America Imagined: Explaining the United States in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Latin America

Körner, Axel; Miller, N.; Smith, Adam I. P.

Why has "America" - that is, the United States of America - become so much more than simply a place in the imagination of so many people around the world? In both Europe and Latin America, the United States has often been a site of multiple possible futures, a screen onto which could be projected utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares. Whether castigated as a threat to civilized order or championed as a promise of earthly paradise, America has invariably been treated as a cipher for modernity. It has functioned as an inescapable reference point for both European and Latin American societies, not only as a model of social and political organization - one to reject as much one to emulate - but also as the prime example of a society emerging from a dramatic diversity of cultural and social backgrounds.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2012-08-16

Format: Paperback

ISBN-13: 9781137536884

DOI: 10.1057/9781137018984

Dimensions: 216.0cm x140.0cm

Pages: 268.0