Ebook: Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital

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

Content:
Chapter 1 Rethinking British Informal Empire in Latin America (Especially Argentina) (pages 23–48): Alan Knight
Chapter 2 The British in Argentina: From Informal Empire to Postcolonialism (pages 49–77): David Rock
Chapter 3 Commercial Christianity: The British and Foreign Bible Society's Interest in Spanish America, 1805–1830 (pages 78–98): Karen Racine
Chapter 4 Britain, the Argentine and Informal Empire: Rethinking the Role of Railway Companies (pages 99–123): Colin M. Lewis
Chapter 5 Finance, Ambition and Romanticism in the River Plate, 1880–1892 (pages 124–148): Charles Jones
Chapter 6 Appropriating the ‘Unattainable’: The British Travel Experience in Patagonia (pages 149–172): Fernanda Penaloza
Chapter 7 ‘Weapons of the Weak?’ Colombia and Foreign Powers in the Nineteenth Century (pages 173–186): Malcolm Deas
Chapter 8 ‘Literature Can be Our Teacher’: Reading Informal Empire in El ingles de los guesos (pages 187–207): Jennifer L. French
Chapter 9 The Artful Seductions of Informal Empire (pages 208–228): Louise Guenther
Chapter 10 Afterword: Informal Empire: Past, Present and Future (pages 229–241): Andrew Thompson