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Trade Contraction and Economic Decline: The Paraguayan Economy under Francia, 1810–1840*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Mario Pastore
Mario Pastore
Affiliation:
Visiting Fellow at the Latin American Studies Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
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I argue here that economic activity fell considerably in the first three decades of Paraguay's early national period, below levels it had attained in the late colonial period and would attain again only after the mid-nineteenth century. I attribute this economic depression primarily to regional political fragmentation and the institutional regression it triggered. In the 1810s, the United Provinces of the River Plate sought to keep the former Viceroyalty of the River Plate under a single federal government, but failed to prevent Paraguay's early secession. Their subsequent trade blockades and military threats had profound economic and political effects on Paraguay: revenues from foreign trade taxation fell, scale economies in defence and justice provision vanished, a standing army emerged, government budget deficits worsened, mercantilist regulations heightened, the fiscal burden increased, and transactions costs generally rose. Proponents of federation, more representative governments, and freer trade progressively declined, while supporters of secession, political absolutism, and government regulation became ever more prominent. In the 1820s, blockade relaxations exacerbated economic intervention by the state, which substantially redistributed property rights in land towards itself. In the 1830s, renewed blockading had more than proportional negative effects on economic activity, which remained below late colonial levels at least until international waterways became freely navigable shortly after mid-century. Colonial absolutism and mercantilism may be said to have been restored with a vengeance. Long-run economic performance worsened.

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Articles
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Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , October 1994 , pp. 539 - 595
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Early national economic activity fell throughout Latin America, the only two exceptions being Brazil and Cuba. See Prados, and Amaral, , La independencia americana (Madrid, 1993)Google Scholar. Political fragmentation – which raises military expenditures by lengthening defence perimetres – was also a generalised phenomenon, which only Brazil escaped. See Friedman, David, ‘A Theory of the Size and Shape of Nations’, journalof'Political Economy; vol. 85, no. 1 (02 1977), pp. 59–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The fiscal burden also increased in the region as a whole, apparently with similar political effects as in Paraguay. See Donghi, Tulio Halperín, Guerra y finanzas en los orígenes del estado argentino (Buenos Aires, 1982)Google Scholar; Klein, Herbert, Bolivia. The Evolution of a Multi-ethnic Society, 2nd. edition (New York, 1992), chapters 4 and 5Google Scholar; and Richard J. Salvucci and Linda K. Salvucci, ‘Las consecuencias económicas de la independencia mexicana’, in Prados and Amaral, La independencia americana, pp. 31–53. Finally, mercantilism persisted throughout early national Latin America according to Véliz, Claudio, The Centralist Tradition in Latin America (Princeton, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The analysis of early national Paraguay, therefore, may have fairly wide ranging implications, but due to time and space constraints this article will confine itself to the chosen case. An interesting early attempt to analyse Paraguay's early national period and work out its implications for South America is Báez, Cecilio, Ensayo sobre el Doctor Francia y la dictadura en Sud-América (Asuncion, 1910)Google Scholar.

2 The late colonial economy involved substantial factor mobility and may be thought of in terms of the staples theory of economic growth. The early national economy involved little factor mobility, and is thus better conceptualised in terms of Ricardo's comparative advantage theorem. The staples growth theory, already evident in Adam Smith, was used by North and Watkins to account for the early economic development of the United States and Canada, and was formalised by Caves. See Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations, Everyman edn. (London, 1910), vol. II, book 4, ch. 7Google Scholar; North, Douglass C., The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1961)Google Scholar; Watkins, Melville, ‘A Staple Theory of Economic Growth’, The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. xix, no. 2 (05 1963), pp. 141–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Caves, Richard, ‘Vent for Surplus Models of Trade and Growth’, In Baldwin, R. E. et al. (eds.), Trade, Growth and the Balance of Payments (Chicago, 1965)Google Scholar. Assadourian suggests that the staples model is ‘perfectly applicable’ to the region of concern during the colonial period. Students and followers of Assadourian who have researched the country of concern here, however, have ignored this theoretical clue. See Assadourian, Carlos Sempat, El sistema de la economia colonial: mercado interno, regiones, y espacio económico (Lima, 1982), p. 116, fn. 9Google Scholar; Garavaglia, Juan Carlos, Mercado internoy economía colonial (México, 1983)Google Scholar; and Whigham, Thomas L., The Politics of River Trade: Tradition and Development in the Upper Plata (1780–1870) (Albuquerque, 1991)Google Scholar. For the comparative advantage theorem see Caves, R., Frankel, J., and Jones, R., World Trade and Payments. An Introduction, 5 th edition (Glennview, Ill, 1991)Google Scholar.

3 Ricardo's differential rent and Von Thünen's locational rent theories are well presented in Hartwick, John M. and Olewiler, Nancy D., The Economics of Natural Resource Use (New York, 1986), ch. 2Google Scholar. The standard reference on regional economics is Isard, Walter, Methods of Regional Analysis. An Introduction to Regional Science (Ithaca, NY, 1982)Google Scholar. Also relevant to this article is North's joining of trade and location theories in a regional economic history context. See North, Douglass, ‘Location Theory and Regional Economic Growth’, journal of Political Economy, vol. LXIII, no. 3 (06 1955), pp. 243–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an interesting new approach to locational and regional issues in an international trade context see Krugman, Paul, Geography and Trade (Cambridge, MA, 1991)Google Scholar.

4 In formalising the staple growth theory Caves stripped its institutional aspects away. North, D. C. and Thomas, R. P. sought to restore them by resorting to transactions costs in ‘An Economic Theory of the Growth of the Western World’, The Economic History Review, 2nd series, vol. 23, no. 1 (04 1970), pp. 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. They discussed the rise of property rights on men and land in detail in ‘The Rise and Fall of the Manorial Economy: A Theoretical Model’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 31, no. 4 (December 1971), pp. 777–80. They themselves recognised that their effort would have been more successful had a theory of institutions, of the state in particular, been available. North provided the first statement of the theory of the state, in Structure and Change in Economic History (New York; 1981), ch. 3. Updated discussions of the issues involved can be found, respectively, in Feeney, David, ‘The Development of Property Rights in Land: A Comparative Study’, in Bates, Robert H. (ed.), Toward a Political Economy of Development, a Rational Choice Perspective (Berkeley, 1989)Google Scholar and Eggertsson, Thrainn, Economic behavior and Institutions (New York, 1989)Google Scholar. These theoretical sources facilitate comprehension of the problem at hand and could be used to derive implications testable by econometric methods. However, such a test would require much more statistical data than is available. The most one can hope for is a rough correspondence between theory and evidence.

5 In this view, trade expansion will benefit owners of abundant factors and producers of goods using those factors intensively, which in economies where land is abundant relative to labour and capital will lead to landowners aggressively seeking to further trade liberalisation vis-à-vis defensive labourers and capitalists; trade contraction, on the other hand, may be expected to benefit owners of relatively scarce factors and of goods produced using scarce factors intensively; that is, trade contraction may be expected to benefit small peasants, labourers and artisans, who will seek protection, at the expense of landowners, who will oppose it. See Rogowski, Ronald, ‘Political Cleavages and Changing Exposure to Trade’, American Political Science Review, vol. 81, no. 4 (12 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Commerce and Coalitions. How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments (Princeton, NJ, 1989); Stolper, Wolfang and Samuelson, Paul, ‘Protection and Real Wages’, Review of Economic Studies (1942)Google Scholar; and Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action. Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA, 1965)Google Scholar and The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven, CT, 1982).

6 North and Weingast argue that budgetary crises, in the absence of an army and of crown lands, forced absolute monarchs to trade revenue for rule-making power with Parliament. Constitutional rule facilitated the development of a market in government securities and, later, in private securities. The capital market that developed as a result helped the eventual launching of the Industrial Revolution. See North, Douglas and Weingast, Barry, ‘Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth Century England’, Journal of Economic History, pp. 49, no. 4 (12 1989), pp. 803–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Batou, Jean, Cent ans de résistance au sous-développement: I'industrialisation du Moyen Orient et de I'Amérique latine face au défi européen (Géneve, 1989), pp. 460–1Google Scholar.

