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

In the nineteenth century, Latin America was home to the majority of the world's democratic republics. Many historians have dismissed these political experiments as corrupt pantomimes of governments of Western Europe and the United States. Challenging that perspective, James E. Sanders contends that Latin America in this period was a site of genuine political innovation and popular debate reflecting Latin Americans' visions of modernity. Drawing on archival sources in Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay, Sanders traces the circulation of political discourse and democratic practice among urban elites, rural peasants, European immigrants, slaves, and freed blacks to show how and why ideas of liberty, democracy, and universalism gained widespread purchase across the region, mobilizing political consciousness and solidarity among diverse constituencies. In doing so, Sanders reframes the locus and meaning of political and cultural modernity.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix Prologue 1 Introduction. American Republican Modernity 5 1. Garibaldi, the Garibaldinos, and the Guerra Grande 24 2. "A Pueblo Unfit to Live among Civilized Nations": Conceptions of Modernity after Independence 39 3. The San Patricio Battalion 64 4. Eagles of American Democracy: The Flowering of American Republican Modernity 81 5. Francisco Bilbao and the Atlantic Imagination 136 6. David Pena and Black Liberalism 161 7. The Collapse of American Republican Modernity 176 Conclusion. A "Gift That the New World Has Sent Us" 225 Notes 239 Bibliography 297 Index 331

About the Author :
James E. Sanders is Professor of History at Utah State University. He is the author of Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Colombia, also published by Duke University Press.

Review :
“The book focuses mainly on the midcentury period, roughly 1840-80, and covers important encounters between transatlantic republicans in the process of nation building...An important book.” - K. L. Racine (Choice) "While The Vanguard of the Atlantic World speaks most directly to scholars of intellectual and political history, students interested in racial relations would benefit greatly from this book. Throughout, Sanders writes in a lucid and engaging style. Without a doubt, Sanders successfully demonstrates the importance of Latin American political thought for the nineteenth century and beyond." - Rachael L. Pasierowska (History) "Insightful, profusely documented, creatively organized, and clearly written,... 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." - Victor M. Uribe-Uran (Ethnohistory) "[T]his is an enormously thought-provoking book, one that should spark productive debate and dialogue, within Latin Americanist circles and beyond." - Karen D. Caplan (The Americas) "Ambitious and important. . . . James E. Sanders must be praised for his perseverance in stubbornly maintaining his focus on popular engagement with the egalitarian, democratic, and republican ideas that pervaded the nineteenth-century Atlantic world." - Guy Thomson (Hispanic American Historical Review)