Revista del CEI - Centro de Economía Internacional

evealed by growing political and cultural contacts, an increase in tourism and transport links, thechannelling of reciprocal investments, the execution of joint projects and cooperation in academia.Whether the previous factors are to prevail will depend on the strength of institutions, the economic andsocial policies and the integration of both countries into an international framework placing, at thedomestic level, a strong emphasis on investment, the improvement of income distribution, themodernisation of infrastructure, the quality of public expenditure, and the efficient management ofeducation, health care, and research and development.2. The Secular Trenda) OriginsArgentina and Australia were populated by Europeans. In the first case, contingents under the SpanishCrown spread all over the country, from the north to the centre of the territory, throughout the sixteenthcentury. In the case of Australia, prisoners were taken by military officers of the British Crown in thesecond half of the eighteenth century and, joined by Irish, English, Scottish and, to a lesser extent,German immigrants, settled along the east, south and south-west coasts and on the Island of Tasmania.The prisoners were sent with the aim of clearing British prisons; they were assigned productive tasksunder custody in order to contribute to the consolidation of English presence in Australia. The Aboriginalpopulation was either absorbed, as happened with some of the old civilisations from the north-east and thenorth-west of Argentina, or gradually displaced to the interior of the country. As the population wasincreasing in number, new cities or towns were founded and the land was used for agricultural, livestockbreeding and mining activities. The resistance to the expansion of colonisers and their descendants wasrelatively important in the centre and in the south of Argentina, and almost nonexistent in Australia, wheremost actions taken by the original peoples were either individual or carried out by minor groups.Throughout the first stages of colonisation, land availability favoured self-sufficiency and the generation ofexport surpluses, based on livestock breeding in the case of Argentina, and on agriculture and sheepbreeding in Australia. The discovery of important auriferous deposits led to a leap in the population andeconomy of Australia since 1850, whereas in Argentina such a jump, produced by sheep breeding andagriculture, was delayed until the arrival of the major European immigration inflows in the 1860s and1870s. The Spanish monopoly and the limits imposed on trade with third countries were one of the mainreasons for the proclamation of independence in the second decade of the nineteenth century inArgentina, whereas in Australia, the establishment of government and judicial institutions and of opentrade after the British fashion led to a gradual development culminating in a consensual independence in1900. By 1870, after the first census, the population of Australia was 1,300,000 inhabitants whereas thatof Argentina was 1,700,000. In the former, growth started practically from scratch and the country reacheda substantial degree of development in less than 100 years, while it took almost three centuries to comeabout in the latter, waiting for the industrial revolution in Europe and the domestic political changes to playtheir role. Due to the contribution of immigration into Argentina during the second half of the nineteenthcentury and the beginning of the 20th, there was an exponential growth in population, which amounted to4,500,000 and 11,900,000 inhabitants in 1900 and 1930, respectively. The result of this was that thepopulation of Argentina almost doubled that of Australia, which at the time totalled 6,500,000 inhabitants.Later, the population growth rate in both countries showed a similar evolution, gradually falling to theproportions seen in the 30s –with slight variations. At the end of 2005, population estimates were20,200,000 inhabitants in Australia and 38,900,000 in Argentina (Table 1).