The concept of dependency, Platt asserts, is “scarcely sustainable” because its historical foundation is unconvincing. “Students of chrono-politics (history),” he implies, find unacceptable the notion that “development and expansion” of Western Europe's economy dominated and conditioned that of Latin America since the conquest. The fact that Dos Santos' definition of dependency denies the presence of autonomous development in Latin America is “critical.” Economic autonomy, according to Platt, is the leitmotif of Latin America's evolution, certainly to the close of the nineteenth century, when there “finally awoke metropolitan interest in the neglected periphery.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 1980 , pp. 131 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

The authors thank the editors for the opportunity to dissect Platt's “objections” and to clarify further Latin America's secular relationship to the Atlantic economy. The school of dependency houses students of many persuasions; we happen to have come to our view by “historical analysis” of Spain's eighteenth-century Atlantic empire and of nineteenth-century Latin America—to which we limit our focus in this rejoinder.

References

Notes

1. For the importance of Spanish re-exports of European goods to the American colonies, especially textiles, see Resumen de la balanza del comercio exterior de España en 1792 (Madrid, 1803) and Balanza de comercio de España con los dominios de SM en America en el año de 1792 (Madrid, 1805). Growth of British exports of woolen and cotton textiles to Spanish possessions in and around the Caribbean, 1785–1800, can be discerned in the spurt in exports to the British West Indies registered in E. B. Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697–1808 (Oxford, 1960), p. 67. Moreover, British textiles also flowed to the Spanish colonies as U.S. re-exports to that area. For example, the percentage of domestic exports in total U.S. exports to Spanish America dropped sharply (1803–1808) from 64 to 15 percent and it is reasonable to presume re-exports consisted largely of British textiles. See the suggestive article by J. H. Coatsworth, “American Trade with European Colonies in the Caribbean and South America, 1790–1812,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 24 (Apr. 1967):243–66. The relative position of Spanish imports to re-exports of European manufactures is suggested by Woodbine Parish, Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata … (London, 1839), appendix 11.

2. Parish reported, for example, that over the period 1829–37 “a considerable portion of the articles sent to Chile are intended for the supply of the West coast of Mexico.” Buenos Ayres, p. 415.

3. See references to Spanish balances of trade, note 1.

4. “Of the [silver and gold coin and bullion] importations no Account can be rendered from this Department, the articles in question being by Law being exempted from Entry inwards at the Custom-house.” Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers, 1854 (xxxix), p. 439. Similarly, in the eighteenth century “anyone who pleased might import coin and bullion without making any return of the transaction, and hence no record was kept of the gold and silver brought in.” T. S. Ashton, in Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, p. 7. One must recall that the English East India Company's annual deficit on merchandise balance with China, until British merchants pushed opium into that country, was covered by “[Spanish] American silver currency originally brought to China by the East India Company.” See Frederic E. Wakeman's contribution in D. Twitchett and J. K. Fairbanks, eds., Cambridge History of China 10 (1978), p. 164.

5. See note 11.

6. In the following table, “Foreign West Indies” are considered a Latin American destination since Cuba and Puerto Rico were the principal importers. Latin America received 86.5 percent of the value of U.S. imports of British domestic exports, 1820–49 —by no means insignificant.

British Domestic Exports by Destination, 1820–1848 (£000,000)
Central & South Am. Brazil Foreign W. Indies Total U.S. (Platt) Brazil & Spanish Am.
1820–29 42.8 9.4 52.2 57.9
1830–39 49.0 11.5 60.5 79.2 43.4 (1831–39)
1840–49 49.6 10.7 60.3 63.3 51.5
Total 173.0 200.4

Sources: A. D. Gayer, W. W. Rostow, and A. J. Schwartz, The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790–1850, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1953), 1:182, 215, 251, 282, 314; D. C. M. Platt, “Further Objections to an ‘Imperialism of Free Trade.‘” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 36 (Feb., 1973):91, appendix. Platt's “Spanish America” includes Buenos Aires, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Montevideo, Peru, and Venezuela.

