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.

Reeder's comparative approach provides a new vision of imperial power and makes a forceful case for expanding the archive of British literary studies.

“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.

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.

Transatlantic Travels in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: European Women Pilgrims retraces the steps of five intrepid “lady travelers” who ventured into the geography of the New World—Mexico, the Southern Cone, Brazil, and the Caribbean—at a crucial historical juncture, the period of political anarchy following the break from Spain and the rise of modernity at the turn of the twentieth century. Traveling as historians, social critics, ethnographers, and artists, Frances Erskine Inglis (1806–82), Maria Graham (1785–1842), Flora Tristan (1803–44), Fredrika Bremer (1801–65), and Adela Breton (1849–1923) reshaped the map of nineteenth-century Latin America. Organized by themes rather than by individual authors, this book examines European women’s travels as a spectrum of narrative discourses, ranging from natural history, history, and ethnography. Women’s social condition becomes a focal point of their travels. By combining diverse genres and perspectives, women’s travel writing ushers a new vision of post-independence societies. The trope of pilgrimage conditions the female travel experience, which suggests both the meta-end of the journey as well as the broader cultural frame shaping their individual itineraries.

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.