The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Abstract

This important historical study contributes to rescuing Latin America from the margins to which the dominant historiography on modern democracy relegated it, placing the region at the center of the development of political modernity worldwide. Based on the claim that nowhere else in the world was democratic republicanism embraced in such a wide manner during the mid-nineteenth century, Sanders establishes that the New World was truly at the vanguard of modern political culture at the time. He focuses, in particular, on an intriguing aspect of political culture—namely, the emergence of what he terms “American republican modernity” (4 and introd.), exploring its rise, relative significance, and eventual collapse late in the century.The book, which for lack of a better word could be considered a “connective” rather than comparative history, mainly focuses on Colombia and Mexico, the two Spanish American regions where in Sanders’s opinion republican modernity operated more strongly. However, the study also takes in Uruguay and Cuba and makes significant references to Chilean political thought and discourse. Instead of addressing modernity as a tangible or “measurable” reality in these various places, Sanders emphasizes its discursive character, insisting also on its fluid and competing nature. Though it competed with alternative visions or “currents of modernity” (21), republican modernity in places like Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, and even Cuba was, he contends, a forceful mind-set in everyday political thought and discourse, predominantly reflected in the journalistic public sphere. The more than 120 newspapers referenced in this study (over half of them published in Mexico) were consumed avidly by not only the highly educated but also, in general, the masses, who absorbed modern republican ideas in the streets, in taverns, at cockfights, during national celebrations, and so forth.The study is arranged thematically and presented in narrative case studies and in analytic chapters with abundant comparative references. The narrative chapters center on significant historical episodes. Chapter 1, for instance, examines the experiences and mind-set of Garibaldinos, the foreign soldiers (Italian, French, and Basque) who fought in Uruguay’s international and civil war, the Guerra Grande (1839–51), under Giuseppe Garibaldi. Their ideas and those of Afro-Uruguayan combatants symbolize the rapid growth of modern republican discourse, including principles such as fraternity among all peoples, support for freedom and the abolition of slavery, and the belief that civilization was tied to liberty and republicanism. Chapter 3, another narrative part of the book, addresses republican discourses related to the experience of Mexico’s St. Patricio battalion, which fought against General Zachary Taylor’s troops during the US-Mexican War (1846–48). Made up not only of Mexican nationals but also of several Irish, defectors from the US army, the group fought bloody battles against the American invaders, whom they regarded as uncivilized racists incapable of true republicanism. This was part of the wider disappointment Mexican republicans felt toward the United States, whose attitudes were deemed contrary to universal liberty, equality, fraternity, and humanity. Chapters 5 and 6 provide additional narratives (on the life and thought of Chilean liberal Francisco Bilbao and the career of a Colombian soldier) illustrative of the spirit characteristic of American republican modernity.The analytic portions of the book address tensions surrounding discourses on republican modernity, including Europhile inclinations dominating discourses on cultural modernity among Latin American intellectuals before the midcentury; the flourishing and impact of an animated democratic culture and of republican political modernity on society, even subaltern sectors that appropriated relevant discourses, from the 1840s to the 1860s; and the collapse of American republican modernity from the 1870s to the 1890s, when Western industrial modernity took over elite values and mind-sets. Still, Sanders establishes that as elites abandoned American republican modernity, subaltern sectors continued to demand that the principles of republicanism, liberty, and justice be respected.Insightful, profusely documented, creatively organized, and clearly written, this deeply revisionist study joins the work of authors such as Carlos Forment and Eduardo Posada-Carbó, who years ago insisted that in nineteenth-century Latin America a vibrant, democratic public sphere had been forged in the crucible of republican politics and free elections. The Vanguard of the Atlantic World shall become indispensable to those interested in the history of political culture, democracy, and republicanism not only in Latin America but across the globe.