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Informal Empire in Argentina: an Alternative View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

A. G. Hopkins
A. G. Hopkins
Affiliation:
Professor of International History atthe Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva.
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Extract

Andrew Thompson's review of the long-running debate on informal empire will be welcomed both by specialists, who need to be reminded from time to time that many trees do sometimes make a forest, and by teachers, who need help in guiding their students through both. The comments that follow are therefore offered in a constructive spirit that is wholly in accord with Thompson's purpose in trying to take hold of a notoriously slippery concept. My aim in citing his work is to identify the batch of established arguments that his essay faithfully represents. The intention is to move the debate forward: the temptation to readvertise familiar positions will be avoided as far as is possible; the risk of drowning the argument in an excess of detail is removed by limitations of space.

Type
Commentary
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , May 1994 , pp. 469 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 ‘Informal Empire? An Exploration in the History of Anglo-Argentine Relations, 1810–1914’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 24 (1992), pp. 419–36.

2 References to Platt and to the debate in general can be found in two valuable compilations: Louis, Wm. Roger (ed.), Imperialism: The Gallagher and Robinson Controversy (New York, 1976)Google Scholar, and Jones, Stuart (ed.), Economic Interpretations of Nineteenth-Century Imperialism, special issue of the South African Journal of Economic History, vol. 7 (1992)Google Scholar.

3 Thompson, ‘Informal Empire?’, p. 425.

4 Ibid., p. 430.

5 Ibid., p. 425.

6 Ibid., p. 426.

7 Jones, Charles, ‘”Business Imperialism” and Argentina, 1875–1900: A Theoretical Note’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 12 (1980), p. 437CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Curiously, Thompson makes no reference to this article.

8 Thompson, ‘Informal Empire?’, p. 426.

9 Ibid., p. 427.

10 Ibid., p. 428.

ll Ibid., p. 428.

12 Ibid., p. 426.

13 Ibid., p. 426.

14 See, for example, Ferns, H. S., Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1960), pp. 69, 108–9Google Scholar; Gravil, Roger, The Anglo-Argentine Connection, 1900–1930 (Boulder, Col., 1985), pp. 24–7Google Scholar; Marichal, C., A Century of Debt Crises in Latin America: From Independence to the Great Depression, 1820–1930 (Princeton, N.J., 1989), p. 161Google Scholar.

15 Thompson, ‘Informal Empire?’, p. 427.

I6 Ibid., pp. 428–9.

17 Ferns, H. S., ‘The Baring Crisis Revisited’, journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 24 (1992), pp. 241–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Thompson, ‘Informal Empire?’, p. 428.

19 Ibid., p. 429.

20 Ibid., p. 429.

21 Robinson, Ronald, ‘Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration’, in Owen, Roger and Sutcliffe, Bob (eds.), Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London, 1972), pp. 117–40Google Scholar.

22 Thompson, ‘Informal Empire?’, p. 435.

23 Ibid., pp. 429–30.

24 Ibid., pp. 419–20.

25 Ibid., pp. 427, 429.

26 Ibid., p. 435.

27 I hope it will be clear that here and throughout I am referring to what 1 shall call the simple dependency thesis, which also seems to be Thompson's principal frame of reference. I am aware of the ‘new dependency thesis’ and other sophisticated versions, which ought to be distinguished from the popular, Frankean statement. However, the emphasis is justified in the present context because the simple version has penetrated the corpus of historians to a degree unmatched by other, inevitably more complex, offerings. For one of a number of helpful guides see O'Brien, Philip J., ‘Dependency Revisited’, in Abel, Christopher and Lewis, Colin (eds.), Latin America, Economic Imperialism and the State (1985), pp. 40–69Google Scholar.

28 Thompson, ‘Informal Empire?’, p. 429.

29 Ibid., pp. 430–4.

30 Gallagher and Robinson also allowed for the possibility of coercion as well as collaboration. In such cases, however, ‘housebreaking’ would be followed (in Gallagher and Robinson's view) by the creation of collaborators drawn from local elites.

31 Ibid., p. 422.

32 Ibid., pp. 424, 430.

33 Ibid., p. 424.

34 Among other things, of course. One obvious addition, worth noting at this point, is that imperialism has an integrative function. Evidently, this is not true of all cases where the exertion of external power by one state diminishes the sovereignty of another.

