The Limits of Sympathy: The United States and the Independence of Spanish America

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America

Henry Clay and the Poinsett Pledge Controversy of 1826

1972 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-440
Author(s):  
Randolph Campbell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Monroe Doctrine ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Initial Task ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
American Nation

It is well known that the initial task of interpreting the Monroe Doctrine as a functional policy in international relations fell largely on John Quincy Adams. Somewhat ironically, the noncolonization principle in Monroe's famed Annual Message of 1823 for which Adams, then Secretary of State, was most responsible, received relatively little attention in the 1820's. Leaders in the United States and Spanish America alike were more concerned with the meaning of the other main principle involved in the Message—nonintervention. What were the practical implications of Monroe's warning that the United States would consider intervention by a European power in the affairs of any independent American nation “ as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States ” ? John Quincy Adams laid the groundwork for an answer to this question in July, 1824, when Colombia, alarmed by rumors of French interference in the wars for independence, sought a treaty of alliance. The President and Congress, Adams replied, would take the necessary action to support nonintervention if a crisis arose, but there would be no alliance. In fact, he added, it would be necessary for the United States to have an understanding with certain European powers whose principles and interests also supported nonintervention before any action could be taken or any alliance completed to uphold it. The position taken by the Secretary of State cooled enthusiasm for the Monroe Doctrine, but Spanish American leaders did not accept this rebuff in 1824 as final.

“A Stalwart Motor of Revolutions”: An American Merchant in Pernambuco, 1817-1825

2008 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin A. Fitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
New Order ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old World ◽  
Republican Government

A new order for the New World was unfolding in the early nineteenth century, or so many in the United States believed. Between 1808 and 1825, all of Portuguese America and nearly all of Spanish America broke away from Europe, casting off Old World monarchs and inaugurating home-grown governments instead. People throughout the United States looked on with excitement, as the new order seemed at once to vindicate their own revolution as well as offer new possibilities for future progress. Free from obsolete European alliances, they hoped, the entire hemisphere could now rally together around republican government and commercial reciprocity. Statesmen and politicians were no exception, as men from Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay tried to exclude European influence from the hemisphere while securing new markets for American manufactures and agricultural surplus.

Abolition, Chinese Indentured Labor, and the State: Cuba, Peru, and the United States during the Mid Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Narváez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Us South ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
Indentured Labor

Abolition forced planters in the post-Civil War US South to consider new sources and forms of labor. Some looked to Spanish America for answers. Cuba had long played a prominent role in the American imagination because of its proximity, geostrategic location, and potential as a slave state prior to the Civil War. Even as the United States embraced abolition and Cuba maintained slavery, the island presented Southern planters with potential labor solutions. Cuban elites had been using male Chinese indentured workers (“coolies” or colonos asiáticos) to supplement slave labor and delay the rise of free labor since 1847. Planters in coastal Peru similarly embraced Chinese indentured labor in 1849 as abolition neared. Before the Civil War, Southerners generally had noted these developments with anxiety, fearing that coolies were morally corrupt and detrimental to slavery. However, for many, these concerns receded once legal slavery ended. Planters wanted cheap exploitable labor, which coolies appeared to offer. Thus, during Reconstruction, Southern elites, especially in Louisiana, attempted to use Chinese indentured workers to minimize changes in labor relations.

Trends and Cycles in U.S. Trade with Spain and the Spanish Empire, 1790–1819

1984 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 521-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Cuenca Esteban
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Terms Of Trade ◽  
Balance Of Payments ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Export Trade ◽  
Demand Elasticities ◽  
Merchandise Trade ◽  
Constant Prices

Analysis of balance-of-payments components with Spain and Spanish America helps account for spectacular economic gains to the United States in the neutrality years and for the subsequent turn to net deficit positions during the 1810s. Excess export values at constant prices with Spain and favorable terms of trade with Spanish America decisively contributed to large surpluses on commodity account through 1795–1813. Most cycles in merchandise trade are consistent with greater demand elasticities for exports than for imports.Net earings on freight, insurance, and mercantile profits boosted overall returns from the Spanish Empire at the very times when they were most needed to finance the re-export trade and to settle deficits elsewhere.

