Argentina: A Short History

Introduction

During the greater parts of the colonial period, the region that would become Argentina was regarded as a poor, far-flung part of the Spanish empire. The Río de la Plata failed to live up to the promise of the name bestowed upon it by the conquistadores. If precious metals – and a compliant workforce – were regarded as the principal sources of wealth elsewhere in Spanish America, here there was no silver and precious few people – and those encountered by colonial administrators and would-be settlers were anything but malleable. Spanish control was tenuous in the extreme. Another misnomer was the title conferred on the city – La Ciudad de Nuestra Señora Santa María de Buen Aire. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Buenos Aires was a malodorous township located close to tidal mudflats, surrounded by the slaughtering pens of meat-salting and tallow-rendering plant. From these unpromising beginnings a city and a nation would emerge. By the early twentieth century, Argentina was the tenth largest trading economy in the world, a success story of national consolidation and political–economic progress, while Buenos Aires was being described as the ‘Paris of South America’. The city had become one of the great capital cities of the world – a vibrant opulent metropolis boasting fine public parks, grand avenues, and a modern infrastructure. According to the popular cliché, the country had been made by British gold, Italian blood, and French culture, with a residual patina of Spanish sensibilities.

The second largest country in South America after Brazil, Argentina comprises a little over one million square miles (2.7 million square kilometres). It is about one-third the size of continental USA (that is, slightly larger than the part that lies to the east of the Mississippi) or similar to Western Europe. Located in the south-east corner of the continent, lying between 21° 40' and 55° 18' south and 53° 38' and 73° 25' west, nearly the whole of the republic is situated in the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, though due to the sheer size of the country there are considerable variations in climate and topography. Argentina shares land frontiers with Chile in the west, Bolivia and Paraguay in the north, and Brazil in the north-east. Uruguay lies across the River Plate estuary to the east.

Conventionally, the country is divided into four geographical zones: the Andes, the north, the pampas, and Patagonia. The north is sometimes further sub-divided: the Andean north (broadly the provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Tucumán, Catamarca, and La Rioja); the Chaco (Formosa, Chaco, and Santiago del Estero); Mesopotamia (Misiones, Corrientes, and Entre Ríos). The north-west (like the far west) is dominated by the Andean chains (cordilleras), and shares many characteristics with the high, arid, cold puna of Peru and Bolivia. However, running down towards the north-east, the sub-tropical Chaco is flatter. It is a region of high rainfall and rolling forest drained by the rivers Bermejo and Paraguay. Lying immediately south-east of the Chaco, and west of Brazil, is Argentine Mesopotamia, an extension of the Paraná plateau. Situated between the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, this area also comprises well-watered rolling country, the more densely forested north giving way to open grassland in the south. Agriculture and the processing of agricultural commodities are the principal economic activities of Mesopotamia. Logging predominates in the Chaco, though tobacco and cotton are also grown. The north-west is rapidly developing as a centre of mining and energy production with large reserves of oil and natural gas. Extractive operations are now displacing more traditional activities like distilling and cane-sugar and livestock production. Historically, the north was the demographic centre of the country. The north-west was settled first by the Incas and subsequently included some of the earliest cities established in the region during the colonial period. Nomadic forest-based Amerindian cultures predominated in the Chaco and northern Mesopotamia. This was the area where the Jesuits established the first Guaraní missions. During the latter part of the seventeenth century and until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1768, the Guaraní reducciones functioned virtually as a self-contained theocracy.