35 Initially in Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, Conn., 1961)Google Scholar. For an urbane but also learned survey see Nye, Joseph S., ‘The Changing Nature of World Power’, Political Science Quarterly vol. 105 (1990), pp. 177–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Nye, ‘The Changing Nature of World Power’, refers to this as ‘co-optive power’ (p. 181).

37 Strange, Susan, States and Markets (London, 1988)Google Scholar, Ch. 2. Thompson (‘Informal Empire?’, p. 434, n. 38) also refers to this study but does not incorporate it into his analysis.

38 Specialists will have noted the difference between this use of the term structural and that favoured by neo-realists.

39 This is the focus adopted by Platt, D. C. M. (ed.), Business Imperialism, 1840–1930: Enquiry Based on British Experience in Latin America (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar.

40 See Taylor, Alan M., ‘External Dependence, Demographic Burdens and Argentine Economic Decline After the Belle Epoque’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 52 (1992), pp. 907–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Taylor underlines the importance of foreign capital to Argentina's economic growth by showing that the republic's economic problems in the 1920s were closely linked to the drying up of financial flows from abroad.

41 Platt, D. M. C., Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914 (London, 1972), p. 111Google Scholar.

42 This serves as a reminder that perceptions, and in this case misperceptions, are important to understanding outcomes.

43 The literature on the Baring crisis is too weighty to be listed here. Most of the important references can be found in Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688–1914 (London 1993)Google Scholar, Chs. 4 and 9, to which should now be added Ferns, ‘Th e Baring Crisis’, cited above, n. 17.

44 Ferns, ‘The Baring Crisis’.

45 That this was perfectly clear to the Argentine elite themselves is demonstrated by Hodge, John E., ‘Carlos Pellegrini and the Financial Crisis of 1890’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 50 (1970), pp. 499–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Hodge, like Ferns, was concerned to emphasise the part played by members of the local elite, but he drew a different conclusion about their independence. Ferns, strangely, appears to have bypassed Hodge's work – which may help to explain its unjustified obscurity.

46 See, for example, the important essays by Charles Jones, ‘Commercial Banks’ and ‘Insurance Companies’, in Platt, Business Imperialism, chs. 1–2; idem, ‘The State and Business Practice in Argentina, 1862–1914’, in Abel and Lewis, Latin America, ch. 10; idem, ‘Great Capitalists and the Direction of British Overseas Investment in the Late Nineteenth Century: the Case of Argentina’, Business History, vol. 22 (1980); Linda Jones, Charles Jones and Robert Greenhill, ‘Public Utility Companies’, in Platt, Business Imperialism, ch. 3. Also Reber, V. B., British Mercantile Houses in Buenos Aires, 1810–1880 (Boston, Mass., 1979)Google Scholar, ch. 4, and Joslin, D., A Century of Banking in Latin America (London, 1963)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

47 See Lewis, Colin, British Railways in Argentina, 187–1914: A Case Study of Foreign Investment (London, 1983), pp. 86–7Google Scholar, 118–20; Marichal, A Century of Debt, pp. 168–9.

48 Jones, ‘Business Imperialism’, p. 442.

49 For the exception that proves the rule see Osterhammel, Jürgen, ‘Semi-Colonialism and Informal Empire in Twentieth-Century China: Towards a Framework of Analysis’, in Mommsen, Wolfgang J. and Osterhammel, Jürgen (eds.), Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities (London, 1986)Google Scholar, ch. 19.

50 Gallagher and Robinson may well have the last word as they had the first. On the one hand, colonial powers may not be able to exercise, in practice, the sovereignty that is formally theirs. In other words, they may need to resort to techniques of informal influence within the context of formal rule. On the other hand, it is possible for an external power to dominate, informally, the most important aspects of the sovereignty of an independent state without dominating them all and without seeking to do so.

51 This development became clear in their later work: see especially Robinson, Ronald and Gallagher, John with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London, 1961)Google Scholar.

52 Quoted in Smith, Joseph, Illusions of Conflict: Anglo-American Diplomacy Towards Latin America, 1869–1896 (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1979), p. 190Google Scholar.