The midterm will be held during the normal lecture hour on Wednesday, March
17, 2004. This will be a closed-note examination.
The midterm will be divided into two parts:
You will be given four terms drawn from key vocabulary raised in lecture and the assigned readings. You must answer two (and no more than two) of the four options, defining the term within its proper historical context. Each answer should not exceed three sentences.
Two of the following six questions will appear verbatim on the midterm. You will be asked to answer ONE of the two choices in a well-thought and well-argued essay. The essay should draw on the assigned readings, lecture, and discussion. There is no expectation that you incorporate outside reading or research.
1) The legal end to slavery can be firmly dated in Cuba (the early end to the patronato system in 1886) and Brazil (summary abolition in May 1888). However, the historical process of slavery's destruction stretched over a long period of time in both countries. Identify and critically analyze three developments surrounding the piecemeal destruction of slavery in Cuba and Brazil. Place each development in its proper historical context.
2) If metropolitan Spain and Portugal faced a similar crisis in 1808—both imperial seats fell under foreign occupation and the monarch was forced out of the country—the regional reactions to the crisis in imperial authority varied widely across Spanish and Portuguese America. Choose two of the five main regions of colonial Latin America (e.g., Viceroyalty of New Spain; Viceroyalty of New Granada; Viceroyalty of La Plata; the Viceroyalty of Peru; Brazil) and compare and contrast local reactions to the crisis in Iberia over the period 1808-1825.
3) Ada Ferrer argues that contested notions of race were intimately connected to the struggle for emancipation, political independence, and national citizenship in Cuba. Analyze this thesis, assessing how ideas of race and "racelessness" were used by different social actors (e.g., leaders of the insurgency, intellectuals in exile, slaves and freed men of color, the Spanish colonial state, and U.S. occupying forces) in the anticolonial and antislavery struggles of 1868-1898.
4) John Chasteen makes an argument about neocolonialism that is largely based upon the domestic and international relations of economic production in Latin America from the mid-nineteenth century through 1929. Critically assess this argument, demonstrating its strengths and weaknesses.
5) Throughout Latin America, Domingo Sarmiento's dream of a civilización appeared triumphant by 1890. What did this civilization look like at the turn of the twentieth century? What problems plagued this 'civilized' world?
6) Nineteenth-century Latin American history is marked by seemingly endless civil unrest. Violence, in its many forms, is a running theme of postcolonial history. Paradoxically, the nineteenth century is also known as the liberal period, where liberty, citizenship, and patriotic virtue were won through the overthrow of colonial despotism and racism. Develop an argument that explains why violence and liberalism were so closely tied in nineteenth-century Latin America.