Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization
Author: Thomas Schoonover
"Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization examines the growth of the American empire from its early nationhood to its first global military conflict. As the fledgling nation's military, industrial, and economic strength developed, the United States created policies designed to protect itself from challenges beyond its borders. According to Schoonover, a surge in U.S. activity in the Gulf-Caribbean and in Central America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was catalyzed by the same avarice and competitiveness that motivated European adventurers to seek a route to Asia centuries earlier." Schoonover locates the origins of American globalization and expansionism in the Spanish-American War. American involvement in the War of 1898, he argues, reflects many of the fundamental patterns of our national history - exploration and discovery, labor exploitation, violence, racism, class conflict, and concern for security - that have shaped America's course since the nineteenth century. Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization is the first work to identify the source of the United States' economic, political, and social policies abroad - and the actions that established it as the only remaining superpower.
Publishers Weekly
In contrast to the traditional globalization assertion that the world's "Heartland" lies somewhere in the Eurasian land mass, Schoonover, professor of history at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, places it in the Caribbean/Central American region that from 1492 to the present has acted as a bridge and a springboard for Europe's, then America's expansionist quest for Asian markets. The Spanish-American war of 1898, according to Schoonover, was neither an aberration nor a false path temporarily followed. It brought together most of the major themes of U.S. history: imperialism, militarism, labor exploitation, racism. Industrial technology increased production to a level where global distribution was the only way of sustaining the profits Americans had come to expect. For Schoonover, westward expansion was not a search for land and freedom, but a stage in opening America's way to the Pacific basin. The Caribbean region played a vital role in the process because it was the site for the isthmus canal that linked the U.S.-dominated North Atlantic to a Pacific region where during the first half of the 20th century, U.S. aims and policies were asserted by sophisticated combinations of economic, political, military and cultural pressure. Asian reactions were predictable: "suspicion, distrust, anger, and hatred," a legacy that Schoonover finds endures to the present. Schoonover acknowledges his particular intellectual debt to Walter LaFeber (who provides an introduction) for many of these ideas. His concise history of the U.S.'s early imperial maneuvering is scarcely comforting and should play a role in ongoing debates about current actions. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Book about: Condoleezza Rice or Haunted by Combat
Latin America in the World Econ P
Author: Frederick Stirton Weaver
Latin America in the World Economy considers the dual aspect of Latin American development: how external factors (phases of world capitalism since Columbus) interweave with internal factors (Latin American culture, politics, and social groups). Within his skillful approach, Weaver demonstrates how domestic social conflicts and power relations have consistently capitalized on changes in the international economy, while, conversely, engagement with the international economy has consistently constrained local struggles and patterns of change. With over half of the book dedicated to the "short" twentieth century (after 1930), Latin America in the World Economy is appropriate for courses in Latin American economic history, political economy, and development.
Booknews
Considers how external factors (the phases of world capitalism since Columbus) interweave with internal factors such as Latin American culture, politics, and social groups in Latin American development. With this text, Weaver (economics and history, Hampshire College) updates his article on capitalist development in South America originally published in Fall 1976. Over half of the text focuses on 1930 to the present. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Table of Contents:
| List of Tables | ix | |
| Foreword | xi | |
| Preface | xiii | |
| Acknowledgments | xv | |
| List of Acronyms | xvii | |
| Map of Western Hemisphere | xix | |
| 1 | The Changing World Economy: Introduction and Early History | 1 |
| Some Preliminary Principles and Terms | 2 | |
| Tribute-Seeking Empires | 4 | |
| Mercantilism and Commercial Expansion, 1450-1750 | 5 | |
| Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Colonial Latin America as an Uncertain Mercantile Project | 13 | |
| 2 | Competitive Capitalist Industrialization, Free Trade Imperialism, and Latin American Independence, 1700-1850 | 25 |
| Competitive Capitalism: England | 25 | |
| Free Trade Imperialism | 32 | |
| Political Independence in Latin America | 35 | |
| Independent Spanish America in the World Market | 44 | |
| 3 | Finance Capitalism, the New Imperialism, and Latin American Export Economies, 1850-1930 | 55 |
| Finance Capitalist Industralization: Germany | 56 | |
| Finance Capitalism and the "New Imperialism," | 61 | |
| Latin America in the Era of the New Imperialism | 66 | |
| 4 | Modern Times, Bretton Woods, and Transnational Corporations, 1920-1970s | 91 |
| The Turbulent Beginnings of Modern Times in the United States | 91 | |
| The Structure of Modern Times in the 1950s and 1960s | 96 | |
| The International Economy, the Cold War, and Transnational Corporations | 101 | |
| 5 | Import Substitution and Semi-Industrialization in Latin America, 1930-1970s | 117 |
| Depression, War, and the Ascent of the State | 117 | |
| The Limits of Populism: Argentina Under Peron | 125 | |
| The Political Economy of Import-Substituting Industralization in Latin America | 127 | |
| Success, Failure, and Demise of Import-Substituting Industrialization | 139 | |
| 6 | International Competition and the Dissolution of Modern Times | 147 |
| The Crisis of U.S. Modern Times | 147 | |
| Beyond Modern Times | 164 | |
| 7 | Debt, Democracy, and Uncertain Transformations: Latin America in a New World | 169 |
| The Debt Crisis in Latin America | 172 | |
| Debt Leverage and Structural Adjustment | 177 | |
| Political Transitions | 184 | |
| Neoliberal Democracy | 188 | |
| The implementation of Neoliberal Reforms | 197 | |
| Beyond Neoliberalism | 203 | |
| References | 211 | |
| Index | 241 |
