Abstract

GARAVAGLIA, Juan Carlos. La construcción nacional en la Argentina: Rentas, presupuestos y niveles de estatalidad (1856-1865)Nation-Building in Argentina: Income, Budgets, and the Stages of Statehood (1856-1865). Prohistoria [online]. 2013, vol.20, pp.03-43. ISSN 1851-9504.

The Memoria de Hacienda presented by the minister of the treasury in 1863 brings before our eyes one of the first written formulations of what would end up being a major cliché in Argentine historiography: the story of Argentina as a Nation started after Pavón, as nothing truly ¨national¨ had existed before the battle. According to it, the ¨Nation¨ of Argentina would have been initially kicked off only after Buenos Aires had succeeded in taking its place at the forefront of the recently ¨unified¨ country. The Confederation is thus denied any credit for the role it played in the process of organizing the nation. A study however that compares the sources of income, budgets, and organization of the Confederate territory to those that made up the nation, province of Buenos Aires, and municipality of Buenos Aires -in what would constitute the three stages of statehood- would show the extent to which the Confederation was the ¨mother¨ of the Argentine nation. This analysis would also allow us to demonstrate the unequal distribution of national revenues and the provinces´ relative backwardness, which became apparent when they faced the dynamism that characterized Buenos Aires once the stage after Pavón was initiated

Keywords : Income; Public debt; ¨National¨ organization; Nation/provinces.

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