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THE ‘PARRY REPORT’ (1965) AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2018

GABRIEL PAQUETTE
GABRIEL PAQUETTE*
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
*
Robert D. Clark Honors College, 1293 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1293, USApaquette@uoregon.edu
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Abstract

This article examines the origins of the ‘Parry Report’ (1965), the implementation of which led to the massive expansion of Latin American Studies in the United Kingdom. Drawing on material from several archives, the article argues that the Report was the product of a peculiar geopolitical conjuncture – decolonization, the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Britain's rejection from the European Economic Community – that prompted the Foreign Office to convene a group of academics (and selected others) from institutions then in the process of formalizing links with US-based private foundations. It seeks to show how extramural and intramural factors, geopolitics and academic politics, combined to generate an interdisciplinary area study that survived long after the conditions that had given rise to its genesis had disappeared.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 219 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this article was given as a paper at the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) Annual Conference in Winchester in March 2018. I am grateful for the constructive comments received on that occasion from Matthew Brown, Claire Taylor, Jean Stubbs, David Rock, and Charles Jones. The article benefited greatly from the astute criticisms provided by two anonymous expert reviewers.

References

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3 As Victor Bulmer-Thomas pointed out, the Parry Committee ‘found itself facing a virtual tabula rasa with regard to teaching and research on Latin America in the United Kingdom…while a handful of individuals, some extremely distinguished, had dedicated themselves to the study of Latin America before the 1960s, they were nearly all working in History and had not succeeded or, indeed, attempted, to establish Latin American Studies as a separate discipline’. In Bulmer-Thomas, , ‘Introduction’, in Bulmer-Thomas, Victor, ed., Thirty years of Latin American Studies in the United Kingdom 1965–1995 (London, 1996), p. 1Google Scholar.

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37 Board of Studies in History, ‘Memorandum of Professor Bellot on Latin-American History’, 28 Sept. 1934, University of London Archives (ULA), MS 825–5.

38 Humphreys had made only a single trip to Latin America – to Mexico in 1936 – before taking up his chair in Latin American History in 1948, but his secondment to the FO during the Second World War fomented his interest in the region. See Fisher, ‘Britons and South America’, p. 11.

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41 Representative Boxer titles include The golden age of Brazil, 1695–1750: the growing pains of a colonial society (Berkeley, CA, 1962)Google Scholar; The Dutch seaborne empire, 1600–1800 (London, 1965)Google Scholar; and The Portuguese seaborne empire, 1415–1825 (New York, NY, 1969)Google Scholar.

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43 Miller, Rory, ‘Academic entrepreneurs, public policy, and the growth of Latin American Studies during the Cold War’, Latin American Perspectives, 45 (2018), pp. 46–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; I thank Professor Miller for sharing the page proofs of his article prior to its publication.

44 Historian Malcolm Deas later quipped that the ‘founder of the [Latin American] Centre was Dr. Fidel Castro, a graduate of the University of Havana’; Dees quoted in González Hernández, Raymond Carr, p. 239.

45 Nicholls, C. S., The history of St. Antony's College, Oxford, 1950–2000 (London, 2000), pp. 102–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar passim. As Nicholls pointed out, ‘The Ford grant gave St. Antony's, and therefore Oxford, a 3-year lead in the establishment of Latin American Studies in Britain. It provided St. Antony's with a critical initial edge and sophistication which enabled it to take full advantage of the Parry Report when it came’ (p. 105).

46 Ifor Evans to Stanley Gordon, 1 May 1962, ULA, MS 825–6.

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48 The number of students in full-time higher education in Britain leapt from 217,000 in 1962–3 to 376,000 in 1967–8. See Layard, Richard, King, John, and Moser, Claus, The impact of Robbins (London, 1969), p. 13Google Scholar.

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50 Minutes of 27 Mar. 1962, TNA, FO 924–1433.