The pampas (a term derived from bamba, the Qechua for upland meadow) constitute the principal physical feature of the central region of the country. Flat and featureless, but hugely fertile, the pampas extend westwards from the city of Buenos Aires for a radius of approximately 400 miles. Beyond this arc, over the next two hundred miles or so, the prairies gradually give way to the foothills of the Andes. Yet, with the exception of the Córdoba hills, much of this extension of the true pampa stands hardly more than a few hundred feet above sea level. The southern part of the pampas, the pampa húmeda, normally enjoys good rainfall even though there are few rivers of any importance. Similarly fertile, the northern districts of the pampa seca are drier. The province of Buenos Aires lies almost entirely within the humid pampa, though the neighbouring province of La Pampa is drier. The dividing line between the humid and dry pampa runs broadly from east to west-north-west through the provinces of Santa Fé and Córdoba. The pampas represent the economic, demographic and political heartland of the country. The province of Buenos Aires and the federal capital are respectively the first and second most important electoral districts, accounting for approximately two-thirds of voters. The region also accounts for a disproportionately large share of agricultural production and industrial output. Until the eighteenth seventeenth century, nomadic tribes held sway in the central pampas. They had domesticated horses, abandoned with the failure of the first efforts to colonise Buenos Aires between 1536 and 1541, and complemented their traditional diet and patterns of activity by hunting cattle, similarly abandoned. The basis of the gaucho society had already been formed by the end of the seventeenth century. Hitherto depicted as an empty (that is unsettled) ‘desert’, the region was transformed between the 1880s and 1920s. Massive immigration from Europe (notably Italy and Spain), foreign investment and the export of temperate agricultural commodities ‘made the pampas’. The area of pampean land under cultivation doubled during the late nineteenth century and again during the period immediately before the First World War. The systematic exploitation of pampean resources dates from the nineteenth century, but the region had become an important source of exports of hides, dried-salted meat, grease and tallow by the eighteenth century. At that time, production was informally organised on the basis of the irregular hunting expeditions – vaquerias – licensed by the Crown to ‘crop’ herds of wild horses and cattle that roamed the prairies. During the colonial period, established estancias, largely devoted to the breeding of mules and draught animals for the silver mines of Upper Peru (Bolivia), tended to be found in Uruguay and Córdoba, and in the valleys of the north-west, not in the pampas adjacent to Buenos Aires. By the 1840s, ‘colonial commodities’ like hides and tallow – the traditional frutos del país – were being complemented by ‘modern’ exports such as wool. Later still, the production–export schedule would include cereals (wheat, corn and linseed) and meat (canned meat and exports on the hoof being displaced by higher valued-added frozen and chilled meat around the First World War). Between the 1870s and the 1920s, the value of overseas trade per capita – largely commodities produced in the central pampas, southern Mesopotamia and Patagonian sheep stations – increased virtually four-fold.

Wind-swept Patagonia is made up of five provinces: Neuquén (in the north-west of the region), Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego. Islands in the South Atlantic, along with Antarctic territory, claimed by Argentina are also formally included in Patagonia. Northern regions of Patagonia are drier and warmer. The south is windier, and – during the antipodean winter – bitterly cold. The east is generally wetter than the west, though districts in the western cordilleras, particularly in the north, are watered by snow-fed rivers that rise in the Andes. The Andes dominate the west of the country, extending from the far south to the north. Agriculturally, Northern Patagonia is largely given over to fruit production and mixed farming. Further south, sheep runs predominate. Tourism in resorts of the Andean lake district – and eco-tourism in the far south – is also significant. The region contains important oil reserves: national petroleum production dates from the discovery of deposits around Comodoro Rivadavia at the beginning of the twentieth century – and various minerals.

The Argentine Andes contain the highest peaks in South America: Aconcagua, 23,000 feet, and Tupungato, 22,000 feet. Cuyo (comprising the provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luís, more properly an extension of the western pampa) is the most densely settled region of the Andes and Andean foothills. The area includes some of the most prosperous non-pampean provinces and some early centres of colonial settlement. The irrigated districts of Cuyo are among the most productive in the republic. Historically, a centre of wine production and ranching, parts of the region are now diversifying, growing a broad range of commodities for the national and international markets. Particularly in Mendoza, this process is aided by the development of hydro-electricity and improvements in communications with other parts of the republic and neighbouring countries.

Notwithstanding the predominant importance of the natural endowments of the pampas, Argentina boasts an ability to exploit a wide range of resources. It has, and is developing the capacity to satisfy domestic energy needs and become an important exporter of a wide range of energy products, including gas and electricity. The cordilleras contain deposits of exploitable minerals: even today the full extent of these resources remains imperfectly understood. And, although there are regions of agricultural specialisation, such as hard fruit production in Neuquén, citrus and stone fruit in Mesopotamia, and cereals and pasture in the central pampas, much of the agricultural land of the republic has the innate capacity to produce a very wide range of temperate commodities. The actual and potential comparative advantage of the pampas is enormous – not least in terms of a ‘green premium’, the ability to realise high yields without the use of chemicals and artificial additives. The ability to exploit this natural wealth has, critically, depended on a number of inter-related factors: an efficient infrastructure; the political capacity to deliver a stable environ-ment for growth; and an appropriate international trade regime.

