America Imagined Explaining the United States in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Latin America

Why has "America" - that is, the United States of America - become so much more than simply a place in the imagination of so many people around the world? In both Europe and Latin America, the United States has often been a site of multiple possible futures, a screen onto which could be projected utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares. Whether castigated as a threat to civilized order or championed as a promise of earthly paradise, America has invariably been treated as a cipher for modernity. It has functioned as an inescapable reference point for both European and Latin American societies, not only as a model of social and political organization - one to reject as much one to emulate - but also as the prime example of a society emerging from a dramatic diversity of cultural and social backgrounds.

Axel Körner is a Reader in Modern European History, University College London, UK.

Nicola Miller is a Professor of Latin American History, University College London, UK.

Adam I. P. Smith is a Senior Lecturer in US History, University College London, UK.

1. Land of Opportunity; Adam I. P. Smith
2. A Model Republic; Kate Ferris
3. Liberty, Lipstick and Lobsters; Nicola Miller
4. Barbarous America; Axel Körner
5. A World Apart, A Race Apart; Maike Their
6. Slavery and Abolition; Natalia Bas, Kate Ferris and Nicola Miller