En torno al “desplazamiento” de los empresarios nacionales por los inmigrantes europeos. El caso de Concepción, Chile (siglo XIX y primeras décadas del siglo XX)

Abstract

In the nineteenth century social and intellectual elites throughout Spanish America showed a great admiration for European Culture, which led them to despise the native and mestizo roots of Latin America.  Sarmiento’s well-known expression, Civilization and Barbarism, epitomized the predilection for the European lifestyle and progress.  However, at the beginning of twentieth century a nationalist reaction emerged and cultural native roots began to be appreciated.  In Chile, this new trend was represented, among other thinkers, by Tancredo Pinochet Le Brun, Francisco Antonio Encina and, above all, by Nicolás Palacios.  They dennounced European immigration, and saw it as a detrimental process that caused the displacement of national entrepreneurs.  In regards to that view, this article analyzes the commercial relations between Chilean and foreign businessmen since Independence, paying particular attention to the composition of the entrepreneurial communities in the Concepción region.  We argue that nationals and foreigners complemented each other, and that, instead of a displacement of national entrepreneurs, it took place a process of expansion to new markets and areas.  That was the case, indeed, from the 1820s, and even earlier on, with the articulation of the Chilean economy to the British market, and through the exporting of copper, hides, and other products; and, with the rise of domestic trade associated to urban population growth.  In sum, rather than displacing Chilean entrepreneurs, foreigners’ commercial activity was associated to a process of market expansion.