Readers and economic readings in Buenos Aires at the end of the colonial period

Abstract

The article attempts a first look to the world of the economic readings

in Buenos Aires in the last years of the colonial period: which authors circulated

more frequently, which books used to be found in the private libraries, and what

type of people were interested in them, starting from the inventories of private

libraries, and indirectly, from the registration of books donations to Public Library

in the first independent years. The postulated hypothesis is that the economics

books enjoyed of more freedom in the Buenos Aires late colonial period, propitiating

the diffusion of the new ideas of the so-called “Christian Enlightenment». It was

in this context, characterized by the active presence of the clergy and the officials

of the viceregal administration, (i.e., the members of the two Powers: the Crown

and the Church), and an increasingly influential mercantile sector, which constituted

the readers of economic works. On the other hand, the analysis of the libraries

inventories shows how frequently the Spanish and Italian authors appeared, through

translations, adaptations or copies like other European economists’ middlemen.