The demographic (and economic) centre of gravity of Argentina shifted dramatically following Independence from Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Spanish power in the Americas rested on silver. Hence it was hardly surprising that before the establishment of the Río de la Plata viceroyalty the economic as well as the administrative focus of the territories of south-eastern Spanish America were centred on the Andean plateau and coastal region. Until the late eighteenth century the River Plate was subject to the authority of Lima, the capital of the viceroyalty of New Castile. The largest city in the New World by the early seventeenth century, the mining camps located around Potosí (Bolivia) were an important market for livestock, agricultural products and manufactures – regionally produced and imported. The mining camps bought in mules, cattle and leather goods from Uruguay and Córdoba. The north-west and Cuyo provided pasture for animals, to be fattened before the last stages of the long trek from the coast to the mines, and produced a range of artisan manufactures – woollen ponchos and other textiles, pottery, wine and spirits, sugar and preserves, and wooden artifacts. From Buenos Aires came contraband. Silver funded the colonial administration, generated huge personal fortunes and served as a circulating medium. Even with the exhaustion of the early mines, the Andean region remained the focal point of the region. This was ensured by the opening up of new mines in present-day Peru and the unrelenting colonial mercantilist commercial order that prohibited direct trade from Buenos Aires. Overseas commerce was required to be conducted through the Iberian peninsula (Seville and subsequently Cádiz) via Lima, Callao and the Isthmus, and Havana. Not only was the north-west and Cuyo the principal region of settlement, but these areas retained strong commercial and financial links with Bolivia and Chile until the late nineteenth century. Buenos Aires, with its back to the Atlantic and virtually surrounded by the ‘desert’ was a far-flung outpost, surviving on fiscal transfers from the Lima treasury, primitive farming and ranching, and contraband. During the mid- eighteenth century, smuggling was probably the principal economic activity of Buenos Aires, certainly the most lucrative. No longer a backwater of Empire, it was the back door into the Spanish Empire in South America for North Atlantic merchants who sought to trade directly with the River Plate or consign goods via Brazil. By the time the new viceroyalty was created, illicit commerce was probably as valuable as legal trade – a silver sink draining bullion and specie to Britain, the Netherlands, France and elsewhere.

Refounded in 1580, the city of Buenos Aires formed part of the Charcas region of the viceroyalty of Peru. Administrative dependence on Lima determined the economic physiognomy and political raison d’être of the area until late in the eighteenth century. The settlement was devised to defend the weak underbelly of empire. Although smuggling grew apace in the eighteenth century, the theory – and much of the substance – of colonial mercantilism and imperial monopoly remained intact until the onset of the struggle for Independence. The status, structure and importance of the region changed with the formation of the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776. Nevertheless, the indian frontier remained perilously close to the city – barely thirty miles away – and the existence of the viceroyalty was repeatedly threatened by Portuguese ambitions in Uruguay and Paraguay. Views about the potential of the region were, however, beginning to change even before the 1776 administrative reforms. The fertility of the pampas was recognised as a source of power and wealth, notwithstanding the tyranny of distance and poor means of communications. The establishment of the new viceroyalty was but one element in a series of administrative, financial and commercial reforms designed to revitalise Spanish imperial power in the Americas.

The main institutions of colonial rule were the Crown, the Church, the Army, and the Merchant Council or Guild (consulado). Centred on Lima, the administrative and judicial system was composed of a hierarchy of officials subject to the Council of the Indies based in Seville. For most of the period from the mid-sixteenth century until the late eighteenth, Argentina lay within the Audiencia de Charcas. Charcas was the name of both the audiencia, a sub-division of the viceroyalty of New Castile, and its administrative centre – the city is now known as Sucre. Civil, military and ecclesiastical authority conformed to the same arrangement, subject to Lima, Seville and, ultimately, the Crown in Madrid. Within this jurisdiction, cities such as Asunción, Córdoba (seat of the first university in the country, established in 1622), Salta, Santiago del Estero (the oldest permanent settlement), Tucumán (site of the 1816–20 Congress that declared Independence and drafted the first national Constitution), and Santiago de Chile were administratively and economically more important than Buenos Aires for much of the pre-eighteenth century period. The rise to prominence of Buenos Aires, however, was confirmed with the formation of the viceroyalty of the River Plate. The territory of present-day Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, parts of Chile, as well as Argentina itself, now became subject to Buenos Aires. Designed to strengthen peninsula authority in the Americas, the formation of new viceroyalties was part of a series of measures, known as the Bourbon Reforms, which were launched in the last third of the eighteenth century. In addition to administrative reorganisation, measures such as ‘imperial free trade’ (comercio libre) were enacted. There was, too, some easing of race-based social restrictions – the petit apartheid of empire. Colonial society was categorised largely along ethnic lines: status, occupation and dress were determined by race and established in law. Social degrees ranged from peninsula-born whites (peninsulares), to whites born in the Americas (criollos), through a whole gradation of mixed races – mestizo (mixed indian/white parentage), pardo (black/white), zambo (black/indian) and many more – to liberated blacks. Slaves, of course, were chattels. Community indians (repúblicas de indias) were protected subjects of the Crown – at least in theory, their lives governed by a distinct code.

