During the first wave of globalization, Argentina was among the most internationally integrated economies, experiencing a rising trend in trade openness and a tremendous increase in labor due to migration. In this paper, we empirically show the central role immigration had in boosting exports and imports in the years 1870–1913 by considering Argentine bilateral trade and migration from eight European countries (Austro-Hungarian Empire, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and United Kingdom). We use a migration-augmented gravity model to estimate the contribution of the massive inflows of Europeans, and we find that the main pro-trade effect was on imports: a percent 10% increase in migrants from a particular country would increase imports by up to 8% from that same country. We do not find the same effect on exports. The disproportionate decrease in transportation rather than communication costs may explain why the latter are relatively more decisive for exports than for imports. To overcome the problem of reverse causality and endogeneity, we use migration flows to the US from the eight European countries as an instrumental variable. In so doing, we aim at capturing the same push (but not Argentine pull) factors inducing European out-migration.

El presente trabajo pretende explorar un aspecto pasado por alto por la literatura de historia económica comparada entre Argentina, Australia y Canadá: el capital humano. Mediante la comparación con estos países en los años de la Primera Globalización, analiza los stocks de capital humano con los que contaba la Argentina durante fines del siglo XIX y la primera parte del XX, y realiza un aporte principal: la Argentina del período presenta un problema de desigualdad regional (y de persistencia de esa desigualdad) ausente en el resto de las “economías de reciente poblamiento”.

While the role of coal has been the subject of long-running debate in the historiography of the Industrial Revolution, its part in the economic development of the global periphery has been comparatively neglected. The technological context of the ‘First Globalization’ (c.1870–1914) made pastoral production in the periphery increasingly dependent on modern energy, as new methods of production and transportation bridged the distance between grasslands in the south of the world and kitchens in the north. By comparing choices of meat preservation techniques in Uruguay and New Zealand – two small settler economies that prospered on the back of pastoral exports – this article highlights the usefulness of an energy perspective on agriculture-based transitions to modern economic growth. Different conditions of access to coal shaped how New Zealanders and Uruguayans exploited their livestock herds when terms of trade favoured them the most, with important consequences for the persisting income gap between them.

In order to understand Uruguay’s long-run economic evolution it becomes crucial to interpret its export performance during the First Globalization. The lack of accuracy of official figures, especially official prices used, calls for an adjustment of Uruguayan export series. We have used empirical evidence to test the accuracy of quantities and values of export records, first, according to import partners’ records and, second, according to international market prices. Results show a general undervaluation of official export values during the period along with severe distortions in the registers caused by transit trade. We reconstructed new Uruguayan export f.o.b values and an export price index which present a more unstable and less dynamic export evolution than that of neighbouring Argentina.