The Coastal Elite and Peruvian Politics, 1895–1919

Abstract

For the foreign scholar, especially, an understanding of Peruvian politics between 1895 and 1919, the period of the so-called Repôblica Aristocràtica, is difficult to obtain. This quarter-century is considered an era of rapid social and economic change: in the words of one scholar, it completed ‘the disappearance of colonial Peru’. An important element in this transition was the growth on the coast of the ruling group connected with the expanding export economy, known in the literature variously as the ‘oligarchy’, ‘bourgeoisie’, or the ‘plutocracy’, which supposedly obtained control over the meagre resources of the state and directed them to its own ends.