The Tragedy of American Diplomacy Revisited: U.S. Relations with Latin America and the Caribbean

The Second Century: United States-Latin American Relations since 1889. By Mark Gilderhus. (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000. Pp. 282. $55.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.)

United States-Latin American Relations, 1850-1903: Establishing a Relationship. Edited by Thomas M. Leonard. (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1999. Pp. 303. $44.95 cloth.)

The French in Central America: Culture and Commerce, 1820-1930. By Thomas D. Schoonover. (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000. Pp. 244. $55.00 cloth.)

The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America. By Nancy Mitchell. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Pp. 312. $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.)

Whose America? The War of 1898 and the Battles to Define the Nation. Edited by Virginia Marie Bouvier. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001. Pp. 256. $62.95 cloth.)

Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954-1961. By Stephen M. Streeter. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000. Pp. 384. $30.00 paper.)

The Legacy of the Monroe Doctrine: A Reference Guide to U.S. Involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean. By David W. Dent. (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1999. Pp. 417. $59.95 cloth.)

Oil, War, and Anglo-American Relations: American and British Reactions to Mexico's Expropriation of Foreign Oil Properties, 1937-1941. By Catherine E. Jayne. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. Pp. 210. $62.50 cloth.)

Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954. By Nick Cullather. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pp. 142. $39.50 cloth, $14.95 paper.)

The United States in Honduras, 1980-1981: An Ambassador's Memoir. By Jack R. Binns. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2000. Pp. 397. $39.95 paper.)

Gunboats, Corruption, and Claims: Foreign Intervention in Venezuela, 1899-1908. By Brian S. McBeth. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2001. Pp. 307. $69.95 cloth.)

Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff, and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-66. By Eric Thomas Chester. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. Pp. 353. $55.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.)

Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic: Eisenhower, Kennedy and the Trujillos. By Michael R. Hall. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000. Pp. 163. $55.00 cloth.)

Several very clear and consistent scholarly messages come through from this selection of recent publications on the external relations of the countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. The first is that scholarly, cultural and political interest in U.S.-Latin American relations remains a thriving industry. A second is that, increasingly, scholars are appropriately seeking to move beyond the bilateral U.S.-Latin American relationship to explore more fully the role of European countries in this hemisphere, setting the U.S.-Latin American relationship into the larger context of international affairs. These scholars are also making the effective use of European archival sources that many in the field have long advocated. There are several excellent examples of that orientation among the volumes discussed in this review. A third message is that scholars are also making more effort to use Latin American archival sources, although the obstacles are frequently substantial, especially because of limited access to those sources. A fourth feature is that U.S.-based and largely North American-born and educated scholars continue to dominate the field, and there appears to be relatively little consideration given to, or evidence of familiarity with, scholarship published in Latin America and the Caribbean itself, although a number of the essays in both the Bouvier and Leonard volumes represent important exceptions to that tendency. A fifth observation is that there has only been marginal innovation in the conceptualization and methodology in the writing on inter-American relations. But, there are exceptions to this observation among the volumes under review—these make an important contribution not only to the study of inter-American relations but...