Perhaps the University of Texas Press bet that Tales of Two Cities would prove (to unknowing consumers) an instant Victorian classic, boosting flagging sales on Latin American lists. Not likely. This sales gimmick obscures the fact that this an interesting book on its own terms. Camilla Townsend’s work excels (much like Dickens) in its larger narrative strategies and in the end makes a successful stab at a much-talked about but still rarely done venture: extended historical comparisons between Latin and North America.The actual settings are more specific than its broader title: Gauyaquil, Ecuador, and Baltimore, Maryland, in the first half of the nineteenth century. Centered upon “economic culture,” from a largely social history perspective (rather than one of racial discourse), the Tale concerns two maritime towns which shared striking commercial parallels and even links in the era. The book’s introduction is its weakest moment. Her heart seems in the right place—in seeking to heal the current gap between “culturalists” and “structural economists” (as she dubs them)—but Townsend is unable to produce a genuinely sophisticated or even cohesive “theoretical” approach here to the comparative problem. (And commits some embarrassing gaffs, such as declaring “dependency theory” still the reigning paradigm in our field.) Nonetheless, the rest of the book succeeds admirably in what narrative historians do best: telling a fresh and interesting story, with lessons for other times, peoples and places.The story that follows is lucidly laid out. It begins with two chapters that contrast the mercantile elites of Guayaquil and Baltimore, then two chapters comparing the “middling ranks” of both towns (artisans, peddlers, professionals), followed down the social ladder by two chapters that compare the laboring “poor” (freedman, migrants). Two places, two histories, three broad bands of social classes, and active comparisons throughout. The book draws on a good deal of hard social evidence—censuses and the like—but it also focuses on individuals (some like Ana Yagual and Frederick Bailey as recurring plot characters) with aspirations and limits within the two social orders. This literary turn is effective, enhanced by a fine spatial sense, and the reader gets easily drawn into the swampy back streets and fancy shops of the two ports.The key analytical problem seems to be unraveling the human agency and experience of two divergent historical paths: Baltimore, towards prosperity and a greater inclusion of citizens after independence, Guayaquil, stuck in relative stagnation and a stubbornly hierarchical colonial-like culture. Yet, in the book’s back-and-forth comparisons, we often find fresh and surprising similarities, as well as some fairly stereotypical or expected differences. People worked hard in both towns and basic economic attitudes barely differed; the book rejects a crude cultural determinism. But Baltimore’s caste structure excluded mainly a small black minority, whereas Guayaquil’s power elite instinctively kept benefits and voice from just about everyone else in town. Baltimore’s paradoxical legacy of slavery, Orlando Patterson fashion, defined wider “freedoms” for so-called whites (even to shocking new minorities of Jews). The starkest differences, Townsend suggests, were “relational” ones around class; she also suggests that Baltimore’s more open and mobile vistas were a cause of its long-term economic dynamism—a conclusion that will hearten those who wish to ground “economic development” generally in issues of equity, human or “social capital” and better structures of opportunity. If hard to judge as social science, she presents a credible and compassionate story.In short, this is a Tale worth reading, despite a few flaws in its marketing and its framework of analysis. Readers may also be intrigued by some quite unusual acknowledgments.
Search from 250 M+ research papersSearch from 250 M+ research papers
Open Access
Apr 1, 2011
Esmeralda Broullón Acuña 
