Spanish America and British Romanticism, 17771826 : Rewriting Conquest

An examination of Spanish America's impact on the British Romantic literary and political imagination.

Robert Southey did not exaggerate when he described the England of his day as "South American mad." As Spain''s hold on its colonies progressively weakened during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, thousands of British scientists, soldiers, entrepreneurs, and settlers rushed to take advantage of the enticing opportunities Spanish America offered. Britain''s fascination with the region displayed itself in poems, plays, operas, political tracts, news reportage, travel narratives, and stock market quotations. Creole patriots such as Francisco de Miranda and Andrés Bello gathered in London to solicit aid for their revolutions while ministers debated tactics for liberating both the peoples and the untapped wealth of Spain''s colonies.Through critical reconsiderations of both canonical and lesser-known Romantic texts, from Helen Maria Williams''s Peru to Samuel Rogers''s The Voyage of Columbus and Byron''s The Age of Bronze, Heinowitz reveals the untold story of Romantic-era Britain''s Spanish A