ADAM SMITH'S IDEAS AND THE MAY 1810 REVOLUTION IN BUENOS AIRES

Congreso; 2022 International Adam Smith Society Bogota Conference; 2022

ADAM SMITH IDEAS AND THE MAY 1810 REVOLUTION IN BUENOS AIRESThe objective of the paper is to do a brief review of the influence that Adam Smith'sideas had on the vision of political economy of the protagonists of the May Revolutionthat occurred in Buenos Aires in May of 1810.The new political ideas of European thinkers and the birth of the ?new science?, thePolitical Economy, are very important pieces to explain the matrix of revolutionarythought .Late Mercantilists, Physiocrats, Sholastics and Classical economists (mainlySpanish, British and French) marked the economic thought of the revolutionaries.The relative economic ?backwardness" of Spain and its political crises were acatalyst for the revolutionary process but also a limit which was reflected on disputesand debates that occurred in the following decades. In this historical context thegrowing influence of liberal ideas, both political and economic, play an essential role.Adam Smith ideas were very relevant in this process and economic liberalismwould be the driver of the evolution and growth of Argentine economics of the secondhalf of 19th century an the first decades of 20th century.The "new science" reached the Vice-royalty of the Río de la Plata, at the end of the18th century and the beginning of the 19th, with the ideas of Manuel Belgrano (who isconsidered the first Argentine economist), Juan José Castelli, Mariano Moreno andJuan Hipólito Vieytes among many others.These changes of intellectual paradigms, the crisis of the colonial system, the gradualemergence of institutions that would then characterize modern capitalism and theaction of the "Men of May? produced a new reality but with tensions and internalcontradictions.It is in this context that the Argentine Republic would be born