Fragments of the Past, Tasks for the Future: Spanish in the United States

PMLA ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 115 (7) ◽  
pp. 1961-1964
Author(s):  
James D. Fernández
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Place Of Residence ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

In december 1826, a young bostonian on a grand tour of Europe received a letter from his father, offering the following advice: “Such are the relations now existing between this country and Spanish America that a knowledge of the Spanish is quite as important as French. If you neglect either of these languages, you may be sure of not obtaining the station which you have in view.” The son received the letter in Paris, heeded his father's advice, and headed straight for Madrid. Some four months later he would write back from the capital of Spain, “I have not seen a city in Europe which has pleased my fancy so much, as a place of residence” (Helman 340).

The Spanish American Aspect of Henry Clay’s American System

1967 ◽  
Vol 24 (01) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph B. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
American System ◽  
Emerging Nations ◽  
Henry Clay

Henry Clay of Kentucky first offered his American System as a plan to guide the growth of the United States during the period of awakening nationalism that followed the Peace of Ghent in 1815. When asked just before his death in 1852 to make up a list of his most important public services for use by some friends who were having a medal struck to commemorate his career, Clay prepared a list of fourteen items which included the American System with the date, 1824. Thus, at the end of his long career, the Kentuckian identified this phrase with his most famous speech in support of the protective tariff. It may then seem surprising that his first recorded use of the term came on May 10, 1820, in a speech supporting recognition of the emerging nations of Spanish America. Clay’s use of “American System” in these two apparently different areas of discussion has led to two separate connotations for the phrase. The two meanings call for careful discrimination. Equally important, however, is the significant connection between them in the thought of Henry Clay.

The Rise and Decline of the Ariel-Caliban Antithesis in Spanish America

1978 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Reid
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
The North ◽  
Primary Image ◽  
Literary Device

Seldom has a literary device had such international political resonance as the famous Ariel-Caliban contraposition of José Enrique Rodó's essay. In the decades immediately following its publication in 1900 Ariel was an exceptionally valued credo for Spanish American youth, not only for its intrinsic grace, but also because it provided a timely answer to a widespread need. To a generation depressed by the frequently pessimistic conclusions of racist doctrines and an uneasy sense of inferiority, and irked by the admonitions of ninteenthcentury “Nordomaniacs,” Ariel offered in sonorous periods a set of values assumed to be peculiarly Latin and therefore the patrimony of Latin America. As Alberto Zum Felde says, “It was the longed-for reply of this weak backward America to the Titanic potentiality of the North: its self-justification, its compensation, its retaliation.” Luis Alberto Sánchez's generation must have derived, as he says he did, its primary image of the United States from Ariel. Arturo Torres-Ríoseco describes it as “the ethical gospel of the Spanish-speaking world.”

The Parvin-Brigham Mission to Spanish America, 1823–1826

1945 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
J. Orin Oliphant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
The United States ◽  
War Of 1812 ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact

Slowly during the years just preceding our War of 1812, and rapidly during the decade that followed the Peace of Ghent, the vast reaches of Latin America swam within the ken of the people of the United States. Of this “discovery” of our southern neighbors and of our relations with Latin America before 1830, we have learned much from a volume recently brought out by a distinguished historian of the United States, Professor Arthur P. Whitaker. Professor Whitaker's informing study was intended to be nothing less than a well-rounded history of the impact of Latin America upon the United States to 1830; and such it has proved to be—with one exception. Professor Whitaker completely overlooked the religious phase of the subject he otherwise treated so skillfully. Upon this neglected part of the history of our early relations with Latin America this paper will endeavor to throw some light.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document