Americana The Americas in the World, Around 1850

by Dunkerley, James

• ISBN13: 9781859847534
• ISBN10: 1859847536
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-17
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

The Americas of the 1850s provides James Dunkerley with compelling material for this majestic and unorthodox book. Drawing on a range of contemporary sources, from Walt Whitman to Charles Darwin, Anthony Trollope, Karl Marx and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, he adopts a fully Atlanticist perspective to reappraise the first steps in American modernity. Americana is arranged around major themes: time and space, culture, political economy and international relations. Between these more general discussions are edited transcripts and commentaries on three court cases from the period which both divert and illuminate: John Mitchel's 1848 conviction for treason in Dublin which led him through Bermuda, Tasmania and Nicaragua before joining the Confederate cause in the US Civil War; Myra Gaines' suit for the return of her legacy which reveals her Sligo-born father to have conspired against Jefferson and treated with Napoleon's agents in the sale of Louisiana; Mariano Munoz's trial for releasing a prisoner on Good Friday in the style of Pontius Pilate which draws the curtain back on Francisco Burdett O'Connor, prefect of Tarija, elder brother of the Chartist leader Feargus and Simon Bolivar's chief of staff. Americana seeks simultaneously to savour the language and sensibilities of the nineteenth century in the Americas and to provide a pleasurable critique of contemporary vanities over globalisation and the complex sophistication of modernity.

Author Biography

James Dunkerley is Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of London.

Table of Contents

Dramatis Personae	ix
Maps	xiii
Preface	xxi
A Little Time (And Space)	1	(56)
Marking Time
Chronologies
US Time
Latin American Time
Indigenous Time
Atlantic Space
First Case	57	(42)
The Queen v. John Mitchel, The Commission Court, Dublin, May 1848
Cultures in Contention	99	(144)
Historiographies
Religion and Rome
Old Spain
Civilisations and Barbarisms
Race, Custom and Difference
Southern Arcadia
http:// wetness. Women. whitman
Feminist Forepieces
Singing Sex
Marx and Bolivar
Second Case	243	(60)
Myra Clark Gaines v. Relf Chew, Supreme Court of the United States, February 1852
Political Economies	303	(134)
Explanations of Empire
Trade
Tariffs and Textiles
Land of Plenty (for Some)
On the Road to Somewhere
Slavery Days
Latin Bondage
Confronting the Slave Trade
Third Case	437	(44)
Mariano Donato Munoz, defendant before the Supreme Court of Bolivia, June-December 1850
Empires at War (and Nearly So)	481	(140)
Becoming American (Again)
Destiny Manifest, Elephant Visible
Heroes without a Cause?
Politics in Command
Sights on the Mosquito Shore
Kings and Consuls
Testing the Balance of Power
The Grey-eyed Man (and the Tall Fellow)
Appendices
1. The Course of the Mexican-American War
2. The Mosquito Shore and Nicaragua, 1844-60	613	(8)
Thanks	621	(3)
Picture Credits	624	(2)
Index	626