____________________________________________________________

H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE David Pletcher. _The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment:
U.S. Economic Expansion in the Western Hemisphere, 1865-1900_ . Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1998

Roundtable Editor: Thomas Schoonover

Reviewers: John Belohlavek, Jurgen Buchenau, Paul Dosal, Seth Fein, David
Healy, Aissatou-Sy-Wonyu

________________________________________________________________

Seth Fein <hissf@panther.gsu.edu Assistant Professor of History Georgia
State University

At the outset, I feel compelled to mention that my own research on
inter-American relations is squarely situated in the twentieth century.
This is not _only_ a commentator's typically defensive prolepsis but an
opportunity to underline how essential I found _The Diplomacy of Trade and
Investment_ for my (comparative and causal) thinking about later
developments on which I write. It has also invigorated a desire to ignore
further than I do now the false divide of 1900 in my teaching of U.S.
foreign relations. David Pletcher's book cannot, as all good books cannot,
be easily characterized; it is part analytic survey, part
historiographical essay, part archival investigation. Despite its
panoramic perspective, it is a book that will reward the informed reader
more than the neophyte. Its density (in the term's good sense) offers a
feast for those familiar with this cuisine but might overwhelm the
uninitiated palate.

Although presented in three chronologically marked parts--1865-85
(chapters 1-6), 1885-95 (chapters 7-11), 1895-1900 (chapters 12-14)--this
book can also be divided in two, along thematic and methodological lines.
Chapters 1-9 investigate the interplay of U.S. diplomacy and economic
interests throughout the Americas, culminating in coherent (if
unfulfilled) Pan American visions and initiatives towards the 19th
century's end. Chapters 10-13 revisit well-known conflictual diplomatic
episodes preceding and emerging from the Spanish-American War. Chapter 14
is both conclusion and epilogue, extending the story by previewing the
1898-1914 period. (The "Parts" referred to below are the author's.)

Part I portrays U.S. economic involvements as chaotic and the inchoate
development of diplomatic support of those interests as equally unplanned.
Following a foundational chapter about "The Export Trade and the Tariff,"
the analysis proceeds chapter- by-chapter according to area case studies:
"Canada," "Mexico," "Central America," "The Caribbean," "South America."
Pletcher shows his protagonists--U.S. consuls and government officials,
entrepreneurs and corporate managers, industry and trade
boosters,congressmen and journalists--searching for opportunities for
economic expansion with little coordination of their efforts and without a
coherent hemispheric vision. Its polychromatic rendering of the quotidian
development of U.S. interests and interactions covers a vast geographical
field.

Empirically, Pletcher's deep excavation of still-too-under-consulted U.S.
consular records vitally contributes to an ongoing reconfiguration of the
state (from a wide variety of methodological positions) in international
histories (including two by contributors to this roundtable) that views
the operation of U.S. power beyond capital cities and seeks to probe links
between international and transnational relations. (1) Beyond their
explicit contribution to our understanding of economic relations and
diplomacy, these chapters also implicitly demonstrate the dispersed
development of late-19th-century Pan American discourse, how that
rhetorical movement which coalesced around Blaine's frustrated attempt to
forge commercial union and political integration at the end of the 1880s
developed as much out of the widely (but unevenly) disseminated material
practices of mid-19th-century inter-American commerce, investment, and
diplomacy as it did from earlier tropes of hemispheric exceptionalism
articulated by the Monroe Doctrine. This research is very suggestive,
opening new scholarly terrain for interdisciplinary cultivation. A crucial
recent example of such work is Emily Rosenberg's pathbreaking study of
dollar diplomacy that purposefully demonstrates the invaluable insights
produced by the creative pursuit of the connectivity of cultural,
ideological, economic, and political fields in the historical study of
U.S. foreign relations. (2)

