Past Events
Public Lectures
Prof. Gregory J. Grandin (New York University), "The Liberal Traditions in the Americas." 31 October 2011
Description: The term American Exceptionalism usually references two things: first, the fact or belief that the United States has been exempt from the kind of domestic class conflict that has afflicted the development other nations; second, the fact or belief that the United States has been able to project an unprecedented degree of global power free from the kind of direct colonialism and militarism that has defined previous empires. But in all the debates over what is and isn’t distinct about the United States, little discussion has been paid to one variable that can, at least in relation to its global ascendance, unambiguously be called unique: its relationship with Latin America. This lecture contrasted Latin America’s “sovereignty-social rights” complex with the United States’s “interventionist-individual rights” one, as a way of sketching out an integrated history of “Greater America.”
Watch a recording of the lecture here
Read about and discuss the lecture on the Liberalism in the Americas discussion forum, here
Prof. Klaus Gallo (Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires), “The Development of Laicism in Argentina 1810-1827: The Case of Juan C. Lafinur." 1 November 2011.
Description: This lecture examined the rise of laicist and secularising ideas during Argentina's first wave of liberal and republican reforms in the early nineteenth century, under the leadership of Bernardino Rivadavia. Heated debates took place in the Buenos Aires press regarding secularisation, and in this climate of public debate, the enigmatic figure of Juan Crisóstomo Lafinur (1797-1824) sheds some light on how these debates reached the broader public. Lafinur was a controversial figure who pioneered a philosophy of teaching geared towards reducing the influence of the Catholic Church in university education and produced a series of controversial plays and performances at civic festivals that aimed to spread laicist and secularist messages to the broader public.
Read more about the lecture on the Liberalism in the Americas discussion forum here
Prof. David Rock (University of California, Santa Barbara), "Liberalism in Argentina and Mexico: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives." 5 December 2011
Description: Focusing on Argentina (and using Mexico mainly as a counterpoint), the lecture explored the principal features of nineteenth century liberalism in three main phases, each associated with dominant political leaders. The first is the era of independence and Bernardino Rivadavia 1800-1830, which includes topics such as free trade and early British commerce and early forms of representative government. Second is the mid-century era of the liberal intelligentsia led by a group including Juan B. Alberdi and Domingo F. Sarmiento, and, later, Bartolomé Mitre. While in Argentina, this liberal revolution proved “easy” in the light of weak popular resistance, in Mexico it proved “hard” on account of peasant opposition. Thirdly, the lecture focused on the liberal regimes of the late nineteenth century dominated in Argentina by Julio A. Roca and in Mexico by Porfirio Diaz. Points of comparison between the two countries included foreign investment, structures of landholding, and connections with outside great powers. For most of its history Argentina proved more “liberal,” particularly in economic terms, than other Latin American countries. The strength of Argentine liberalism derives from traditions of multilateral commerce preceding independence and from so-called natural democracy and natural equality, as early nineteenth writers called them, based on the unique environmental conditions of the Argentine pampas.
Read more about the lecture on the Liberalism in the Americas discussion forum here
Dr Roderick Barman (University of British Columbia), "The Enigma of Liberalism in Imperial Brazil, 1822-1889." 10 February 2012.
Description: The Empire of Brazil, 1822-1889, conformed, it is widely agreed, to the Liberal model. The constitution of 1824 incorporated its precepts; political discourse was conducted in those terms; reform campaigns sought to remove imperfections. While not untrue, this narrative evades the inconsistencies and contradictions, some innate to the ideology, some specific to the country, that characterized Liberalism in Imperial Brazil. Radical liberals, such as Teófilo Ottoni, "the king of the people", eschewed social reforms. Slavery long remained a taboo subject, being abolished only in 1888. The impetus for reform often lay not in popular pressure but in imposition from above. Very importantly, the Liberal order depended on the oversight and management of Pedro II ("I have sworn the Constitution") who, as one critic observed, "spent fifty years pretending he ruled a free people". Liberalism in Imperial Brazil was an enigma, simultaneously a reality and an artifice.
Watch a recording of the lecture here
Download the paper here
Read more about the lecture in the Liberalism and the Americas discussion forum
Prof. Linda Colley (Princeton University), "Liberties and Empires: Writing Constitutions in the Atlantic World, 1776-1848." 21 March 2012.
Description: The outbreak of revolution in the Thirteen Colonies in 1776, in France in 1789, and in Haiti in 1791, famously gave rise to the creation of substantially new and highly influential written constitutions. Before 1786, no independent state possessed a single document which it termed a constitution. But in the wake of these and other revolutions, written constitutions proliferated. By 1812, there were fifty new constitutions in Europe alone. Over sixty more were drafted before 1850, many of them in Latin America.
Yet the degree to which the explosion of new constitutions after 1766 was a trans-national and a trans-continental phenomenon can be easily obscured by exceptionalist and purely national historical narratives. In this lecture, Linda Colley considers the evidence for a more complex and multi-lateral history of constitutions in the Atlantic World between 1776 and 1848, and discusses their profound connections with empire as well as nationalism.
Watch a recording of the lecture here.
Read more about the lecture and discuss it on our forum here.
Dr Matthew Butler (University of Texas, Austin), "Revolutionary Religion? Liberalism and Catholicism in Post-Revolutionary Mexico," 18 April 2012.
