Hansen/Curtis, Voyages in World History, 1e, Ch 25

Summary

The Americas were very different places in 1895 than they had been in 1830. Through a process of national consolidation, centralized governments had more effective power over their territories. Economic growth and technological change had connected many more people to the global economy as producers and as consumers. Immense social changes threatened many older ideas and traditions.

• What were some of the main factors that needed to be overcome for effective political consolidation to occur in North and South American nations? When and how was that consolidation achieved?

Before states could centralize, they needed to overcome regional factors. In Canada, a process of balancing the diversity of its peoples and regions and its relationship with the British Empire culminated in 1867 with the Confederation. In the United States, decades of sectional conflict erupted into the Civil War. After the war and Reconstruction, strong regional differences remained, the victory of the Union positioned the United States to become a great world power. Mexico achieved effective centralization only after it lost much of its territory to the United States. That loss produced a reform process that, despite foreign invasion and internal unrest, ultimately stabilized power under a strong central government. In South America, more liberal statesmen replaced caudillos, and by 1895 nations such as Venezuela and Brazil had developed more effective and progressive governments. In each of these regions, technologies such as railroads and telegraphs helped centralizing governments to extend their reach across national space.

• What were the main factors driving economic growth in the nineteenth century Americas? Who were the main beneficiaries?

New technologies helped to open the Great Plains to agriculture, expand the beef export industry in Argentina, and develop coffee production in Brazil and commercial agriculture in the Yucatan. The main beneficiary of this economic growth was the United States, a country with vast resources, a growing population, and access to strong internal and international markets. Similarly, Canada flourished as grain and beef from the west fed industrializing cities to the east. In Latin America, late-nineteenth-century liberal reforms developed export economies which stimulated the growth of an urban middle class. Throughout the Americas, the fruits of economic growth spread unevenly, with a small elite typically enjoying the greatest benefit.

• What were some important similarities and differences in various parts of the Americas in important areas of social change such as the fate of indigenous societies, abolition, immigration and race relations, and in gender relations?

Throughout the Americas slavery fell to liberal free-market and wage-labor systems. However, former slaves often saw no meaningful benefits from abolition. Despite racist opposition, immigration from Europe and Asia enhanced economic dynamism and cultural diversity of the Americas. Native American peoples lost their sovereignty to expanding governments, some incorporated into the commercial labor system, others simply pushed aside. At the same time, gender relations and attitudes began to shift, particularly in North America, as women found new opportunities for work and expression and began to campaign for political rights.