The midterm will be held during the normal lecture hour on Wednesday, March 14, 2007. A study session will be held late afternoon Tuesday, March 13, in Francis Scott Key 1117. (Time: TBA)
The exam will be closed-book, but every student may bring in a single, 8.5x11 study sheet. The sheet may contain whatever information that can be fit on one side of the paper . The information may be hand-written or printed. There are no limitations on font size or margins. Although students are free to study together, the study sheet should reflect a student's own understanding of the course materials, and any text on the study sheet must be in the individual student's own words. The sheet must be turned in with the exam.
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-reasoned 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 definitive end to slavery in the Americas can be dated to May 13, 1888, when the so-called Golden Law decreed the summary abolition of slavery in Brazil. Yet, slavery's destruction was really a gradual process that stretched out across the nineteenth century, with significant regional variations in the timing and scope of emancipation. Critically analyze the piecemeal destruction of slavery in postcolonial Latin America, making specific reference to two of the following three regions: Gran Colombia, Brazil, and Cuba.
2) If metropolitan Spain and Portugal faced a similar crisis in 1807-1808--both Madrid and Lisbon were occupied by French troops and the reigning monarch was forced to abandon the imperial capital--the responses in Ibero-America to the crisis in imperial authority were highly diverse. Compare and contrast local reactions in Nueva Granada and Portuguese America to the crisis in imperial rule over the period 1807-1831.
3) John Chasteen makes an argument about neocolonialism that is largely based upon the relations of economic production in Latin America from the mid-nineteenth century through 1929. Critically assess this argument, demonstrating its strengths and weaknesses.
4) Political instability is a running theme of the liberal period in Latin America. Develop an argument that explains why instability is so closely tied to nineteenth-century Latin American liberalism.
5) Develop an argument that identifies three ways that the military service and the bearing of arms--in the regular army, in militias, in the national guard, and in insurgent forces--was one of the most significant factors of social mobilization and the enjoyment of the rights of citizenship, in nineteenth-century Latin America. Consider carefully the gendered dimensions of military service.
6) How did Latin Americans go about imagining the nation in the nineteenth century? In your answer, compare and contrast how elites and popular groups used a language and symbolism of nación/nação and pátria to imagine a community of shared experience and interests. Consider the limitations of such attempts to find commonality and collective belonging in the postcolonial period.
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