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Abstract
James Bryce is recognized as a traveler, historian, lawyer, politician, diplomat, and International Relations scholar, who led to an improvement in British-American relations, the understanding of modern democracies, and the establishment of the League of Nations. However, until recent times his portrayal of Latin America has been overlooked by historiography. This article aims to explore his analysis of the region as a historian and thinker of the international, especially in his book South America: Observations and Impressions (1912). In this book, among questions of history, nation, and race, the author wrote about the relations of Latin American nations within them and with regard to the United States and Europe, which shall be explored. These questions were also studied by early Latin Americanists in the first three decades of the twentieth century.
James Bryce est connu comme un voyageur, historien, avocat, homme de politique, diplomate et spécialiste en Relations Internationales qui a mené à une amélioration des relations entre le Royaume-Uni et les États-Unis, la compréhension des démocraties modernes, et la fondation de la Société des Nations. Cependant, jusqu’à récemment sa représentation de l’Amérique Latine reste négligée par l’historiographie. Cet article a l’intention d’explorer son analyse de cette région en tant qu’historien et spécialiste de l’international, surtout dans son livre South America: Observations and Impressions (1912). Dans ce livre, entre les questions d’histoire, de nation, et de race, l’écrivain a écrit sur les relations des nations de l’Amérique Latine entre elles et aussi en ce qui concerne les États-Unis et l’Europe, qui seront explorées. Ces questions ont aussi été étudiées par les premiers spécialistes en Études latino-américaines pendant les trois premières décennies du vingtième siècle.
James Bryce es un reconocido viajero, historiador, abogado, político, diplomático y estudioso de las Relaciones Internacionales, que condujo a una mejora de las relaciones británico-estadounidenses, a la comprensión de las democracias modernas y al establecimiento de la Liga de las Naciones. Sin embargo, hasta tiempos recientes su interpretación de Latinoamérica ha sido ignorada por la historiografía. Este artículo tiene el objetivo de explorar su análisis de la región como historiador y como pensador de lo internacional, especialmente en su libro South America: Observations and Impressions (1912). En este libro, entre cuestiones de historia, nación y raza, el autor escribió sobre las relaciones de las naciones iberoamericanas entre ellas y con Estados Unidos y Europa, las cuales serán exploradas. Estas cuestiones también fueron tratadas por los latinoamericanistas de las tres primeras décadas del siglo XX.
Acknowledgments
The letters written by James Bryce to his family while he stayed in Mexico in October 1901 are held in the Bryce Papers at the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford. I want to extend my gratitude to the staff at this Library for allowing me to consult these archival materials. I would also like to thank the Postdoctoral Scholarship Program at UNAM, which supported this research. I also want to extend my gratitude to Professor Paul Garner for sharing his Inaugural Lecture delivered as Cowdray Professor of Spanish at the University of Leeds in 2007.
Notes
1 Frederic A. Ogg, “James, Viscount Bryce,” The American Political Science Review 16 (1922), pp. 310–11; Dorothy Ross, “Anglo-American Political Science, 1880–1920,” in Modern Political Science: Anglo-American exchanges since 1880, eds. Robert Adcock, Mark Bevir and Shannon C. Stimson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 18–36; and Casper Sylvest, “James Bryce and the Two Faces of Nationalism,” in British International Thinkers, eds. Ian Hall and Lisa Hill (New York: Palgrave, 2009), pp. 161–79.
2 Edmund Ions, James Bryce and American Democracy, 1870–1922 (London: Macmillan, 1968); Thomas Kleinknecht, Imperiale und internationale Ordnung. Eine Untersuchung zum anglo-amerikanischen Gelehrtenliberalismus am Beispiel von James Bryce (1838–1922) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985); Morton Keller, “James Bryce and America,” The Wilson Quarterly 124 (1988), pp. 86–95; Russell L. Hanson, “Tyranny of the majority or fatalism of the multitude? Bryce on Democracy in America,” in America Through European Eyes. British and French Reflections on the New World from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, eds. Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. Isaac (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2009) pp. 213–36; and Frank Prochaska, Eminent Victorians on American Democracy: The View from Albion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
3 Keith Robbins, “History and Politics: The Career of James Bryce,” Journal of Contemporary History 7(3/4) (1972), pp. 37–52; and John T. Seaman Jr., A Citizen of the World: The Life of James Bryce (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006).
