The civil war broke out anew several times. The military leader of the Buenos Ayres Federals, General Rosas, seized upon the dictatorship in a time of disorder, exercising it not without intelligence, but with a cruel despotism, and he carried on a long war against Montevideo, which lasted until General Urquiza, of the Union party (with Brazil and Uruguay as allies) delivered his country by the victory of Caseros (1852). The Constitution of the Argentine Republic was voted on 25th May 1853; but the end of the civil war and the definite reunion of Buenos Ayres to the other Provinces did not take place until 1860, the year of the revision of the Constitution.
War and confusion are not usually propitious to progress. However, the population in 1861 was estimated approximately at 1,375,000; it had increased to almost five times what it was at the beginning of the century.
Buenos Ayres became definitely the capital of the Republic in 1882, upon ceasing to be the capital of the State of Buenos Ayres.
The third period is that of economic development. This is the period of which our authors write. We may mention it as beginning with the re-entrance of Buenos Ayres into the Argentine Concert, and the revision of the Constitution of October 1860. If it has not been free from political agitations and international misunderstandings, it has none
the less been more pacific than the preceding periods, and industry has enjoyed a security which in former years was only too often disturbed by the regulations of colonial trade, the attacks of the Indians, the civil wars, and the Separatist policy. But there were still for twelve years intestine troubles and dissensions.
It was only in 1882 that the political organisation was completely constituted, when Buenos Ayres became the Federal capital; for from 1865 to 1870 the Argentine was forced to wage war against Paraguay, when it struggled, in concert with Brazil, against the despotism of Lopez. The Treaty of the 3rd of February 1876 gave it the greater Chaco as far as Pilcomayo. The Chaco is pacified; matters are not the same now as when, in 1881, Crevaux was assassinated there by the Tobas. General Riva effected the Argentine conquest of Patagonia (1879-1880), and the Indians, feared so long by the planters, were driven across the Andes.
In 1895 the difference which had arisen between the Argentine and Brazil, with reference to the Misionès frontier, was settled by arbitration. By the Treaty of 23rd July 1881 was terminated a long quarrel with Chili in relation to Patagonia; the Argentine obtained possession of the country as far as the line made by the Cordilleras and a portion of Tierra del Fuego. Arbitration also, in November 1902, settled the difference with Chili, no less irritating and of equally long standing, concerning, the frontiers of the Andes. No more serious causes of quarrel between the Argentine and its neighbours remain.
The period of economic development is as yet of only fifty years’ duration: it is far from having reached the limit of its evolution; but we may judge of the amplitude which that evolution has already attained by means of statistics,[4] and by them we may foretell what the future holds in promise.
[4] The more recent figures cited in this Preface are taken, for the most part, from The Statesman’s Year-Book.