8 Ibid.

9 The related Argentine revisionist school has been analysed by Donghi, Tulio Halperín in El revisionismo histórico argentine (México, 1971)Google Scholar. For a historiographical discussion of the nineteenth century literature see White, Richard Alan, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution (Albuquerque, 1978), pp. 7–13Google Scholar, and of the twentieth century literature see Al'perovich, M. S., ‘La dictadura del Dr Francia en la historiografía del siglo xx’, Estudios Latinoamericanos, vol. 5 (1979), pp. 87–96Google Scholar.

10 See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution; Williams, John Hoyt, The Rise and Vail of the Paraguayan Republic, 1800–1870 (Austin, Texas, 1979)Google Scholar; and Reber, Vera Blinn, ‘Commerce and Industry in Nineteenth Century Paraguay: The Example of Yerba Mate’, The Americas, vol. XLII (07 1985), fn. 1Google Scholar; ‘The Demographics of the Paraguay: A Reinterpretation of the Great War, 1864–70’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 68, no. 2 (1988), pp. 289–319; and Modernisation from Within. Trade and Development in Paraguay, 1810–1870 (forthcoming). Williams does not use dependency theory. He is included in the school because he characterises the period as one of state socialism. Both White and Reber have been influenced by Bradford Burns. White's book was based on the doctoral dissertation he wrote under Burns at the University of California at Los Angeles. Another student of Burns has just completed a second UCLA dissertation on Francia. See Huston, Richard, ‘Folk and State in Paraguay: Political Order and Social Disorder’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1993Google Scholar. Until this work becomes available to researchers, one can only speculate as to whether it may or may not be classified as a revisionist piece.

11 Most of White's quantitative data may be found in Appendices A through H, pp. 179–264, but see also p. 95 and passim. White's and Williams's data were gathered independently. The majority of subsequent contributors have been friendly to the revisionist school. Prominent among them is Reber. Critics have been much fewer. Thomas L. Whigham's Politics of River Trade is a recent such attempt, but overlooks most of the fundamental weaknesses of the revisionist analysis to which this article calls attention.

12 A proponent of dependency theory as a useful tool for analysing Paraguayan history has recently gone further; Diego Abente asserts that ‘Dr White's work is a fine piece of research full of archival data. Some of the conclusions he draws, however, are derived from a preconceived theoretical framework rather than from the facts themselves. Although Dr White's arguments are limited to the dictatorship of Francia, the tendency of the revisionist literature is to extrapolate them to the López period as well’. See ‘Foreign Capital, Economic Elites, and the State in Paraguay during the Liberal Republic (1870–1936)’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 21 (February 1989), p. 72, fn. 22. However, Abente did not substantiate any part of this claim. Clearly, such a charge requires evidentiary support to stand.

13 Neither does the available evidence support claims of a spectacular industrialisation process between 1852 and 1870. Instead, it suggests an alternative set of hypotheses. See my ‘State-led Industrialisation: the Evidence on Paraguay, 185 2–1870’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 26, pt. 2 (May 1994), pp. 295–324.

14 On institutional innovation in Holland see North, Douglass C. and Thomas, Robert P., The Rise of the Western World (New York, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for England, see North and Weingast, ‘Constitutions and Commitment’.

15 The renewed economic expansion of the River Plate region in the first half of the eighteenth century is discussed by Mörner, Magnus, ‘Panorama de la sociedad del Río de la Plata durante la primera mitad del siglo xvIII’, Estudios Americanos, Revista de la Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, Sevilla. vol. xvII, no. 92–93 (Mayo–Juno 1959), pp. 203–16Google Scholar. Economic conditions in Paraguay in the same period may be discerned from Velázquez, Rafael Eladio, ‘Navegación paraguaya de los siglos XVIII y XVIII’, Estudios Paraguayos, vol. 1 (11, 1973), pp. 45–84Google Scholar; Paoli, Juan Bautista Rivarola, La economía colonial (Asunción, 1986)Google Scholar; and Susnik, Branislava, Una visión socioantropológica del Paraguay del siglo XVIII (Asunción, 1991), pp. 7–59Google Scholar.

16 For the Bourbon Reforms see John Lynch, Spanish Colonial Administration 1782–1810; The Intendent in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata London, 1958. Carlos, Juan Garavaglia analyses the late colonial regional specialisation in ‘Economic Growth, and Regional Differentiation: The River Plate Region at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 6, no. 1 (1985), pp. 51–89Google Scholar, but the paper does not discuss Paraguay. Conditions in pre-Edict Paraguay were described in Governor Pinedo's 1773 and 1777 reports to the king, excerpted in White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, pp. 17–21. For a summary of conditions in Paraguay after the Edict see Cooney, Jerry W., ‘An Ignored Aspect of the Viceroyalty of the River Plate’, Intercambio Internacional, vol. 2, no. 1 (01 1977), pp. 10–13Google Scholar. For more detail see Cooney, Jerry W., Economia y sociedad en la Intendencia del Paraguay (Asunción, 1990)Google Scholar.

17 For insightful comments and further sources on the military reorganisation in the Province of Buenos Aires see Rock, David, Argentina, 1516–1980: From Colonisation to the Falkland;' War (Berkeley, 1985)Google Scholar; for Paraguay, see Williams, John Hoyt, ‘From the Barrel of a Gun: Some Notes on Dr Francia and Paraguayan Militarism’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 119, no. 1 (02 1975), pp. 73–86Google Scholar, and Cooney, Jerry W., ‘The Paraguayan Independence Movement, 1806–1814’, Ph.D. dissertation, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 1971Google Scholar.

18 Asunción yerba exports in 1776 were only 26,429 arrobas, but averaged 195, 102 arrobas per year from 1792 to 1796 and 271, 322 arrobas per year from 1803 to 1807. One arroba equals twenty five pounds. For the 1776 figure see Cardozo, Efraím, El Paraguay colonial: las rakes de la nacionalidad (Buenos Aires, 1959), p. 106Google Scholar; for the 1792–1796 averages see ‘Tabla de Comercio’, in de Azara, Félix, Descripción e historia del Paraguay y del Río de la Plata in Biblioteca Indiana. Viajes por la América del Sur, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1847, 1962), pp. 313–4Google Scholar, and for the 1803–1807 averages see ‘Razón de los Tercios de yerva que salieron de esta Provincia en el último quinquenio’, Ministros de R.I Hacienda Pedro de Oscariz and José de Elizalde, Asunción, 28 November 1898, in ANA-NE 1790, both cited in Cooney, Jerry W., ‘Serving the Hinterland: The Commercial Rise of Asuncion, 1776–1810’, SECOLAS Annals, vol. XVIII (03 1987), p. 90, fn. 46 and p. 91, fn. 48Google Scholar, respectively. Cooney also provides figures on total exports and imports.

19 Slavery first characterised Paraguay's early colonial economy but was replaced in mid-sixteenth century by two versions of a form of serfdom, the encomienda yanacona, which disguised the earlier slavery, and the encomienda mitaria, more akin to European serfdom. Mita Indians were confined to Franciscan and, later, to Jesuit missions. Both these forms of the encomienda had declined noticeably by the 1630s and, eventually, Jesuit missions were exempt from the encomienda mitaria. Elsewhere, the stagnant encomiendas persisted throughout the colonial period, though most had reverted to the crown towards the end of the eighteenth century. For the encomiendas see Pastore, Mario, ‘Trabalho forçado indígena e campesinato mestiço livre no Paraguai colonial: uma visão de suas causas baseada na teoria da procura de rendas econômicas’, Revista Brasileira de Historia, vol. 11, no. 21 (set/fev. 1990/1991), pp. 147–85Google Scholar, English version in J. Brewer and S. Staves (eds.), Early Modern Conceptions of Property (London, forthcoming).

20 That some private encomiendas may have persisted after they were legally abolished is suggested by the fact that in 1812, after Spanish rule ended, an early national government reiterated the encomiendas' dissolution. However, African slavery remained in force, both de jure and de facto. For state enterprises, see Cooney, Jerry W., ‘A Colonial Naval Industry: The Fabricas de Cables of Paraguay’, Revista de Historia de América, vol. 87 (Enero–Junio 1979)Google Scholar; ‘Paraguayan Astilleros and the Platine Merchant Marine, 1796–1806’, The Historian (1980), pp. 55–74; and ‘La Dirección General de la Renta de Tabacos and the Decline of the Royal Trade Monopoly in Paraguay. 1779–1800’, Colonial Latin American Historical Review; vol. 1, no. 1 (1992), pp. 101–16; for a hint that state enterprises relied on indigenous coerced labour see James Schofield Saeger, ‘Survival and Abolition: The Eighteenth Century Paraguayan Encomienda’, The Americas, vol. 28 (July), pp. 59–85; for the private sector's use of African slaves see Plá, Josefina, Hermano Negro, La Esclavitud en el Paraguay (Madrid, 1972)Google Scholar.

