America, América: A New History of the New World

The histories of North and South America have been shaped by the continents’ relationship to one another, according to this scintillating study. Pulitzer winner Grandin (The End of the Myth) traces the Americas’ intercontinental feedback loop from the colonial period—when Spain and Portugal goaded England’s imperial ambitions with reports of bloodthirsty conquest—through the revolutionary period, when Spain and England each funded revolts in the other’s colonies. As independence was won, the two continents’ paths significantly diverged, Grandin writes, when South American statesman Simon Bolivar rejected the “expansionist” U.S. model of democracy as a continuation of Europe’s “doctrine of conquest.” Bolivar instead called for redistribution of land to Indigenous people—an ultimately half-completed project that Grandin notes nevertheless inspired some politicians in the North to reconceptualize democracy, leading to the yo-yoing between “boots-on-the-ground invasions” and nascent planning for “a system of international law” that characterized U.S. foreign policy by the early 20th century. This tension came to a head, according to Grandin, when Woodrow Wilson backed a democratic socialist faction in the Mexican Revolution, prompting U.S. elites to stage a backlash so severe that U.S. policy toward Latin America has remained antileftist ever since. The Americas, Grandin perceptively concludes, have spent centuries “battling over how to justify dominion,” with philosophies of imperialism and democracy flourishing side by side. It’s a monumental new view of the New World. (Apr.)