Between 1805 and 1807 the British mounted several expeditions into the South Atlantic aimed at weakening Napoleon's Spanish and Dutch allies. The targets were the Dutch colony on South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, which potentially threatened British shipping routes to India, and the Spanish colonies in the Rio de la Plata basin (now parts of Argentina and Uruguay). In 1805 an army of around 6,000 men was dispatched for the Cape under the highly-respected General David Baird. They were escorted and assisted by a naval squadron under Home Riggs Popham. The Cape surrendered in January 1806. Popham then persuaded Baird to lend him troops for an attack on Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires was taken in July but the paltry British force (around 2,400 men) was then besieged and forced to surrender in August. Popham was later court martialled for exceeding his orders. In Feb 1807 Montevideo was taken by a new (officially sanctioned) British force of 6,000 men. Whitelocke, the British Commander then attempted to retake Buenos Aires (not least to free British prisoners from the first attempt) but was defeated by unexpectedly fierce resistance stiffened by armed creoles and slaves.After heavy losses he signed an armistice, surrendering Montevideo and withdrawing all his forces. He too was court-martialled. One of the major themes of this new account is the strong Scottish connection - Baird and Popham were both Scots, and the 71st Highlanders made up the main force in the Cape and Popham's adventure. Another is the unlooked for consequences of these actions. The arrival of Scottish Calvinist ministers in the Cape influenced the eventual development of apartheid, while successful resistance to the British, with little help from Spain, shaped and accelerated the independence movement in South America. Read more

The timeless stories of three contemporary Latin Americans whose lives represent three driving forces that have shaped the character of the region: exploitation, violence, and religion.Leonor Gonzales, a miner's widow, lives in a tiny community perched in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on earth.Carlos Buergos is a Cuban who fought in the civil war in Angola and was among hundreds of criminals Cuba expelled to the USA.Xavier Albó is a Jesuit priest from Barcelona who emigrated to Bolivia, where he works among the indigenous people.In Silver, Sword and Stone Marie Arana seamlessly weaves these stories with the history of the past millennium to explain three enduring themes that have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained history of violence, and the abiding power of religion. What emerges is a vibrant portrait of a people whose lives are increasingly intertwined with our own. Read more

Between 1805 and 1807 the British mounted several expeditions into the South Atlantic aimed at weakening Napoleon's Spanish and Dutch allies. The targets were the Dutch colony on South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, which potentially threatened British shipping routes to India, and the Spanish colonies in the Rio de la Plata basin (now parts of Argentina and Uruguay). In 1805 an army of around 6,000 men was dispatched for the Cape under the highly-respected General David Baird. They were escorted and assisted by a naval squadron under Home Riggs Popham. The Cape surrendered in January 1806. Popham then persuaded Baird to lend him troops for an attack on Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires was taken in July but the paltry British force (around 2,400 men) was then besieged and forced to surrender in August. Popham was later court martialled for exceeding his orders.In Feb 1807 Montevideo was taken by a new (officially sanctioned) British force of 6,000 men. Whitelocke, the British Commander then attempted to retake Buenos Aires (not least to free British prisoners from the first attempt) but was defeated by unexpectedly fierce resistance stiffened by armed creoles and slaves. After heavy losses he signed an armistice, surrendering Montevideo and withdrawing all his forces. He too was court-martialled. One of the major themes of this new account is the strong Scottish connection Baird and Popham were both Scots, and the 71st Highlanders made up the main force in the Cape and Popham's adventure. Another is the unlooked for consequences of these actions. The arrival of Scottish Calvinist ministers in the Cape influenced the eventual development of apartheid, while successful resistance to the British, with little help from Spain, shaped and accelerated the independence movement in South America. Read more