21 On immigration, Cooney, Jerry W., ‘Foreigners in the Intendencia of Paraguay’, The Americas, vol. 39 (1982–83), pp. 333–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Arréllaga, René Ferrer, Un siglo de expansión colonizadora: los orígenes de Concepción (Asuncion, 1985)Google Scholar. On internal migration, see de Aguirre, Juan Francisco, ‘Diario…’ Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional de Buenos Aires, no. 17–20, 1949–51Google Scholar. On the new towns, Velázquez, Rafael Eladio, El Paraguay en 1811 (Asunción, 1965)Google Scholar; Mérida, José Luis Mora, ‘La demografía colonial paraguaya’, Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft, und Gessellschaft Lateinamerikas, Band II (1974), p. 76Google Scholar; Ferrer de Arréllaga, Expansión colonizadora; Viola, Alfredo, Orígen de Pueblos del Paraguay (Asunción, 1986)Google Scholar. See also Cooney, Jerry W., ‘The Yerba Mate and Cattle Frontier of Paraguay 1776–1811: Social, Economic, and Political Impact’. Paper presented at the XIV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, New Orleans, LA, 17–19 03 1988Google Scholar.

22 Peasants devoted themselves to agriculture during the autumn and winter. They sowed tobacco in May or June and by September they were usually finished transplanting the seedlings, ‘though the operation sometimes continued for two more months’. They laboured in the yerba trade during the hottest months of the year, October through May. For the timing of tobacco activities, see Whigham, Thomas L., ‘The Politics of River Commerce in the Upper Plata, 1760–1865’, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1986, p. 175Google Scholar, for that of yerba harvesting, see Reber, ‘Commerce and Industry’, p. 33.

23 For the expansion of hardwood and tobacco production see Cooney, ‘A Colonial Naval Industry’ and Cooney, Jerry W., ‘Forest Industries and Trade in Late Colonial Paraguay’, Journal of Forest Industries, vol. 23, no. 4 (09 1979), pp. 186–97Google Scholar. The modern economic theory of common property resource use originates with Gordon, H. Scott, ‘The Economic Theory of a Common Pool Resource: The Fishery’, Journal of Political Economy, vol. LXII (1954)Google Scholar.

24 The small peasantry's family-sized farms sprung up in the sixteenth century alongside the relatively larger estates worked mostly by Spaniards with encomienda labour, the lands of the towns of Spaniards and of Indians, and the royal lands. The peasantry became progressively more important after the 1630s. However, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, increased cattle ranching, population growth, the transformation of Jesuit mission Indians into peasants following the Order's 1767 expulsion, and the Bourbon liberalisation of trade of the late 1770s in particular, led to increased land concentration, the appearance of land tenancy and agricultural wage labour. The displacement of small peasants from their farms pushed the frontier farther out. See Pastore, ‘Trabalho forçado indigena’.

25 see Velázquez, Rafael Eladio, ‘Organización militar de la Gobernación y Capitanfa General del Paraguay’, Estudios Paraguayos, vol. v, no. 1 (Junio 1977), pp. 25–68Google Scholar for the expansion of forts and Ferrer de Arréllaga, Expansión colonizadora, for military status and land ownership in Concepción.

26 Yerba gatherers fed on the cattle, packed the yerba mate in sacks made of hides, and transported the yerba itself to riverain ports by oxen. Loggers also used cattle in their operations. Rivarola Paoli, La economía colonial, gives a list of late colonial ranches formed in the area the Jesuits had previously occupied. Garavaglia, Mercado interno, discusses barreros. For Paraguay's status as a net importer of cattle in the late colonial period see Whigham, Thomas L., ‘Cattle Raising in the Argentine Northeast: Corrientes, 1750–1870’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 20 (11 1988), pp. 313–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 For the financial activities of the Church see White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution. Asunción merchants could pay for their purchases in Buenos Aires with ‘libranzas’, drafts drawn against their balances at the Royal Tobacco monopoly in Asunción which could be presented for payment at the Renta's offices in Buenos Aires. For silver hoarding, see Jerry W. Cooney, 'The Carrera del Paraguay, 1770–1810: Lifeline of the Platine Littoral', paper presented at the Southern Historical Association Meetings, 1988. For statements on price inflation see Aguirre, ‘Diario…’, cited in Cooney, ‘Serving the Hinterland’, p. 91, fn. 56.

28 Product estimates like those proposed for the United States by Gallman and David have been put forth for Mexico by Coatsworth as well as by Richard and Linda Salvucci, for El Salvador by Lindo Fuentes. However, I am aware of no such series for the Viceroyalty of the River Plate or any for countries that emerged in the region after its dissolution, though Coria has made an attempt for Mendoza in the first decade of the nineteenth century. See Gallman, Robert, ‘The Pace and Pattern of American Economic Growth’, In Davis, Lance et al. , American Economic Growth (1972), pp. 33–9Google Scholar; David, Paul, ‘The Growth of Real Product in the United States Before 1840: New Evidence, Controlled Conjectures’, Journal of Economic History, vol. XXVI, no. 2, (06 1967)Google Scholar; Coatsworth, John, ‘Obstacles to Change in Nineteenth Century Mexico’, American Historical Review (1978)Google Scholar; Richard and Linda Salvucci, ‘Las consecuencias económicas de la independencia mexicana’, in Prados and Amaral, La independencia americana, pp. 31–53; Fuentes, Héctor Lindo, ‘Nineteenth Century Economic History of El Salvador’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1984Google Scholar; and Coria, Luis A., ‘Determinación del P. B. I. de Mendoza para 1807’, in Anales del A.A.E.P., XXIII Reunión Anual, vol. 1 (1988)Google Scholar.

29 See Jerry W. Cooney, ‘Criollos and Peninsulares in the Intendencia of Paraguay: Elite Accommodation in Place of Conflict’, Dpt. of History, University of Louisville (n.d.).

30 The crown had – for budgetary reasons – delegated its defence responsibilities onto the settlers in exchange for encomiendas de indios, which were comparatively numerous and relatively small. This pattern contrasted with similar provinces on other Indian frontiers such as Chile, where the crown stationed a large standing army; military power, therefore, was more concentrated, and in the hands of the colonial administration. See Khale, Günther, ‘La encomienda como institución militar en la América hispánica colonial’, in Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, no. 9 (1979), PP. 5–16Google Scholar.

31 For the ‘special dispensation’ see Cardozo, Efraím, Efemérides de la historia del Paraguay (Asunción, 1967)Google Scholar; for the Comuneros Revolt, see Saeger, James Schofield, ‘Origins of the Rebellion of Paraguay’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 2 (05 1972), pp. 215–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar;López, Adalberto, The Revolt of the Comuneros, 1721–1735: A Study in Colonial History of Paraguay (Cambridge, MA, 1976)Google Scholar, and Garavaglia, Juan Carlos, Economía, Sociedad y Regiones (Buenos Aires, 1987), pp. 193–260Google Scholar; for suggestions on the political effects of the Reforms see Pastore, Carlos, ‘Introductión a una historia económica del Paraguay en el siglo XIX’, Historia Paraguaya, vol. XVI (1978), pp. 103–26Google Scholar and Cooney, ‘Serving the Hinterland’, p. 91, fn. 58.

32 The Real Renta also had military implications. Tobacco growers who agreed to sell it their tobacco could be exempted of militia duties. See Cooney, ‘Rent a de Tabacos’.

33 Buenos Aires received subsidies of silver from Bolivia and men from Paraguay. See Rock, Argentina, and Kline Bolivia.

34 Early in the first battle, the invading armies appeared on the verge of victory; so much so that the Spanish governor of Paraguay abandoned the battlefield and the royalist community attempted to flee Asunción by boat. The Paraguayan officers and militias, however, despite being owed several months' back pay, remained on the field and eventually repelled the invasion. Their behaviour need not puzzle us, however. These creole officers reportedly had been predominantly recruited from among local landowning families who had benefited economically from the Bourbon Reforms both directly and indirectly. Furthermore, many of these officers and militia men had participated in the defence of Montevideo and Buenos Aires, suffering grievous losses. By some estimates, these may have ran as high as 70%. They were understandably concerned, therefore, about reports that the Buenos Aires forces' real aim was to recruit for the Bolivian campaign.

