Rival, Ally, or Subordinate? Anglo-American Relations in Latin America during the First World War
This chapter underlines the importance of Latin America to the fortunes of both the United States and Britain during World War I. The conflict in Europe transformed the positions of both powers in Latin America. Traditionally the United States and Britain
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Rival, Ally, or Subordinate? Anglo-American Relations in Latin America during the First World War Phillip Dehne
Introduction The Great War transformed the Latin American dimensions of the relationship between Britain and the United States. Both countries possessed tight and profitable relationships with a variety of Latin American states. Over the long term, both vied to fill Latin American markets with their own goods, to profit from facilitating Latin American exports, and to develop investments in the growing Latin American economies. During
I would like to acknowledge financial assistance to conduct research from a number of Faculty Grants awarded by the Office of the Provost at St. Joseph’s College. I am also grateful for the critical feedback I received at the Transatlantic Studies Association conference in Ghent, at the América Latina en la Gran Guerra Colloquium in Mexico City, and from the editors of this book. P. Dehne (*) St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. C. Mills, R. M. Miller (eds.), Britain and the Growth of US Hegemony in Twentieth-Century Latin America, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48321-0_2
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the war, both Britain and the United States aimed to guide Latin American attitudes, official and popular, towards the global war against Germany and, over the longer term, towards themselves. For the first three years of the war the United States was neutral, but from April 1917 they joined the fight against Germany, raising the possibility that the United States and Britain might collaborate in their Latin American policies. In a variety of ways, the First World War has been regarded as a turning point in the international history of Latin America. Some historians have portrayed the war as a fundamental political and economic transition, from a Latin America dominated by British informal imperialism to the pre-eminence of the United States.1 Yet the war may also have generated modern Latin America’s rebelliousness against the idea of the United States as hemispheric guardian.2 From the perspective of internationalist ideas and values, a number of historians have argued that the First World War was the pivotal event that turned Latin Americans and their leaders against foreign penetration of their economies and, more broadly over the ensuing decades, against globalisation.3 Each of these arguments positioning the war as a pivot point in Latin American history is relevant to understanding the wartime relationship between Britain and the United States. Throughout the Great War some British businessmen and officials, fearful of their own long-term decline in Latin America, grew increasingly wary of losing more ground to their US rivals. From the other side, their US counterparts optimistically expected to take advantage of the wartime situation to gain politically and economically against the British. Both countries hoped to profit from the newly embattled status of Germany, as the war provided a situation whe
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