Sources: A. D. Gayer, W. W. Rostow, and A. J. Schwartz, The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790–1850, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1953), 1:182, 215, 251, 282, 314; D. C. M. Platt, “Further Objections to an ‘Imperialism of Free Trade.‘” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 36 (Feb., 1973):91, appendix. Platt's “Spanish America” includes Buenos Aires, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Montevideo, Peru, and Venezuela.

7. Gayer et al., British Economy 2:783.

8. United Kingdom Cotton (Piece) Goods Exports to Principal Destinations, Selected Years (000,000 yds.)

1820 1830 1840 1850 1860
Yds. % Yds. % Yds. % Yds. % Yds. %
America* (except
U.S.) 56.0 22.3 140.8 31.6 278.6 35.2 360.4 26.5 527.1 19.7
U.S. 23.8 9.4 49.3 11.6 32.1 4.0 104.2 7.6 226.8 8.4
Europe 127.7 50.9 137.4 30.9 200.4 25.3 222.1 16.3 200.5 7.4
Total 250.9 100 444.6 100 790.6 100 1358.2 100 2676.2 100

Source: Thomas Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain [1886] (New York, 1968), pp. 63–64.

*Most so destined, one may assume, went to Latin America.

Source: Thomas Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain [1886] (New York, 1968), pp. 63–64.

*Most so destined, one may assume, went to Latin America.

9. Britain's trade with Argentina is suggested by the following:

Trade of the Rio de la Plata with Great Britain, 1831–40: 5 Year Average Annual Volume or Value
Exports Imports
Years Hides (no.) Wool (lbs.) Cottons (Yds.) Woolens (£s)
1831–35 107.664 462.340 14.006.422 111.813
1849–53 270.308 2.674.341 31.549.624 281.985

Source: Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1842 (xxxix), p. 375; 1854–55 (Lii).

Source: Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1842 (xxxix), p. 375; 1854–55 (Lii).

10. Commenting on the extraordinary upsurge in Argentine wool exports, 1830–37, Parish credited the “intelligent foreigners [who] introduce and cultivate a better breed. … Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Harratt are the individuals to whom Buenos Ayres is principally indebted for this new source of wealth” (Buenos Ayres, pp. 358–59). According to Frank Safford, British residents in New Granada had a similarly innovating effect in promoting tobacco and coffee for export. “Commerce and Enterprise in Central Colombia, 1821–1870” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1965), pp. 187–200, 300.

11. There is a steady rise in Mexican silver coinage and a fluctuating level of precious metals exports over the period 1825–49. The export level, 1845–49, was depressed by the U.S. war with Mexico.

Years Silver Coined 5-Year Annual Averages (mill. ps) Silver/Gold Exports 5-Year Annual Averages (mill. ps)
1825–29 9.2 8.7
1830–34 11.3 10.7
1835–39 11.5 7.4
1840–44 12.4 9.7
1845–49 15.6 7.7

Sources: A. Soetbeer, Edelmetall-produktion und werthverhältniss zwischen gold und silver … (Gotha, 1874), p. 55; M. Lerdo de Tejada, Comercio exterior de México desde la conquista hasta hoy (1853) (México: Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior, 1967), documento no. 52.

Sources: A. Soetbeer, Edelmetall-produktion und werthverhältniss zwischen gold und silver … (Gotha, 1874), p. 55; M. Lerdo de Tejada, Comercio exterior de México desde la conquista hasta hoy (1853) (México: Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior, 1967), documento no. 52.

12. Ines Herrera Canales, El comercio exterior de México, 1821–1875 (México, 1977), p. 60.

13. That Latin America's lower classes had long been a prime market for British cottons is clear from contemporary mercantile records as well as recent research. Cf. Herrera Canales, Comercio, pp. 26, 34, 113 and Safford, “Commerce and Enterprise,” pp. 191, 240.

