During the second half of the nineteenth century Argentina was transformed from a sparsely populated, backward, and disunited community of provinces into a nation along European lines. The demands for economic development, a larger and better educated population, and the centralization of the state on a constitutional and legal basis were the greatest problems its leaders would have to face. Chief among constitutional hurdles was the hostility between the forces demanding autonomy for the province of Buenos Aires led by Adolfo Alsina (Partido Autonomista) and those representing national unity (Partido Nacionalista) following Bartolomé Mitre, the first president of a united Argentina (1862-68).

During the first six decades of Colombia's existence as an independent nation, it experienced five major revolutions (1839-42, 1854, 1859-62, 1876-77, 1885-86) as well as innumerable uprisings confined to specific regions or localities. Although only one of these major revolutions was successful in its objective of overthrowing the government, all of them were destructive of lives and property and seriously disrupted plans for economic develpoment. None of them, however, had such devastating effects as the War of the Thousand Days (1899-1902). This vain struggle by Liberal revolutionaries to overthrow a Conservative-dominated government began only after years of debate among Liberals on the wisdom of attempting to attain political power by force and in defiance of the wishes of the party's top leaders. The events that culminated in the outbreak of the revolution will be traced in the following pages.

A Social History of colonial Latin America should endeavor to trace the patterns of behavior of the various social groups within the society. Group behavior can be viewed from a number of different perspectives. Among the more important variables are political behavior, economic behavior, social behavior and religious behavior. Religious participation and involvement is one of the more interesting of these variables, especially in Latin America, where the Catholic Church has traditionally been a social institution powerfully affecting all others. The Church and the upper social groups have often functioned in a symbiotic relationship one to another, with the Church providing a measure of social prestige and temporal power in exchange for economic and/or political support. This essay, based on a study of 178 wholesale merchants, seeks to interpret the relationships established between the Church and the economically and socially powerful merchant group in late eighteenth century Buenos Aires. At the same time, the essay attempts to illustrate that in studying the religious participation of a specific social group, the role of religion as an indicator of social prestige and power becomes dramatically apparent.

Scholars are presently re-examining the status of creoles in Spanish colonial administration at the end of the eighteenth century. All historians accept that the Crown discriminated against Americans but the degree and effect of that prejudice is the subject of much current research. Most have rejected Bolívar's sweeping generalization that Spain excluded Americans from all responsible positions, but few agree on the extent of creole participation. Recent studies suggest that creoles held more high positions than had been suspected. These studies further suggest that a new interpretation of the effect of creoles on administration and the independence movement is overdue. The road to this synthesis must be paved with case studies of individuals.

On the eve of the American Revolution colonial trade with the islands of the British West Indies had reached considerable proportions. Close to 40% of the ships leaving the ports of New York and Boston alone sailed directly to the English possessions in the Caribbean, and an estimated 500 sloops and schooners were involved in both direct and indirect commerce. The year 1767 saw a total of 2000 vessels cleared through American ports for the West Indies.

The landowners in the West Indies were highly dependent upon the American colonies for supplies of foodstuffs (including livestock) and lumber. Therefore agricultural America had an outlet for its primary products, while the West Indian planter had a steady market for his sugar economy. In effect the trade with the BWI had become, on the eve of the Declaration of Independence, a cornerstone of American commerce. The importance of this trade can, and has, been documented. But no better than by the remark of Paul Revere shortly after the famous midnight ride. Traveling through the major commercial areas of New England, Revere reported “a sentiment in favor of Congress, so constituted, in order to place a restriction on the trade of the West Indies.” Actually the colonies were not about to injure this trade. After Boston harbor was shut down, John Adams remarked that its commerce was “an essential link in a vast chain, which has made New England what it is, the southern provinces what they are, the West India islands what they are.”

The erosion of Great Britain's economic and political foothold in Brazil reached critical proportions during the 1870's, at which time England sustained dual commercial assaults by German and American interest groups. In his study of British Preëminence in Brazil, Alan K. Manchester says that the first rival to seriously threaten Britain's role in Brazil was Germany and he goes on to cite examples of this threat during 1873. While Manchester alludes to the United States as another economic rival of Great Britain during the nineteenth century, he suggests that the United States figured only as a minor competitor until World War I, when it would supplant Great Britain as the principal supplier of the South American nation. A closer examination of the sources, however, indicates that the United States was anything but a minor competitor and actually a very real threat to Great Britain during the 1870's. The study undertaken by Richard Graham discloses that the British investment in Brazil slowed down during the years 1873-1879. During this period the United States took advantage of the opportunity to increase its economic role and its political prestige in Brazil at the expense of the British.

The years of violence in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1924) have been viewed as a period of upheaval and disruption in which governments toppled, politicians were killed or banished, and the caudillo held sway. However, in such times ideas and institutions often continue to evolve in spite of revolutionary chaos. Mexican education in the second decade of the twentieth century revealed at least two important trends of a peaceful nature: the growth of socially cohesive nationalism and the triumph of the principle of federalism in public education.