35 Originally scheduled to coincide with the first anniversary of the Buenos Aires coup of 25 May 1810, the coup was moved up to the 14–15 May 1811 for tactical reasons. Political power initially fell for the most part into the hands of the senior military officers, who proceeded to appropriate the outstanding cash in government vaults for back pay. John Hoyt Williams puts the amount taken at pesos 13,180. See that author's ‘Governor Velasco, the Portuguese, and the Paraguayan Revolution of 1811: A New Look’, The Americas, vol. 28, no. 4 (April 1972), p. 444.

36 On the junta's composition see Cooney, ‘The Paraguayan Independence Movement,’ pp. 173, 191. See also Franco, Eliana Castedo, ‘El proceso social de la revolución del 14 de mayo de 1811. Un estudio socio-histórico’, Estudios Paraguayos, vol. 6, no. 2 (1978), pp. 141–95Google Scholar. The two military officers were Caballero and Yegros, the mercantile elite representative was de la Mora, that of the clergy, Bogarín. For a quick sketch of their personal backgrounds see Chaves, Julio César, La revolución paraguaya de la independencia. Relato y biografía de los proceres (Buenos Aires, 1961)Google Scholar. More detail may be found in Quell, H. Sánchez, Pedro Juan Caballero y otros ensayos (Asunción, 1984)Google Scholar; Velázquez, Rafael Eladio, ‘Los Yegros en la historia del Paraguay’, Historia Paraguaya, vol. XVIII (1981), pp. 215–83Google Scholar; Cooney, Jerry W., ‘The Rival of Dr. Francia: Fernando de la Mora and the Paraguayan Revolution’, Revista de Historia de América, no. 100 (06–12 1985), pp. 201–29Google Scholar; on Francia, see Chaves, Julio César, El Supremo Dictador, 3a. edición (Buenos Aires, 1958)Google Scholar. Francia's continued presence in the expanded junta, I suggest, may have been partly due to kinship ties between him and two of the military officers, Fulgencio Yegros and his brother Antonio Tomás, as well as with the junta's secretary Mariano Larios Galván. These have been documented by Julio César Chaves in El Supremo Dictador and La revolutión paraguaya, pp. 69–73 and 85–9, as well as by Rafael Eladio Velázquez, ‘Los Yegros…’, pp. 249–51, but have been questioned by Benjamín Vargas Peña, Secreta Politico del Dictador Francia (República Argentina, 1985), p. 95.

37 Yegros, for example. See Molas, Mariano Antonio, Descripción histórica de la antigua provincia del Paraguay 3a. edición (Buenos Aires, 1957)Google Scholar.

38 See Chaves, El Supremo Dictador.

39 The royalist party may not unreasonably be supposed to have included some who were loyal to Carlota, Ferdinand VII's sister and wife of Portugal's João, then in Brazil. After her brother's abdication, she had a claim on the Spanish throne. Vargas Peña's argument seems consistent with Francia's functions in the colonial administration and the notion that he had no role in planning or executing the coup of the 14–15 May. Aside from noting the fact that Francia's father was born a Portuguese subject, Vargas Peña also produces evidence that Francia sponsored diplomatic efforts in the 1810s and the 1820s to explore the possibility of making Paraguay a protectorate of Portugal and Spain, respectively. Ramos rejects the documentary validity of this thesis. However, Abente grants that Vargas Peña's books ‘make very interesting revelations and raise important and long-neglected issues’, even if they are ‘marred by a rather simplistic, all encompassing conspiratorial theory’. See Benjamín Vargas Peña, Secreta Politica, pp. 8–11, 49–64, and 93–124; Ramos, R. Antonio, La político del Brasil en el Paraguay bajo la dictadura del Dr. Francia (Buenos Aires, 1957)Google Scholar; and Abente, Diego, ‘The Liberal Republic and the Failure of Democracy’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 21 (02 1989), p. 527Google Scholar. The subject clearly deserves more research.

40 The clergy's representative was forced to withdraw by Francia, who later withdrew himself as a result of conflicts with the military officers.

41 A summary of Velázquez's description of the broader aims of this Junta reads as follows: ‘…enseñanza gratuita; instructión para el maestro de primeras letras ajustada a las más modernas concepciones pedagógicas de la época, con citas que demuestran la gran versación de sus autores y encaminada notoriamente a formar hombres libres y dignos; Sociedad Patriótica Literaria, para coadyuvar a la elevación del nivel cultural de la población; Academia Militar, para la formatión de los mandos medios y subalternos; expedición al Norte, para expulsar a invasores Portugueses; erección del Cabildo de la Villa Real de la Concepción; trabajos iniciales de la fundación de la Villa del Salvador de Tavegó o Etevegó; supresión del tributo indígena; concesión para una lí;nea de navegación con buques a vapor…; relaciones cordiales con Artigas…, como complemento o alternativa de las que se mantenían con Buenos Aires; y una misión confidential para obtener el levantamiento del bloqueo realista del rio Paranó… Además se iniciaron gestiones para la adquisición en Buenos Aires de una imprenta ye de la biblioteca que había pertenecido a Mariano Moreno, entonces recientemente fallecido.’ See ‘Los Yegros’, pp. 59–60.

42 Most important among trade obstacles were the tobacco monopoly and the regulations that hindered free navigation to and from regional markets down river and beyond. On the agreement with Buenos Aires see Cardozo, Efraím, El Plan Federal del Dr. Francia (Buenos Aires, 1941)Google Scholar. On the notion that technological innovations that reduce transportation costs are equivalent to tariff reductions see Rogowski, Commerce and Coalitions.

43 On the agreement's dissolution see Cardozo, Plan federal. I have highlighed only the main issues of contention between the Junta and Buenos Aires.

44 Here I use the word ‘rational’ in the neoclassical economic sense of ‘maximising’. The free rider concept is discussed at length in Olson's Logic.

45 For late colonial export figures see Cooney, ‘Serving the Hinterland’, p. 84, for early national exports, White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendices C through F, pp. 225–57. However, to calculate export values for the years in the period for which he did furnish data, White used 1818 prices of some goods and 1829 prices of other goods. Thus, he may in some sense be said to have furnished real rather than nominal figures, though not through deflating nominal figures by an index of export prices. In addition, White excluded goods exported in relatively small quantities, understating exports according to his own calculation by as much as 10 per cent. Subsequent authors, among them Whigham, Politics of River Trade, and Reber, Modernisation From Within, have overlooked and compounded the problem by using White's figures to compile longer series for nominal exports and imports. White did not furnish export data for 1810–1815, 1817, 1821–28, 1833–34, and 1836. Nor do his appendices contain import data for any year of the period. White's figures are used here only to gain an idea of the orders of magnitudes involved in the early national trade contraction.

46 Tables 2 and 3 summarise data contained in White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix A, pp. 180–214. White arranged government income and expenditure categories differently every year, in order of decreasing magnitude. I have kept the yearly order of categories constant and allowed the magnitudes to vary. Note that White did not include data on government revenues and expenditures for 1817, 1819, 1821, 1824–27, 1830, and 1836, although on pp. 213–14 he himself lists the ANA locations at which they are available.

47 Tables 4 and 5 contain data in White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix H. Data on troop strength and military allocations during this period also can be found in Williams, ‘From the Barrel’. The findings of White and Williams, however, are sometimes at odds. For example, Williams warns that the Libros de Caxa of the War Treasury between 1816 and 1827 ‘concerns troops garrisoned in and around the capital. Frontier troops and the garrisons of other population centers such as Pilar and Ytapúa, are not mentioned in the libros de Caxa’. These were expected to be self sufficient. See Williams, ‘From the Barrel’, p. 77. White, however, in Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, suggest that these data apply to the country as a whole. Proper hypothesis testing procedure require that I use White's figures, because they may be underestimates of true values on troop strength and military allocations. They also cover a wider period (between 1816 and 1823). However, I will use White's figures to suggest the orders of magnitude involved only. Where possible, I will supplement White's figures with those of Williams and other sources. Again, this procedure may be questionable, but not if the purpose is to suggest orders of magnitude.