Influenced by the needs of imperial defence and metropolitan regeneration, administrative reform and new commercial and fiscal arrangements were devised to reactivate a stagnating colonial economy and to promote a flow of treasure to Spain. In some areas, the reforms were held to be responsible for the revival of mining, economic diversification and growth. Tighter administration certainly enhanced the fiscal return on empire. In the medium term, economic growth and greater Spanish control promoted a surge in the flow of tax revenue to the peninsula. However, closer supervision from Madrid and making the empire pay for its own defence offended creole sensibilities, as did the easing of socio–ethnic restrictions. Similarly, economic revival in some areas, growth in others and the piecemeal ‘liberalisation’ of trade disturbed old alliances and vested interests. In the long-run the Bourbon administrative and financial reforms destabilised the ‘imperial compact’, contributing to demands for greater local autonomy and, subsequently, independence – particularly in regions such as the River Plate where the direct influence of metropolitan government had been softened by distance and a capacity to ‘negotiate’ with and through intervening layers of authority. The new commercial regime, which overturned the mercantilist order, challenged the position of interests that had benefited from – and supported – royal authority while generating opportunities for new groups historically less dependent on the imperial connection. Some of these were merchant–landowners, many of whom had engaged in smuggling. They had grown accustomed to flexible personal relations with long-serving colonial officials responsive to local needs and were most likely to be antagonised by the more robust application of imperial edict favoured by post-Bourbon Reform bureaucrats drafted in from Spain.

If the Bourbon Reforms both strengthened imperial control (albeit at the expense of destroying some powerful colonial institutions) and fostered resentment, the immediate causes of Independence were triggered by events in the peninsula and global power conflicts, namely the British invasions of the River Plate in 1806 and 1807 and the Napoleonic conquest of Spain in 1807–8. With the collapse of legitimate power, patriotic juntas sprang up in the River Plate, as elsewhere in Spanish America. The juntas rejected the authority of Joseph Bonaparte, now installed as king in Madrid, and swore a tenuous allegiance to the House of Bourbon. In the case of the Buenos Aires junta, ‘national’ sentiments and aspirations had previously been strengthened by the successful expulsion of British expeditionary forces. In July 1806, returning to Great Britain following a successful expedition to Cape Town, Commodore Sir Home Popham landed a force of around 1500 regular troops under the command of General William Carr Beresford at Quilmes, some miles to the south of the city of Buenos Aires. After a two-day march, Beresford took the city with hardly a shot being fired, Viceroy Rafael de Sobre Monte having already abandoned the fort, fleeing with the Spanish garrison to Córdoba from where he expected to regroup and launch a counter-attack. Popham’s action remains a matter of dispute. Formally, it was unauthorised, though there is suspicion that he may not have been discouraged from engaging in opportunistic action in South America, notably the River Plate. The manoeuvre may also have owed something to the activities of South American agents such as Francisco de Miranda in London. Soon-to-be patriots, precursors of independence such as Miranda, played a shadowy game of intrigue where expectation was all and substance questionable. They cultivated commercial and political interests in London, claiming that South America was ripe for revolution. A suitable military gesture would be all that was required to deliver an uprising by creole forces who were anxious to throw off the yoke of Spanish tyranny. Enlightened creoles, it was argued, were keen to embrace modern ideas of political and economic organisation espoused by Britain. Experiencing a sharp contraction in overseas trade as the result of the Napoleonic Continental System that closed European markets to British goods, merchant and financial interests in London were well disposed to the ideas peddled by Miranda and applauded the action of Popham. They were inclined to view Buenos Aires as a potential Cape Town – a strongpoint that could be readily secured as a British base from which trade could be conducted with an extensive, prosperous hinterland. The wealth of the region was apparently demonstrated by the quantity of silver plundered from the viceregal treasury by Popham. Even if it had initially been ill-disposed, popular and commercial pressure forced the British government of the day to send an expeditionary force, under the command of Major General John Whitelocke, to reinforce Beresford.

