Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T00:40:02.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mechanisation in the Periphery: The Experience of Chilean Agriculture, c. 1850–90

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2018

CLAUDIO ROBLES-ORTIZ
CLAUDIO ROBLES-ORTIZ*
Affiliation:
Department of EconomicsUniversidad de Santiago de Chile
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article examines mechanisation during the period of export-led growth in Chilean agriculture, c. 1850–90. According to conventional wisdom, since labour was cheap, landowners did not modernise their haciendas. The introduction of machinery was late and superficial; the large estate remained backward and inefficient. This view is flawed by lack of quantitative evidence and a narrow approach. Using imports and stocks data, and case material from the National Agricultural Society's bulletin, the article presents an alternative interpretation. The development of the market for agricultural equipment involved a fruitful exchange of technical expertise between the foreign importing companies and local landowners and experts. Mechanisation solved labour supply bottlenecks, and developed primarily on harvest tasks, above all the threshing of wheat. The scale and pattern of mechanisation were consistent with the development of this process in other countries’ older agricultures. The area mechanically harvested was much larger than previously estimated. Mechanisation was a significant transformation in the agricultural sector.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , October 2018 , pp. 195 - 216
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Bulmer-Thomas, V., The Economic History of Latin America since Independence (Cambridge, 2014), p. 98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bértola, L. and Ocampo, J. A., Desarrollo, vaivenes y desigualdad: Una historia económica de América Latina desde la Independencia (Madrid, 2010), pp. 148–9Google Scholar.

2. Hernández, S., ‘Transformaciones tecnológicas en la agricultura de Chile central: Siglo XIX’, Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios Socioeconómicos, 3 (1966), 1–31Google Scholar.

3. Bauer, A. J., Chilean Rural Society from the Spanish Conquest to 1930 (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 104–06Google Scholar. Later works showed that agricultural machine imports increased in the 1850–80 period and continued after the War of the Pacific (1878–83); see Sater, W. F., ‘La agricultura chilena y la Guerra del Pacífico’, Historia, 16 (1981), 125–49Google Scholar; and G. Salazar, ‘Entrepreneurs and Peons in the Transition to Industrial Capitalism, Chile 1820–78’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Hull, 1984), p. 253.

4. Oglethorpe, S., ‘The end of sharecropping in central Italy after 1945: the role of mechanisation in the changing relationship between peasant families and land’, Rural History, 25:2 (2014), 243–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collins, E. J. T., ‘The latter-day history of the draught ox in England, 1770–1964’, Agricultural History Review, 58:2 (2010), 191–216Google Scholar; Caunce, S. A., ‘Mechanisation and society in English agriculture: the experience of the north-east, 1850–1914’, Rural History, 17:1 (2006), 23–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Garrabou, R., ‘Sobre el atraso de la mecanización agraria en España (1850–1933)’, Agricultura y Sociedad, 57 (1990), 41–77Google Scholar.

6. Manuelli, R. E. and Seshadri, A., ‘Frictionless technology diffusion: the case of tractors’, American Economic Review, 104:4 (2014), 1368–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martini, D. and Silberberg, E., ‘The diffusion of tractor technology’, Journal of Economic History, 66:2 (2006), 354–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, W. J., ‘An unsung hero: the farm tractor's contribution to twentieth-century United States economic growth’, Journal of Economic History, 61:2 (2001), 493–6Google Scholar; Brassley, P., ‘Output and technical change in twentieth-century British agriculture’, Agricultural History Review, 48:1 (2000), 60–84Google Scholar; Olmstead, A. L. and Rhode, P. W., ‘Reshaping the landscape: the impact and diffusion of the tractor in American agriculture, 1910–1960’, Journal of Economic History, 61:3 (2001), 663–98Google Scholar.

7. Robles-Ortiz, C., ‘Agrarian capitalism and rural labour: the hacienda system in central Chile, 1870–1920’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 41:3 (2009), 493–526CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. C. Kay, ‘Comparative Development of the European Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System: An Approach to A Theory of Agrarian Change for Chile’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 1971).

9. C. Gay, Historia física y política de Chile (Paris, 1844–71). This monumental work comprised twenty-eight volumes and two atlases. All references included in this article are from a modern facsimilar edition of the two volumes on agriculture: Claudio Gay, Agricultura Chilena (Santiago, 1973).

10. Gay, Agricultura, p. 220.

11. Ibid., p. 223.

12. Ibid., pp. 223–4

13. Barros, L., ‘La introducción de las máquinas de trillar en Chile’, Boletín de la Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura (hereafter BSNA), IX:12 (5th April 1878), 241Google Scholar.

