Chilean Rural Labor in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

THE DECADE OF THE i86os marks an important stage in the history of those parts of the Western world that have since been called developed and underdeveloped. In the Great Plains of the United States, in Canada, and in Australia huge exports of bulky food to the world's industrial centers were made possible by changes in transport better sailing shlips and improved knowledge of ocean geography, rail, and steam. In these new lands where the indigenous occupants could not be induced to work, where there were no arclhaic farming practices to overcome, agricultural expansion brought into existence wholly new rural societies-technologically up to date from the start. Tens of thousands of new landowners appeared; farmers who had no choice if they were to survive but to use the new Australian machines or McCormick's or Deere's latest invention. The result was a vigorous agricultural sector capable of supplying a large urban population and able to consume its industrial output.] In other regions of the West agriculture had long been undergoing important changes, but the competition and heightened demand of the later nineteenth century made progressive adj ustments imperative. In England and such parts of the Continent as Denmark and Holland, agriculture was mechanized and diversified; a reduced rural population was more intensively employed. Elsewhere in Western Europe responses varied but everywhere a more efficient agricultural base was created. The industrial cities that absorbed the surplus produce and population became increasingly politically dominant.2

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