Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions

by Caitlin Fitz Narrated by Emily Durante

Overview

In the early nineteenth century, the United States turned its idealistic gaze southward, imagining a legacy of revolution and republicanism it hoped would dominate the American hemisphere. From pulsing port cities to Midwestern farms and southern plantations, an adolescent nation hailed Latin America's independence movements as glorious tropical reprises of 1776. Even as Latin Americans were gradually ending slavery, U.S. observers remained energized by the belief that their founding ideals were triumphing over European tyranny among their "sister republics." But as slavery became a violently divisive issue at home, goodwill toward antislavery revolutionaries waned. By the nation's fiftieth anniversary, republican efforts abroad had become a scaffold upon which many in the United States erected an ideology of white U.S. exceptionalism that would haunt the geopolitical landscape for generations. Marshaling groundbreaking research in four languages, Caitlin Fitz defines this hugely significant, previously unacknowledged turning point in U.S. history.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

05/02/2016
In this accessible, scholarly account, historian Fitz reframes early U.S. history in light of American perceptions of Latin American revolutions during the early 19th century. As an insurgent Latin America toppled European tyranny and embraced republican forms of government, onlookers in the U.S. reacted to these breakthroughs with enthusiasm and support—including naming towns and children after the liberator Simón Bolívar, providing arms, and volunteering as armed adventurers—as well as plenty of self-aggrandizement, often viewing their own anticolonial conflict and subsequent embrace of republicanism as the primary impetus for the entire hemisphere’s revolutionary developments. However, as Latin American insurrections went beyond republicanism and toward abolitionism, the continuing proliferation of slavery and tightening racial hierarchy within the U.S. exposed the limits of the American Revolution and soured Americans’ enthusiasm for their southern neighbors. Fitz argues that a previously unrecognized turning point occurred in which a “racialized strain of nationalism” based on U.S. white exceptionalism began to develop, in which the U.S. perceived itself as the “white, moderate, and prosperous exception to a hemisphere bursting with incompetent, aggressive, antislavery radicals.” This study, based on strong academic foundations and written with captivating and elegant prose, is an impressive achievement that suggests intriguing origins of American exceptionalism. Illus. Agent: Wendy Strothman, Strothman Agency. (July)

Wall Street Journal - Fergus M. Bordewich

"Superb. . . . As instructive as Ms. Fitz’s narrative is, it is also a pleasure to read. She has a gift for the sparkling phrase that both enchants and illuminates. . . . It is a rare historian who can bring politics alive with such verve."

Sean Wilentz

"Caitlin Fitz's superb study beautifully tells a story of persisting American egalitarian ideals coming under fire from an emerging cotton slaveocracy. With her meticulous research and trenchant prose, Fitz sends familiar preconceptions and pieties tumbling, and offers a new frame for understanding early American politics. With that, she takes her place at the forefront of an exciting, rising generation of American historians."

Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution - Woody Holton

"Caitlin Fitz shows that U.S. observers’ attitude toward their fellow American Revolutionaries south of the Rio Grande was, above all, narcissistic. Her fast-paced narrative goes a long way toward explaining why, by the mid-20th century, the Americas’ first independent republic became the world’s leading suppressor of anti-colonial revolts."

Amy Greenberg

"Caitlin Fitz’s thrilling investigation is as notable for its readability as for the broad significance of its claims. Fitz introduces us to a United States where South American independence movements were embraced by a surprisingly wide range of U.S. residents, where hemispheric fellowship trumped racism, and both black and white children were named Bolivar. Much like the newspaper editors quoted within its pages, Our Sister Republics provides ‘an alternative picture of who we might have been, and just maybe, whom we might become.’"

Greg Grandin

"Caitlin Fitz’s Our Sister Republics is a tremendous accomplishment. Fitz’s bold and convincing argument removes the early history of the United States from its provincial cloister, revealing the transnational origins of American Exceptionalism, the ways in which the United States’ sense of its republican uniqueness was formed, since its very inception, in engagement with Spanish and Portuguese America. A timely, compelling, and important book."

Daniel Walker Howe

"Caitlin Fitz has written an eloquent account of how public opinion in the United States welcomed the revolutions of the South American republics, and how the United States became the first country in the world to recognize their independence. She vividly describes the individual experiences of men and women, whites and blacks, politicians, intellectuals, and just plain folk."

James M. McPherson James M. McPherson

"During the latter half of the Age of Revolution (1775-1825) many South American peoples threw off their colonial ties to Spain and Portugal and declared their independence. Residents of the United States hailed the birth of these nations and named towns and sons after Simon Bolivar. In this original and stimulating book, Caitlin Fitz shows how these ovations turned sour for many slave-state citizens when the new republics south of the border abolished slavery—one more example of the increasingly divisive politics of slavery in North America."