4 On the construction of the term Latin America see: John Leddy Phelan, “Pan-Latinism, French Intervention in Mexico (1861–1867) and the genesis of the idea of Latin America,” in Conciencia y autenticidad históricas. Escritos en homenaje a Edmundo O´Gorman, ed. Juan Ortega y Medina (Mexico: UNAM, 1958), pp. 279–98.
5 Seaman, A Citizen of the World, p. 2.
6 James Bryce, “British Feeling on the Venezuela Question,” The North American Review 162:471 (1896), pp. 145–153. Bryce´s analysis of this conflict has been explored by Héctor Domínguez Benito, James Bryce y los fundamentos intelectuales del internacionalismo liberal (1864–1922) (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2018), pp. 250–57.
7 From these journeys, he only wrote an article on Cuba: James Bryce, “Some Reflections on the State of Cuba,” The North American Review 174:545 (1902), pp. 453–56. Regarding the journey in Mexico see Itzel Toledo García, “Mexico through the eyes of James and Marion Bryce,” Studies in Travel Writing 23: 2 (2019), pp. 139–157.
8 Chapters entitled “The relations of races in South America,” “The two Americas and the relation of South America to Europe,” “The conditions of political life in Spanish-American republics,” and “Some reflections and forecasts” examined these topics.
9 Domínguez Benito, James Bryce y los fundamentos intelectuales, pp. 247–321.
10 Helen Delpar, Looking South. The Evolution of Latin Americanist Scholarship in the United States, 1850–1975 (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2008). For example, in the 1920s and 30s, Latin Americanist Herbert E. Bolton explored commonalties and differences in the Western Hemisphere. See Philip C. Brooks, “Do the Americas Share a Common History?”, Revista de Historia de América 33 (1952), pp. 75–83; Russel M. Magnaghi, Herbert E. Bolton and the historiography of the Americas (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., 1998; and Delpar, Looking South, pp. 40–43.
11 Domínguez Benito, James Bryce y los fundamentos intelectuales, pp. 285–86.
12 As a politician, lawyer and constitutional historian Emilio Rabasa based his analysis on Mexican institutions in the context of French, British and U.S. practices reading scholars like Walter Bagehot, James Bryce, Woodrow Wilson and Joseph Barthélemy. See Charles A. Hale, Emilio Rabasa and the Survival of Porfirian Liberalism. The Man, His Career, and His Ideas, 1856–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), pp. 33–52; Alonso Lujambio, La influencia del constitucionalismo anglosajón en el pensamiento de Emilio Rabasa (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010); and Domínguez Benito, James Bryce y los fundamentos intelectuales, pp. 268–78.
13 Martin Lynn, “British Policy, Trade and Informal Empire in Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire. Volume III The Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrew Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 101–21; Alan Knight, “Britain and Latin America,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire. Volume III, pp. 122–45; Paul Garner, “´El Imperio Informal´ británico en América Latina: ¿Realidad o ficción?,” Historia Mexicana 65: 2 (2015), pp. 541–59; and Will Fowler, “La historia de la relación entre México y el Reino Unido en el siglo XIX y la polémica sobre el imperio informal británico,” in Diplomacia, negocios y política. Ensayos sobre la relación entre México y el Reino Unido en el siglo XIX, eds. Will Fowler and Marcela Terrazas (Mexico: UNAM, 2018), pp. 15–44.
14 Victor Bulmer-Thomas, British Trade with Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Occasional Papers No. 19 (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1992), pp. 6–7.
15 Delpar, Looking South, p. ix.
16 Delpar, Looking South, pp. 25–26.
17 Delpar, Looking South, p. 51.
18 José Enrique Covarrubias, “Alexander von Humboldt y James Bryce: una visión cosmopolita de Hispanoamérica en dos tránsitos de siglo,” in Escenarios de cultura entre dos siglos. España y México 1880–1920, eds. Aurora Cano Andaluz, Manuel Suárez Cortina and Evelia Trejo Estrada (Mexico: UNAM/Universidad de Cantabria, 2019), pp. 317–329.
19 María del Rosario Rodríguez Díaz, “Cuba: el advenimiento de la “República” en el periódico La Lucha 1902,” Latinoamérica 58 (2014/1), pp. 181–203; and Serge Ricard, “La revolución confiscada: Teodoro Roosevelt y el nacimiento de la república de Cuba” Anuario de Estudios Americanos LV:1 (1998), pp. 61–72.
