Latin American and world histories: Old and new approaches to the pluribus and the unum

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 84, Issue 3, 2004, Pages

  Adelman, Jeremy ^a,b  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Program in Latin American Studies

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34547465165     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-84-3-399     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. For those interested in the development of world history and its many camps, two recent collections are very helpful guides. Ross E. Dunn, ed., The New World History (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000)
2. and Philip Pomper, Richard H. Elphick, and Richard T. Vann, eds., World History: Ideologies, Structures, and Identities (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)
3. Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1985), xi-xiii
4. Octavio Paz, "A Literature of Convergences," in Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 220
5. For a fascinating self-reflection, see William H. McNeill, "The Changing Shape of World History," in Pomper et al., eds., World History, 21-40
6. For more on the foundational histories, see Adelman, "The Independence of Latin America," Latin American Historiography, ed. José Moya (New York; Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming)
7. Octavio Paz, "A Literature of Foundations," Triquarterly 13-14 (Fall-Winter 1968-69): 8
8. Stephen Haber, ed., Haw Latin America Fell Behind: Essays on the Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico, 1800-1914 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997)
9. Caio Prado Jr., Formação do Brasil contemporâneo: Colônia (São Paulo: Livraria Martins, 1942)
10. For a reflection on this work, see Stuart B. Schwartz, "The Colonial Past: Conceptualizing Post-Dependentista Brazil," in Colonial Legacies: The Problem of Persistence in Latin American History, ed. Jeremy Adelman (New York: Routledge, 1999), 175-92
11. Steve J. Stern, "Feudalism, Capitalism, and the World System in the Perspective of Latin America and the Caribbean," reprinted in Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America, ed. Frederick Copper et al. (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 23-82
12. Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250-1350 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989)
13. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin, 1985)
14. Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982)
15. Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984). It is worth noting the obvious. All of these books anticipated what Abu-Lughod's did: that the centeredness of the world is a relative and contingent thing
16. For a more recent effort in this tradition, see Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1999)
17. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997). The "clash of civilizations," with the West coming out on top, appears (not surprisingly) to be something of a rage these days
18. For quite a different take accenting bellicose cultures, see Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Doubleday, 2001)
19. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2000)
20. Lauren A. Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)