Britain And Latin America In The 19th And 20th Centuries

The first full-length survey of Britain's role in Latin America as a whole from the early 1800s to the 1950s, when influence in the region passed to the United States. Rory Miller examines the reasons for the rise and decline of British influence, and reappraises its impact on the Latin American states. Did it, as often claimed, circumscribe their political autonomy and inhibit their economic development? This sustained case study of imperialism and dependency will have an interest beyond Latin American specialists alone.

“The editors have assembled an outstanding group of scholars in this very welcome addition to our understanding of Latin American external relations and British foreign policy towards the region in the 20th century.”— Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Honorary Professor, Institute of the Americas, University College London & Former Director, Chatham House “This is an important and timely book, reappraising the UK’s role in Latin America in the 20th century. What emerges is far more interesting than the usual narrative of linear UK decline in the face of growing US predominance.”— Peter Collecott, CMG, UK Ambassador to Brazil, 2004–2008 This book explores the role of Great Britain in twentieth-century Latin America, a period dominated by the growing political and economic influence of the United States. Focusing on three broad themes—war and conflict; commercial and business rivalries; and responses to economic nationalism, revolution, and political change—the individual chapters cover a number of countries and issues from 1914 to 1970, stressing the reluctance with which Britain ceded hegemony in the region. An epilogue focuses on Anglo-American relations and concerns in Latin America in the more recent past. The chapters, all written by leading scholars on their particular subjects, are based on original research in a wide variety of archives, going beyond the standard Foreign Office and State Department sources to which most earlier scholars were confined.

This book studies the reasons for the dramatic decline of British relations with Latin America.

British and American soldiers, naval officers, mining engineers, merchants, businessmen and wealthy travellers flocked to the countries of Latin America following their independence from Spain and Portugal. Most such travellers were entirely ignorant of the continent and expected instant success: easy money, the cheap acquisition of fertile land, military glory or vast mineral wealth. Few of them realized their ambitions, for the overthrow of the old regimes had not brought peace, liberalism and the social conditions in which foreign investment could thrive. To their shock and disgust, they encountered the same civil strife, corruption, squalor and "barbarism", religious intolerance and petty jealousies that had prevailed in earlier centuries. The experiences of these travellers, as noted in their diaries, journals and letters, are presented in this book. It should be of interest to modern-day travellers as well as to historians and students of Latin America. A strength of the book is its coverage of political, business and civilian history as well as military life, throughout the continent.

"Clear and well documented, this is a very important contribution to the rich, varied work on British imperial activities and to postcolonial studies."--Helen M. Cooper, Stony Brook University Ramirez examines British literary representations of Latin America from the 16th through the 20th centuries, with particular attention to travel writing and fiction published during and after Latin American independence. Locating these representations within the political and economic histories of the countries in which they are set, she places works by Sir Walter Ralegh, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Malcolm Lowry, and Graham Greene within a critical context that can best be called "Americanist" and surveys the prominent themes of these works. She also examines their imperialist impulses and their changing master cultural narratives, from Charles Gould's "idea" of empire and his faith in commercial development for Latin America in Conrad's Nostromo to Lowry's Under the Volcano, a story of a failed and alcoholic English Consul in 1930s Mexico. Americanist literature, as Ramirez sees it, manifests mostly informal aspects of imperialism, reflecting the British desire to invest, develop, map, and catalog in countries as varied as Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Brazil. Ramirez argues that British representations of Latin Americareveal an authorial freedom to advance imperial and commercial projects on one hand, while questioning the English self and sense of strangeness in the New World on the other. Especially in the 19th- and 20-century works under consideration, she reveals an acute sense of vulnerability, as British power worldwide had begun to crumble. Expanding on the critical conversation surrounding "Orientalism" and "New World Studies," Ramirez's examination of informal British imperialism and the struggle of motives represented in each of the selected narratives opens a fascinating new terrain of texts reflecting the historical relationship between Britain and Latin America.

Contributing to the historiography of transnational and global transmission of ideas, Connections after Colonialism examines relations between Europe and Latin America during the tumultuous 1820s. In the Atlantic World, the 1820s was a decade marked by the rupture of colonial relations, the independence of Latin America, and the ever-widening chasm between the Old World and the New. Connections after Colonialism, edited by Matthew Brown and Gabriel Paquette, builds upon recent advances in the history of colonialism and imperialism by studying former colonies and metropoles through the same analytical lens, as part of an attempt to understand the complex connections—political, economic, intellectual, and cultural—between Europe and Latin America that survived the demise of empire. Historians are increasingly aware of the persistence of robust links between Europe and the new Latin American nations. This book focuses on connections both during the events culminating with independence and in subsequent years, a period strangely neglected in European and Latin American scholarship. Bringing together distinguished historians of both Europe and America, the volume reveals a new cast of characters and relationships ranging from unrepentant American monarchists, compromise seeking liberals in Lisbon and Madrid who envisioned transatlantic federations, and British merchants in the River Plate who saw opportunity where others saw risk to public moralists whose audiences spanned from Paris to Santiago de Chile and plantation owners in eastern Cuba who feared that slave rebellions elsewhere in the Caribbean would spread to their island. Contributors Matthew Brown / Will Fowler / Josep M. Fradera / Carrie Gibson / Brian Hamnett / Maurizio Isabella / Iona Macintyre / Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy / Gabriel Paquette / David Rock / Christopher Schmidt-Nowara / Jay Sexton / Reuben Zahler

The first comprehensive survey of Latin America in the formative period from the attainment of independence to 1880, when a quickening of economic growth and relative political stabilization ushered in a new phase of development, this book combines a review of issues and problems pertaining to the region as a whole with more detailed discussion of specific national case studies. It examines the preliminary experiments in nation-building throughout Latin America and the conscious attempts in most countries to adopt a liberal model of socioeconomic and political development. Incorporating important new scholarship on Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, the authors provide complete coverage of the entire region during a critical era that shaped contemporary Latin America.

This extraordinary book encompasses the time period from the first Christian evangelists' arrival in Latin America to the dictators of the late twentieth century. With unsurpassed knowledge of Latin American history, John Lynch sets out to explore the reception of Christianity by native peoples and how it influenced their social and religious lives as the centuries passed. As attentive to modern times as to the colonial period, Lynch also explores the extent to which Indian religion and ancestral ways survived within the new Christian culture.The book follows the development of religious culture over time by focusing on peak periods of change: the response of religion to the Enlightenment, the emergence of the Church from the wars of independence, the Romanization of Latin American religion as the papacy overtook the Spanish crown in effective control of the Church, the growing challenge of liberalism and the secular state, and in the twentieth century, military dictators' assaults on human rights. Throughout the narrative, Lynch develops a number of special themes and topics. Among these are the Spanish struggle for justice for Indians, the Church's position on slavery, the concept of popular religion as distinct from official religion, and the development of liberation theology.