The President of Uruguay, José "Pepe" Mujica, has recently become a global icon. Among other things, he lives a notoriously austere lifestyle; eschews luxury and protocol like no other head of state; has legalized marijuana and same-sex marriage; has agreed to take in Guantánamo detainees and Syrian refugees, and more. According to Mujica himself, all of his conduct and ideology is rooted in his time as a guerrilla: as a Tupamaro.Beginning in the late 1960s, the uprising of the Tupamaros shook Uruguay and rippled across the Western world. Born in a middle-class, urbanized society, these guerrillas did not fight within the natural shelters of jungles and mountains, but rather in the concrete maze of the city. Infiltrating residences, bars, movie theaters, sewers, police stations, and mansions, the Tupamaros were everywhere and nowhere.Uruguay’s under-resourced police had to face the world’s most sophisticated urban insurgents. The Tupamaros employed diverse, though often contradictory, tactics: from hunger relief commandos and the armed propaganda that gave them the Robin Hood title, to taking hostages and descending into murderous terrorism. In doing so, they integrated women like no other guerrilla force before, and staged memorable prison escapes.This is the first complete English-language history of the Tupamaros and of Mujica, who under the codename Facundo was directly involved in many operations. As the president himself has said, the way to understand him as both man and politician is as a Tupamaro. Read more

The Paraguayan War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, was the largest and most important military conflict in the history of South America, after the Wars of Independence, and its only true 'continental' war. It involved four countries and lasted for more than five years, during which Paraguay fought alone against a powerful alliance formed by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. This conflict was remarkable in its huge scale and its terrible cost in lives, with the catastrophic human price paid by Paraguay amounting to more than 300,000 men, a loss of some 70% of the country's total population. The war was a real revolution for the armies of South America, and the first truly modern conflict of the continent. When the war began in 1864, the armies were small, poorly trained and badly equipped semi-professional forces. However, by the time the war ended, most of them had adopted percussion rifles employing the Minié system and new weapons like breech-loading rifles and Gatling machine guns were being tested on the continent for the first time. This title covers the whole span of the war, from the early days when the conflict primarily involved small columns of a few thousand men seeking each other out in rugged and sparsely inhabited territory, through to the later Napoleonic-style positional battles fought at points of strategic importance. It also explores the unique challenges presented by the humid, subtropical climate, including the devastating impact of disease on the troops. Read more

The timeless stories of three contemporary Latin Americans whose lives represent three driving forces that have shaped the character of the region: exploitation, violence, and religion.Leonor Gonzales, a miner's widow, lives in a tiny community perched in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on earth.Carlos Buergos is a Cuban who fought in the civil war in Angola and was among hundreds of criminals Cuba expelled to the USA.Xavier Albó is a Jesuit priest from Barcelona who emigrated to Bolivia, where he works among the indigenous people.In Silver, Sword and Stone Marie Arana seamlessly weaves these stories with the history of the past millennium to explain three enduring themes that have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained history of violence, and the abiding power of religion. What emerges is a vibrant portrait of a people whose lives are increasingly intertwined with our own. Read more

South American food, music and culture are cutting a swathe across the western world.But what if cricket - the quintessential English sport - were to conquer Latin America? The notion of Brazilians and Mexicans playing T20 at the Maracana or the Azteca is not as far-fetched as it sounds.Cricket was the first sport played in almost every country of the Americas - earlier than football, rugby or baseball. In 1877, when England and Australia played the inaugural Test match at the MCG, Uruguay and Argentina were already 10 years into their derby played across the River Plate.The visionary cricket historian Rowland Bowen reckoned that during the highpoint of cricket in South America between the two world wars, the continent could have provided the next Test nation. In Buenos Aires, where British engineers, merchants and meat-packers flocked to make their fortune, the standard of cricket was high: towering figures like Lord Hawke and Plum Warner took star-studded teams of Test cricketers to South America, and were beaten by Argentina. A combined Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean team took on the first-class counties in England in 1932.But this is as much a social history of grit, industry and nation-building in the New World. West Indian fruit workers battled yellow fever and brutal management to carve out cricket fields next to the railway lines in Costa Rica and by the hulking locks of the Panama Canal. The legendary BBC commentator Brian Johnston, working for the family coffee business in Santos, was Brazil's best wicketkeeper until he was bed-ridden by beri-beri. Cricket was the favoured pursuit of the blustering Nitrate King of Chile; Emperors in Brazil and Mexico used the game to curry favour with Europe; General Pinochet's grandchildren avidly play the game in Chile to this day.But the fate of cricket in South America is symbolised by Eva Perón ordering the burning down of the Buenos Aires Cricket Club pavilion when the club refused to hand over their premises to her welfare scheme. Mexican bandits, Colombian guerrillas and Argentine anarchists have kidnapped their country's leading cricketers for ransom. One of the first Uruguayan cricketers - who scored the first goal for the national football team - was killed when a whirlwind carried away the cabin he was sheltering in. This is a book short on match reports, and long on blood and guts. Read more

