Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism by Greg Grandin

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(Hardcover)

  • Pub. Date: May 2006
  • 304pp
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    Product Details

    • Pub. Date: May 2006
    • Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated
    • Format: Hardcover, 304pp

    Synopsis

    “Grandin has always been a brilliant historian; now he uses his detective skills in a book that is absolutely crucial to understanding our present.”
    —Naomi Klein, author of No Logo
    The British and Roman empires are often invoked as precedents to the Bush administration’s aggressive foreign policy. But America’s imperial identity was actually shaped much closer to home. In a brilliant excavation of long-obscured history, Empire’s Workshop shows how Latin America has functioned as a proving ground for American strategies and tactics overseas. Historian Greg Grandin follows the United States’ imperial operations from Jefferson’s aspirations for an “empire of liberty” in Cuba and Spanish Florida to Reagan’s support for brutally oppressive but U.S.-friendly regimes in Central America. He traces the origins of Bush’s current policies back to Latin America, where many of the administration’s leading lights first embraced the deployment of military power to advance free market economics and enlisted the evangelical movement in support of their ventures.
    With much of Latin America now in open rebellion against U.S. domination, Grandin asks: If Washington failed to bring prosperity and democracy to Latin America—its own backyard “workshop”—what are the chances it will do so for the world?

    The Washington Post - Roger Atwood

    A provocative and lucid writer, Grandin examines how the United States has used Latin America as a proving ground for imperial war strategies employed later elsewhere, most recently in Iraq. Some rhetorical excesses aside, it's an important book that deserves a wide audience.

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    Biography

    Greg Grandin, associate professor of Latin American history at New York University, is the author of The Last Colonial Massacre and the award-
    winning The Blood of Guatemala. A Guggenheim fellow, Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan civil war and has written for Harper’s, The Nation, and The New York Times.

    Customer Reviews

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    Brilliant study of imperialismby Willp

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    June 12, 2009: Greg Grandin teaches Latin American history at New York University. In this brilliant and important book, he studies Latin America and the USA's impact on it. As Hugo Chavez said, "What is happening today in Latin America? To answer this question, read Empire's workshop."

    Thatcher lied that Reagan ended the Cold War 'without firing a shot', but the shots were fired in Latin America and elsewhere, to defeat the Soviet Union. Reagan backed terrorists in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and in Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Libya, Yemen, and Cuba. Reagan imposed capitalism by dirty wars, coups and death squads.

    Thatcher and Reagan imposed cripplingly high interest rates, to cut welfare, education, health and industry, attack trade unions, and wreck pay agreements, job security and pensions.

    The same high interest rates forced Europe's governments to reply in kind, notably wrecking France's social democratic path. These rates also destroyed development programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The City of London and Wall Street lent these countries petrodollars, which went to pay ever-higher interest on earlier debts, not to invest in industry and services.

    In Latin America, income per head had risen by 73% between 1947 and 1973, when its countries were using development strategies. But under laissez-faire capitalism, from 1980 to 1998, there was a boom for Latin America's privateers and a slump for its workers. Median income per head did not rise at all. In 1970, 11% were destitute; in 1996, 33% (165 million people); by 2005, 221 million people were in poverty.

    To develop, countries need land reform, planned industrialisation and decent services for all. For this, they need to have national independence and sovereignty, control over their own resources, and labour needs to control capital, not vice versa. As Grandin sums up, "democracy, social and economic justice, and political liberalization have never been achieved through an embrace of empire but rather through resistance to its command."

    I Also Recommend: Imperial State and Revolution, Unfinished Business, Washington, Somoza and the Sandinistas, Cuba, the United States, and the Post-Cold War World, Open Veins of Latin America.

    Best new book on US foreign policyby Anonymous

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    May 16, 2006: Like a lot of Gen X?ers on the Left, I cut my teeth as a political activist working on Central America in the 80s. We knew then that atrocities and nation razing were taking place in the name of spreading democracy, but until now, no book has underlined that epoch?s singular historical importance. Over the long term, from the Monroe Doctrine and through countless incarnations of gunboat diplomacy into the present, Grandin shows how the language of free markets, democracy, and American exceptionalism has long clouded our understanding of what in reality amounted to bayonet-backed plutocratic plunder. Over the shorter term, he demonstrates that the ramp up of US anti-communist militarism in Central America during Reagan?s ?morning in America? helped revitalize the right-wing foreign policy establishment after the retreat from Vietnam, thus setting the stage for our current blunders in Iraq. The Central America wars were not just nasty, in other words. They represented the bloody redemption of what Grandin calls ?new imperialism?--a critical and foreboding pivot in the history of foreign affairs. For anyone who wants to have a better understanding of US policy in Latin America generally or who wants a deeper history of our present-day politics of terror than the chattering classes provide, this book is a great place to start. Kudos to Grandin for forcing us to reexamine this shameful but too often forgotten neighborhood history and its unfolding legacy.