Argentina, 1516-1987 : from Spanish colonization to Alfonsín

Abstract

The author presents a comprehensive explanation of Argentina's history, covering the period from Spanish colonization to the climactic events of the five years following the Falklands War. Argentine history represents a progression, via bloody dictatorship, from peripheral colony, to successful immigrant nation with a constitutional government, an important role in the economy of the world and an optimistic future. Its initial promise was followed by a steady decline after the Depression, marked by a transition from populism to authoritarianism, the empty exhuberance of the Peronist era, a cycle of military intervention and repression, the occasional release of pent-up nationalism and the state-sanctioned terror of the Junta period, culminating in the frustration of the Falklands defeat and new attempts at democracy - all formidable problems for the historian and social scientist to explore and explain. Rock argues that Argentina's decline during recent decades - and the instability linked to this decline - stems from the collapse of long-established links with Western Europe and the country's failure to establish substitutes. He shows how the early colonial period works as a crucially formative influence on the country's later development, and he brings together a wide variety of issues which have previously been treated separately and disconnectedly. Professor Rock has also written Politics in Argentina 1980-1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism. His work on Argentina has won him the Herbert Bolton Prize for Latin American History.

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