Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T10:14:03.916Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Contesting Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

James E. Sanders
James E. Sanders*
Affiliation:
Utah State University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This essay explores the various ways Mexicans and Colombians envisioned and employed modernity in the nineteenth century, especially the flourishing and collapse of an alternative mentalité I call American republican modernity. I argue that in the late 1840s a vision of civilization emerged that privileged political progress, measured by the success of republican projects and the enactment of extensive citizens' rights, as a marker of modernity over older visions, defined by high culture or wealth. Because conceptions of modernity deeply affected the hegemonic rules of political life in Spanish America, I also suggest how such a discourse enabled subalterns to exploit this language to promote their inclusion in new nation-states. The article concludes by exploring the collapse of this alternative modernity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as Western notions of modernity—involving technological innovation, industrialization, and state power—became dominant.

Resumen

Resumen

Este ensayo investiga como mexicanos y colombianos imaginaron y emplearon la modernidad en el siglo XIX, especialmente el crecimiento y derrumbamiento de una mentalidad alternativa que denomino la modernidad americana republicana. Demuestro que en los años cuarenta una visión de civilización surgió y subrayó el progreso político, demostrado por el éxito de los proyectos republicanos y la promulgación de derechos extensivos de los ciudadanos, como una medida de modernidad que reemplazó las visiones previas definidas por la cultura alta ó la riqueza. Puesto que las concepciones de la modernidad profundamente afectaron las reglas hegemónicas de la vida política en América Latina, sugiero también cómo tal discurso ayudó a los subalternos a explotar esta retórica para promover su inclusión en las naciones nuevas. La conclusión del ensayo examina la disminución de esta modernidad alternativa durante el último cuarto del siglo XIX, cuando nociones occidentales de la modernidad —enfocado a la innovación tecnológica, industrialización, y el poder estatal— se volvieron dominantes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , 2011 , pp. 104 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2009 Latin American Studies Association International Conference in Rio de Janeiro and the 2009 symposium “Latin American Revolutions and Civil Wars before Mass Politics” at the University of Illinois; many thanks to the participants in both. Research for the article was conducted in part under a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and faculty research grants from Utah State University. I thank Reid Andrews, Celso Castilho, Jennifer Duncan, Mike Ervin, Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Marixa Lasso, Aims McGuinness, Len Rosenband, and the LARR reviewers for comments on drafts of the article; of course, all errors are my own.

