Entrepreneurial Families, Inheritances and Wealth Transfers: The Edwards Family and Their Transition from Entrepreneurs to Rentiers, 1880–1914

Abstract

This chapter describes and analyses the transfer of property from one generation to another as the powerful Chilean entrepreneurs who had accumulated fortunes during the economic growth cycle of the nineteenth century (1830–1880) left their wealth to their children and grandchildren between 1880 and 1930. It examines the particular case of the Edwards Ross family (second generation) and the Edwards Mac Clure (third generation), concluding that the new generations lacked the entrepreneurial spirit of the family patriarch and became rentiers, moving the focus of their investments from mining and finance to agricultural and urban property. The decision to live from their rental income, which allowed them to enjoy a high standard of living in Chile and Europe, would eventually bring them serious financial problems and losses of property, as the sustained devaluation of the peso made it increasingly difficult for them to maintain the lifestyle of the ‘Belle Époque’, especially after the First World War.