Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century

Fully revised and updated, this unique single-volume survey provides complete and even more up-to-date coverage of the entire region during the critical era that saw the formation and consolidation of its distinctive national institutions, laying the groundwork for contemporary Latin America. Covering all the major countries, the new edition features a new treatment of Peru based on important recent research, important new material on elections in imperial Brazil and the Mexican economy in 1810-55, and a fully updated bibliography. The authors focus on the preliminary experiments in nation-building throughout Latin America and explore the conscious--if perhaps misguided--attempts by most leaders to adopt a liberal mode of both socioeconomic and political development. No pat answers are provided, but the nagging questions of Latin American "instability" and "underdevelopment" are examined, and the data and factors that come into play are presented and explained.

– From the publisher's website

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
  2. The Founding of a New Political System
  3. The Economic and Social Dimensions
  4. Mexico in Decline (1821-1850)
  5. Andean South America to Midcentury: Consolidation of Independence
  6. The Road to the Dictatorship in the Platine Area
  7. The Rise of the Brazilian Monarchy (1850-1885)
  8. Latin America at Midcentury: A Quickening Pace of Change
  9. The Heyday of the Liberal Reform in Spanish America (1850-1880) I: Mexico and Columbia
  10. The Heyday of Liberal Reform in Spanish America (1850-1880) II: Argentina, Chile, and Some Other Cases
  11. The Flowering and the Decline of the Brazilian Empire (1850-1885)
  12. The Caribbean Vortex in the Nineteenth Century: Cuba and Central America
  13. The Liberal Legacy and the Quest for Development
  Notes
  Appendixes
  Chronology
  Further Reading
  Index