48 Just as the reforms of 1801 may be said to have given origin to the early Paraguayan military, measures by Governor Velazco – his requisition of ‘a number of merchant ships in the Asuncion harbour’ – may be said to have given rise to the Paraguayan Navy. These ships ‘were armed, many of them with cannon’, and were devoted to the expedition against Corrientes in 1811 and to patrolling the Paraná. However, and despite the riverain blockades imposed by Buenos Aires beginning in 1812, ‘little was done to strengthen the flotilla for several years’ according to Williams: ‘From the Barrel’, p. 84.

49 In addition, White asserts that after 1815 ‘the government constructed approximately 100 river craft, including sloops, flatboats, and enormous canoes…’. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 104. Government budgets show that the government spent funds for ‘construction of ships’ in 1816 and 1818, pesos 8,551 and 6,622, respectively. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, pp. 182 and 184. This is consistent with the fact that a Paraguayan naval force bombarded Corrientes in 1818, in retaliation for the earlier seizure of several Paraguayan merchant ships. Expenditures on shipbuilding continued in 1819 and 1820, when the government respectively devoted 10,724 pesos (Williams, ‘From the Barrel’, p. 84) and 13,615 pesos (White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 186) to that aim. The flotilla was augmented by the addition of captured ships in 1820. The disaffected crew of a heavily armed ship belonging to Littoral caudillo Francisco Ramírez interned at Pilar and gave itself up. Francia refused to release the ship. See Williams, ‘From the Barrel’, pp. 84 and 85.

50 Though total government receipts increased from 264,000 pesos in 1816 to 286,000 pesos in 1818. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, App. A.

51 Tax revenues decreased by 72,000 pesos, confiscations amounted to 90,107 pesos, and the 1818 budget surplus to 91,712. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix A.

52 They fell from 47,770 pesos to 8,146 pesos, a drop of 83%. Excise taxes also fell, but not in the same proportion, from 40,285 to 33,445 pesos. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix A.

53 These amounted to 7,729 pesos. Merchandise sales amounted to only 650 pesos. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix A.

54 They amount to less than 5,000 pesos. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix A.

55 The officers probably were much better educated and more familiar with their Buenos Aires counterparts and their innovative ideas than revisionist and nationalist historians have generally been willing to concede. The secondary literature alone suggests as much. See, for example, Chaves, La revolutión; Sánchez Quell, Pedro Juan Caballero; and Velázquez, ‘Los Yegros’. The Congress of 1814 was supposed to have had 1,000 delegates, though only six or seven hundred attended. That of 1816 had only 150 delegates. See Chaves, El Supremo Dictador (1958, pp. 168 and 182). Seven eighths of the votes from the countryside favoured Francia in the 1814 Congress. The 1816 Congress, however, designated Francia Perpetual Dictator and ‘ser sin exemplar’, by acclamation, without a vote. See de Morgenstern, Francisco Wisner, El Dictador del Paraguay, José Gaspar de Francia (Buenos Aires, 1923, 1957), pp. 76, 90Google Scholar, respectively.

56 This is evidenced by the fact that the military commander of Paraguay's southernmost garrison, Matiauda at Itapúa, disobeying the Consul's warnings not to intervene in regional squabbles, joined Artigas, the leader of federalist forces in the Banda Oriental; see Williams, The Rise and Fall, p. 39. However, most federalists among the Army's filiado officers – despite the worsening economic situation – abided by the Consul's commands.

57 Caballero is reported to have helped convince the Congress of 1814 of the need to give Francia dictatorial powers for a limited term. See Cooney, ‘The Paraguayan Independence Movement’. For Francia's army reorganisation decree see ANA, Sección Historia, Vol. 229, N. 11, transcribed in Viola, Alfredo, Cartasy y Decretos del Dictator Francia, tomo Ill (Asunción, 1990), pp. 26–9Google Scholar. For the ‘Great Conspiracy’ see Williams, , ‘The Conspiracy of 1820 and the Destruction of the Paraguayan Aristocracy’, Revista de Historia de América, nos. 75–76 (01–12 1973), pp. 141–56Google Scholar.

58 Something similar had happened in Paraguay during the Comuneros Revolt at the end of the first third of the eighteenth century. Theft and crime continued to be a preoccupation of provincial governors and of the consuls (see Garavaglia, Economía, sociedad y regiones, pp. 243–5). Should an alliance with Artigas be formed, therefore, the possibility of a recurrence could not be discounted.

59 The literature on the 1820s frequently refers to budgetary problems, government efforts to improve international trade, and land confiscations, but does not causally connect them to one another or to the increased labour coercion that can be found in this period. For a recent example see Whigham, Thomas L., ‘The Backdoor Approach: The Alto Uruguay and Paraguayan Trade, 1810–1852’, Revista de Historia de América, no. 109 (Enero–Junio 1990), pp. 45–68Google Scholar.

60 Tax revenues fell by 14,536 pesos, 6–7% of 1816 receipts; confiscations amounted to 121, 123 pesos, 35–40% larger in nominal terms than those of 1818. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous devolution, Appendix A.

61 Government spending fell by 28,218 pesos and the budget deficit was 38,000 pesos.

62 Brazil offered to establish commercial relations with Paraguay o n 1 February 1823. Buenos Aires, likewise, proposed to reestablish commercial and economic relations several times during the period stretching from November 1823 to November 1824, and relaxed the blockade. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 179.

63 Quoted in White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 140.

64 See Vargas Peña on Parish's message to Francia concerning Buenos Aires's attitude regarding trade at this point.

65 The quote comes from White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 140.

66 ANA-SH, Legajo 241, Francia a Ramírez, 22 December 1831, cited in White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 147.

67 Rengger and Longchamps furnish evidence that Francia had a different attitude towards trade with Brazil and with Argentina. They observe that ‘(t)he price of flour having risen in 1821, the Dictator fixed a maximum for its sale, which was lower than the price paid for it at Buenos Ayres; the year following he did the same thing with the cattle brought to be slaughtered. On the other hand, when he opened a commercial relation with the Portuguese, he fixed a minimum, under which the tobacco and tea of Paraguay were not allowed to be sold’. See Rengger, J. R. and Longchamps, M., The Reign of Doctor Joseph Gaspard Roderick de Francia in Paraguay; Being an Account of a Six Year's Residence in that Republic, from July, 1819 to May 1825 (London, 1827), p. 151Google Scholar. Italics in original.

68 Rengger and Longchamps's observations suggest that the preferential trade conditions Paraguay accorded Brazil may have actually benefited Argentina and that Corrientes, in particular, gained substantially from the fact that it did not have to contend with Asunción's competition in downriver markets for yerba mate and other products. They remark that ‘(i)n 1819, Corrientes was half in ruins, and looked more like a deserted village than an inhabited city. In 1825, we found the old houses rebuilt and a great number of new ones erected. The population had considerably increased, commerce was in full activity, and agriculture flourishing’. While admitting that part of the recovery was due to the four years of peace enjoyed since 1821, they also observe that '(t)his city, moreover, owes, in part, its speedy re-establishment to the interruption of the trade with Paraguay; for since then, its inhabitants gave themselves up exclusively to the cultivation of tobacco, and the sugar-cane, and to the felling of wood for building-branches of industry, in which it would have been before impossible for them to have competed with their neighbours. Rengger and Longchamps, Reign of Doctor Francia, p. 195.

69 Lynch, John, ‘The Origins of Spanish American Independence’, In Bethell, Leslie (ed.), Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. III (London, 1987), p. 333Google Scholar, emphasis in the original. Francia's strong preference for Brazil did not restrict itself to the realm of trade and may only partially be attributed to his Portuguese background. It may not be unreasonable to suggest that it may have been due to his conservative political views.

70 See Williams, John Hoyt, ‘La guerra no-declarada entre el Paraguay y Corrientes’, Estudios Paraguayos, vol. 1, no. 1 (Noviembre 1973), pp. 35–43Google Scholar.

71 On Grandsire's projects and Francia's attitude towards them see Acosta, Juan Francisco Pérez, Francia y Bompland (Buenos Aires, 1942), pp. 25–7Google Scholar.

