Spanish America and British Romanticism, 1777–1826: Rewriting Conquest

Rebecca Cole Heinowitz

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2010

Spanish America and British Romanticism, 1777–1826

Rewriting Conquest

Rebecca Cole Heinowitz

In the series Edinburgh Studies in Transatlantic Literatures

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748641611

Overview
Contents

About this book

Robert Southey did not exaggerate when he described the England of his day as "South American mad." As Spain's hold on its colonies progressively weakened during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, thousands of British scientists, soldiers, entrepreneurs, and settlers rushed to take advantage of the enticing opportunities Spanish America offered. Britain's fascination with the region displayed itself in poems, plays, operas, political tracts, news reportage, travel narratives, and stock market quotations. Creole patriots such as Francisco de Miranda and Andrés Bello gathered in London to solicit aid for their revolutions while ministers debated tactics for liberating both the peoples and the untapped wealth of Spain's colonies.

Through critical reconsiderations of both canonical and lesser-known Romantic texts, from Helen Maria Williams's Peru to Samuel Rogers's The Voyage of Columbus and Byron's The Age of Bronze, Heinowitz reveals the untold story of Romantic-era Britain's Spanish American obsession. Although historians have traditionally characterized Britain's relationship with Spanish America as commercial rather than colonial, this book explores the significant rhetorical overlap between formal and informal strategies of rule. In the absence of a coherent imperial policy regarding Spain's colonies, Britain struggled to justify its actions by means of the problematic assertion that British primacy was authorized by a political, cultural, ethical, and even historical identification with the peoples of Spanish America. By examining the ways in which this discourse of British-Spanish American similitude was deployed and increasingly strained throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Heinowitz demonstrates that British writing about Spanish America redefines the anxieties, ambivalences, and contradictions that characterize Romantic Imperialism.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Introduction: ‘An Empire in Men’s Hearts:’ The Liberal Conquest of Spanish America Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Naturalizing Empire: Helen Maria Williams’s Peru and the British Ascendancy in Spanish America Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
2. Creole Patriotism and the Discourse of Revolutionary Loyalism, 1792–9 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	70
3. The Allure of the Same: Robert Southey’s Welsh Indians and the Rhetoric of Good Colonialism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
4. ‘Thy World, Columbus, shall be free:’ Visions of Spanish America during the Peninsular War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
5. Lord Byron’s ‘South American Project:’ Aristocratic Radicalism and the Question of Venezuelan Settlement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	158
6. The Spanish American Bubble and Britain’s Crisis of Informal Empire, 1822–6 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 264
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: February 28, 2010
ISBN: 9780748641611