14. Gay, Agricultura, pp. 225–6.

15. Llorca-Jaña, M., ‘Shaping globalization: London's merchant bankers in the early nineteenth century’, Business History Review, 88:3 (2014), pp. 469–95Google Scholar; Mayo, J., British Merchants and Chilean Development, 1851–1886 (Boulder, CO, 1987)Google Scholar; Miller, R., Britain and Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1993)Google Scholar.

16. BSNA, I:1 (16th October 1869), 4–9. In 1875, Ramsomes Sims & Head and M. Clark & Co. were listed in the SNA membership; ‘Personal de la Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura’, BSNA, VI:18 (5th February 1875), 441–4.

17. ‘La Galería de los SS. Rose Innes i Ca.’, BSNA, VII:7 (20th January 1876), 130.

18. ‘La Sección de Máquinas de la Galería de Rose Innes de Valparaíso’, El Correo de la Exposición, 10 (10th November 1875), 149.

19. Public Notary of Valparaíso, records before Julio C. Escala, 13th July 1881 and 20th November 1881.

20. Mayo, British Merchants, pp. 194–5.

21. Gay, Agricultura, p. 225.

22. S. Izquierdo to Clark & Co., Santiago, 8th January 1876; BSNA, VII:7 (20th January 1876), 148; see also Alejandro Valdés to Clark & Co., Santiago, 9th January 1876; BSNA, VII:7 (20th January 1876), 144.

23. Sepúlveda, S., El trigo chileno en el mercado mundial: ensayo de geografía histórica (Santiago, 1959)Google Scholar; Bauer, A. J., ‘Expansión económica en una sociedad tradicional: Chile Central en el siglo XIX’, Historia, 9 (1970), 137–235Google Scholar.

24. Menadier, J., ‘El ferrocarril de Talcahuano a Chillán’, BSNA, V:9 (20th February 1872), 183–5Google Scholar.

25. ‘La emigración de peones chilenos y la agricultura’, El Independiente, 12th April 1872, p. 6.

26. H. Rumbold, ‘Report by . . . on the progress and general condition of Chile’, Reports by Her Majesty's Secretaries of Embassy and Legation, Commercial no. 14 (London, 1876), p. 390.

27. ‘Las segadoras de trigo y el rastrillo de caballo’, BSNA, IV:9 (20th February 1873), 176.

28. ‘Cuadro comparativo del costo de siega, trilla y avienta según el sistema antiguo y moderno’, BSNA, III:6 (1871), 111–13.

29. As shown by the ‘Unspecified’ category, large numbers of agricultural machines were recorded without any indication of their use; thus, import figures in the Estadística Comercial and stock records in the Anuario Estadístico used in this article are not meant to be accurate estimates, but indicators of general trends.

30. Some 256 cultivators and seeders were imported between 1859 and 1878. Since they were not periodically recorded in Estadística Comercial, they are not included in Table 1.

31. L. Ortega, ‘Change and Crisis in Chile's Economy and Society, 1865–1878’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1979), pp. 413–92.

32. ‘Exportación de Trigo por los puertos de la República desde 1841 a 1911’, Estadística Comercial de la República de Chile (Santiago, 1911), p. XII.

33. Lindsay, S., ‘Ensayo de Estadística Agrícola’, Anuario Estadístico (Santiago, 1864), p. 6Google Scholar.

34. BSNA, I:3 (5th November 1869), 33.

35. ‘Steam Power for Cultivation’, California Farmer, 11th March 1869, p. 60, quoted in A. L. Olmstead and P. Rhode, A Survey of the Development of California Agricultural Machinery 1860–1960, University of California, Davis Agricultural History Center Working Paper No. 11 (January 1983), p. 5.

36. Echeverría, F., ‘Las máquinas y el trabajador agrícola’, BSNA, II:20 (1st August 1871), 345–6Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., 345.

38. Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile: Estadística Agrícola 1865–1866 (Santiago, 1867), p. 460.

39. Echeverría, ‘Las máquinas’, 344.

40. Hernández, J. W., El Maquinista, o sea instrucciones breves y sencillas para el manejo de las máquinas a vapor y trilladoras (Melipilla, 1876), p. 33Google Scholar.

41. Barros, L., Estadística Jeneral del Departamento de Melipilla presentada en la Esposición Internacional Chilena (Santiago, 1875), p. 11Google Scholar.

42. Barros, ‘La introducción’, 242–3.

43. ‘Prensas para pasto’, BSNA, VII:7 (20th January 1876), 132–3.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Drouilly, M. and Cuadra, P. L., ‘Ensayo sobre el estado económico de la agricultura en Chile, redactado para el Congreso Agrícola de París’, BSNA, IX:14 (5th May 1878), 297Google Scholar.