72 Francia's first decree, of 13 November 1814, is quoted in Báez, Cecilio, Ensayo sobre el Doctor Francia y la dictadura en Sud-América (Asunción, 1910), p. 93Google Scholar. Báez also paraphrases the contents of the second decree, which dates from the mid-twenties.

73 Alfredo Viola mentions some of the ingenious ways in which individuals sought to smuggle money out and the mulcts that were applied to those who were caught in the act. See ‘Moneda y control de cambio durante el gobierno del Dr. Francia’, Anuario del Institute de Investigaciones Históricas José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, vol III, no. 3 (Setiembre), pp. 15 and 16. For the decree concerning silversmithing establishments see Circular a los Comisionados de Costa Abajo, 21–Abril 1929, ANASH Vol 240, no. 2, also cited in Viola, ‘Moneda y control de cambio’, p. 15.

74 The ‘escape valve’ view, though evidently untenable, has remained popular in the literature. Even writers who have abandoned the dependentista school still cling to it. Thus, Whigham's Politics of River Trade still speaks of a ‘commercial “vent”’ (p. 40).

75 Squatters who had settled on the lands were expelled. See Alfredo Viola, ‘La tenencia de la tierra durante el gobierno del Dr. Francia’, Anuario del Institute de Investigations Históricas José Caspar Rodríguez de Francia, vol. II, no. 2 (November), pp. 80–9.

76 Most of those found guilty of conspiracy were executed on 17 July 1821. Molas claims, according to White, that sixty-eight were executed. White himself claims that twentyone were executed on 17 July or shortly thereafter, and that a total of at most forty political executions took place during Francia's entire tenure. See Molas, Mariano Antonio, ‘Clamor de un Paraguayo’, Revista del Paraguay, no. 7 and 8 (1828, 1893), pp. 240–62Google Scholar, cited in White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 91 and 92, respectively. For the ‘autos’ and the assets confiscated from Cavañas, the Yegros and the Montiel families see Williams (1973 a), p. 151.

77 On the Colegio's closure see Williams, John Hoyt, ‘Dictatorship and the Church: Dr Francia in Paraguay’, Journal of Church and State, vol. 15, no. 3 (Fall 1973), p. 430CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 279, fn. 72.

78 For the secularisation decree see Pastore, Carlos, La lucha por la tierra en el Paraguay (Montevideo, 1972), p. 99Google Scholar; and Williams, ‘Dictatorship and the Church’, p. 430–31. For the transformation of conventual buildings into barracks see Nogués, Alberto, La Iglesia en la época del Dr. Francia (Asunción, 1960), p. 5Google Scholar, paraphrased in Williams, ‘Dictatorship and the Church’, p. 431.

79 For partial studies of inventories of convents see Jerry W. Cooney, ‘The Destruction of the Religious Orders in Paraguay’, The Américas, vol. 36, no. 2 (October), pp. 177–98, and Williams, ‘Dictatorship and the Church’. The quote is from Williams, ‘Dictatorship’, p. 431.

80 One of the better reputed analyses of the evolution of Paraguay's land tenure system available to date states in this connection that: ‘Las tierras privadas cuyos propietarios no pudieron presentar los títulos o certificados en el plazo determinado por el gobiemo, fueron arrendadas a sus ocupantes, sus primitivos dueños, con la obligación de cultivarlas y poblarlas de ganado, convirtiéndose así en importante fuente financiera del Estado. El gobierno, por su parte, ocupó las tierras aptas para la producción ganadera, organizando en ellas grandes estancias de ganado vacuno y caballar del Estado, para abastecer de came, montados y equipos al ejército, y de cueros a la industria de la curtiembre y de la yerba mate, y para distribuir entre la gente sin recursos económicos.’ See Pastore, Lucha por la tierra, p. 102.

81 See Alfredo Viola, ‘Tenencia de la tierra’, pp. 85–6. Francia's decree says: ‘… la omisión de los mercedarios ha sido la causa no sólo de hallarse aún despobladas dichas villas y sus costas y de los desastres y robos que por falta de suficiente gente que la cubra y defienda han ejecutado los indios bárbaros del Chaco sino también de que para contenerlos, haya sido preciso que el govierno con crecidos gastos hiciese construir cuatro fuertes en aquella banda, manteniendo en todos ellos, la guarnición de tropa veterana a costa igualmente de la Tesorería, sin que hubiesen bastado, para que los insinuados mercedarios cumpliesen con su obligación las repetidas providencias, que en todo tiempo aun en el antiguo régimen se tomaron para que poblasen debidamente las tierras que habían solicitado ye se les había concedido…’ Viola adds that ‘Dispuso además el Dictador que si esas tierras no eran pobladas por el término señalado se tendrán “…por inválidas e ineficaces, mandándolas recoger, y se repartieran las tierras a las familias pobres que se irán remitiendo a poblar la costa.”’ See Viola, ‘Tenencia de la Tierra’, pp. 85–6.

82 The information on state ranches ‘Costa Arriba’ and ‘Costa Abajo’ is from Viola, ‘Tenencia de la tierra’.

83 See Williams, John Hoyt, ‘Paraguay's Nineteenth Century Estancias de la República’, Agricultural History, vol. 47 (07 1973), pp. 206–15;Google Scholar.

84 See Archivo Nacional, vol. 61, no. 21–37 SE, in Colección Doroteo Bareiro, tomo III, p. 15;, in Colección Documental Carlos A. Pastore.

85 See Romero, Luis Armando Galeano, ‘Unidades productivas agropecuarias y estructura de poder en Paraguay (1811–70)’, Revista Paraguaya de Sociología, vol. 9, no. 23 (Enero–Abril 1972), pp. 91–105Google Scholar, and White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 264.

86 Riquelme García states that ‘por la pragmática de expulsión de los jesuitas el 7 de febrero de 1767 se dispuso que todos los bienes de la Compañía de Jesús en Hispanoamérica, pasasen a ser aplicados a la fundación de institutos de enseñanza’, and goes on to say that ‘se entregó al Seminario, en enero de 1781, las estancias de Paraguarí, Tacurutí, Ybitipé, Yeguariza, Caañabé, Pindapoita, Yariguaá-miní, Román Potrero, Guazu-cuá, Yariguaá-guazú, Roman Potrero viejo, Novillo Vacay, La Cruz, treinta y cinco leguas de tierras en las Cordilleras, tierras de labrantíos en Tacumbú, las chacras de San Lorenzo, Barsequillo Potrero y Capiípery’. See Benigno Riquelme García, ‘El Colegio Seminario Conciliar de San Carlos, de Asunción, 1783–1822’, Cuadernos Republicans, no. 10 (n.d.), p. 74. Juan Bautista Rivarola Paoli furnishes a roughly coincident list of sixteen ranches. See ‘La Administración de Temporalidades en la Provincia del Paraguay’, Historia Paraguaya, vol. 25 (1988), p. 200. This number is also that given by a contemporary observer, Molas, Mariano Antonio, in ‘Descriptión histórica de la antigua Provincia del Paraguay’, Revista de Buenos Aires, tomo Ix (1866), p. 187Google Scholar, cited by Pastore, Luchapor la tierra, p. 104. Ranches administered by the Colegio in the Paraguarý partido in 1816 are said to have been Tacuruty and Caacupé, suggesting that, by that date, the number of ranches could have been larger still. See ‘Ynventario Perteneciente a las Estancias de Paraguary’, Archivo Nacional, vol. 1822, NE, 20 July 1816. For the statement that former Jesuit ranches were turned to individuals see Rengger and Longchamps, Reign of Doctor Francia.

87 Cattle from state ranches were not only used to feed the troops. In addition, evidence from 1829 reportedly suggests that the state distributed eight hundred head of cattle to the indigent poor of Villa Rica. Evidence from 1831 suggests that the state provided cattle in partial payment of the salaries of eight teachers of rural public schools. See Williams, ‘Estancias de la República’, p. 211. This is consistent with the notion that after the state expropriated the lands of the religious orders, it had to take over some welfare functions that the Church had discharged during the colonial and the early national period, such as those related to ministering to the needy, and education.

88 Available evidence indicates that the government obtained revenues from renting out ejido lands after 1827. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 278, fn. 71. It is not clear whether these ejido lands belonged to Spanish or Indian towns.

