Argentina's new president Javier Milei took office on Sunday, December 10. He repeats like a mantra that Argentina was "the richest country in the world" at the beginning of the 20^th century, but that, due to state interventionism advocated by Peronism – a movement created by President Juan Domingo Peron in 1945 – it now trails in "140^th place." They are ultra-liberal promises, Trump-like in rhetoric, to restore the country's greatness and, in 35 years' time, make it "once again the world's leading power."

For Ezequiel Adamovsky, a researcher at the French National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and professor of history at the National University of Buenos Aires and the National University of San Martin, Argentina has never been a "world power," and the explanation for the decadence of its economy lies more in neoliberal policies, applied in particular since the dictatorship of 1976, than in Peronism.

Absolutely not. Nor was it ever the "richest country in the world," as he puts it. It is true that if we look at the growth trajectory of gross domestic product [GDP] per capita, we see that between 1885 and 1913, at the height of the agricultural export boom and when Argentina had become the "breadbasket of the world," its growth was higher than that of the United States.

Based on the Maddison database [the only one with data prior to 1900], Argentina ranked between 7^th and 14^th in terms of GDP per capita. But it should be pointed out that the database at the time only included around 30 countries. And today, Argentina is not in the 140^th position, but in 60^th.

And while it was a wealthy country, it was by no means a power, in the sense that it played no significant role in the concert of nations. Its high GDP per capita corresponded to a very particular context: at the time, Argentina had doubled its available land following the conquest of indigenous territories [between 1878 and 1885]; it was the first beneficiary of investments from the United Kingdom, then the world's leading power; and the workforce seemed unlimited with the arrival of European migrants [the population doubled between 1895 and 1914, rising from four million to eight million residents, 30% of whom were foreigners]. These three factors resulted in a very significant, but very limited, economic boom.

When economic historians compare Argentina with other countries with high GDP per capita at the time, such as Canada or the United States, they note an anomaly: Argentina had very low human capital in terms of education, especially at secondary and university levels. Education is a key factor in determining whether a country will become rich or not. Argentina invested heavily in education, placing it at the top level in Latin America, but well below European countries, the United States and Canada. And it has never managed to catch up. It is a country that seemed rich due to exceptional circumstances, but it was not truly rich.

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