The Platt-Stein Controversy over Dependency: Another View

• Published in: Latin American research review 1981-01, Vol.16 (3), p.173-180
• Main Author: Street, James H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: British imperialism; Communications; Disputes; Economic development; Economics; Indexing in process; International economics; Latin America; Latin American culture; Meats; Pampas; Research review studies; Sharing economy; Technological innovation
• ISSN: 0023-8791; 1542-4278
• DOI: 10.1017/S0023879100033471

The lively exchange in the Latin American Research Review between D. C. M. Platt and Stanley J. and Barbara H. Stein over dependency and autonomy in nineteenth-century Latin America raises a number of significant questions in the field of historical interpretation. It illustrates once more how difficult it is to support sweeping generalizations about so large and complex a region as Latin America, especially in a time period so filled with changes (in at least parts of the region) as the nineteenth century. The controversy over sources of action and their motivation, which characterizes dependency analysis, is unresolved. The argument is flavored with attributions of moral blame for events that may turn out, in a broader historical view, to have been highly fortuitous. The present comment is an attempt to insert and assess the force and direction of a vector usually passed by in the controversy. The case will be confined to Argentina, the country most often cited by Platt, and certainly the Latin American country most affected in its emerging pattern of economic development by marked shifts from Spanish to criollo to British influence over the century.