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The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Contesting Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

James E. Sanders
James E. Sanders*
Affiliation:
Utah State University
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Abstract

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This essay explores the various ways Mexicans and Colombians envisioned and employed modernity in the nineteenth century, especially the flourishing and collapse of an alternative mentalité I call American republican modernity. I argue that in the late 1840s a vision of civilization emerged that privileged political progress, measured by the success of republican projects and the enactment of extensive citizens' rights, as a marker of modernity over older visions, defined by high culture or wealth. Because conceptions of modernity deeply affected the hegemonic rules of political life in Spanish America, I also suggest how such a discourse enabled subalterns to exploit this language to promote their inclusion in new nation-states. The article concludes by exploring the collapse of this alternative modernity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as Western notions of modernity—involving technological innovation, industrialization, and state power—became dominant.

Resumen

Resumen

Este ensayo investiga como mexicanos y colombianos imaginaron y emplearon la modernidad en el siglo XIX, especialmente el crecimiento y derrumbamiento de una mentalidad alternativa que denomino la modernidad americana republicana. Demuestro que en los años cuarenta una visión de civilización surgió y subrayó el progreso político, demostrado por el éxito de los proyectos republicanos y la promulgación de derechos extensivos de los ciudadanos, como una medida de modernidad que reemplazó las visiones previas definidas por la cultura alta ó la riqueza. Puesto que las concepciones de la modernidad profundamente afectaron las reglas hegemónicas de la vida política en América Latina, sugiero también cómo tal discurso ayudó a los subalternos a explotar esta retórica para promover su inclusión en las naciones nuevas. La conclusión del ensayo examina la disminución de esta modernidad alternativa durante el último cuarto del siglo XIX, cuando nociones occidentales de la modernidad —enfocado a la innovación tecnológica, industrialización, y el poder estatal— se volvieron dominantes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , 2011 , pp. 104 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2009 Latin American Studies Association International Conference in Rio de Janeiro and the 2009 symposium “Latin American Revolutions and Civil Wars before Mass Politics” at the University of Illinois; many thanks to the participants in both. Research for the article was conducted in part under a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and faculty research grants from Utah State University. I thank Reid Andrews, Celso Castilho, Jennifer Duncan, Mike Ervin, Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Marixa Lasso, Aims McGuinness, Len Rosenband, and the LARR reviewers for comments on drafts of the article; of course, all errors are my own.

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