In a work of unprecedented scope, Thomas D. Schoonover combines exhaustive multicountry archival research with a sophisticated theoretical framework grounded in world systems theory to elucidate the relations between the United States and Central America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Schoonover's archival research in Central America, Europe, and the United States encompasses public, business, organizational, and individual records. In analyzing this material, Schoonover applies a world systems theory approach with that of social imperialism and dependency theory to underscore the broad, multistate dimension of international affairs. In exploring the international history of Central America, Schoonover describes the role of personalities such as John C. Frémont, Otto von Bismarck, Theodore Roosevelt, Manuel Estrada Cabrera, and José Santos Zelaya; the impact of railroad building and canal projects; and the role of pan-Americanism, nationalism, racism, and anti-Americanism.
Accounts of the international relations of Central America have been dominated by the role of the United States and Great Britain. The role of France in Central America has largely been overshadowed by the other great powers. In a well-written, tight, and masterful synthesis, Thomas Schoonover redresses this imbalance.p Based on exhaustive multinational archival research, The French in Central America: Culture and Commerce, 1820-1930 details French attempts to establish a sphere of influence in Central America amongst the machinations of the British, Germans, and U.S. who all sought to dominate trade in Central America, control transit routes between the oceans, advise the national militaries, and influence cultural developments.p The book traces the involvement of the French in Central America from Independence to the unsteady economic years following World War I. Central America, in the nineteenth century was an area of vital importance to the French, who, along with a number of other powers, were interested in building a canal across the isthmus. The French in Central America demonstrates how the French used both economic and military means to further their desire for economic as well as colonial expansion. More importantly, the book examines how the French worked to develop strong cultural bonds with the nations of Central America through education, language schools, orders, and military missions. The French sought cultural advantage in considerable part because they hoped and expected commercial benefits to result.p The French in Central America: Culture and Commerce, 1820-1930 is an important addition to the growing literature on the international relations of the Americas. Thisbook will be of great interest to professors and students of French and Central American history as well as individuals interested in international relations and cultural studies.p
When Heinz Lüning posed as a Jewish refugee to spy for Hitler’s Abwehr espionage agency, he thought he had discovered the perfect solution to his most pressing problem: how to avoid being drafted into Hitler’s army. Lüning was unsympathetic to Fascist ideology, but the Nazis’ tight control over exit visas gave him no chance to escape Germany. He could enter Hitler’s army either as a soldier . . . or a spy. In 1941, he entered the Abwehr academy for spy training and was given the code name “Lumann.” Soon after, Lüning began the service in Cuba that led to his ultimate fate of being the only German spy executed in Latin America during World War II. Lüning was not the only spy operating in Cuba at the time. Various Allied spies labored in Havana; the FBI controlled eighteen Special Intelligence Service operatives, and the British counterintelligence section subchief Graham Greene supervised Secret Intelligence Service agents; and Ernest Hemingway’s private agents supplied inflated and inaccurate information about submarines and spies to the U.S. ambassador, Spruille Braden. Lüning stumbled into this milieu of heightened suspicion and intrigue. Poorly trained and awkward at his work, he gathered little information worth reporting, was unable to build a working radio and improperly mixed the formulas for his secret inks. Lüning eventually was discovered by British postal censors and unwittingly provided the inspiration for Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. In chronicling Lüning’s unlikely trajectory from a troubled life in Germany to a Caribbean firing squad, Thomas D. Schoonover makes brilliant use of untapped documentary sources to reveal the workings of the famed Abwehr and the technical and social aspects of Lüning’s spycraft. Using archival sources from three continents, Schoonover offers a narrative rich in atmospheric details to reveal the political upheavals of the time, not only tracking Lüning’s activities but also explaining the broader trends in the region and in local counterespionage. Schoonover argues that ambitious Cuban and U.S. officials turned Lüning’s capture into a grand victory. For at least five months after Lüning’s arrest, U.S. and Cuban leaders—J. Edgar Hoover, Fulgencio Batista, Nelson Rockefeller, General Manuel Benítez, Ambassador Spruille Braden, and others—treated Lüning as a dangerous, key figure for a Nazi espionage network in the Gulf-Caribbean. They reworked his image from low-level bumbler to master spy, using his capture for their own political gain. In the sixty years since Lüning’s execution, very little has been written about Nazi espionage in Latin America, partly due to the reticence of the U.S. government. Revealing these new historical sources for the first time, Schoonover tells a gripping story of Lüning’s life and capture, suggesting that Lüning was everyone’s man in Havana but his own.
In a work of unprecedented scope, Thomas D. Schoonover combines exhaustive multicountry archival research with a sophisticated theoretical framework grounded in world systems theory to elucidate the relations between the United States and Central America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Schoonover's archival research in Central America, Europe, and the United States encompasses public, business, organizational, and individual records. In analyzing this material, Schoonover applies a world systems theory approach with that of social imperialism and dependency theory to underscore the broad, multistate dimension of international affairs. In exploring the international history of Central America, Schoonover describes the role of personalities such as John C. Frémont, Otto von Bismarck, Theodore Roosevelt, Manuel Estrada Cabrera, and José Santos Zelaya; the impact of railroad building and canal projects; and the role of pan-Americanism, nationalism, racism, and anti-Americanism.
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."--BOOK JACKET.
This book offers an innovative, thematic approach to the history of Latin America since independence. It traces continuity and change in colonial legacies that became central political issues following independence: authoritarian governance; a rigid social hierarchy based on race, color, and gender; the powerful Roman Catholic Church; economic dependency; and the large landed estate. Generally, liberals have sought to modify or abolish these legacies in the interest of what they consider progress, while conservatives have attempted to preserve them as much as possible as bastions of their power and privilege. Examining the evolution of these colonial legacies across two centuries reveals the processes that formed the political systems, economies, societies, and religious institutions that characterize Latin America today.
Studying printed books as physical objects can reveal not only how books were produced, but also how their design and layout features emerged and came to convey meanings. This concise and accessible introduction to analytical bibliography in its historical context explains in clear, non-specialist language how to find and analyze clues about a book's manufacture and how to examine the significance of a book's design. Written by one of the most eminent bibliographical and textual scholars working today, the book is both a practical guide to bibliographical research and a history of bibliography as a developing field of study. For all who use books, this is an ideal starting point for learning how to read the object along with the words.
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