Even before Popham had reached London, the expectations of Miranda and his ilk had been confounded by events in Buenos Aires. Although Beresford’s entry into the city of Buenos Aires had been largely unopposed, British forces were hardly greeted as a liberating army; possibly they had come to occupy, not to liberate. By the middle of August 1806, Beresford’s position had become untenable. He was opposed by regular forces from Montevideo commanded by Santiago de Liniers, the senior colonial military official in the absence of the viceroy, that had slipped through Royal Navy patrols, the Buenos Aires urban militia (composed of Spanish civilians and the patricios – a creole company formed for the occasion), and gauchos raised by Juan Martín de Pueyrredón, sometime criollo official in the colonial administration. The assault – the reconquista – was swift and dramatic. After a two-day bombardment, the British surrendered and were interned in Luján. The omens were not auspicious for the establishment of a commercial beachhead in South America. A couple of days after Beresford’s surrender, an ‘open meeting’ (cabildo abierto) was declared in the city of Buenos Aires. The assembled peninsula and creole notables, composed of landowners, merchants, clerics and officials, conferred overall military command on Liniers who made ready for the anticipated British counter-attack. By February 1807, British forces remaining in the River Plate were firmly dug in across the river in Montevideo, awaiting the arrival of Whitelocke and some 10,000 war-hardened veterans. Whitelocke began the assault on the city in July. Possibly failing to recognise the determination and preparedness of his foe, he committed the strategic error of making a frontal attack. The gridiron layout of the city gave the defenders a considerable advantage. Virtually every house in the centre was fortified. Densely packed together in the straight narrow streets, the invaders were exposed to withering crossfire from roof-top marksmen who enjoyed a clear line of view. Unable, or unwilling, to use artillery, the British forces were reduced to a block-by-block slog. Almost one-third of Whitelocke’s troops were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. He accepted Linier’s offer of a truce. British forces were evacuated to Montevideo which was then abandoned as Whitelocke sailed for London, to face court martial and disgrace.

The British invasions of 1806 and 1807 were pivotal events in Argentine national political history. La defensa and la reconquista forged a sense of civic pride and self-confidence, if not the nation itself. The critical factor was that residents of Buenos Aires (porteños) had organised their own defence, unaided by the colonial power. Seasoned foreign troops had been defeated largely by the urban militia and peasant irregulars. Strategic and political decisions had been taken by local actors without reference to Madrid and with hardly any intervention from Viceroy Sobre Monte, the discredited representative of peninsula authority who had conducted an ineffective campaign in the interior. The cabildo abierto had provided a forum to air views about the political future of the region, allowing distinct positions to coalesce. Disagreement among the Spanish administrative and commercial communities allowed ‘Americans’ to seize the initiative, although outright Independence remained the project of a relatively small minority. In one other respect the British invasions of Buenos Aires and Montevideo were fundamental. Briefly, the ports were opened. While the porteños elite rejected British political and military aspiration for the River Plate, the demonstration effect of free trade was telling. As elsewhere in Latin America, the opening of the ports highlighted the real and opportunity costs of Iberian mercantilist monopoly and illegal trade. Inevitably, comercio libre and metropolitan claims to ascendancy rooted in historic legitimacy and imperial defence were now seen in a considerably different light by criollos of many classes.