20 José Honório Rodriguez, The Brazilians: Their Character and Aspirations (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1967).
21 Domínguez Benito, James Bryce y los fundamentos intelectuales, pp. 247–322.
22 Antoni Kapcia and Linda A. Newson, eds., Report on the State of UK-Based Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2014), p. 9.
23 Paul Garner, “Mexican Politics and Victorian Philanthropy: Weetman Pearson and the Cowdray Chair of Spanish at the University of Leeds (1916).” An inaugural lecture delivered by Professor Paul Garner, Cowdray Professor of Spanish, University of Leeds, on 22 January 2007, p. 3.
24 Paul Garner, British Lions and Mexican Eagles: Business, Politics, and Empire in the Career of Weetman Pearson in Mexico, 1889–1919 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
25 Garner, “Mexican Politics and Victorian Philanthropy,” p. 3.
26 During his travels in Latin America, Bryce had a remarkable reception throughout the region. In Mexico he was welcomed by local politicians with banquets and music, and Mexico City’s mayor, Guillermo Landa y Escandón, presented him to prominent political figures such as President Porfirio Díaz and Minister of Finance José Yves Limantour (Bryce Papers, University of Oxford, Oxford [MS Bryce] 418, James Bryce to his mother, 18 October 1901, f. 170; MS Bryce 358, James Bryce to his brother Annan, Oaxaca, 23 October 1901, f. 165). In the preface of his book South America he thanked the reception by engineers of important infrastructure projects such as the Panama Canal, the Peruvian Southern Railways, the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railroad Company, the Transandine Railway Company in Chile, the Buenos Aires and Pacific and Argentine Great Western Railways Company and the Leopoldina Railway in Brazil. Furthermore, he thanked the heads in New York of W. R. Grace Co, his friend Professor Bingham of Yale University and the governments of Chile, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay for diverse courtesies. Bryce, South America, pp. vii-viii.
27 Bingham was Professor at Yale University in the United States, part of the American commission at the First Scientific Pan-American Congress (Santiago, Chile, 1908–09), writer of Across South America: An Account of a Journey from Buenos Aires to Lima by Way of Potosí (Boston, 1911) and “rediscoverer” of Machu Picchu in 1911. Regarding Hiram Bingham as an early Latin Americanist, see: Jerry E. Paterson, “Hiram Bingham, 1875–1956,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 37:1 (1957), pp. 131–37; Delpar, Looking South, pp. 37–40; and Christopher R. Rossi, Whiggish International Law. Elihu Root, the Monroe Doctrine, and International Law in the Americas (Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2019), pp. 5–6.
28 Bryce, South America, p. 585.
29 Matthew Brown, “The global history of Latin America,” Journal of Global History 10 (2015), pp. 380–381.
30 MS Bryce 418, James Bryce to his mother, On Board S S Yucatan, 1 November 1901, f. 174.
31 Bryce, South America, p. 460.
32 Richard Drayton and David Motadel, “Discussion: the futures of global history,” Journal of Global History 13: 1 (2018), p. 4.
33 Kleinknecht, Imperiale und international Ordnung, pp. 22–23.
34 Casper Sylvest, (2010) “British Liberal Historians and the primacy of Internationalism,” in The Primacy of Foreign Policy in British History, 1660–2000. How Strategic Concerns Shaped Modern Britain, eds. William Mulligan and Brendan Simms (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 214.
35 For example, Bingham wrote a 4 pages letter replying to a letter Bryce wrote him in October to ask some questions regarding rocks from Sacsahuaman, the activity of the Misti volcano, nationality of Peruvian priests, the racial question in Peru, the gaucho in Argentina, and differences between Colombians, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Chileans and Argentina. To the last question Bingham answered: “There is a distinct difference between the average Colombian, for example, and the Venezuelan, Peruvian, Chilean or Argentino, but regarding this whole question of nations and states I should like very much to talk to you. I fear my ideas are too nebulous to make them worth writing down.” MS Bryce 11, Hiram Bingham to James Bryce, New Haven, 30 December 1911, ff. 272–74.
