Business families in Southern Patagonia: from the end of the 19th Century to the first decades of 20th century

Abstract

The groups of settlers who arrived in Punta Arenas in Southern Patagonia in the second half of the 19th century, established the trade in hunting products, leather and exotic feathers. They organized the first companies as trading houses between individuals and friends. The capital accumulation of these immigrants promoted take-off and productive control based on external trade routes, an evidence of prior connections abroad. From 1881, the multiplication of some family companies boosted out controlling branches and suppliers of value productive chains through different association to foreign groups encouraged by the offer of land concessions. Partnership by friendship and family also added anonymous societies with a shareholder scheme including family members. The major article’s goal is to analyze first family business in this context, through a genealogy business approach. Theoretical concepts and method used here include debates of economic history and entrepreneurial history focused on family business. The core is social and commercial structures for understanding the family continuity, and also business survival in specific contexts. We elaborate three intertwined commercial and family genealogies that worked first in Punta Arenas before 1908 and later in Argentina. And, we analyze strategies by family members of second and third generations achieved for survival, and configuration of the Braun-Menéndez Behety business family. We relate some findings to the connections between Punta Arenas economy and European capitalism; interregional connections; the family as a socio-cultural dimension in entrepreneurship; management innovations in rural contexts and the pathways followed to establish the firsts mother-firms in Austral Patagonian Area.