One of _Diplomacy of Trade and Investment_'s key conceptual virtues is its
asymmetrical organization. Its first half or so focuses on various
national situations and U.S. economic initiatives; the second on foreign
policies, episodes of conflict, ideological expressions, and particular
business plans and projects. This juxtaposition emphasizes how the
maturation of U.S. economic engagement crystalized as a movement
advocating diplomatic intervention at the turn of the century. This
structure does not succumb to, in fact it radically revises, the
still-dominant narrative of late-19th-century U.S. diplomatic history
which too-often seems to represent all of the post-Civil War epoch as
teleologically determined by the Spanish-American War, both as final scene
in the 19th-century drama of diplomatic provincialism and overture to the
20th-century tragic-comedy, heroic epic, something in between (take your
pick) of global power. Pletcher's story strives to create a sense of how
inter-American relations developed over time for those living throughout
the Americas in the late-19th century who had no idea, of course, that the
Spanish-American War and its particular aftermath were on their way.

This last point is central to the rest of _Diplomacy of Trade and
Investment_ since it undergirds Pletcher's conclusions about the
development of more muscular diplomatic and military initiatives analyzed
in the book's latter chapters. From the middle of Part II (i.e., from
chapter 10) forward, Pletcher more directly joins the debate
overmotivation for _fin de sièècle_ expansion. His conclusion that
"improvisation and lack of planning" (p. 395) characterized the entire
1865-1900 period rests to a large degree on his early chapters' innovative
and meticulous research about economic expansion. He then mobilizes this
analysis of U.S. relations "out there," in the pre-1890s Americas, to
support his re-interpretation of foreign policy and diplomacy developed
"back here," in Washington in the century's final years. As have others,
Pletcher takes Open Door/New Empire interpretations to task for
overstating the intentionality of policymakers and the clarity of the
business sector in leading the nation to war and empire. It is, however,
unclear if Pletcher's assertions of a more moderate, in his view more
plausible, alternative is all that convincing or all that new.

Most of the interpretive questions, in fact, adhere to the contours
established by the seminal works of Ernest May and Walter LaFeber
published almost 40 years ago. (3) Pletcher's postrevisionist (my
redeployment of the term) stance basically sides with May, _inter alios_,
about the causality of 1895-1900 events but is more hemispherically
centered and grounds its conclusions about end-of-the-century diplomacy in
his earlier chapters' readjustment of the entire 1865-1900 period's
rendering by LaFeber, _inter alios_. Here the book departs from the
less-predictable (and in my view more enlightening) approach to U.S.
economic engagements pursued in Part I to follow a more worn path through
the established episodic history of U.S. diplomatic conflicts and
near-conflicts with Latin American and European states culminating in war
with Spain and the establishment of formal and informal U.S. imperialism.
The irony here, of course, is that _Diplomacy of Trade and Investment_'s
first nine chapters are far more effective at deepening our understanding
of the everyday international relationship between U.S. diplomacy and
business interests than the final five are at disclaiming clear
connections between economic expansion and U.S. foreign policy. That is,
this book's demonstration of how U.S. economic and political relations
expanded without a master plan suggests much about the systemic impulses
projected in the late-19th century which led, if not inevitably, then,
inexorably to more assertive U.S. foreign policies and to an expanded
self-conscious international economic and political presence in the 20th
century.

Take for example the Spanish-American War (and its immediate aftermath).
As mentioned, Pletcher criticizes revisionists for overstating the
consensus for war among leading business interests as well as exaggerating
the McKinley administration's predisposition to intervene in Cuba. His own
conclusion, though, ultimately supports more than it undermines the
revisionist point of view about the war's meaning even as it diverges from
a materialist explanation of its causes: "Although economic factors were
not the primary, positive cause of the Spanish-American War, the conflict
had a far-reaching effect on American foreign trade and investment." (p.
383). More important, though, for understanding how some of this work's
conclusions seem to defy its research is to note the persistent (if, as
Pletcher shows, often frustrated) call for greater diplomatic support by
those searching for economic opportunity in the Americas. The fact that
not all U.S. political and business elites shared the visions of the
likesof Blaine, Mahan, and (Brooks) Adams may finally be less significant
than the "on the ground" conditions for an expansionist foreign policy
created during the 19th century's final third by less-famous folk, whose
efforts Professor Pletcher has painstakingly recovered for us.