36 Domínguez Benito, James Bryce y los fundamentos intelectuales¸ pp. 286–304.
37 A discussion on the ways in which travel writing helped to build meaning of the other (i.e. Latin America as places of exploration and travel) and the self (European economic and political expansion), see Mary Louis Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).
38 Sylvest, “James Bryce and the Two Faces of Nationalism”, p. 172.
39 Bryce, South America, p. 529.
40 Bryce, South America, p. 529, note 4.
41 Bryce, South America, p. 535.
42 Domínguez Benito, James Bryce y los fundamentos intelectuales, pp. 295–98.
43 For example, in journals such as Journal of Race Development (1910; renamed Journal of International Relations in 1919), Foreign Affairs (1922), and War and Peace (1913). Besides, courses on International Relations began in 1899 at the University of Wisconsin, and 1910 at Columbia University. Furthermore, important books for the discipline were published before 1919, such as Norman Angell´s The Great Illusion (1909), John Hobson´s Towards International Government (1915), Leonard Woolf´s International Government (1916) and Henry Brailsford´s A League of Nations (1917). It was historians and lawyers like James Bryce, who set the basis for International Relations as a discipline. On discussions regarding the birth of International Relations as a discipline see Brian C. Schmidt, “On the History and Historiography of International Relations,” in Handbook of International Relations, eds. Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth A. Simmons (London: SAGE, 2012), pp. 3–28; Lucian M. Ashworth, A History of International Thought: From the Origins of the Modern State to Academic International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2014); Robert Vitalis, “Birth of a discipline,” in Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations, eds. David Long and Brian Schmidt (New York: State University of New York, 2005), pp. 159–82; and José Ricardo Villanueva Lira, “1919: ¿La fundación de la disciplina de Relaciones Internacionales?” Revista de Relaciones Internacionales de la UNAM 125 (2016), pp. 11–34.
44 Lucien M. Ashworth, “Where are the idealists in interwar International Relations?,” Review of International Studies 32:2 (2006), pp. 291–308; Joel Quirk and Darshan Vigneswaran, “The Construction of an Edifice; The Story of a First Great Debate,” Review of International Studies 3:1 (2005), pp. 89–107.
45 Henry R. Winkler, “The Development of the League of Nations Idea in Great Britain, 1914–1919,” The Journal of Modern History 22: 2 (1948), pp. 95–112; Keith Robbins, “Bord Bryce and the First World War,” The Historical Journal 20 (1967), pp. 255–78; Héctor Domínguez Benito, “El mundo necesita otro Grocio: el desencuentro entre derecho y política en el intercambio de proyectos para la constitución de una Sociedad de Naciones,” Revista de Estudios Políticos 176 (2017), pp. 223–51.
46 James Bryce, International Relations: eight lectures delivered in the United States in August 1921. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), p. vii.
47 Bryce, International Relations, pp. vii-viii.
48 Bryce, South America, p. 522.
49 Bryce, South America, pp. 481–482.
50 For an exploration of the relationship between Brazil and Latin America in a historical perspective see Leslie Bethell, “Brazil and ´Latin America´”, Journal of Latin American Studies 42 (2010), pp. 457–85. The author explains that in the first century after independence Brazilian governments and intellectuals were focused on Europe and after 1889 also the United States, but not in Spanish America. Moreover, intellectuals from Spanish-speaking America did not feel connected to Brazil.
51 Bryce, South America, p. 475.
52 Bryce, South America, pp. 483–84.
53 Bryce, South America, p. 484.
54 Bryce, South America, p. 484.
55 Bryce, South America, p. 475.
56 Bryce, South America, p. 526.
57 Bryce, South America, p. 527.
58 Bryce, South America, p. 528.
59 Bryce, South America, p. 529.
60 Bryce, South America, p. 533.
61 Bryce, South America, p. 535.
62 Bryce, South America, p. 535.
63 Bryce, South America, p. 536.
64 Bryce, South America, p. 538.
65 Bryce, South America, pp. 541–542.
66 Bryce, South America, pp. 542–543.
67 Bryce, South America, p. 543.
68 Bryce, South America, p. 543.
69 Bryce, South America, p. 549.
70 On Latin American attempts to Pan-Americanize the Monroe Doctrine, see Juan Pablo Scarfi, “In the Name of the Americas: ´The Pan-American Redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine and the Emerging Language of American International Law in the Western Hemisphere, 1889–1933,” Diplomatic History 40:2 (2016), pp. 189–218.
