South America

In 1902, writes Norman Wilkinson, a revolutionary dictator named Castro provoked an Anglo-German naval demonstration off the coast of Venezuela.

At a low point in his fortunes, the Liberator sent an emissary to recruit troops in London. Philip Ziegler describes how their achievements were of various importance, but the flame of Simón Bolivar’s British Legion lives on.

George Washington had warned the American people against “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.” President Monroe, writes Arnold Whitridge, further developed “the thesis of non-entanglement.”

Of all the measures undertaken by President Peron, none was more popular in Argentina than the nationalization of the British-owned railway system.

Roderick Barman examines the circumstances surrounding Brazil’s entry into the Great War and appraises the conflict’s legacy on the developing nation.

In 1861 a young clergyman’s son arrived in British Guiana to oversee a sugar plantation. Over the next 30 years Henry Bullock’s letters home caught the texture of life in a remote backwater of Empire – though they don’t tell the whole story, as Gaiutra Bahadur explains.

William Gardener investigates the history of American flora and finds among its contributions to the health and happiness of Europe the not inconsiderable commodities of maize, the potato, rubber, tobacco, and quinine.

A study of the cosmographical theories and nautical observations that prompted Columbus’s momentous voyage to the unknown West in 1492.

Geoffrey Treasure describes how the imperial policies of Charles V and Philip II declined in the seventeenth century and Spain entered an extended period of depression.

John R. Fisher describes how, in 1780, a descendant of the Incas launched a revolt against the Spanish Empire in Peru.