As the editors of this volume note in the introduction, business history has been a relatively small, even marginal, field in Latin America. However, it has experienced sustained growth since the 1990s as historians, in Latin America and beyond, turn their attention to the history of firms and business practices in the region. This book builds on earlier efforts to give an account of the field, such as Carlos Dávila and Rory Miller’s Business History in Latin America: The Experience of Seven Countries, published in 1999, and provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date panoramic perspective that combines country studies with a series of thematic chapters.
The introduction, written by the volume editors, gives a useful overview of the key debates in the economic history of the region that have shaped the study of its business sectors and practices (with dependency theory functioning as a sort of historical and conceptual pivot). Though the field of business history is clearly influenced by its origins in the United States, and by the work of US business historians like Alfred Chandler and Mira Wilkins, it has since consolidated as an independent scholarly field. Scholars in Latin America, like Carlos Dávila in Colombia, and outside the region, like Rory Miller in the United Kingdom, played key roles in this process before the turn of the century.
Since then, business historians in Latin America have further solidified their field through participation in key conferences such as the Business History Conference (with one meeting held in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2019) and by publishing articles in leading journals such as Business History, Business History Review and Enterprise and Society. This has helped raise the visibility and recognition of Latin American business history within the broader field, which remains somewhat focused on the ‘Global North’. If the 1999 volume by Dávila and Miller can be seen as an account of the field in its infancy, this volume portrays it entering early maturity.
The six country chapters – on Argentina (by Norma Silvana Lanciotti), Brazil (Anne Hanley), Chile (Manuel Llorca-Jaña and Rory Miller), Colombia (Carlos Dávila Ladrón de Guevara), Mexico (Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato and Gabriela Recio Cavazos) and Peru (Martín Monsalve Zanatti) – are informative. Their historical coverage varies, with the chapters on Mexico and Peru beginning in the sixteenth century (perhaps because their authors can draw on extensive studies of the colonial period), while the other four start their accounts in the nineteenth century. The brevity of these chapters means they cover a lot of history in a very succinct manner, appearing somewhat descriptive. The narrative is typically driven by the economic history of the periods covered, particularly as it moves into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the familiar story of shifts from open (export age) to closed (Import Substitution Industrialisation, ISI) to open (neoliberal) economies, rather than by research questions specific to the field. Nonetheless, several themes emerge, such as the importance of the family firm, the development of business groups, relations between local and foreign firms, and state–business relations, allowing for comparisons and contrasts between the cases.
The second set of chapters covers a variety of themes, from sustainability and green business, including beauty consumer products and eco-tourism (Geoffrey Jones), crime and business (Sandra Ley and Angelika Rettberg), families in business (Paloma Fernández Pérez and Andrea Lluch), business groups (María Inés Barbero), multinational companies (Marcelo Bucheli), women in business (Bernardita Escobar Andrae), and overland and air transportation (Xavier Durán). These chapters, though brief, do not feel as compressed as they focus on themes rather than entire countries. The chapters on families in business, on business groups, and on multinational companies are particularly effective because they build on themes discussed previously in the country chapters. All the chapters provide useful overviews of key and topical themes, such as, for example, the costs of crime and violence for businesses in the region and how businesses adapt to these challenges.
While the chapters cover a wide range of topics and serve as a starting point for any study in the business history of Latin America, much remains to be done. The editors acknowledge the omission of some countries in the region, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela in South America as well as the Central American and Caribbean nations. They also list a dozen themes that would benefit from further study, from technological innovation to Indigenous business history. Of these, informal businesses are particularly worthy of study. Most of the volume focuses on the formal business sector, but in a region where the informal economy often dwarfs the formal economy in terms of employment and, in some cases, contribution to national income, exploring the history of informal business activity is a crucial and urgent research agenda item. To the long list of themes, I would have added the role of labour, i.e. of workers and their organisations. Writing the history of business without considering the role of workers makes as little sense as writing the history of labour without considering the role of capital.
Though not entirely absent, a more sustained discussion on the practice of researching the history of business in Latin America would have been valuable. What opportunities and challenges do archival collections, both in Latin America and elsewhere, present to researchers? How has the availability of certain sources and not others shaped the study of firms and business practices? What methodological innovations have emerged from the archival limitations faced by business historians in Latin America? Reflecting on what we have learned, how we have learned it, and on what we have not been able to learn in the last few decades would have enhanced the volume’s contribution and appeal. Nonetheless, anyone interested in the business history of Latin America, particularly those looking to contribute to the further development of this field, will find this volume essential reading.
