Re-thinking the 1820s:
Europe, Latin America, and the Persistence of
Mutual Influence in a Decade of Transformation
29-30 May 2009
Trinity College, University of Cambridge
The decade of the 1820s occupies an uneasy place in the imagination of those historians who study the connections — political, economic and cultural — between Europe and Latin America. On the one hand, the dominant image is one of rupture: the dramatic disaggregation of the Iberian empires in the crucible of turmoil wrought by two decades of war. With the coming of independence, for Brazil in 1822 and for much of Spanish America by 1825, Europe and Latin America appeared to experience divergent historical evolution, as the bonds which had fastened each to the other were irreparably severed.
On the other hand, however, historians are increasingly aware of the persistence, even deepening and creation, of robust links between Europe and the new nations which emerged from the defunct Iberian empires. The aim of this symposium is to bring together historians interested in the connections between Europe and Latin America during the tumultuous 1820s, a decade better known for an ever-widening chasm between the Old World and the New than for their convergence.
This symposium is co-organized by Gabriel Paquette and Matthew Brown. It enjoys the generous support of Trinity College, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Conference Series Fund, the Cambridge Faculty of History’s Trevelyan Fund, Harvard University's Center for History and Economics, the University of Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts (BIRTHA), the Royal Historical Society, and the Cambridge Centre of Latin American Studies.