Emerging El Dorado: Steam Age Expansionism and the Social Worlds of Growth in Argentina

The scramble for distant riches has featured centrally in the history of the Global South--from the first forays of European imperialists to the recent fascination with emerging markets. In the mid-nineteenth century, fortune hunters turned their attention to Argentina, transforming it into a front line of an expanding West. While accounts of this period often emphasize impersonal economic flows, Emerging El Dorado demonstrates that this chase for wealth has a far more multifaceted, dynamic, and human history. In Argentina, it encouraged explosive growth across several fronts--financial, commercial, demographic, and territorial. Capitalist routines of accumulation coexisted with get-rich-quick ventures, land grabs, and fraudulent schemes. Eduardo Elena's study profiles the promoters in Argentina and Europe who convinced others that this truly was a "rising country." At the same time, the book investigates the experiences of the groups who helped propel expansion, such as migrant families and overseas investors, and those like mixed-race paisanos/as and Indigenous peoples who were deemed obstacles. By exploring these overlapping social worlds, Emerging El Dorado sheds new light on the roots of our present-day growth dilemmas.