In the first decades of the nineteenth century, Buenos Aires underwent a process of rapid economic growth, overshadowed only by an even greater prosperity at the end of that century. That early process of growth has been studied from the perspective of the economy in general or of a particular sector of production. These explanations, however, disregard how resources were organized to make growth possible. Prosperity was not a necessary consequence of either providential or natural design, but the result of human action in a particular institutional context.

This book focuses upon the economic organization that led that process of growth – the estancia. Its internal structure, the combination of factors of production on it, and their economic results are the central issues considered here. The time frame is delimited by the beginning of the expansion in the late eighteenth century on one end, and the introduction of new technology (railroads, wire fencing, banking) around 1870 on the other.

The book is divided into four parts, studying the internal workings and structure of estancias, the conditions of production restricting estancia operations, the human action required by estancia operations, and the results of estancia operations. The introduction reviews the literature on estancias and early capitalism in Buenos Aires, and the conclusion summarizes the main points covered.

Capital investment, income and expenditure, profit, and the use of labor are key aspects toward understanding the internal workings of estancias as firms. Those operations on a late-eighteenth-century estancia are studied in Chapter 2. Source limitations do not allow for an extension of that study to other periods.