Description: The conventional historiographical narrative of revolutionary Mexico (1910-1940) stresses the institutional, intellectual, and affective animosity separating Catholicism and the country’s liberal and revolutionary traditions. The Revolution was godless and secularizing, as seen in the defanaticization campaigns of the 1930s or the cristero civil war of the 1920s. If the Revolution had a religious face, it is often argued, then this was Protestant. This paper argued that an historic tradition of reformist Catholicism represented a little acknowledged but significant component of revolutionary ideology and practice, as can be seen in the written testimonies of many revolutionary ideologues––the Constitutionalist Luis Cabrera; the Zapatista Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama; the anarchist Miguel Mendoza López Schwerdtfeger; and the Marxist Vicente Lombardo Toledano, among others. The paper then discussed the Revolution’s main religious project in a positive sense: the attempted foundation in the 1920s and 1930s of a national Catholic Church resting on primitive discipline and genuinely “Mexican” devotional bases. This emphasis on restorationist religion and early Church history, the paper argued, reminds us that Mexico’s Revolution should be seen as a period of religious experimentation as well as social and economic ferment. It also shows us that the Revolution sought to retie a thread to an early vein of nineteenth-century, Catholic-inspired, liberalism, as embodied by the likes of Fray Servando and Father Mora: and that some revolutionaries, at least, conceived the 1910 Revolution as a struggle over religious purity with the Church.
Coming soon: watch a recording of the lecture
Research Workshops
"Liberalism in the Americas: What is to be done?" 31 October 2011
Description: This workshop sought to establish the state of existing research regarding the history and impact of liberalism in the Americas. Focusing on Argentina, Peru, Mexico and the USA in the nineteenth century, this event examined the historiography of liberalism in the region and tried to establish what key questions have shaped the study of liberal ideas and practices in the Americas. Moreover, workshop participants helped to determine what key questions remain to be answered, and indeed asked, in this important field of enquiry that includes political culture, economic policy, social development, intellectual culture, and international relations. The workshop further explored what new insights and methods of enquiry can be gained from a comparative and transnational approach to the study of liberalism in the Americas.
Participants included: Prof. Alan Knight (St Anthony’s College, Oxford), Prof. Klaus Gallo (Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires), Dr Natalia Sobrevilla Perea (University of Kent), Prof. James Dunkerley (Queen Mary, University of London), Prof. Colin Lewis (London School of Economics), Dr Joanna Cohen (Queen Mary, University of London); Prof. Greg Grandin (New York University); Prof. Linda Colley (Princeton University); Prof. David Rock (University of California, Santa Barbara).
Download the programme flyer
Coming soon: Download and read the collected working papers discussed during the workshop.
"Liberalism, Monarchy and Empire: Ambiguous Relationships." 10 February 2012
Description: As a political philosophy, liberalism has been typically associated with the development of republicanism, popular sovereignty, and electoral representation, and liberal movements often defined themselves in opposition to monarchical and imperial regimes. This workshop sought to examine the ongoing currency of monarchical and imperialist ideas throughout the Americas, exploring the relationships—antagonistic, co-existent, and co-operative—between liberalism, monarchy and empire during the nineteenth century. The workshop explored these issues in comparative context, featuring discussion of Mexico, Brazil, Haiti, and Colombia.
Participants included: Dr Matthew Brown (Bristol University), Prof. Anthony McFarlane (University of Warwick), Dr Erika Pani (El Colegio de México), Dr Philip Kaisary (University of Warwick), Prof. Alan Knight (St Antony's College, Oxford), Prof. Rebecca Earle (University of Warwick).
Download the programme flyer
Coming soon: Read the working papers discussed during the workshop.
Liberal Constitutionalism in the Americas: Theory and Practice
21 March 2012, 1.00-5.00pm. Court Room, Senate House, London
Description: This workshop focuses a comparative perspective on constitutional traditions across the Americas since the late eighteenth century, as well as exploring the national and transnational influences upon constitution-making in the region. We seek to establish what liberal concepts and institutions were prioritized at different times and in different national constitutions, and what the intellectual, political, economic and other influences were that shaped these decisions and debates from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Moreover, the workshop will explore how constitutional laws were interpreted and practiced in different contexts at different levels of government: executive, judicial, and legislative; national, state and local.
Participants included: Prof. Kenneth Maxwell (Visiting Professor, Harvard University), Dr Max Edling (Loughborough), Dr Natalia Sobrevilla Perea (Kent), Dr Marta Irurozqui (CSIC), Tom Cutterham (St Hugh's College, Oxford), Dr Adrian Pearce (KCL), Dr Gabriel Negretto (CIDE), Dr Erik Mathisen (Portsmouth).
Download the programme flyer
Download the conference report
Read more about the event on the Liberalism in the Americas Discussion Forum.
Coming soon: Read papers discussed during the workshop
Liberalism and Religion: Secularisation and the Public Sphere in the Americas
18 April 2012, 1.00-5.00pm. 103, Senate House, London
Description: The development of political, economic, scientific and cultural spheres separate to and autonomous from the Catholic Church in Latin America during the long nineteenth century was a central aspect of the secularising agenda of liberalism, which contributed to the reformulation of relations between religious institutions, the state, and public life. But this was neither a linear nor an uncontested process. This workshop explored reformist, laicist, and anticlerical positions towards the Church in Latin American society to highlight the complex processes of negotiation between different groups of liberals and the Church, as well as their effects on the public sphere. In addition, the workshop endeavoured to examine the emergence of Masonic and Protestant movements in Latin America in a comparative framework, exploring to what extent the liberal traditions in the Americas, both north and south, were affected by their different religious traditions.
Participants included: Dr Gregorio Alonso (Leeds University), Prof. Roberto di Stefano (Universidad de Buenos Aires, in absentia), Prof. Ricardo Martínez Esquivel (Universidad de Costa Rica), Dr Trevor Stack (Aberdeen University), Dr Austin Ivereigh (Catholic Voices), Dr Natalia Sobrevilla Perea (University of Kent).
Download the programme flyer
Coming soon: read papers from the workshop and a conference report on the Liberalism in the Americas Discussion Forum.