47. Anuario Estadístico recorded stocks until 1874; then, this source ceased to be published in 1892 and was resumed in 1907.

48. ‘Las propiedades rústicas de Chile’, BSNA, VI:16 (6th June 1875), 412. Values are given in current Chilean pesos.

49. Garrabou, ‘Sobre el atraso’, 41–4.

50. Following Collins's work for north-western European countries, this estimate considers that a reaper could cut 25 hectares in a season. Bauer used Drouilly and Cuadra's estimates of the number of reapers, and considered an area of 400,000 hectares in wheat and 100,000 hectares in barley (the Anuario Estadístico recorded an area slightly smaller: 469,334 hectares); Bauer, Chilean Rural, p. 105; Anuario Estadístico: Agricultura (1879), pp. 105–06; and Collins, E. J. T., ‘Labour Supply and Demand in European Agriculture 1800–1880’, in Jones, E. L. and Wolf, S. J., eds, Agrarian Change and Economic Development: The Historical Problems (London, 1969), pp. 74–7Google Scholar.

51. ‘Cuadro comparativo del costo de la siega, trilla y avienta según el sistema antiguo y moderno’, BSNA, III:5 (20th March 1871), 110–13. As background information, note that 1 cuadra equals 10 tareas, and thus 1 hectare equals 6.3 tareas.

52. This estimate of four hectares per day for a mechanical reaper drawn by oxen in Chile in the 1870s is consistent with evidence for the US. Citing the 1860 US census, Rogin considered that ‘a common reaper’ drawn by horses cut from ten to twelve acres (roughly four to five hectares) in a twelve-hour day. Olmstead and Rhode estimated that in the 1850s a mechanical reaper had a capacity to cut at least 110 acres in a three-to-four-week period, and also indicate that farmers exceeded this capacity by using the machine on more than one farm. They also consider that that figure increased with the improvement in machines, so that by the 1880s it would be significantly higher. See Rogin, L., The Introduction of Farm Machinery in its Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1931), p. 160Google Scholar; Olmstead, A. L. and Rhode, P. W., ‘Beyond the threshold: an analysis of the characteristics and behavior of early reaper adopters’, Journal of Economic History, 55:1 (1995), 27–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. In 1878, there were 418,780 hectares cultivated with in wheat: Anuario Estadístico: Agricultura (Santiago, 1879), pp. 105–06.

54. ‘Del trabajo de las máquinas de trillar y otros datos tomados de una cosecha’, BSNA, IV:3 (5th March 1872), 255–61.

55. Adelman, J., Frontier Development: Land, Labour, and Capital on the Wheatlands of Argentina and Canada, 1890–1914 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 2, 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. Collins, ‘Labour Supply’, p. 74.

57. Ibid., p. 75 (Table III).

58. Barros, ‘La introducción’, 242.

59. ‘Almanaque Agrícola: Trabajos del mes de febrero’, BSNA, V:8 (5th February 1874), 8.

60. Anuario Estadístico: Estadística Agrícola (Santiago, 1875), p. 686.

61. Lindsay, ‘Ensayo’, p. 530.

62. Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile, Estadística Agrícola (Santiago, 1867–8), p. 391.

63. Table 3 presents lower-bound figures because, by including a large number of machines without specifying their use, the agricultural statistics understate the number of reapers.

64. ‘Descripción Estadística del Departamento de Lontué’, Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile: Agricultura (Santiago, 1875–6), p. 140.

65. Menadier, J., ‘La Hacienda Viluco’, BSNA, III:11 (5th March 1872), 209Google Scholar; ‘Las propiedades rústicas de Chile’, BSNA, VI: 16 (6th June 1875), 412.

66. Bengoa, J., ‘Una hacienda a fines de siglo: Las Casas de Quilpué’, Proposiciones, 19 (1990), 148, 154Google Scholar.

67. Tornero, R. S., Chile Ilustrado: Guía descriptivo del territorio de Chile (Valparaíso, 1872), pp. 433–4Google Scholar.

68. For an excellent analysis of the Mexican hacienda based on such documentation, see Miller, S., Landlords and Haciendas in Modernizing Mexico: Essays in Radical Reappraisal (Amsterdam, 1995Google Scholar).

69. Bauer, Chilean Rural, pp. 178–9.

70. El Araucano (Santiago), 28th November 1869, p. 6.

71. Llorca-Jaña, M., Robles-Ortiz, C., Araya, R. and Navarrete-Montalvo, J. D., ‘La agricultura y la elite agraria chilena través de los catastros agrícolas, c. 1830–1855’, Historia, 50:II (2017), 633Google Scholar.