Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Department of History

Nation-building in the Nineteenth Century

2024-2025 PowerPoint

2023-2024 powerpoint

You can also watch the 2020-21 lectures:

Lecture slides 2020-21

Lecture Part 1: Recap and Introduction 2020-21

Lecture Part 2 2020-21

Lecture Part 3: The Seminar Readings 2020-21

CC seminar week 1

Questions

  • How did nineteenth-century elites “imagine” their nations? What obstacles to "effective" government did they identify?
  • Did all sections of society share this vision?
  • Why was political stability so hard to achieve after independence? Why did some countries achieve it sooner than others?
  • Do you see more similarities or more differences between the Hispanic American republics and the case of Brazil?
  • Why did Brazil remain a united country when Spanish America broke up into separate republics?
  • How "liberal" were the new nations?

Required Reading

  • Appelbaum, Nancy P.. Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia, University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Introduction. Pp 1-16.

And one of the following:

Useful primary sources:

Additional Readings

General

  • Barman, Roderick, Brazil: the Forging of a Nation, Stanford University Press (Stanford, 1998), chapters 4-8
  • Bethell, Leslie (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1984+), vol. 3, chapters by Tulio Halperín Donghi and Frank Safford, available as E-book at library
  • Bradford Burns, E., The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century, University of California Press (Berkeley, 1980).
  • Espelt-Bombin, Silvia. and Mark Harris. "Changing Narratives of Race and Environment in the Nineteenth-Century and Early-Twentieth-Century Brazilian Amazon." Bulletin of Latin American Research, (2019), 38: 150-163. https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1111/blar.12782
  • Kraay, Hendrik. “ ‘As Terrifying as Unexpected’: The Bahian Sabinada, 1837-1838,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 72:4 (November 1992): 501-27 [provides a useful comparative perspective on historiography of Brazilian independence]
  • Larson, Brooke, Trials of Nation-Making: Liberalism in the Andes, 1810-1910 (Cambridge University Press, 2004) [e-book at Library]
  • Levine, Robert, and John Crocitti, eds.,The Brazil Reader History, Culture and Politics, Duke University Press (Durham, 1999), chapter 2: ‘Imperial and Republican Brazil’.
  • Stein, Stanley and Barbara, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America, Oxford University Press (London, 1970).
  • Williamson, Edwin, The Penguin History of Latin America, Penguin (London, 1992), chapters 7-8

Elite Nationalism

  • Earle, Rebecca, “Padres de la Patria and the Ancestral Past: Celebrations of Independence in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 34:4 (2002), pp. 775-805.
  • Fernández Bravo, Alvaro, “Ambivalent Argentina, Nationalism, Exoticism, and Latin Americanism at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition,” Nepantla: Views from South, vol. 2.1 (2001), pp. 115-139.
  • Sábato, Hilda, “On Political Citizenship in 19th Century Latin America,” American Historical Review, vol. 106:4 (October 2001).
  • Thurner, Mark, ‘“Republicanos” and “La Comunidad de Peruanos”: Unimagined Political Communities in Postcolonial Andean Peru’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 27:2 (1995), pp. 291-318.

Popular Politics

  • De la Fuente, Ariel, “Facundo and Chacho in Songs and Stories: Oral Culture and the Representations of Caudillos in the Nineteenth-Century Argentine Interior,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 80:3 (2000), pp. 503-535.
  • Guardino, Peter, “Barbarism or Republican Law. Guerrero’s Peasants and National Politics, 1820-1846,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 75:2 (1995).
  • Sanders, James, “Atlantic Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century Colombia: Spanish America's Challenge to the Contours of Atlantic History,” Journal of World History, vol. 20:1 (2009).
  • Thomson, Guy, “Popular Aspects of Liberalism in Mexico, 1848-1888,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 10 (1991).

Brazil

Matthias Rohrig Assuncao, ‘Elite Politics and Popular Rebellion in the Construction of the Post Colonial Order. The Case of Maranhao, Brazil (1820-41) Journal of Latin American Studies, 31 1999

Hendrik Kraay, “As Terrifying as Unexpected”: The Bahian Sabinada, 1837-1838,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 72:4 (Nov 1992): 501-27

Leslie Bethell, ed. Brazil: Empire and Republic, chapter 2 [e-book @ Library]

João José Reis, “Slave Resistance in Brazil: Bahia, 1807-1835,” Luso-Brazilian Review, 25:1 (1988).

•Hendrik Kraay, “Between Brazil and Bahia: Celebrating Dois de Julho in Nineteenth-Century Salvador,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 31:2 (1999): 255-86

Kraay, Hendrik. Days of National Festivity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1823-1889. Stanford University Press, 2013.