Agrarian history in Uruguay: From the “agrarian question” to the present

This paper analyses Uruguayan historiography on agrarian and rural themes from 1970 to the present. It is not a directory of authors or contributions, nor does it present bibliometric indicators to describe the agrarian historiography of Uruguay. The main point of this article is that the rise and fall of Uruguayan rural historiography depict the life cycle of what Imre Lakatos called a research programme (Lakatos, 1983). This research programme was born in the 1950s and had its progressive stage between 1960–89. From then to the beginning of the new century, the programme underwent what is called the regressive stage in Lakatos’s terms. This article closes with some references to the main lines of what may be an emerging research programme. I hope that the Uruguayan case may contribute to a broader reflection on Latin American rural historiography during the last five decades.