These are long-standing battles. They are important ones but no longer
produce, perhaps, the most enlightening research about 1898. Two books
published just after _Diplomacy of Trade and Investment_ show how new
sources and methods have reinvigorated the historiography of 1898 in ways
that build upon past approaches while bending our perspective to see new
things. Kristin Hoganson's work about gender and the war contributes--in
fundamentally new ways--to the eminent extant literature about the
domestic forces which drove U.S. intervention. (4) Ada Ferrer's recent
study builds upon the work of those, most notably Louis Péérez, who center
the story of 1898 in Cuba, by radically transforming our conceptualization
of the interplay of race and national identity in the movement for
independence. (5)

As the book's focus moves away from the everyday to the episodic, Mexico
virtually disappears from its final two parts covering the post-1885
period. Arguably the American nation most transformed by its
late-19th-century engagement with the U.S. economy receives only one
paragraph, in the conclusion's discussion of the 1900-14 period. (p. 388)
The revolution which began in 1910, and which historians, in various ways,
have connected to Mexico's late-19th-century economic development gets one
less-than-superficial sentence. (6) This notable lacuna underlines how the
book shifts in its final chapters to conform with the established
historiography's dominant narrative which positions 1898 as _the_ "turning
point" in the history of U.S. foreign relations. Pletcher's epilogue
further conforms to that story's usual retelling as he describes the
post-1898, pre-World War I U.S. search for order in the circum-Caribbean
through experiments with government-led economic initiatives,
protectorates, and military interventions. It seems that as Professor
Pletcher's story moves ahead chronologically it becomes increasingly
entangled amidst historiographical overgrowth; the author seemed freer to
roam in the earlier years' more-open, less-congested scholarly terrain.

Mexico's disappearance is particularly unfortunate given Pletcher's own
expertise, on display in his book's early chapter concentrated on
U.S.-Mexican economic engagement during the Porfiriato's first decade.
Expanding this coverage to the later Porfiriato and Mexico's revolution
(too often treated as a _sui generis_ topic in U.S. foreign relations)
might have compelled welcomed reconceptualization of the conventional
periodization and employment of late-19th-century U.S. foreign relations
(which of course did not end with the year 1900, no matter how convenient
the timing of the war with Spain is for survey writers and instructors).
Although the revolution's Constitutionalist "winners" had cautious U.S.
support, the postrevolutionary state presented a paradigmatic dilemma for
twentieth-century U.S. foreign relations: how to contend with
constitutional regimes whose laws do not comply with U.S. interests.
Furthermore, the example of revolutionary Mexico demonstrates how
thediversity of political economies, states, national identities, and
security considerations encountered by the United States determine
differences in the goals and outcomes of U.S. foreign policy and
diplomacy. If 1898, commonly invoked as the watershed in the emergence of
the United States as a great power, marks the end of 19th-century U.S.
diplomatic history, perhaps the United States' inability to foresee,
comprehend, and control the Mexican revolution marks the true beginning of
20th-century U.S. diplomatic history (by demonstrating the substantial
limits the world's newest power experienced in contending with complex
disorder even, sometimes especially, generated from within its own
self-proclaimed sphere of influence). No doubt in part a Mexicanist's
self-indulgent diatribe, this call for reformulation also expresses the
desire of a historian of U.S. foreign relations to see calcified stories
dissolved, not simply for the thrill of the new but to offer provocative
and enlightening broad re-interpretations that disturb our sometimes
overly soporific complacency toward the master narratives of U.S.
diplomatic history.

