Greg Grandin’s latest book, “America, América: A New History of the New World,” appears to set up an opposition from the start, one that may be striking to the minds that consider “America” a different way of saying the United States. Grandin, however, shows how this limited understanding of these two words has contributed to a dearth of knowledge about the formation of the modern world. “America, América,” Grandin writes, “is more than a history of the Western Hemisphere. It’s a history of the modern world.”
Without understanding the Americas in their entirety, it is impossible to understand the liberal or rules-based global order in which we live. Grandin wrote the book “not to fuss over names but rather to explore the New World’s long history of ideological and ethical contestation.” In many ways, the book is related to Grandin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The End of the Myth,” which articulates how the promise of American expansion, exceptionalism and limitlessness enabled the prosperity we take for granted today.
“America, América,” uses the philosopher’s tool of “immanent critique” to consider how Latin America acts as an “irrepressible critic” or “magpie” of the United States through its “persistent opposition to intervention and conquest, and its unwavering demand for the recognition of absolute national sovereignty.” This “magpie rivalry,” as Grandin calls it, “played a vital role in the creation of the modern world, shaping its economics, politics, and moralities.”
To make this compelling argument, Grandin covers a jaw-dropping historical timeline. He begins with the Spanish conquest that kicked off in the early years of the 16th century, detailing the “astonishing brutality” that Spain inflicted on the natives of the New World and contends that the Anglo conquest of North America – which rivaled Spain’s – was devoid of any argument over the morality of their conduct against Native populations. In Spain, Catholic theologians, lawyers and philosophers at least kept the Natives they were oppressing in their moral scope, spurring intense legal and theological debates that challenged the expansion of an empire which extended from Iberia to the Philippines. To the contrary, the English instead “opted for evasion” when it came to legitimizing their colonial settlements. They studied closely the lively debates taking place in Spain, but were hesitant to elevate any discussions that questioned the legitimacy of an empire, for obvious reasons.
Grandin writes that the “dissent of these theologians and jurists has rung down the centuries,” setting the stage for the stark contrast between the United States and the rest of Latin America that is present today. After the American Revolution, the founders saw “no limits” on the expansion of their new nation. In Latin America, the opposite was the case.
After breaking away from Spanish colonial rule, Latin American republics “had to learn to live together if they were to survive … and they largely did so, with their intellectuals, lawyers, and statement elaborating a unique body of international law” that was instrumental in the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations. Today’s commonplace principles of non-aggression, the rebuke of the right of conquest, and harsh European realism stem from the centuries-long experiences of the New World living in confrontation with the plundering imperial forces of Western Europe. It is a story of brutality and human depravity, but also a story of undeniable hope, one that demonstrates Latin America’s overlooked role in aiding humanity’s evolution into something approximating a promised ideal.
The brilliance of this book lies in its originality and depth, not to mention Grandin’s vibrant writing style (which has earned him the rightful comparison to Gabriel Garcia Marquez). I can’t think of another history book that changed fundamentally how I think about the world like “America, América.” Writing from the era of Bartolomé de Las Casas to that of the late Pope Francis, the breadth of Grandin’s scholarship will be a new standard for decades to come. “America, América” is a crucial work in modern history.
If you are planning to read a book next, let it be this one.
Rating: 10/10
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