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SILVER, SWORD AND STONE is a vibrant, sweeping history of Latin America, told through three compelling lenses.The first, precious metal, of which silver is an enormous part, is an obsession that burned brightly in pre\-Columbian times, consumed Spain in its relentless conquest of America, drove a system of exploitation, and has morphed into Latin America\x27s hope for the future. The second, the \x27sword\x27, is the culture of violence: from the Aztec and Inca empires through the bloody nineteenth\-century wars of independence to state terrorism, the Shining Path, and today\x27s drug wars. The third, embodied in temples, elaborate cathedrals, or simple piles of rock, is the region\x27s fervent adherence to religious institutions, built in stone.The result is a dramatic portrait of a continent, brimming with colourful stories that cover a thousand years of history as well as real, living characters: Leonor González, a tiny widow and mother of five living in La Rinconada, the highest human settlement in the world, informs the history of mining. Carlos Buergos \- a Cuban drug dealer who honed his knife skills in the war in Angola, brought his cunning to America, then became a police informant \- echoes the violence of the Aztecs, Pizarro, Rafael Trujillo and Pinochet. And Father Xavier Albo, a Jesuit priest who lives in La Paz, has worked for forty years to keep Catholicism alive among the Quechua and Aymara of the Andes, who would rather believe what their ancestors did.Vivid and impeccably researched, SILVER, SWORD AND STONE is the definitive narrative history of a region with a tumultuous but little\-understood present as well as past. Read more

This narrative history of Latin America surveys five centuries in less than five hundred pages. The first third of the book moves from the Americas before Columbus to the wars for independence in the early nineteenth century. The construction of new nations and peoples in the nineteenth century forms the middle third, and the final section analyzes economic development, rising political participation, and the search of identity over the last century. The collision of peoples and cultures--Native Americans, Europeans, Africans--that defines Latin America, and gives it both its unity and diversity, provides the central theme of this concise, synthetic history. Read more

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Americas, then keep reading...The one-character trait that sometimes surpasses the human instinct for survival is curiosity. When humans discovered an entire hemisphere that lay beyond their own Eastern Hemisphere, the race was on.What opportunities would these new lands hold? Surely, a small country in Europe could wield the power of an empire if it could claim these new lands in the Americas. After all, there was new fertile land in these Americas, the lure of wealth, the entertainment of exciting wildlife, productive vegetation, and the marvelous treasures that shone and glittered. The cry for gold overcame all the people’s mortal fears. It echoed in 1528 in the search for the ethereal El Dorado, in 1632 in Venezuela, and in the frigid Yukon in 1896.The countries came and claimed and clashed as they tried to mix and meld. Instead, they found themselves caught in the dialectic of opposing sides, caught in a game of tug-of-war over acres of plains and pampas, sand and stones, mountains and mesas. In The Americas: A Captivating Guide to the History of the Continents of North and South America, Starting from the Olmecs through the Maya and Aztecs to European Colonization and the Independence Movements, you will discover topics such asThe Olmecs: The Rubber People (1500–400 BCE)The Maya: The K’iche’ People (3000 BCE–1511 CE)The Aztecs (1250–1521 CE)The Andean Civilizations and the IncasSouth America: Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela from Pre-Columbian Times through ColonizationSouth America: Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay from Pre-Columbian Times through ColonizationSouth American Wars of IndependenceThe Natives in North America (13,000 BCE–1492 CE)Iceland and GreenlandThe European Colonization of North America, 1492–1733North American Conflicts, Including America’s War for Independence, 1754–1783North America: Mexico and Canada, 1821–1982Cuba and the West IndiesAnd much, much more!So if you want to learn more about the Americas, scroll up and click the "add to cart" button! Read more