References

Alberdi, Juan Bautista 1970 La monarquía como mejor forma del gobierno en Sud América, estudio preliminar y notas de Juan Pablo Oliver. Buenos Aires: A. Pena Lillo.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 2004 The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.Google Scholar
Bilbao, Francisco 1865a “La América en peligro.” In Las obras completas de Francisco Bilbao, edited by Manuel Bilbao, 2:171–278. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Buenos Aires.Google Scholar
Bilbao, Francisco 1865b “Sociabilidad chilena.” In Las obras completas de Francisco Bilbao, edited by Manuel Bilbao, 1:3–42. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Buenos Aires.Google Scholar
Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge 2006 Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh 1992 “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” Representations 37:1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh 2007 Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chambers, Sarah C. 2007 “Political Ideas, Political Cultures: New Works on the Middle Period in Spanish America.” Latin American Research Review 42 (2): 169–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ching, Erik, Buckley, Christina, and Lozano-Alonso, Angélica 2007 Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Frederick 2005 Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coronil, Fernando 1997 The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cosío Villegas, Daniel 1959 Historia moderna de Mexico. Vol. 1, La república restaurada, la vida política. Mexico City: Editorial Hermes.Google Scholar
Dallmayr, Fred R. 2002 G. W. F. Hegel: Modernity and Politics. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Dussel, Enrique 1993 “Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures).” boundary 2 20 (3): 65–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eakin, Marshall C. 2007 The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony 1990 The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Guedea, Virginia 2000 “The Process of Mexican Independence.” American Historical Review 105 (1): 116–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guerra, François-Xavier 1992 Modernidad e independencias: Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas. Madrid: Editorial Mapfre.Google Scholar
Hale, Charles A. 1989 The Transformation of Liberalism in Latin Nineteenth-Century Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart 1995 “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power.” In Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies, edited by Hall, Stuart, Held, David, Hubert, Don, and Thompson, Kenneth, 184–227. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hidalgo, José Manuel 1868 Apuntes para escribir la historia de los proyectos de monarquía en México. Mexico City: Imp. de F. Díaz de León y Santiago White.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1999 “Political Modernization: America vs. Europe.” In Modernity: Critical Concepts. Vol. 3, Modern Systems, edited by Waters, Malcolm, 279–311. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jaramillo Uribe, Jaime 1964 El pensamiento colombiano en el siglo XIX. Bogotá: Editorial Temis.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul 1991 The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815–1830. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Knight, Alan 1992 “The Peculiarities of Mexican History: Mexico Compared to Latin America, 1821–1992.” Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (Quincentenary Supplement): 99–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Alan 2007 “When Was Latin America Modern? A Historian's Response.” In When Was Latin America Modern?, edited by Miller, Nicola and Hart, Stephen, 91–117. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landes, David S. 1999 The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Larrain, Jorge 2000 Identity and Modernity in Latin America. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Brooke 2004 Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810–1910. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lasso, Marixa 2007 Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia, 1795–1831. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeGrand, Catherine 1986 Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1830–1936. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Mallon, Florencia E. 1995 Peasant and Nation: The Making of Post-Colonial Mexico and Peru. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallon, Florencia E. 2005 “Subalterns and the Nation.” Dispositio/n 25 (52): 159–178.Google Scholar
Martínez, Frédéric 2001 El nacionalismo cosmopolita: La referencia europea en la construcción nacional en Colombia, 1845–1900. Bogotá: Banco de la República.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuinness, Aims 2003 “Searching for ‘Latin America’: Race and Sovereignty in the Americas in the 1850s.” In Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, edited by Appelbaum, Nancy P., Macpherson, Anne S., and Rosemblatt, Karin Alejandra, 87–107. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Múnera, Alfonso 2005 Fronteras imaginadas: La construcción de las razas y de la geografía en el siglo XIX colombiano. Bogotá: Planeta.Google Scholar
Quirarte, Martín 1993 Historiografía sobre el imperio de Maximiliano. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Ramos, Julio 2001 Divergent Modernities: Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Rojas, Cristina 2002 Civilization and Violence: Regimes of Representation in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Roldán Vera, Eugenia, and Caruso, Marcelo 2007 “Introduction: Avoiding the National, Assessing the Modern.” In Imported Modernity in Post-Colonial State Formation: The Appropriation of Political, Educational, and Cultural Models in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, edited by Vera, Eugenia Roldán and Caruso, Marcelo, 7–28. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Romero, M. 1864 The Situation of Mexico. New York: Wm. C. Bryant and Co.Google Scholar
Sabato, Hilda 2001 The Many and the Few: Political Participation in Republican Buenos Aires. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sabato, Hilda 2006 “La reacción de América: La construcción de las repúblicas en el siglo XIX.” In Europa, América y el mundo: Tiempos históricos, edited by Chartier, Roger and Feros, Antonio, 263–279. Madrid: Fundación Rafael del Pino.Google Scholar
Safford, Frank 1991 “Race, Integration, and Progress: Elite Attitudes and the Indian in Colombia, 1750–1870.” Hispanic American Historical Review 71 (1): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanders, James E. 2004 Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino 2003 Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism, translated by Ross, Kathleen. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Originally published 1845)Google Scholar
Sierra, Justo 1977 Obras completas XII: Evolución política del pueblo mexicano, edited by Edmundo O'Gorman. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. (Originally published 1900-1902)Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles 2004 Modern Social Imaginarles. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio 1996 Mexico at the World's Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Thomson, Guy 2007 “Mid-Nineteenth-Century Modernities in the Hispanic World.” In When Was Latin America Modern?, edited by Miller, Nicola and Hart, Stephen, 69–90. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurner, Mark 1997 From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Post-Colonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurner, Mark 2003 “After Spanish Rule: Writing Another After.” In After Spanish Rule: Post-Colonial Predicaments of the Americas, edited by Thurner, Mark and Guerrero, Andrés, 12–57. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waters, Malcolm, ed. 1999 Modernity: Critical Concepts. Vol. 1, Modernization. London: Routledge.Google Scholar