89 See Williams, ‘From the Barrel of a Gun’.

90 The ‘conspiracy’ was presumably discovered as a result of a confession passed on by a priest to the authorities. Summary trials were held subsequently, but evidence in favour or against the charges was subsequently destroyed by the government.

91 See Velázquez, ‘Los Yegros’, p. 60. The passage referred to reads in its entirety as follows: ‘¿Hubo conspiración en 1820? Pudo haberla, como no haberla. El propio gobernador afectado se habría encargado de destruir la documentatión relativa al tema. Sobre el mismo existe amplia bibliografía, con aseveraciones y desmentidos por igual rotundos, mas no hallamos en ella testimonios objetivos que nos permitan arribar a definitiva certidumbre.’

92 See previously quoted excerpt from Batou, Cent ans.

93 The claim that Francia's emphyteusis was simply a prolongation of the colonial emphyteusis, made by Báez, Ensayo sobre el Dr. Francia, is restated by Abente, ‘Foreign Capital’, p. 73.

94 See Castedo Franco, ‘Proceso social de la revolutión’.

95 For the emphyteusis under Rodríguez and Rivadavia see Coni, Emilio, La verdad sobre la enfiteusis de Rivadavia (Buenos Aires, 1927)Google Scholar; Bagú, Sergio, El plan económico del grupo rivadaviano, 1811–1827 (Rosario, Argentina, 1966), pp. 49–53Google Scholar and 84–94); and Burgin, Miron, The Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism, 1820–1852 (New York, 1946), pp. 96–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 In that sense they also seem to have differed from the emphyteusis that Carlos Antonio López's later implemented, as described by Gelly. See Gelly, Juan Andrés, Paraguay: lo que fue, lo que es, y lo que será (Paris, 1926)Google Scholar.

97 The army could press peasants into service. Private ranchers, presumably, could not obtain labourers in that fashion. State ranches, therefore, had an advantage vis-à-vis private ranches.

98 The reference is to those blacks who had been Church tributaries at the expropriated Tabapý ranch. See Williams, John Hoyt, ‘Black Labor and State Ranches: The Tabapí Experience in Paraguay’, Journal of Negro History, vol. 62, no. 4 (10 1977), p. 380CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 141.

100 For the 1817 resettlement of the five former Jesuit mission towns of the district of Candelaria to lands north of the Paraná River see Guillermo, Furlong Cardiff S. J., Misiones y sus pueblos de guaraníes, 1610–1813 (Buenos Aires, 1962), p. 706Google Scholar. Further references may be found, according to Williams, ‘La guerra no declarada’, p. 39, fn. 16, in Audibert, Alejandro, Los límites de la antigua provincia del Paraguay 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1892), ia. pane, pp. 156–7Google Scholar, and in de Moraes Lima, Diego Arouche, ‘Memoria da campanha de 1816’, Revista do Institute Histórico e Geographico Brasileiro, no. 26–27 (julio y octubre 1845), pp. 125–70Google Scholar, 373–8.

101 See Williams, ‘La guerra no-declarada’.

102 Rengger and Longchamps, Reign of Doctor Francia, pp. 176–7.

103 See Spalding, Karen, De indio a campesino. Cambios en la estructura social del Perú colonial (Lima, 1974), pp. 127–46Google Scholar.

104 Secondary sources do not clarify whether these pueblos paid taxes in kind which the government auctioned off or whether they sold their own output to pay the tax in money. The former is more likely.

105 ‘Los seis Guaycurúces trabajan perfectamente en obras públicas con los demás yndios y presos todos a cadena. Así se irán acostumbrando a vivir sugetos, ocupados, y trabajando, lo que es mucho mejor y más conveniente pa ellos qe el qe vayan a tomar el Oficio de bandidos y salteadores.’ Archivo Nacional, Colección Rio Branco, no. 220, 1–29, 23, 28, no. 11.

106 See Williams, The Rise and Fall, p. 92, and ‘Informe de Correa de Cámara’, 1 May 1829, in Anais do ltamarati, 4–85.

107 Rengger and Longchamps, Reign of Doctor Francia, pp. 126–7. (Italics added.)

108 See, for example, Norberto Ortellado to Francia, 12 July 1821, Archivo Nacional, Colección Rio Branco, no. 220, I–29,23,28, no. 13; and Francia to Norberto Ortellado, 12 August 1821, Archivo Nacional, Colección Rio Branco, no. 220,1–29,23,28, no. 16.

109 Rengger and Longchamps, Reign of Doctor Francia, pp. 49–50. Rengger and Longchamps's assertion that there was no such thing as a dexterous man in Paraguay is clearly erroneous. The dissolution of the Jesuit missions alone supplied large numbers of skilled artisans. See Furlong, Misiones y sus pueblos, Part vIII, and Part IX, Ch. 65.

110 In the first connection, see Williams, , ‘Black Labor and State Ranches: The Tabapí Experience in Paraguay’, Journal of Negro History, vol. 62, no. 4 (10 1977), pp. 378–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; in the second, Pastore, Lucha por la tierra, p. 99.

111 Whigham, The Politics of River Trade, p. 29, advances a similar opinion, but offers no evidence to support it.

112 See Burgin, Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism, p. 97, emphasis in the original.

113 For military and bureaucratic reformism in early modern Europe see Batchelder, Ronald and Freudenberger, Herman, ‘On the Rational Origins of the Modern Centralized State’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 20 (1983), pp. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for developments in seventeenth century England see North and Weingast, ‘Constitutions and Commitment’.

114 Viola points out that ‘educational expenditures were limited to paying the salaries of the elementary school teacher of Asunción, José Gabriel Téllez, the professors of the Colegio Seminario de San Carlos which opened until 1823, and of the academy of young apprentices’. After the Colegio's closure, educational expenditures must have fallen, but according to Viola they ‘experienced a noticeable increase beginning in 1834’. See Viola, Alfredo, ‘El Dr Francia y la Hacienda Pública’, Anuario del Institute de Investigations Históricas Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, vol. V, no. 5 (10 1983), p. 53Google Scholar. Potthast-Jukheit notes that Francia's policies had the effect of ‘weakening the institution of marriage’, and illegitimacy rose, in Encarnación, ‘from around 51 % in 1818 and 1819’ to more than 79% in 1835/36, and in Villa Rica, Horqueta, and Santa Rosa to 54%, 50%, and 35 %, respectively. See Potthast-Jukheit, , ‘The Ass of a Mare and Other Scandals: Marriage and Extramarital Relations in Nineteenth Century Paraguay’, Journal of Family History, vol. 16, no. 3 (1991), P. 220Google Scholar.

115 See Cooney, ‘Repression and Reform’, p. 416.

116 See Fulgencio Yegros, Pedro Juan Cavallero, and Fernando de la Mora, 9 de abril de 1812, in Báez, Ensay sobre el Doctor Francia, pp. 87–88.

117 The original reads ‘casarse con indias de los pueblos, mulatas conocidas, y negras’. Viola's remark may be found in Alfredo Viola, ‘El Dr Francia y la Hacienda Pública’, p. 49. On Francia's extension of the droit d'aubaine see Potthast-Jutkeit, ‘Ass of a Mare’, p. 219.

118 The decree granting one such license reads as follows: ‘Asunción y Noviembre io de 1819. Se concede licencia para el Matrimonio, que pretende ésta parte, siempre que entregue en la Tesorería tres mil ochocientos pesos fuertes para los gastos extraordinarios del Estado, que al presente occuren en la inteligencia de que verificada la entrega se dará por el Actuario el correspondiente certificado de ésta concesión. Francia. Ante mi Mateo Fleytas, Fiel de Fhos.’ Archivo Nacional, vol. 2533, Nueva Encuademación, transcribed in Coleccón Doroteo Bareiro, tomo III, p. 48, in Coleccíon Documental Carlos A. Pastore.

119 See Schupp, Carlos Antonio Heyn, Iglesía y Estado en el proceso de emancipación político del Paraguay (1811–1853) (Asunción: 1991) p. 212Google Scholar.