14. Laura Randall, A Comparative Economic History of Latin America, 1500–1914. I. Mexico (Ann Arbor, 1977), p. 237.

15. In addition to Safford's “Commerce and Enterprise,” see his The Idea of the Practical: Colombia's Struggle to Form a Technical Elite (Austin, 1976) and his “Trade (1810–1940),” in Helen Delpar, ed., Encyclopedia of Latin America (New York, 1974), pp. 589–92.

16. “On Paradigms and the Pursuit of the Practical: A Response,” LARR 13, no. 2 (1978):253–55.

17. For example, R. M. Ortiz, Historia económica de la Argentina, 1850–1930, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1955); M. Burgin, Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism (Cambridge, 1947); H. Giberti, Historia económica de la ganadería argentina (Buenos Aires, 1954); T. Halperin Donghi, “La expansión ganadera en la campana de Buenos Aires,” Desarrollo económico 3 (1963):57ff, and his Historia Argentina. De la revolución de independencia a la confederación rosista (Buenos Aires, 1972); J. Fodor y Arturo O'Connell, “La Argentina y la economía atlántica en la primera mitad del siglo xix,” Desarrollo económico 13 (1973):3ff; E. Gallo and R. Cortés Conde, Historia argentina. La república conservadora (Buenos Aires, 1972); J. R. Scobie, Buenos Aires. Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910 (New York, 1974). On railroads, A. Bunge, Ferrocarriles argentinos. Contribución al estudio del patrimonio nacional (Buenos Aires, 1918); R. M. Ortiz, El ferrocarril en la economía argentina, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires, 1956); H. J. Cuccorese, Historia de los ferrocarriles en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1969).

18. Paul B. Goodwin, Jr., “The Central Argentine Railway and the Economic Development of Argentina, 1854–1881,” Hispanic American Historical Review 57, no. 4 (1977): 618–19. As Scobie has put it, “The building of railroads responded largely to the potential for carrying hides, wool and grains. … In 1862, for example, a group of British residents in Buenos Aires formed the Southern Railroad to serve the sheep- and cattle-growing zones.” British investors were obviously thinking of exports. Buenos Aires, p. 92.

19. D. C. M. Platt, Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914 (London, 1972).

20. “After independence, an irresistible flood of British goods. … Local industries were ‘destroyed,’ and British traders and manufacturers consolidated a … monopoly over a significant import trade … the years of Britain's ‘hegemony’ of the ‘imperialism of Free Trade’.” Platt, Latin American and British Trade, p. 312.

21. D. C. M. Platt, Finance, Trade and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914 (Oxford, 1968), p. 308.

22. Ibid., pp. 76–77.

23. Ibid., pp. 83–84.

24. Ibid., pp. 76, 308.

25. Ibid., p. 312.

26. Ibid., p. 41. On the same page Platt, ironically, perceived that while “the rule was no ‘official’ or ‘authoritative’ intervention … ‘good offices’ of British diplomatists … must have been difficult indeed to distinguish from unqualified diplomatic intervention.”

27. Platt, Latin America and British Trade, pp. 3–4.

28. “Further Objections to an ‘Imperialism of Free Trade,‘” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 36 (1968): 87 and passim.

29. It is an irony of Britain's imperial fate that Ronald Robinson, co-author of the concept of the imperialism of free trade to describe Britain's mid-Victorian hegemony in Latin America and elsewhere—and prime target of Platt's efforts to disprove that concept—could write in 1972 that the “collaborative mechanism … worked constructively so that these colonies [South Africa and Latin America] eventually ‘took off’” and by mid-twentieth century “the collaborative system had done its work; for the white excolonies—the United States and Latin America [!], together with the British ‘dominions’—had become expansive in their own right in pursuit of their own ‘manifest destiny.’” R. Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration,” in W. R. Louis, ed., Imperialism: The Robinson and Gallagher Controversy (New York, 1976), p. 136.