These sentiments were intensified with the French invasion of Iberia, the rapid defeat of Spanish forces and the disintegration of Bourbon authority with the abdications of, first, Carlos IV and then Ferdinando VII, his son. Liniers, who was French by birth and now confirmed as viceroy by the cabildo, made the mistake of receiving Bonaparte’s emissaries, although declaring in favour of Fernando VII. News from Spain and the arrival of French and patriot representatives from the peninsula resulted in confusion in the River Plate. Who had the best claim to authority in the Americas: Joseph Bonaparte, upstart King of Spain; the patriotic juntas that had sprung up across the peninsula and who were formally pledged to the Bourbons; existing representatives of imperial power; or creole notables? Protesting loyalty to Spain in mid 1808, Montevideo broke with Buenos Aires. In 1809 there were revolts against Spanish rule in Upper Peru. By 1810, news that the last patriotic junta in Spain had been crushed by the French led to the establishment of an autonomous administration in the River Plate. This was the May Revolution.

Amidst the chaos of the final collapse of Bourbon legitimacy in Spain, there was some confusion about the ultimate course to be taken in Buenos Aires. Would the cabildo abierto declare in favour of Ferdinando VII, seeking to establish a monarchy in the Americas, or adopt the radical, popular course of Independence? Most of the provinces sent representatives to Buenos Aires to participate in these deliberations, though Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay went their separate ways, notwithstanding strenuous military efforts by segments of the porteño elite to preserve the territorial integrity of the viceroyalty. By 1815, with Ferdinando VII restored to the Spanish throne, Independence was viewed as the only option and formally declared in July 1816, confirming deliberations taken at the Constituent Congress of Tucumán. The Revolution of May 1810, which grew out of the crisis of legitimate authority in the peninsula, was the only movement of its kind in Spanish America not to be suppressed – even temporarily – by royalist forces. From the May Revolution would emerge the liberal aspirations of constitutionalism, republicanism and popular representation. These concepts, however, had to confront, and contend with, the reality of military strongmen (caudillos) associated with the struggles for Independence and the chaos of the immediate post-Independence decades, positivism of the late nineteenth century, and populism and authoritarianism in the twentieth century.

Ordering the nation proved more difficult than declaring Independence as, indeed, determining an appropriate name for the country. Echoing the designation of the viceroyalty, the United Provinces of the River Plate, favoured in May 1810, proved to be something of a misnomer as the region balkanised. Although the term ‘República Argentina’ first appears in the 1826 Constitution, ‘Nación Argentina’ was used no less frequently. By the 1850s, when Buenos Aires seceded from the other provinces and maintained a separate sovereignty from 1853 to 1862, reference was increasingly made to the ‘Confederación Argentina’. Only since the 1880s has the country been known consistently as the Argentine Republic. The 1854 Constitution – which remained in force until 1995, except briefly from 1949 to 1955 when the ‘Peronist Constitution’ (‘Constitución Justicialista’) applied – envisaged a federal entity, modelled largely on US arrangements, save that the executive enjoyed, formally and actually, substantially more authority than the provinces and the legislative and judicial powers. The 1854 arrangement also determined the political map for almost a century. Some fourteen provinces made up the republic. In addition, there were the national territories. Until the so-called desert campaign of 1878–79 in Patagonia, most of the national territories lay in the north – El Chaco, Formosa, Misiones, and Los Andes (created in 1910 following the resolution of a border dispute with Bolivia and Chile). The southern national territories – La Pampa, Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego – were organised in the 1880s, after the ‘Desert War’. Most of the national territories acquired the status of provinces in the 1940s and 1950s. The exceptions were Los Andes, which was divided among neighbouring provinces, and Tierra del Fuego, which remained a national territory until the 1980s. The other major administrative reorganisation was the federalisation of the city of Buenos Aires in 1880 and the effective conferment of provincial status on the government of the federal capital in the 1995 Constitution.

As a sovereign entity, Argentina has existed for less than two centuries: the bicentenary of Independence will be celebrated in 2010. The economic and political organisation of the republic date largely from the 1880s, as does the modern demographic profile of the country. Indeed, current social and economic organisations are rooted principally in the structural changes that took place during and after the 1880s. The effective occupation of what was to become national economic space did not occur until after the 1870s. Only with the ‘conquest’ of Patagonia in 1878–9, were the current political frontiers of the country established, notwithstanding disputes with Chile in the 1880s, around the turn of the twentieth century, and the 1980s (and the unresolved issue of the sovereignty of South Atlantic islands and Antarctic territories). The principal administrative and political institutions all assumed a recognisable modern form in this period, albeit shaped by events and ideas deriving from the colonial period and influenced by the struggles for Independence and national consolidation from the revolution of 1810.