120 The entire passage reads as follows:

‘por hallarme en un país de pura gente idiota, donde el Gobierno no tiene a quien volver los ojos, siendo preciso que yo lo haga, lo industrie y lo amaestre todo por sacar al Paraguay de la infelicidad y abatimiento en que ha estado sumido por tres siglos. Por eso despues de la revolutión todos se avinieron a robarlo, y lo robaron a su satisfactión Porteños, Artigueños y Portugueños. --Si en medio de todo esto hay quienes deseen más de lo qe yo puedo proporcíonar, no tengo otro arbitrio sino licenciarlos y que se retiren a sus casas, porque no he de hacer lo qe llaman milagro, y mucho menos en esta tierra de imposibles donde todo es dificultad, qe es menester qe entre mis infinitas atencions y ocupacions, ande como un desesperado riñendo, y lidiando con sastres, con mujeres y con criadas para qe no me hechen a perder los vestuars qe hay que preparar asi para la gente de por alla como para la de las Villas de los Presidios del Chaco de Olympo, de Apa, y de los de aqui.’ (Francia al Comandante de Itapúa, 10 Diciembre 1828, cited in Pérez Acosta, Francia y Bompland, pp. 22–23.)

121 The problem apparently persisted, for he later observed that he was:

‘ahogado, sin poder respirar en el inmenso cúmulo de atencions y ocupacions qe cargan sobre mi solo, porque en el Pais por falta de hombres idoneos, se ve el Gobierno sin los operarios y auxiliares, que debe tener y tiene en todas partes, de suerte que por necesidad estoy cumpliendo y llevando el peso de oficios que debian servirse por empleados competentes.’ (Francia al comandante de Itapúa, 22 de agosto de 1830, cited in Pérez Acosta, Francia y Bompland, pps 22–23.)

Vargas Peña, Secreta Politica, pp. 271–85, presents a documentary survey of additional statements by Francia on the capability of Paraguayans.

122 See Ransom, Roger L. and Odell, Kerry Ann, ‘Land and Credit: Some Historical Parallels Between Mexico and the American South’, Agricultural History, vol. 60, no. 1 (Winter 1986), pp. 4–31Google Scholar.

123 Quoted in Velázquez, Rafael Eladio, ‘Los Cabildos en la historia del Paraguay’, Historia Paraguaya, vol xxvi (1987), p. 235Google Scholar. The translation is mine, MP. The officers Francia appointed to replace those of the Cabildo are listed in Velázquez, ‘Los Cabildos’, p. 235.

124 For the closure of Villa Rica's cabildo, see White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 98. For cabildos in other Spanish towns and in Indian towns see Velázquez, ‘Los Cabildos’, pp. 232–4 and 224–7. Pueblos de españoles and pueblos de indios are listed in Pastore, Lucha por la tierra. For the argument that cabildos in other towns continued operating see White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 98; for the suggestion that they did not, see Rengger and Longchamps, Reign of Doctor Francia, p. 125. There is evidence that in the Indian town of Yaguarón, elected cabildo representatives took office as late as 1831, and that ‘en algún caso la elección es rectificada por el Dictador’. See Velázquez, ‘Los Cabildos’, p. 27. The tribunal of commerce to which Rengger and Longchamps refer must be the ‘consulado’. The jurisdiction of a first alcalde was substituted in its place. See Rengger and Longchamps, Reign of Doctor Francia, p. 131. For the Cabildo Eclesiástico's suppression see Estragó, Margarita Durán, Presencia Franciscana en el Paraguay (1538–1824) (Asunción, 1987), p. 292Google Scholar.

125 It would be hard to suggest that the state represented peasants as a class, even if there were more evidence of a particularly favourable attitude towards the peasantry, because it is not clear that peasants are a class. Marx, for one, seemed to doubt it. See Marx, Karl, The Eighteenth of Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, excerpted in Tucker, Robert C. (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd. edition (London, 1978), p. 608Google Scholar.

126 Abente contends that the indigenous landed elite created the early national state. In support of this contention he cites the fact that among Francia's supporters were José Manuel de Ibáñez and Lázaro de Roxas Aranda y Carrillo. He points out that both were well-to-do members of the clases rurales mentioned in contemporary accounts as having made up the social basis of Francia's dictatorship, which he suggests should not be equated to the campesinado or the rural poor. See Abente, ‘Foreign Capital’, p. 65. However, Ibáñez eventually turned against Francia, and was jailed until his death for it. See Williams, The Rise and Fall, p. 50. Roxas's step-son-in-law, Carlos Antonio López, who would become President after Francia, withdrew to the lands his wife had inherited.

127 Norberto Ortellado wrote to Francia: ‘Señor: de mi mas alto respeto me es indispensable en esta ocación molestar a las muy ocupadas atenciones de V.E. y es a que si fuere del Spmo. agrado de V.E. me permita comprar algunas vaquitas que se me proporcionare, y poblar un puestito de Estancia, solo con el fin de tener como socorrer a mis ancianos padres. Quartel de Santa María, 30 de Abril de 1821.’ Archivo Nacional, Colección Rio Branco, no. 220, I–29,23–28, no. 10. Francia answered: ‘Puede Ud. desde luego comprar el ganado que se le proporcione y fundar de su cuenta la Estanzuela que me dice y…tambi” establecer si quiere una buena chacra, pues todo eso no es vedado supuesto que alla hay tierras de sobra y Ud. lo hará a su costa como que son para su utilidad y provecho.’ Archivo Nacional, Colección Rio Branco, no. 220, I–29–23–28, no. 11.

128 See Whigham, Politics of River Trade, p. 43.

129 Sales of state products to the public were 59,809 pesos, to the troops 23,616 pesos; rents of state lands and other state property amounted to 8,517 pesos. See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix A.

130 The sources referred to may be found, respectively, in ANA-NE, Legajo 2968, 'Cuenta Arrendamiento Exidos…de 1827 hasta 1836; ANA-NE, Legajo 2968, Cuenta…Arrendamiento de Exidos…año 1832; and ANA-NE, ‘Cuentas. Arrendamientos de Exidos…año 1839,’ cited in White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 278, fn. 71.

131 See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix A.

132 Ibid.

133 At Asunción, Pilar, and Ytapúa. According to Williams, The Rise and Fall, p. 94, their profits may have amounted to 5,750 pesos in the second half of 1826.

134 White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, p. 106.

135 Ibid., p. 123.

136 For the statement that it was a tax decrease for the small holder at the expense of slaves see Abente, ‘Foreign Capital, Economic Elites, and the State in Paraguay during the Liberal Republic (1870–1936)’, (ms) p. 38. The statement does not appear in the version of the paper published in the Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 21 (1989), pp. 61–88.

137 See Wisner, Dictador del Paraguay, p. 144.

138 This analysis suggests that the more appropriate theoretical view of mercantilism in terms of which to conceptualise Francia's regime is that of Baysinger, Barry, Ekelund, Robert, and Tollison, Robert, ‘Mercantilism as a Rent-Seeking Society’, in Buchanan, , James, et al. , Towards a Theory of the Rent-Seeking Society (College Station, Texas, 1981)Google Scholar, not that of Heckscher, Eli, Mercantilism 2 vols. (London, 1935)Google Scholar.

139 By comparison to spending on military salaries, spending on non-military salaries in 1829, as in 1828, was very low. It covered the salaries of the small treasury staff, of the crews of state ships, a primary school teacher, a public defender for minors and the poor, and a lamplighter.

140 See White, Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, Appendix A.

141 Thereafter, and until 1834, the bulk of state appropriations are accounted for by state inheritance, confiscations from the Church, state debt collections, and fines and confiscations; forced contributions disappeared.

142 To 18,662 pesos.

143 Catalano asserts, by contrast, that Francia successfully rooted ancient institutional forms in a new socio-economic reality. See Catalano, Pierangelo, Modelo institutional romano e independencia: República del Paraguay, 1813–1870 (Asunción, 1986), p. 16Google Scholar.

144 For a discussion of the concept in the context of technological innovation see David, Paul A., ‘Clio and the Economics of QWERTY’, American Economic Review, vol. 75 (05 1985)Google Scholar.

145 The numerous analogous features between this economy and socialist economies suggest that all these economies may be of the same genus.

146 See my ‘State-led Industrialization’.

147 This interpretation contrasts with that in Abente's ‘Foreign Capital’ and ‘Liberal Republic’, where the entire 1870–1930 period is invested with the characteristics of the 1920s.

148 In fact, the only other attempt to create a dynasty in Paraguayan history is observed at this time, but it was less successful. Though Stroessner ruled longer than Carlos Antonio López and Francisco Solano López combined, he did not manage to install his son as President before being forced to relinquish power.