3. Argentina 🇦🇷

A History of Argentina: From the Spanish Conquest to the Present by Ezequiel Adamovsky, translated by Rebecca Wolpin (2024)

Read 23 March 2026 - 12 May 2026

I went for back-to-back national histories as this title really looked the part, promising 'over five hundred years of Argentine economic, political, social, and cultural history'. Unfortunately, despite a few nods towards inclusivity, the book fell a little short of that premise and, as you can tell by the reading time documented above, proved a bit of a drag.

It has to be remembered that this was originally written in Spanish, and Rebecca Wolpin's translation is...hmm. The continual use of passive voice, unqualified demonstratives and employment of terms such as subaltern/upper/popular classes (which I was told to avoid over 20 years ago) made reading certain sections a chore to get through. In particular, I found the retelling of an already convoluted succession of nineteenth century heads of state to be less intelligible than relevant entries on Wikipedia.

The timeframe of the book as billed is misleading – we’re firmly at the start of the nineteenth century as soon as page 37. Aspects of pre- and post-conquest Argentina are touched upon, but scarcely developed. As with the previous title, it’s clear that this is the work of a modern historian, with a primarily economic focus. Adamovsky seems most in his element when deriding post-war neoliberalism, and I do wonder if this book could have been repackaged to trail that fact. Although contrasts between the ancestors of native peoples and imported European elites are maintained throughout, it is not, in my mind, a cultural history. Popular culture is engaged with superficially, with no meaningful analyses of sources, and sometimes, no examples to back up a statement. There is a critical lack of flavour in some paragraphs, only about four of which (in the entire book!) mention sport or cinema. Argentine youth listen to the music of ‘the most famous bands of the time’, and ‘the media broadcast the names and images of the most admired (football) players’. No Diego Maradona here, and no indication that the author was confident in engaging with him either.

The author has two key contentions, both set out in the drawn-out epilogue. Firstly, that Argentina is characterised by the capacity of the working class to organise and directly influence politics, and secondly, that Peronism and anti-Peronism as a social force cut and continues to cut across traditional distinctions of left and right. I think he largely succeeds with illustrating the former, without satisfactorily nailing why this anti-authoritarianism came to be and how Argentina differs from, say, Brazil in that regard. The latter point, repeated frequently, comes across as slightly rudimentary and needed a more consistent intersectional focus to prove compelling.

Of course, this book did increase my understanding of key events in Argentina’s history, and the author’s closing argument that the country might prove ‘a mere chapter in the long agony of capitalism as a global system’ was a convincing one.  

The bigger picture: Perhaps I was a little jaded in my reading, and two grand narrative accounts in a row was a challenge, but I don’t feel I got as much of a sense of Argentina in an international context from this book as I’d hoped. Admittedly though, my eyes tend to glaze over when reading all but the most accessible economic history. Descriptions of Paraguay’s ruin following the War of the Triple Alliance piqued my interest and will warrant further investigation. Adamovsky’s faith in the people of country at street-level (in 2020) reads as Milei-proofed and offers a more universal hope to prevent things finishing on a complete downer.