71 Bryce, South America, p. 551, note 15.
72 However, in his letters to his family he did not write on this topic. MS Bryce, 418 and MS Bryce, 358.
73 Bryce, South America, p. 542.
74 Bryce, South America, p. 561.
75 Bryce, South America, p. 561.
76 Bryce, South America, p. 486.
77 Faustino A. Aquino Sánchez, Intervención Francesa 1838–1839. La diplomacia mexicana y el imperialismo del libre comercio (Mexico: INAH, 1997); and Brian R. Hamnett, “La intervención francesa y el segundo imperio mexicano, 1862–1867,” in Tordesillas y sus consecuencias: la política de las grandes potencias europeas respecto a América Latina (1494–1898), eds. Karin Schüller and Bernd Schröter (Cologne: University of Cologne, 1995), pp. 183–200.
78 Thomas Schoonover, The French in Central America: Culture and Commerce, 1820–1930, Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000.
79 Bryce, South America, p. 2.
80 Bryce, South America, pp. 3–4.
81 Bryce, South America, p. 38.
82 Bryce, South America, p. 28.
83 Bryce, South America, p. 32.
84 Bryce, South America, p. 19.
85 Bryce, South America pp. 28–29.
86 Bryce, South America, p. 30.
87 Bryce, South America, p. 31.
88 Bryce, South America, p. 32.
89 Itzel Toledo García and Silvestre Villegas Revueltas, “La reanudación y la institucionalización de las relaciones diplomáticas entre México y Bélgica, 1879–1895,” Historia Mexicana 266 (2017), pp. 605–58; John Coatsworth, “El Estado y el sector externo en México 1800–1910,” Secuencia 2 (1985), pp. 40–54; Silvestre Villegas Revueltas, “Expansión del comercio mundial y estrategias de fomento al comercio durante el gobierno de Manuel González, 1880–1884,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 29 (2005), pp. 41–92; Sandra Kuntz Ficker, “Las oleadas de americanización en el comercio exterior de México, 1870–1948,” Secuencia 57 (2003), pp. 159–82; Paolo Riguzzi, “Las relaciones de México con Estados Unidos, 1878–1888: apertura económica y políticas de seguridad,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 39 (2002), pp. 299–321; Carlos Marichal, “La banca alemana y los empréstitos para Argentina y México en la temprana globalización financiera, 1880–1900,” in Estudios sobre la historia económica de México. Desde la época de la independencia hasta la primera globalización, eds. Sandra Kuntz and Reinhard Liehr (Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2013), pp. 83–108; Steven S. Bunker, “Transatlantic retailing. The Franco-Mexican business model of fin-de-siécle department stores in Mexico City”, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 2:1 (2010), pp. 41–60; and Jurgen Buchenau, “Una empresa mercantil alemana en la ciudad de México, 1865–1900: la casa Boker, la globalización y el inicio de una cultura de consumo,” in Estudios sobre la historia económica de México, pp. 145–69.
90 Bryce, South America, pp. 554–558.
91 For example, Mexico was the first country of the region in which Paris-styled department stores were built and Mexico City had an important variety of restaurants that were offering French cuisine. See Steven P. Bunker, “Transatlantic retailing. The Franco-Mexican business model of fin-de-siècle department stores in Mexico City,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 2:1 (2010), pp. 41–60; and Raquel Ofelia Barceló Quintal, “Los cocineros y pasteleros franceses en la ciudad de México: la modernidad en la mesa durante el Porfiriato,” Cuadernos de Nutrición 35:2 (2012), pp. 46–56.
92 Bryce, South America, p. 560.
93 Bryce, South America, p. 544.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Itzel Toledo García
Itzel Toledo García is currently a Scholarship holder in the Postdoctoral Scholarship Program at UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, under the supervion of Dr. Silvestre Villegas Revueltas. She has a PhD in History from the University of Essex (United Kingdom). She also holds an MSc in International Relations from the University of Essex and a BA in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, Mexico). As a postdoctoral researcher she works on James Bryce’s perception of the modernization process in Latin America (1901–1922). She has published articles on the relationship between Mexico and European countries during the Porfirian regime and the Mexican Revolution (1870s–1920s) in Historia Mexicana, Tzintzun. Revista de Estudios Históricos and Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación. E-Mail: [email protected]