Essay: Chapter two of Juan Gonzales’s Harvest of Empire – critical analysis

Chapter two of Juan Gonzales’s Harvest of Empire discusses the key differences and relationships between the United States and Latin America during the nineteenth century. The chapter, entitled “The Spanish Borderlands and the Making of an Empire (1810-1898)”, opens with a quote from Thomas Jefferson describing his take on American Manifest Destiny, or the idea that that the expansion of the United States is willed by god. The opening of the chapter describes the state of the relationship between the Spanish viceroyalties. According to Gonzales, there existed a fundamental religious difference between the United States and the Spanish viceroyalties. The United States, was primarily protestant and booming in economic growth, while the Spanish viceroyalties were catholic, tyrannical, and plagued with debt. Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States exploited Latin American through its territorial and economic expansion.
The first section is titled “The Revolutionary Years: From Inspiration to Betrayal”. This section discusses how Latin American patriots were inspired by the American Revolution to break off from Spanish and other foreign inquisition, and form their own independence. Shortly after the U.S. War of Independence, the wars of independence expanded from Mexico to Venezuela. However, the U.S. was always reluctant to see these independence movements succeed. Many Latin American independence movements refuted slavery. As a result, an independent Latin American nation was harder to both economically and ideologically influence. The second section is titled “Freedom, Filibusters, and Manifest Destiny”. This section chronicles the rising conflict between U.S. expansion and the Spanish Colonies. In 1822, the Monroe doctrine issued a warning to these colonies that the U.S. would expand its borders. In Florida, the Spanish bolstered its defenses by creating alliances between Native American tribes. These tribes inhabited the border of the southern United States, and defended it from further expansion. However, civil unrest in West Florida eventually allowed the United States to broker a deal with Spain. U.S. expansion into Texas led to a response from Mexico, resulting in the deadly U.S. defeat at the Alamo. This defeat sparked the Mexican American war, which led to a series of annexations, eventually resulting in the borders that are still present today.
The third section of this chapter is called “Anglo Settlers Head South of the Border”. The theme of this section is U.S. economic expansion across Latin America. This section opens to the story of William Walker, who, after failing to annex the province of Sonora, Mexico, shifted his focus to what is now modern day Panama. At that time, Panama was a province of Colombia. In order to expand trade into the Americas, the U.S. brokered a deal which allowed the construction of a massive canal which would easier connect international trade to the Americas. This canal also helped easier trade to and from California, a high demand area at the time. This demand is attributed to the California Gold Rush, where settlers, entrepreneurs and international workers (often involuntarily) flocked to California to obtain riches. The U.S. also built the Panamanian railroad, which served as one of the only modes of long distance transportation in Latin America throughout the nineteenth century. The final section is titled “The Lure of the Great Antilles”. This section discusses America’s desire to acquire Cuba. There were plenty of mixed opinions in this topic. While some wanted to buy out Cuba, others looked at Annexation the country. Economic expansion into the Dominican Republic turned the region into a sugar producing powerhouse.
All in all, this chapter is about the bullying, sometimes deadly, and often cruel relationship that the U.S. formed with its Latin American neighbors during the nineteenth century. This period of history is characterized by the drastic measures that the U.S. went to to fulfill both the Monroe doctrine and Manifest Destiny. However, the motif of this expansion is often purely economic, and merely justified by Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. Often where annexation could not succeed, the U.S. would find ways to grip newly formed nations economically, effectively forming a rigid sphere of influence around them. Classical interpretations of this period of U.S. history do not address the attitudes that Latin America felt towards the United States. Gonzales emphasizes these attitudes during the chapter. In addition, Gonzales emphasizes the great amount of political distance that the U.S. wants from European powers. While the U.S. is distancing itself from Europe, at the same time it is creating powerful (and often nefarious) economic relationships with its neighbors.