_Diplomacy of Trade and Investment_ foreshadows contemporary difficulties
faced by U.S. foreign policy in its attempts to forge international
consensus about economic policy. Pletcher explores significant precursors
to current disunities. In his discussion of Blaine's 1889-90
Inter-American Conference, for example, he observes "that the greatest
obstacle to unified action would be the chronic dissension between U.S.
and Argentine delegations." (p. 243) In terms of U.S.-Argentine relations,
this friction expressed the illogic of economic union with the United
States for the southern cone's leading wheat and beef producer and
previewed later diplomatic disputes between Buenos Aires and Washington
stretching from the Second World War until the Malvinas/Falkland War. In
the broader realm of inter-American history, it suggests how the dilemma
of Latin American liberals c.1900 resembles that of neoliberals c.2000:
how to emulate the U.S. model while resisting U.S. domination. Such
centrist ambivalence towards the United States has challenged U.S. foreign
policy's pursuit of an "inter-American system" in ways as palpable as the
more inflammatory responses of rightist and leftist regimes which often
are said to emulate extra-hemispheric models.

With some irony, the present-day coalition of diverse national and
transnational interest groups that share the _bete noir_ of neoliberal
free trade appear at times more united in their dissent than do the
nation-states which espouse commitment to lower tariffs and less
regulation. These days "free trade" seems more a movement to regulate
competitive relations among regional, supranational economic blocs within
the GATT than to implement universal principles. Moreover, harmony is
problematic within such blocs as nations seek advantage over their
putative partners and states must respond to domestic interest groups
seeking protection at odds with the international free-trade regime.
Current inter-American events underline this pattern. MERCOSUR (South
America's southern cone common market) strives to maintain its internal
integrity and external independence by seeking ties to the European Union
with which to counter U.S. influence viewed by regionalists as a threat to
their area's development and autonomy. Most recently U.S. efforts toextend
the NAFTA model to Chile have irritated MERCOSUR's leader, Brazil. (7)

Even between the ostensibly _simpáático_ Bush and Fox
administrations--their closeness signaled by the new U.S. president's
foregoing the customary initial foreign visit to Ottawa in favor of
Guanajuato--there are likely to be difficulties ahead (perhaps another
reason to go south first). Fox, unlike his PRI predecessors (who
negotiated and implemented NAFTA with neither an electoral mandate nor a
meaningfully independent press), must respond to new civic and legislative
pressures. These will no doubt compel (and allow) his administration to
amplify its call for expanded legal liberalization of Mexico's second-most
controversial and arguably most-in-demand export to the United States,
labor. The new power and limits democratization has brought the Mexican
state might make anti-Yankeeism a less-important feature of official
rhetoric but make collaborative relations more difficult for the United
States. In fact, the present moment in U.S.-Mexico relations resembles the
early postrevolutionary period, when the fall of an authoritarian regime,
conducive to U.S. interests brought to power new elites whose vision for
national development more closely resembled that of their U.S.
counterparts than had those of the old regime, but whose goal of more
independent national development reinforced by greater mass participation
in politics (if not electoral democracy), produced significant clashes
with the United States in the 1920s.

Protestations have not been limited to the view north. As Professor
Pletcher notes in his discussion of U.S. plans for economic expansion in
the late 1880s, "Canadian opponents of Commercial Union set out to
strengthen transatlantic economic ties and thus counteract the pull from
the south." (p. 227) This reminds us too that one hundred years later, the
Canadian debate over free trade with the United States produced similar
sounding concern about U.S. cultural as well as economic control. Canada's
inclusion adds to this study's sense of geographical comprehensiveness
which is rare in inter-American scholarship (but also notably produced by
the important multivolume series _The United States and the Americas_,
edited by Lester Langley). (8) Indeed Canada's presence makes it possible
to call this work a study of the western hemisphere. To problematize that
rendering, then, is _not_ to detract from its inclusiveness, but _is_ to
recognize that all geographical frameworks are cultural constructions that
carry political significances that impose a particular way of seeing and
thinking. They therefore must be themselves contextualized in order to
comprehend how they interact with the historical environment in which they
are produced and consumed. The trope of the western hemisphere, is (in
world historical terms) a fairly recent one, which took hold among
American elites c.1800 trying to locate their anticolonial and later
postcolonial projects as part of "civilization" but distance them from
European powers that viewed the "Americas" (itself an early-modern
European invention) as _their_ New World. (9)

