It is perhaps surprising, as the author himself suggests, that academics had until now barely addressed the important subject this book examines. Nevertheless, it was worth the wait. Manuel Llorca-Jaña has produced a fine monograph about the textile trade in the Southern Cone of Latin America, pre-eminently Argentina and Chile, and British mercantile activity there during the early nineteenth century.
Derived from the author's PhD thesis and preceded by a clutch of scholarly articles, this book details the growth and structure of the commercial chain by which British-made textiles were exported to and sold in the Southern Cone republics. One of its most significant features, for which future academics will give thanks, is the reworking of the trade statistics between the United Kingdom and Latin America. Llorca-Jaña has reconstructed data from previously unexplored and overlooked sources, and this enables him to quantify the extent to which British merchants traded in the Southern Cone, even before independence. The area represented not a new market but new opportunities in an established market. The many links in the marketing chain between Britain and the Southern Cone reveal the contrasting roles of the textile manufacturers, the participating merchants, their agents, brokers and shippers, and finally the local retailers. Llorca-Jaña distinguishes between the different organisational structures of the merchant houses, some with partners or correspondents in the United Kingdom and others without, and discusses their commercial preferences in the form of own account trading, consignments, fees and advances. He also disaggregates the components of the cost-insurance-freight elements in international trade, such as freight rates and marine insurance. The book sheds light on areas which have largely escaped scholarly attention: the nature of demand and consumer behaviour in South America, product differentiation, the importance of secure packaging, the development of marketing techniques and the transmission of commercial intelligence. In addition, the impact of the shift towards free trade in Britain and of tariff reduction in the Southern Cone on the exchange of goods is examined.
As important, however, is the contribution that Llorca-Jaña makes to the several debates concerning the nineteenth-century Anglo–South American relationship, during which he challenges the prevailing wisdom. Few Latin Americanists emerge unscathed from the onslaught; Christopher Platt in particular receives both barrels in a number of engagements. Llorca-Jaña has a different story to tell. What he concludes is that the markets in the Southern Cone for consumer goods like textiles were neither marginal nor easily glutted but were, contrary to popular opinion, both buoyant and expanding. Equally, he overturns the notion that Latin America had little to offer the United Kingdom by way of return cargoes. Hides from Argentina and copper from Chile, as well as bullion and specie, covered the cost of the Southern Cone's manufactured imports from Britain.
This is not to say that Llorca-Jaña has resolved everything in his favour. The attractions of the Southern Cone to Britain's manufacturers and traders can be overstated. Many British merchants operated in the Southern Cone, as Llorca-Jaña reveals, but the life expectancy of these enterprises was often short, suggesting that business remained precarious and that there was a competitive market in which there were few barriers to entry or exit. Firms like Hodgsons, Huths and Gibbs, which enjoyed longevity in South America, were the exception and not the rule. Nor does all the primary evidence necessarily point in one direction. Contemporary opinion clearly did suggest that at times markets were overstocked and that internal crisis and external strife were obstacles to growth. The view that Britain's textile manufacturers at the start of the nineteenth century, despite the country's industrial leadership, possessed few technological advantages over local producers is rather surprising. Similarly, the implication that British manufacturers became increasingly adept at marketing revises both contemporary and subsequent scholarly opinion. The final chapter, which addresses many of the Southern Cone's politico-economic problems, seems at odds with some of the earlier conclusions and more in line with the conventional views of the Latin Americanists whom Llorca-Jaña had earlier questioned. Finally, the author refers to the impact his work may have upon wider topics. The assertion that the early nineteenth century was not a period of lost economic opportunities in the Southern Cone is probably a useful corrective, but the judgement that the republics gained from their early economic links with the United Kingdom rather than forming part of its so-called informal empire may not find universal endorsement.
There are also some gaps. We are not told much about the up-country redistribution of British textiles after they reached their point of entry in the Southern Cone, and the dependence of mercantile success on formal and informal business networks could have been developed rather more. Given the wealth of detail about merchants and other intermediaries which Llorca-Jaña has unearthed, concepts such as principal-agent analysis and transaction costs, which would interest economists as much as historians, might have been woven into the text.
Nevertheless, this remains an impressive piece of scholarship. The bibliography alone is immense. The book is also the result of painstaking research in British public and business archives, during which no stone seems to have been left unturned. Llorca-Jaña has undertaken the Herculean task of investigating the full range of the Huth papers, the size and complexity of which have deterred most scholars. His familiarity with the archives, with the businessmen and with their travel accounts adds greatly to the book's merit and to the reader's interest. It is also a pleasurable read because Llorca-Jaña has an easy style: his prose is clear and lucid and his arguments are clearly defined. Replete with tables and diagrams, as well as a substantial appendix which extends the narrative in selected areas, the book's presentational qualities, as befits Cambridge University Press and its Latin American series, are high. A cover price of £60, however, may deter a wider readership, which is a great pity because this is an outstanding book which should be widely read.
