From Enlightenment to Development: The Idea of Economic Growth in 19th-Century Latin America

FAIN: FT-286360-22

Casey Marina Lurtz
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD 21218-2608)

Research leading to a comparative history of economic development programs in Latin America during the nineteenth century.

From Enlightenment to Development: The Idea of Economic Growth in 19th-Century Latin America investigates the administrative state building projects of newly independent nations in relation to the 20th-century developmental state. The ideas and practices of fomento, translated as development or promotion, were at the heart of defining and advancing young nations. With roots in the Spanish Enlightenment, fomento promoted progress and prosperity via project-based state intervention. The farmers, laborers, and industrialists targeted by such projects remade them to suit their needs, cementing an expectation of state support for economic development in service of growth. Initial chapters examine emerging ideas of national wealth and the administrative institutions responsible for it. Studies of specific projects then ground the book in the lived experience of those intended to enact growth.