Two Countries: Capitalism, Revolution, and Nations in the Americas, 1750-1870.

• Author: Dawes, Antony W. Keane
• Position: LATIN AMERICA

Tutino, John, ed. Two Countries: Capitalism, Revolution, and Nations in the Americas, 1750-1870. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.

John Tutino brings together a diverse set of scholars to examine how four nations impacted by slavery and four nations with Amerindian majorities adapted to and became a part of a world economy fueled by industrial capitalism. No singular thesis brings together these studies of the United States, Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala. Yet, a common theme that brings together the chapters of this edited volume is the imperial legacy of linking colonies to silver mining and trading along with sugar cultivation buttressed by enslaved labor. Two Countries charts the independence movements of these countries after the Age of Revolutions followed by their nation-building attempts during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Tutino's introduction situates this edited volume in attempting to integrate local national histories into larger regional, comparative, and hemispheric frameworks. Over the last thirty years, scholars such as John Lynch, Robin Blackburn, Lester Langley, J. H. Elliott, and Jeremy Adelman have taken local histories of independence wars, slavery, and colonial empires and situated them into larger regional, hemispheric, and Atlantic frameworks. The different chapters of this edited volume continue these attempts by consolidating these topics and frameworks that bring together studies on colonies and countries impacted by slavery with those outside of its purview. In addition, Two Countries follows new historiographical trends towards global views of history, the new understandings of the Haitian Revolution and Mexican independence, and the relationship between liberal innovation in Spain during the Age of Revolutions and "the origins of regimes of popular sovereignty" (4). What the readers are faced with is a collection of articles emphasizing the integration of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa first through silver capitalism and then through slave-based production and trade that supplied coffee, cotton, and sugar to an industrializing Europe and North America.

The scholars of this edited volume synthesize the larger recent and seminal literature of slavery from national and regional histories and put them in a larger framework. Together, other historians such as David Sartorius (Cuba) and Jordana Dym (Guatemala) include correspondences, proclamations, and travel...