1536-1776 Argentina 1816-1870






La Plata 1776-1816



In 1776 the VICEROYALTY OF LA PLATA was separated from the Viceroyalty of Peru. The new Viceroyalty included modern Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay as well as most of Bolivia. It's capital was BUENOS AIRES.
During the Napoleonic wars, the British navy took Buenos Aires in 1806. Local patriots succeeded in expelling the British and fending off a second British attack in 1807, an event which gave them the confidence to take their political fate into their own hands.
n 1810 the Spanish viceroy was expelled, in 1812 the royalists defeated at Tucuman, in 1816 the independence of the UNITED PROVINCES OF LA PLATA proclaimed.

The economy of the viceroyalty was based on Bolivia's mining industry and on agriculture in the other areas, mainly cattle in the PAMPAS region. GAUCHOS - South American cowboys - hunted (wild) cattle which roamed the Pampas, for leather and fat. The element of African slaves was non-existent, indicating that the area's agriculture had been established later than in the plantation colonies further north and that tropical diseases did not take that much a toll among white and Indio workers.






EXTERNAL
FILES 		Articles from infoplease : Argentina
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE David Rock, Argentina 1516-1987, Berkeley : Univ. of California Press, revised edition 1987, 511 pp.



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted on January 14th 2002, last revised on November 5th 2004

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