A completely updated edition—based on recently declassified archives and judicial investigations—of the story of the covert, U.S.-backed “anti-terrorist” network responsible for South America’s worst human rights abusesFirst published nearly twenty years ago, distinguished journalist John Dinges’s “scrupulous, well-documented, and indignant” (Washington Post) Condor Years blew the lid off a secret intelligence-sharing, torture, and assassination program named Operation Condor, which helped Latin American dictatorships stay in power for a decade—all with the blessing of the United States.In the ensuing years, Dinges has closely tracked a series of groundbreaking judicial investigations—and resulting trials of military officers—in Argentina and Chile, and gained access to the largest-ever trove of CIA and FBI files on Latin America, which were declassified in 2019. Delving into the full documentary record of this most pivotal period in Latin American history, Dinges undertook a major revision of his original book, creating this riveting new edition, of which over 75 percent is completely new material.A “major contribution to the historical record” (Foreign Affairs), The Condor Years is now the definitive story of Latin American dictatorships and repression, with extensive new material on the U.S. role, new revelations about targeted assassinations and collaboration between different nations’ security and intelligence services, and the fullest accounting to date of the victims of this global program of terror. It is crucial reading for anyone who is seeking to understand Latin America today and the U.S.’s enabling of autocratic governments in our neighbors to the south. Read more

Uniquely comprehensive and comparative, praised for its devotion to social and cultural developments as well as politics and economics, The Epic of Latin America is once again revised and brought up to date, with chapters on the great upheavals of the 1980s. The book received the Gold Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California for outstanding literary achievement by a California author and was selected by the American Library Association as one of the "fifty best books of the year." Read more

The dawn of the 19th century was a watershed moment. Europe was in the midst of a revolution that would mark the end of autocratic rule. The Industrial Revolution was harnessing new forces that would transform technology, the productive process and the distribution of power. At the same time, the new nations in the Americas that were sprouting from the collapse of the European monarchial system had the resources, scale and scope to become global superpowers. The former colonies in North America coalesced together, despite being of English, French and Spanish origins, to become a leviathan that would reign beyond the end of the 19th century. Yet, South America crumbled into a kaleidoscope of fractious small nations, irrelevant on the international stage. Yet, it could have been different. It could have united into a single entity that would have rivaled the North American giant. Indeed, South America could still become a superpower. Read more

On 7th July 1807, Lieutenant-General John Whitelocke contemplated the terms of a surrender document to which he was about to put his name. It was the final act in Britain's disastrous attempt to add the colony of the Rio de la Plata to the possessions of His Britannic Majesty King George III. This book attempts to tell the story of this campaign. Read more

Most of the world knows Uruguay only for its soccer team, or its vaunted title as the "Switzerland of South America," an enduring moniker given to the country for its earlier social welfare policies and relative stability. Even many scholarly narratives of Latin America fail to integrate the country into historical accounts, reducing the country to, as one historian has explained, "a periphery within the periphery that is Latin America."This volume challenges that characterization, taking one of the most innovative small states in the region and analyzing its transnational influence on the world. Uruguay in Transnational Perspective takes a broad look at the country’s three-hundred-year history, connecting imperial practices and resistance, Afro-Latin movements, and feminist firebrands, among others to understand how the country and its citizens have influenced and shaped regional and global historical narratives in a way that has thus far been overlooked. With a true collaboration between scholars of the Global North and Global South, the volume is both transnational in its scholarly focus and its production. Its interdisciplinary nature offers a broad range of perspectives from leading scholars in the field to re-evaluate Uruguay’s impact on the global stage. Read more

Excerpt from Bosquejo Histórico de la República O. Del UruguayPoco despues llegó a estos parajes el navegante portugues Magallanes, quien puso al Cerro de Montevideo este nombre, o el de Monte - vidi.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Read more