Conclusion

Abstract

Many people—both in Europe and in Latin America—were indeed looking to the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. The results of the great experiment in modern nation building were eagerly anticipated by both its champions and its critics. The claims made by many Americans, especially political leaders, that the United States was a universal nation, forging a new society not just for one people but for all humankind, were subjected to widespread, if not always well-informed, scrutiny abroad. It is no coincidence that newspapers throughout Europe and Latin America devoted extensive coverage to the great exhibitions of the period, the Centennial one in Philadelphia and, above all, the World Fair held in Chicago in 1893: such events showcased the United States’ official self-definition as the place where all the wonders of the world could be found. Given that the United States often presented itself as a “spectacle,” a grand performance of all things modern, it is hardly surprising that any-one who caught even a glimpse of the show felt entitled to pass comment. America was not only a place people felt they knew, at least as part of their imagined life, but it was also a place they felt they had a right to know. This was the state of affairs, above all, perhaps, in Britain, where a self-consciously transatlantic intellectual community developed, at least partly facilitated by the common language, but it was also evident in Cuba, where not only members of the intellectual and political elites but also workers had firsthand experience of the United States, and where dual-language periodicals reinforced a sense of familiarity between the two countries.

The old world, in its experience, and South America, in its youth, both constantly look to Washington’s native land. All schools, religions and systems endeavor to enlist the spirit of the United States. All political institutions and constitutional theories tend to be based on the foundations of the American city. Every example of progress, every proof of truth, every imaginable reconciliation of liberty and order, centralization and federation, union and independence, local […] and national life, all appeal to the spectacle—the magnificent spectacle—of the United States […]. Chilean intellectual Francisco Bilbao, on US Independence Day, 1858¹