The Impact of ‘Early’ Nineteenth-Century Globalization on Foreign Trade in the Southern Cone: a Study of British Trade Statistics

1 The impact of ‘early’ nineteenth-century globalization on foreign trade in the Southern Cone: a study of British trade statistics1 Manuel Llorca-Jaña, Visiting Lecturer, Universitat Pompeu Fabra [e-mail] Abstract: This paper deals with the impact of „early‟ nineteenth-century globalization (c.1815-1860) on foreign trade in the Southern Cone (SC). Most of the evidence is drawn from bilateral trades between Britain and the SC, at a time when Britain was the main commercial partner of the new republics. The main conclusion drawn is that early globalization had a positive impact on foreign trade in the SC, and this was due to: improvements in the SC‟s terms of trade during this period; the SC‟s per capita consumption of textiles (the main manufacture traded on world markets at that time) increased substantially during this period, at a time when clothing was one of the main items of SC household budgets; British merchants brought with them capital, shipping, insurance, and also facilitated the formation of vast global networks, which further promoted the SC‟s exports to a wider range of outlets.

JEL Codes: N70, N76, O19, R11. Keywords: Lost decades; Anglo-Latin American trade; Early globalization. 1. Introduction. Few concepts are more fashionable than „globalization‟. Yet, despite the popularity of this term, there is no standard definition of it, and „indeed, globalization is in danger of becoming, if it has not already become, the cliché of our times‟.2 Although several mainstream economic historians tend to work with a rather narrow definition of this concept (i.e. market integration3 and price convergence),4 other, more inclusive, definitions are also widely used by scholars with a background in political theory, international relations or social theory. For example, in perhaps the most influential textbook published during the last two decades on the topic, globalization is seen as
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