To observe how scholarship about international relations is part of
(orreproduces) international relations is to note the importance of the
trenchant and controversial contributions of Mark Berger and Arturo
Escobar, among others, to our consideration of the material implications
of discursive practice. (10) _Diplomacy of Trade and Investment_'s
conjunction with the regime of NAFTA means that its reception not only by
scholars and students who consult its pages directly but also its indirect
dissemination--through reviews (including internet roundtables!),
bibliographies, classroom lectures, assimilation of its research by
various types of writers--reinforces a notion about political geography
that has as much power in its subtlety as do its more explicit insights
and conclusions (many of which point to the difficulty expansionists
encountered in forging a hemispheric system).

That the nations of what we call the western hemisphere share a political
history and determining geography, have common security and economic
interests, have greater differences with the rest of the world than among
themselves have been the central suppositions of Pan American
discourse--which posits the United States as hemispheric model and
leader--supported and contested by inter-American elites, in different
ways at different times, since the early-19th century. As Gaddis Smith has
shown in the case of Cold War anticommunism's appropriation of the Monroe
Doctrine, it has transmuted over time. (11) And it has reemerged c.1990
not only in neoliberal economic rhetoric but also within official
antinarcotics discourse (which focuses almost exclusively on international
supply rather than the arguably more significant question of domestic
demand) to justify military and economic aid (some would say intervention)
in the name of hemispheric security (most notably today in Colombia).

As Professor Pletcher's work shows, the interests and interactions of the
United States in the Americas varied from region to region, nation to
nation. Moreover, the degree to which foreign states shaped--through
resistance and collaboration--the interaction of U.S. forces has varied
from country to country as has the quality of the U.S. presence. The
book's first half's comparative framework makes this diversity of
engagements explicit, while at the same time less explicitly but, for this
reader, very plainly demonstrating how the notion of the entire western
hemisphere as a region of common origin and development is a U.S.-centric
one. The uses made of the two most pervasive secular icons produced by
(opposite ends of) 19th-century inter-American history--Bolíívar and
Martíí--exemplify this ongoing contest waged about the naturalness of U.S.
leadership within a hemispheric system. Each of these heroic figures has
been invested at different moments with contradictory significances by
intellectuals and politicians--from throughout the Americas--who have
striven to unite the hemisphere either against or in support of U.S.
power.

That narrative's development, as Pletcher's study subtly evokes, has been
dialectically linked to the political and economic relations more
explicitly explored in his work. That is, the representations of material
relations--propaganda promoting inter-American trade and investment, the
compilation and publication of statistical information and economic
intelligence, the expansion of U.S. government and private-sector
foreignrepresentation, _inter alia_--contributed as much to Pan
Americanism's discursive formation as did more explicit statements about
the hemisphere's shared heritage and future. For example, its presentation
of the proliferation of U.S.-generated numbers about trade and investment
suggests how collectively these figures formed a new grammar, if you will,
of inter-American relations and source of hemispheric identities (in
relation to the United States). Their significance as parts of a system of
signification marking national identities, mapping international
relationships, propagating a hemispheric idea might be as important as
their intended individual meanings, as conveyors of specific economic
information, for comprehending the transformation of late-19th-century
inter-American relations. (12) In this way, this book's research
implicitly demonstrates the material power of signs and the symbolic power
of international relations.

