Making the Americas: U.S. Business People and Latin Americans from the Age of Revolutions to the Era of Globalization

U.S. business people have played a central role in shaping the relationship between the United States and Latin America. Their ambitious transportation, mining, and plantation projects had dramatic economic and political effects on the nations of the Circum-Caribbean during the nineteenth century. In the course of the past one hundred years, American corporations have extended their activity throughout South America, affecting not only economic development, but attempting to alter the work habits and consciousness of millions of Latin Americans, and providing an important catalyst for both mass political movements in the region and U.S. interventions. From eighteenth-century New England whaling men and merchant adventurers to twenty-first-century CEO’s of multinational corporations, U.S. business people have played a central role in shaping the relationship between the United States and Latin America. In fact, it can reasonably be argued that no American institution has had a more persistent and profoun