Atlantic - Robinson Meyer

"Fitz’s elegantly written history tells an early American story of reverse racial progress."

Kathleen DuVal

"In a rip-roaring narrative, Caitlin Fitz tells the stunning story of camaraderie across the Americas in an era of revolutions. She shows that people of the United States took a generous, if self-congratulatory, delight in republican brotherhood in what was truly a revolutionary age, as well as how this shared idealism was forgotten in subsequent decades of division and nationalism."

James M. McPherson

"During the latter half of the Age of Revolution (1775-1825) many South American peoples threw off their colonial ties to Spain and Portugal and declared their independence. Residents of the United States hailed the birth of these nations and named towns and sons after Simon Bolivar. In this original and stimulating book, Caitlin Fitz shows how these ovations turned sour for many slave-state citizens when the new republics south of the border abolished slavery—one more example of the increasingly divisive politics of slavery in North America."

From the Publisher

"Our Sister Republics provides an alternative picture of who we might have been, and just maybe, whom we might become." ---Amy Greenberg, author of A Wicked War

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

"Our Sister Republics provides an alternative picture of who we might have been, and just maybe, whom we might become." —Amy Greenberg, author of A Wicked War

Library Journal

04/15/2016
In the early 1800s, South and Central Americans rose against Spain, forming a pastiche of multiracial revolutionary societies. But surprisingly few historians have explored U.S. reaction to these upheavals. Fitz (history, Northwestern Univ.) bridges this awareness gap by tracing a pivotal shift in American attitudes. Before 1825, Americans cheered on the revolutionaries, congratulating themselves for inspiring the "spiritual heirs of 1776" yet giving little material support to their South American "sister republics." On the other hand, sympathizers christened their sons, prize animals, and even towns after South American liberator Simón Bolívar. After 1825, praise-filled, universalist rhetoric gave way to hardening public skepticism toward the libertadores. Early "color-blind consensus" dissolved in favor of racist contempt, territorial expansionism, sectional quarrels, and slavery's spread, which flouted racially fluid Spanish America's gradual elimination of that "peculiar institution." In contrast, U.S. supporters reconceptualized slavery as "positive good" instead of "necessary evil." To build a holistic understanding of public perceptions, Fitz researches Fourth of July toasts, ditties, letters, editorials, and naming conventions across America. VERDICT Readable and groundbreaking, this work will be cited by scholars and enjoyed by general readers for years to come.—Michael Rodriguez, Hodges Univ. Lib., Naples, FL

SEPTEMBER 2016 - AudioFile

Narrator Emily Durante delivers this work in an earnest voice that focuses more on the facts than the nuances of the author’s reinterpretation of events in the nineteenth century. The U.S. has always had a complicated relationship with Latin America. What started as a celebration of our founding ideas of liberty and equality evolved into disputes over slavery, white privilege, and American exceptionalism. Durante pronounces both English and Spanish words correctly, and her diction is excellent. Her tone, however, lacks emotion and doesn’t give listeners an opportunity to become involved in the story. It’s a shame because this part of early U.S. history is a fascinating era. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-04-06
An examination of the first 50 years of United States history in relation to South America.It was not the American Revolution that sparked revolutions in Latin America; it was the changes in European empires and years of war at the hands of Napoleon, which left the colonies open to trade with whomever they pleased. When he marched into the Iberian Peninsula, installing his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne, Spain's colonies were on their own. In her first book, Fitz (History/Northwestern Univ.) digs into little-tapped historical resources to demonstrate how support for South American revolutionaries grew and ebbed. The revolutions included the creation of towns named for Simón Bolívar, more common in the West but less so in New England. Curiously, the praise of revolutions that included the end of slavery never dwelt on that fact. It seems as if the U.S. was ambivalent to slavery. News articles were reprinted throughout the country, and they morphed from universalist to racialized rhetoric within 10 years. That early support shattered with Bolívar's proposal of a Panama Congress of Latin America; he noticeably did not invite the U.S., but his vice president did. The hue and cry in Congress and in the press was verbalized most vocally by Virginia's John Randolph, who decried the fact that U.S. delegates would have to sit with African descendants, mixed breeds, and Indians. Randolph concluded that the concept of "all men born equal" was a pernicious falsehood. Throughout, the author is a deft guide to this reinterpretation of early American history, a time when "earlier rhetoric of inalienable rights and self-evident truths was increasingly challenged by assertions of white superiority and U.S. exceptionalism." Historians will appreciate the wide research and the serious look at the voice of the common man and occasional woman. Fitz shows that history is not always written by wars, treaties, and administrative actions; often, the people take the lead.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170862290
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	07/05/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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