Formation of a local bourgeoisie and Spanish immigration in the agroexporting Rosario

Abstract

The current work will try, from a restricted analysis viewpoint (the city of Rosario during the agroexporting boom in the mid-XIX century and first decades of the XX century), to focus on some problems which link the plot of the social practices of a national-ethnic community -the Spanish- to a dominant class formation process. The Spanish community, even when it carries o generates significant internal heterogeneity, will have an unquestionable presence in the history of the city, both in quantitative and in qualitative terms. Our interest is to approach certain groups which got inserted, with a higher or lower level of ease, in the managerial and entrepreneurial socioeconomic categories, as a way of recognizing in them the germs of our national bourgeoisie at a local level. This work includes a first part, in which we will try to weigh, through the consultation of quantitative sources, the magnitude and specificity of the Spanish immigration to Rosario in this period, to move then to a preliminary approximation to the Spanish immigrants sector who get involved in the urban and regional economy in their position as businessmen.