Industrialization and Import Substitution in Times of the First Batlle's Government and the First World War (Uruguay, 1911-1930)
Until the 1970s, it was a commonplace in economics and historiography to consider that the industrial experience in Uruguay, as in Latin America as a whole, was a post-1929 crisis phenomenon. Since the 1980s, numerous studies have demonstrated the existence and importance of "early industry&quo...
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| Autores principales: | , |
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| Formato: | Artículo publishedVersion |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
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Centro de Estudios de Historia Económica Argentina y Latinoamericana (CEHEAL)
2007
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| Acceso en línea: | https://ojs.economicas.uba.ar/H-ind/article/view/484 https://repositoriouba.sisbi.uba.ar/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.cgi?a=d&c=hindus&d=484_oai |
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| Sumario: | Until the 1970s, it was a commonplace in economics and historiography to consider that the industrial experience in Uruguay, as in Latin America as a whole, was a post-1929 crisis phenomenon. Since the 1980s, numerous studies have demonstrated the existence and importance of "early industry", whose origins date back to the last quarter of the 19th century. This article studies the development of Uruguayan manufacturing industry during the two decades between the beginning of the second presidency of José Batlle y Ordóñez, leader of a political movement that made industrialization one of its main objectives, and the outbreak of the international economic crisis, after passing through the local effects of World War I (WWI) and the postwar crisis. On the one hand, the importance of industrial growth in these years is assessed, evaluating the impact of the war and, especially, of the policies deployed by Batllismo, and on the other hand, the role of import substitution is discussed. Among the main conclusions of the paper it is suggested that, although this was a period of industrial growth, it did not alter the essentially agro-exporting character of the economy; import substitution would have played a minor role in the industrial growth of the period, suggesting that it should be explained by the behavior of the export sector and the domestic market; the international war had an ambivalent effect on the manufacturing industry and the industrialist policies of Batllismo had severe limitations, both in their formulation and in their impact on the economic process.Until the 1970s, it was a commonplace in economics and historiography to consider that the industrial experience in Uruguay, as in Latin America as a whole, was a post-1929 crisis phenomenon. Since the 1980s, numerous studies have demonstrated the existence and importance of "early industry", whose origins date back to the last quarter of the 19th century. This article studies the development of Uruguayan manufacturing industry during the two decades between the beginning of the second presidency of José Batlle y Ordóñez, leader of a political movement that made industrialization one of its main objectives, and the outbreak of the international economic crisis, after passing through the local effects of World War I (WWI) and the postwar crisis. On the one hand, the importance of industrial growth in these years is assessed, evaluating the impact of the war and, especially, of the policies deployed by Batllismo, and on the other hand, the role of import substitution is discussed. Among the main conclusions of the paper it is suggested that, although this was a period of industrial growth, it did not alter the essentially agro-exporting character of the economy; import substitution would have played a minor role in the industrial growth of the period, suggesting that it should be explained by the behavior of the export sector and the domestic market; the international war had an ambivalent effect on the manufacturing industry and the industrialist policies of Batllismo had severe limitations, both in their formulation and in their impact on the economic process. |
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