This paper argues that the failure to implement state technical education in Bolivia was one of the reasons for the country's economic backwardness. The work makes a key contribution to the history of Bolivian education as it studies aspects not dealt with in the literature so far. First, it details the chronology of the development of technical education in Bolivia and analyses the types of education offered by the State. Second, it looks at the scope of the technical education that was available and whether this adapted to the need for specialised labour that the country's production activities -- which were still pre-industrial -- may have had in the nineteenth century. Primary archival sources and periodical publications of the time have been used for this analysis.