Winner of the 2005 Ottawa Book Award for Non-fiction , the 2005 University of British Columbia Award for Best Canadian Biography, and the Canadian Railroad Historical Association Award for Best Railway Book of the Year. William Van Horne was one of North America’s most accomplished men. Born in Illinois in 1843, he became a prominent railway figure in the United States before coming to Canada in 1881 to become general manager of the fledgling Canadian Pacific Railway. Van Horne pushed through construction of the CPR’s transcontinental line and went on to become company president. He also became one of Canada’s foremost financiers and art collectors, capping his career by opening Cuba’s interior with a railway.
No previous work has covered the web of important players, places, and events that have shaped the history of the United States’ relations with its neighbors to the south. From the Monroe Doctrine through today’s tensions with Latin America’s new leftist governments, this history is rich in case studies of diplomatic, economic, and military cooperation and contentiousness. Encyclopedia of U.S.-Latin American Relations is a comprehensive, three-volume, A-to-Z reference featuring more than 800 entries detailing the political, economic, and military interconnections between the United States and the countries of Latin America, including Mexico and the nations in Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. Entries cover: Each country and its relationship with the United States Key politicians, diplomats, and revolutionaries in each country Wars, conflicts, and other events Policies and treaties Organizations central to the political and diplomatic history of the western hemisphere Key topics covered include: Coups and terrorist organizations U.S. military interventions in the Caribbean Mexican-American War The Cold War, communism, and dictators The war on drugs in Latin America Panama Canal Embargo on Cuba Pan-Americanism and Inter-American conferences The role of commodities like coffee, bananas, copper, and oil "Big Stick" and Good Neighbor policies Impact of religion in U.S.-Latin American relations Neoliberal economic development model U.S. Presidents from John Quincy Adams to Barack Obama Latin American leaders from Simon Bolivar to Hugo Chavez With expansive coverage of more than 200 years of important and fascinating events, this new work will serve as an important addition to the collections of academic, public, and school libraries serving students and researchers interested in U.S. history and diplomacy, Latin American studies, international relations, and current events.
“The editors have assembled an outstanding group of scholars in this very welcome addition to our understanding of Latin American external relations and British foreign policy towards the region in the 20th century.”— Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Honorary Professor, Institute of the Americas, University College London & Former Director, Chatham House “This is an important and timely book, reappraising the UK’s role in Latin America in the 20th century. What emerges is far more interesting than the usual narrative of linear UK decline in the face of growing US predominance.”— Peter Collecott, CMG, UK Ambassador to Brazil, 2004–2008 This book explores the role of Great Britain in twentieth-century Latin America, a period dominated by the growing political and economic influence of the United States. Focusing on three broad themes—war and conflict; commercial and business rivalries; and responses to economic nationalism, revolution, and political change—the individual chapters cover a number of countries and issues from 1914 to 1970, stressing the reluctance with which Britain ceded hegemony in the region. An epilogue focuses on Anglo-American relations and concerns in Latin America in the more recent past. The chapters, all written by leading scholars on their particular subjects, are based on original research in a wide variety of archives, going beyond the standard Foreign Office and State Department sources to which most earlier scholars were confined.
The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934 offers a sweeping panorama of America's tropical empire in the age spanned by the two Roosevelts and a detailed narrative of U.S. military intervention in the Caribbean and Mexico. In this new edition, Professor Langley provides an updated introduction, placing the scholarship in current historical context. From the perspective of the Americans involved, the empire carved out by the banana warriors was a domain of bickering Latin American politicians, warring tropical countries, and lawless societies that the American military had been dispatched to police and tutor. Beginning with the Cuban experience, Langley examines the motives and consequences of two military occupations and the impact of those interventions on a professedly antimilitaristic American government and on its colonial agents in the Caribbean, the American military. The result of the Cuban experience, Langley argues, was reinforcement of the view that the American people did not readily accept prolonged military occupation of Caribbean countries. In Nicaragua and Mexico, from 1909 to 1915, where economic and diplomatic pressures failed to bring the results desired in Washington, the American military became the political arbiters; in Hispaniola, bluejackets and marines took on the task of civilizing the tropics. In the late 1920s, with an imperial force largely of marines, the American military waged its last banana war in Nicaragua against a guerrilla leader named Augusto C. Sandino. Langley not only narrates the history of America's tropical empire, but fleshes out the personalities of this imperial era, including Leonard Wood and Fred Funston, U.S. Army, who left their mark on Cuba and Vera Cruz; William F. Fullam and William Banks Caperton, U.S. Navy, who carried out their missions imbued with old-school beliefs about their role as policemen in disorderly places; Smedley Butler and L.W.T. Waller, Sr., U.S.M.C., who left the most lasting imprint of A
Brazilian Railway Culture examines the cultural relationship Brazil has had with its railways since tracks were first laid by British, American and French engineers in the nineteenth century. ‘Railway’ and ‘Brazil’ are words not often found in the same sentence. Yet each year over seven hundred million passengers are carried by train in the major urban centres, and tens of thousands of visitors enjoy heritage steam rides at over a dozen restored lines and museums. Brazilian Railway Culture starts from the premise that Brazilian society and culture is not just samba, football and sex. The book takes a journey through Brazilian cultural output from 1865 to the present day, examining novels, poetry, music, art, film and television, as well as autobiographies, written histories, and museums to uncover ways in which the railway has been represented. This interdisciplinary study engages with theories of informal empire and postcolonialism, Latin American studies, cultural studies, film and television studies, literary criticism, art history and criticism, museum and heritage studies, as well as railway studies. This is a supplementary text for use by students on both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It will also be of interest to academics, researchers, and railway historians across a range of disciplines.
