Data Collection

I am compiling two original datasets on the allocation and fiscal valuation of approximately nine million hectares incorporated into Argentina following the Desert Conquest of 1878–1885. Drawing on Edward and George Mulhall’s 1885 land survey, National Territories: Names of Landowners, the first dataset records the ownership of 925 lots of 10,000 hectares each, which were distributed to repay the bondholders who financed the military campaign. The second dataset contains detailed fiscal valuations from 1889 that were used to assess the land tax. Together, these datasets enable social scientists and historians to study the concentration of frontier landownership, the fiscal treatment of newly incorporated territories, and the extent of elite capture during Argentina’s nineteenth-century territorial expansion.

I am digitizing two early censuses of public employees. The first, conducted by the National Department of Statistics, provides detailed individual-level information on 8,818 federal civil servants who served in Argentina between 1862 and 1893. The second contains comparable information on 2,169 provincial and local public employees who served in Santa Fe between 1883 and 1903. For each employee, the censuses record age, marital status, nationality, occupational history, salary, tenure, and place of service. Together, these sources provide the first systematic data for studying bureaucratic recruitment, career patterns, and the politics of public employment in nineteenth-century Argentina.

I am compiling annual tax revenue data for Argentina’s fourteen founding provinces from independence to the mid-twentieth century. The dataset brings together information from primary sources, such as publications of statistical agencies and works by prominent statistical bureaucrats, along with secondary research on provincial finances. This dataset is designed to support empirical research by political scientists and economists as well as qualitative work by historians. A first release, covering the period from 1875 to 1939, will be available soon.