51 Lord Dundee to W. Mansfield Cooper (Committee of University Vice-Chancellors), 9 June 1962, TNA, FO 924–1433.

52 ‘Memorandum on the promotion of Latin American Studies in the United Kingdom’ (1962), TNA, FO 924–1433; Sewell, Bevan, ‘“We need not be ashamed of our own profit motive”: Britain, Latin America and the Alliance for Progress, 1959–1963’, International History Review, 37 (2014), pp. 607–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Minute of R. Cecil, 6 June 1962, TNA, FO 924–1433.

54 Dundee ‘Confidential’, 6 June 1962, TNA, FO 924–1433.

55 Minute of H. M. Carless, 20 July 1962, TNA, FO 924–1433.

56 Philips to Murray, 26 June 1962, TNA, UGC 7–612; the qualities Philips extolled were ‘careful, detached, with experience in both the diplomatic and business fields’.

57 Humphreys's father-in-law was Bernard Pares, sometime director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies; his brother-in-law was Oxford historian Richard Pares, a long-time editor of the English Historical Review (1939–58).

58 As Atkinson's then junior colleague, Donald L. Shaw, recalled, ‘Against all expectation, [Atkinson] was not asked to chair it, in all likelihood because people found it difficult to work with him. I saw Mrs. Atkinson very visibly upset, and Atkinson at once left for Rhodesia, as it was then, to avoid having anything to do with what was to become the Parry Committee, and gave us in the Department strict orders to refuse all cooperation.’ Interview with Shaw in Román, Gustavo San, ‘The rise of modern Latin American literary studies in the UK: a questionnaire to early practitioners’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 84 (2007), p. 465Google Scholar.

59 ‘I have, as you know, very little experience of this kind of thing and should be grateful for a short talk about it…this is mostly to get your advice about how such committees set about their business’. Parry to Murray, 24 July 1962, TNA, UGC, 7–612.

60 Parry to E. R. Copleston, 30 July 1962, TNA, UGC 7–612.

61 Murray to W. Mansfield Cooper, 2 Aug. 1962, TNA, UGC 7–612.

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66 ‘The European empires in the 18th century’, p. 12.

67 TNA, FO 953–2262 [Planning Staff, FO], ‘British policy towards Latin America’, July 1965.

68 ULA, MS 825–11, Parry to Heald, 4 July 1963.

69 There are other plausible hypotheses for the delay, including the transition from a Conservative to a Labour government during the Parry Committee's period of greatest activity. Perhaps more pertinent was turbulence within the UGC, which was transferred from the treasury to the newly constituted Department of Education and Science in 1964. See Shattock, UGC, pp. 8, 107–8.

70 Parry to Sir John Wolfenden, 3 Mar. 1965; Wolfenden to Parry, 5 Mar. 1965, TNA, UGC 7–613.

71 R. Cecil to J. A. Thomson, 15 July 1965, TNA, FO 953–2262.

72 Blakemore, ‘Latin American Studies’, p. 115.

73 ‘It does disturb me a little, however, to note that the present memorandum reads, unintentionally I am sure, almost as though the Parry Report had never been written and the five recently established Centres did not exist…I do think that the Essex plans should be considered in the context of what is happening and is likely to happen elsewhere and should not be put forward in vacuo as it were.’ R. A. Humphreys to Albert Sloman, University of Essex Archives, Essex Box 2-D, 20 Mar. 1967.

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77 Fisher, ‘Britons and South America’, p. 28.

78 Bulmer-Thomas, ‘Introduction’, p. 5; though this figure may have been the high water mark, since the number of doctoral dissertations has plummeted by 50 per cent between 1997 and 2014. See Kapcia and Newsom, Report, p. 14.

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80 Kapcia and Newsom, Report, p. 45; other scholars viewed this shift as opening up new vistas for Latin American specialists. Historian Matthew Brown, for example, argued that long-standing ‘professional commitment to area studies probably explains [historians’] reluctance or delay in responding to global history in the 1990s and 2000s’, in spite of the fact that many had been practitioners in all but name, without adopting the appellation. See Brown, , ‘The global history of Latin America’, Journal of Global History, 10 (2015), p. 374CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Miller, ‘Academic entrepreneurs’.