A note about this book's prodigious collection of sources is necessary.
Its depth renders notable lapses in its breadth, especially regarding
secondary sources. While exhaustive, in ways invaluable to the
contemporary scholar, in its survey of research thru the late 1970s, this
study draws too little on significant scholarship published over the last
two decades. "Recent works" mentioned in the text turn out (upon
consultation of the copious bibliography) to be published before 1980.
(And frequent consultation is necessary, because although _Diplomacy of
Trade and Investment_'s footnotes admirably appear at the bottom of each
page, references to secondary sources frustratingly lack publication
dates, even in initial citations.) More important, over-dependence on
pre-1980 sources reduces the author's ability to actualize fully his
research agenda, since so much of the work by area specialists,
particularly relevant to the international framework aspired to here, has
appeared in the last 15 years or so. This is not a matter of scholarly
nitpicking. A work as wide-ranging as this one is necessarily synthetic,
and its utility to students and scholars is to a large degree derivative
of its engagement with available scholarship. While a list of such missing
works would be prolix, not to mention gratuitous, fairness calls for some
examples of the types of studies about which I am thinking. Among
more-or-less recent ones by Latin Americanists are Jonathan Brown's about
Mexico and foreign petroleum investment, Paul Gootenberg's on mid-19th
century Peru's international political economy, and Steven Topik's
dissection of Brazil-U.S. relations in the 1890s. (13)

This study also under-utilizes Latin American primary and secondary
sources. In the first case this is understandable, no single scholar could
make systematic use of multiarchival research over such a broad historical
field. However, the omission of much relevant non-U.S. scholarship is less
easily ignored. This is not to fetishize foreign-language secondary (or
even primary) sources; too often they are ineffectively used in an overly
self-congratulatory manner that reduces international research to the
quantity of foreign sources consulted. The very citation too often is
asserted as innovation itself. Nor is it to essentialize other national
perspectives--e.g., by invoking the too-common sophism that a given work,
by virtue of being written by a non-U.S. scholar, represents _the_ foreign
perspective rather than simply anotherscholarly contribution (one that can
be identified in many different ways, including, but not exclusively, by
an author's nationality). The value of any source, of course, depends on
its use. However, in the hands of a scholar possessing Professor
Pletcher's area expertise and international perspective, more Latin
American scholarship--across empirical fields, theoretical orientations,
and methodological approaches--could have been creatively interpolated.
Such inclusion would have strengthened this work not only as scholarly
synthesis but also deepened its empirical excursions, since Pletcher could
have effectively mined research in foreign archives for his own
investigations.

The immanent connections between culture and international relations is no
better represented than in the figure of the scholar not only as producer
of knowledge, re/producer of discourse, but also as signifier. Several
months ago, while at work in the archives, I came across the following:
"Dr. David M. Pletcher., Hamline College. Specialist in 19th-century
economic history of Mexico, his articles and books have won wide
professional acclaim." (14) It is an excerpt from an annotated list of 25
U.S. scholars of Mexico compiled for the State Department in 1963 by
Howard Cline, distinguished historian of U.S.-Mexico relations and, at the
time, director of the Library of Congress' Hispanic Foundation. The State
Department requested this interdisciplinary prosopography of prominent
Mexicanists (in which Cline included himself) to provide the Mexican
government guidance in its deliberations to award an important prize to a
U.S. academic. Hence, the selection of the Mexican honor's recipient was
(behind the scenes) an international collaboration. Cline's criteria were
mid-career academics ("general age group of 40, 45, or older, and general
academic rank of full Professor, or its equivalent") who had made notable
recent contributions (by publishing either an article or book in the
preceding five years) and were likely to produce significant future work.
He excluded senior scholars who seemed past their prime, younger ones "who
were getting established," prior recipients of Mexican awards, and "a
number of quite able North Americans who are permanent residents of
Mexico." (15) For the State Department, Mexico's recognition of this type
of U.S. achievement served its mission of Pan Americanism, which, in 1963,
was in revival, as the Kennedy administration implemented its Alliance for
Progress (following the postwar devolution of Good Neighbor policies and
rhetoric). As Cline combed bibliographies (and, no doubt, his personal
address book), he selected individuals who could serve the interests of
U.S. foreign policy as a symbol from across the border of interest in and
respect for Mexico's history and future.

