Informal empire in Latin America
Subtitle: culture, commerce and capital
By: edited by Matthew Brown.
Contributors: Brown, Matthew.
Publisher: Blackwell Pub.
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Malden, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9781405179324
Subjects: British -- Latin America -- History; Imperialism; Great Britain -- Relations -- Latin America; Latin America -- Relations -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Commerce -- Latin America; Latin America -- Commerce -- Great Britain
Description: An interdisciplinary interrogation of the concept of British 'informal empire' in Latin America. Builds upon recent advances in the historiography of imperialism and studies of the nineteenth-century modern world, most obviously the work of Ann Stoler, Catherine Hall and C.A. Bayly Combines a comparative perspective with the juxtaposition of political economy, cultural history, gendered and postcolonial approaches By proposing and debating alternative explanatory models, the book breathes new life into the flagging concept of 'informal empire' Illuminates the study of British imperialism, from which Latin America is usually conspicuous only by its absence, and provides a broad and sound basis for interpreting the complex processes of nation-building and state-formation in Latin America Includes essays by scholars who have been shaping the debate for several decades, alongside work by a younger generation of researchers keen to re-conceptualise and re-assess the roles of commerce and culture in shaping informal empire.--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Contributor biographies; title: Introduction / Matthew Brown; title: Rethinking British informal empire in Latin America (Especially Argentina) / Alan Knight; title: The British in Argentina: from informal empire to postcolonialism / David Rock; title: Commercial Christianity: the British and Foreign Bible Society's interest in Spanish America, 1805-1830 / Karen Racine; title: Britain, the Argentine and informal empire: rethinking the role of railway companies / Colin M. Lewis; title: Finance, ambition and romanticism in the River Plate, 1880-1892 / Charles Jones; title: Appropriating the "unattainable": the British travel experience in Patagonia / Fernanda Peñaloza; title: "Weapons of the weak?" Colombia and foreign powers in the nineteenth century / Malcolm Deas; title: "Literature can be our teacher": reading informal empire in El Inglés de los Güesos / Jennifer L. French; title: The artful seductions of informal empire / Louise Guenther; title: Afterword: informal empire: past, present and future / Andrew Thompson; title: References; title: Index.