Imagining informal empire: Nineteenth-century British literature and Latin America

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. e12505
Author(s):  
Marisa Palacios Knox
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Informal Empire

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 219-224
Author(s):  
Andrés Baeza Ruz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Informal Empire ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
Independence Era ◽  
Informal Imperialism

This book has demonstrated the insights that can be found in the analysis of British-Chilean relations in the independence period, which in the case of Chile have been mostly studied relating to the second half of the nineteenth century. The fact that British investments and flows of peoples and goods became increasingly important after 1850, has led scholars like John Mayo to maintain that ‘informal imperialism’ is the appropriate term to describe the ‘anatomy’ of such a relationship. However, such a view is restrictive, allowing an examination of the traditional ambits by which informal empire has been regarded as an analytical tool when approaching the relations between Britain and Latin America. This is to say, the economic and diplomatic means that helped to preserve the subordinate condition of the former Spanish colonies to the interests of the British Empire. In recent years, approaches to the problematic nature of informal imperialism have made it clear that these elements are not enough, that they cannot be the only aspects imbricated in this problem. The cultural dimension must also form part of the analysis of a relationship that, at first glance, seemed to be determined by informal imperialism. This is particularly relevant in a period like the independence era, in which the economic and diplomatic means used by Great Britain to exert its dominion were not as evident as in subsequent years. Indeed, as I showed in the ...

Notes on Emerson in Latin America

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Englekirk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Extended Treatment ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Literary Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good Coverage

A number of chapters—some definitive, others suggestive—have already appeared to afford us a clearer picture of the reception of United States writers and writings in Latin America. Studies on Franklin, Poe, Longfellow, and Whitman provide reasonably good coverage on major representative figures of our earlier literary years. There are other nineteenth-century writers, however, who deserve more extended treatment than that given in the summary and bibliographical studies available to date. A growing body of data may soon make possible the addition of several significant chapters with which to round out this period in the history of inter-American literary relations. Bryant and Dickinson will be the only poets to call for any specific attention. Fiction writers will prove more numerous. Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, Hearn, Hart, Melville, and Twain will figure in varying degrees of prominence. Of these, some like Irving and Cooper early captured the Latin American imagination; others like Hawthorne, and particularly Melville, were to remain virtually unknown until our day. Paine and Prescott and Mann will represent yet other facets of American letters and thought.

Santa Anna and the Gómez Farías Administration in Mexico, 1833-1834

1974 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-50
Author(s):  
A. L. de Sta. Anna
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Political Scene

Despite numerous biographies, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna remains one of the most enigmatic characters to have emerged in nineteenth century Latin America. Often dismissed by his many detractors as an unprincipled opportunist in the worst military caudillo tradition, he nevertheless dominated the turbulent and often chaotic Mexican political scene in the thirty years between independence and the Reform. His life has naturally been subjected to close scrutiny by both his contemporaries and more recent historians but his genius for political manouevre and equivocation have left many episodes in his career obscure and subject to doubt. Perhaps nowhere is this more the case than in his first presidency from 1833-1834 and in particular in his relations with his vice-president Gomez Farias' administration. This article seeks to examine his activities and ambitions in these years, and to suggest reasons, which hitherto have been overlooked or at least not given sufficient attention by his biographers, why he chose to betray and destroy the liberals' first attempt at reform.

“SAVING BRITISH NATIVES”: FAMILY EMIGRATION AND THE LOGIC OF SETTLER COLONIALISM IN CHARLES DICKENS AND CAROLINE CHISHOLM

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-280
Author(s):  
Terra Walston Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
The Social ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Emotional Identification

As Cambridge historian J. R. Seeley writes inThe Expansion of England (1883), the fear of colonial secession, inspired by that of the United States, haunted Britons’ perception of their “second Empire” throughout the nineteenth century, effectively working against a sense of shared national destiny with the white settlers of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (14–15). One important way Victorian writers combatted the “optimistic fatalism” Seeley observed in his fellow Britons was through an imperial economy of affect, which circulated sentiment and stressed emotional identification between settlers and metropolitan Britons (15). If mid-nineteenth-century British literature can be said to negotiate the tensions of Britain's empire through representations of racial, cultural, and linguistic difference, then narratives of sameness – of British families across the oceans – offer models for cohering the British settler empire. In such a model, techniques designed to reinforce the sentimental bonds of settlers to their families might also reinforce the social, political, and affective connections of the settlers to the metaphorical “mother country.”

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