It is impossible for me to read _Diplomacy of Trade and Investment_ and
not think of David Pletcher's own position in inter-American relations.
Thinking of the book and the document together allows me to see each
differently. It reminds me of the power of scholarly discourse to shape
international relations by influencing how we view not only the past but
also the present and of the unexpected ways and unanticipated places where
international exchange takes place. Most of all, though, the book and the
memo together underline for me Professor Pletcher's impressively long and
distinguished career as interpreter of the history of the Americas. Cline
knew of whom he wrote.



NOTES 1. A prime recent example is Thomas F. O'Brien, _The Revolutionary
Mission: American Enterprise in Latin America, 1900-1945_ (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also, Thomas D. Schoonover, _The
United States and Central America, 1860-1911: Episodes of Social
Imperialism and Imperial Rivalry in the World System_ (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1991); David Healy, _Drive to Hegemony: The United
States in the Caribbean, 1898-1917_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1988).

2.Emily Rosenberg, _Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and
Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930_ (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1999). A recent anthology compiled of entries seeking similar
connections, often in a transnational context, is Gilbert Joseph,
Catherine LeGrand, Ricardo Salvatore, eds. _Close Encounters of Empire:
Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations_ (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1998).

3. Ernest R. May, _Imperial Democracy: America's Emergence as a Great
Power_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1961); Walter LaFeber, _The New Empire:
An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860- 1898_ (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1963).

4. Kristin Hoganson, _Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics
Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars_ (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1999).

5. Ada Ferrer, _Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898_
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Louis A. Péérez
Jr.'s most recent contribution is his interpretive centennial meditation
on the literature of the Spanish-American War, _The War of 1898: The
United States and Cuba in History and Historiography_ (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

6. For exemplary differing interpretations of how U.S.-Mexican relations
contributed to the Mexican revolution, see John Hart, _Revolutionary
Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution_ (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987); Friedrich Katz, _The Secret War in
Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution_ (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981); Alan Knight, _The Mexican Revolution_
2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and, for the way in
which the revolution also affected U.S.-Mexican relations, see idem,
_U.S.-Mexican Relations, 1910-1940: An Interpretation_ (La Jolla: Center
for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1987).

7. See, for example, "Brazil Miffed As Chile Shifts Trade Focus Toward
U.S.," _New York Times_, 3 December 2000.

8. Langley's introductory volume articulates the series's approach,
_America and the Americas: The United States in the Western Hemisphere_
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989).

9. There are many recent works which contribute vitally to our
understanding of postcolonial identity formation in the Americas, one of
the most important for questions about conceptions of space, is Walter D.
Mignolo, _The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality,
and Colonization_ (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), see
especially chapter 6.

10. Mark T. Berger, _Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and U.S.
Hegemony in the Americas, 1898-1990_ (Bloomington: University of Indiana
Press, 1995); Arturo Escobar, _Encountering Development: The Making and
Unmaking of the Third World_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995).

11. Gaddis Smith, _The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1953_ (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1994).

12. I am thinking of processes similar to those described by Benedict
Anderson about the cultural sources of national identity in _Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism_ rev. ed.
(London: Verso, 1991), see especially chapter 10.

13. Jonathan C. Brown, _Oil and Revolution in Mexico_ (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993); Paul Gootenberg, _Imagining
Development: Economic Ideas in Peru's "Fictitious Prosperity" of Guano,
1840-1880_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Steven C.
Topik, _Trade and Gunboats: The United States and Brazil in the Age of
Empire_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).

14. "North American Scholars specializing in Mexico," Dr. Howard F. Cline,
Director, Hispanic Foundation, Library of Congress to Dr. Arturo Morales
Carrióón, Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Latin America, ARA, State
Department, 9 September 1963, p. 4; enclosed with Cline to Morales, 10
September 1963, Office Files of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Inter-American Affairs, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, Box 22, Folder:
Mexico, Lot Files 64D369, Record Group 59, National Archives II, College
Park, Maryland.

15. Ibid., p. 1.


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