Informal Empire

Abstract

Informal empire is less a settled concept than a vexing category. Scholars disagree on the complicity of individuals, the extent of government oversight, and even whether informal empire is in fact imperial. I argue that informal empire is best approached through the lens of paradox. It is a system with no centralized authority yet which gave Britain a powerful role in the formation of Latin America. It relied on the continuing independence of Latin American nations and yet compromised their sovereignty. It often fostered the economic progress of the new nations and yet strangled their development. It grew out of the labor of thousands of individual migrants and travelers, and yet many of these people had no sense that they were involved in something called empire. What informal empire means is still very much up for debate. However, what it does for scholars of the nineteenth century is quite clear: it calls us to the study of imperialism in new ways, asking us to expand our gaze beyond the usual sites, to more openly conceptualize power relations, and—using all the particular powers of literary study we possess—to be attuned to the strangeness and paradox of imperialism.