Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in Peru's "Fictitious Prosperity" of Guano, 1840-1880 - Softcover

Gootenberg, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520082907 ISBN 13: 9780520082908

Publisher: University of California Press, 1993

Synopsis

Retelling the saga of Peru's nineteenth-century age of guano, Paul Gootenberg provides the first book in English to explore the historical genealogy of Latin America's postcolonial economic thought. He scrutinizes the mentalities, ideas, and visions that led the country down an ill-fated path of export liberalism. The surprising diversity, vitality, and subtlety of Peruvian economic thinking challenges images of Latin American liberalism as a borrowed, impoverished, and narrow conception of material progress.

By closely weaving together intellectual and social history and a multitude of forgotten texts, as well as trends in elite and popular and European and national cultures, Gootenberg offers a newly integrated approach to the long-neglected field of Latin American economic ideas.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Gootenberg is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Stonybrook and the author of Between Silver and Guano: Commercial Policy and the State in Post-independence Peru (1989).

From the Back Cover

"Gootenberg has mined a large number of periodicals, pamphlets, and nineteenth-century monographs to unearth currents of thought that were more perceptive and developmentalist than conventional wisdom would have expected. He shows their organic connection to their times. The prose is clear, sharp, jocular, and the organization masterful. He interweaves political background with economic doctrine in precisely the right way. This is a model for the history of economic ideas."―Steven Topik, Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine

"Gootenberg writes gracefully; he turns phrases with style and wit. I can't think of any other historian who has gained such a firm understanding of nineteenth-century Peru. This book will stir up interest not just for Peruvianists but for anybody seriously interested in Latin America's policy options today."―Shane Hunt, Boston University

From the Inside Flap

"Gootenberg has mined a large number of periodicals, pamphlets, and nineteenth-century monographs to unearth currents of thought that were more perceptive and developmentalist than conventional wisdom would have expected. He shows their organic connection to their times. The prose is clear, sharp, jocular, and the organization masterful. He interweaves political background with economic doctrine in precisely the right way. This is a model for the history of economic ideas."—Steven Topik, Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine

"Gootenberg writes gracefully; he turns phrases with style and wit. I can't think of any other historian who has gained such a firm understanding of nineteenth-century Peru. This book will stir up interest not just for Peruvianists but for anybody seriously interested in Latin America's policy options today."—Shane Hunt, Boston University

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520082907
• ISBN 13: 9780520082908
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243