Informal Empire and the Americas

While Britain battled much of the world for an informal empire it engaged in a remarkably explicit competition with the United States, particularly over Central and South America. Intensifying after the War of 1812 the Americans in particular felt the competition keenly. It did not end until the United States established undisputed hegemony over the elites of the former colonies of Britain and most other European former colonies, including Britain’s mammoth informal empire. Two components defined this competition between 1812 and 1860: com-petition for land and competition for business. In the first case the United States elite harboured unfounded fears of British designs for more land in North and Central America.1 The British stoked American fears by successfully dominating commercial interaction in South America. Great Britain consciously went after and attained supremacy over the lion’s share of Latin America’s trade by guiding the formation and loyalty of national elites, attaining a dominance in Latin America that did not end until well into the twentieth century.2

Competition (biology) · Dominance (genetics) · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Elite · Empire · Geography · Hegemony · Latin Americans · Political science · Politics · Australian History and Society · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society · History · Law