'Spiritual Empire’: Spanish Diplomats and Latin America circa 1926 (original) (raw)

The global 'turn' in historical scholarship has transformed the study of empire in recent decades. Historians now stress the multiplicity of imperialisms in the modern and contemporary period and the diversity of imperial relations and practices; they also contest the analytical separation between metropole and colony, and explore the influence of the latter on the former. However, when it comes to displacing the grand narrative of 19 th -and early 20 th -century European hegemony and expansion, historians have been less successful and, for all the emphasis on imperial pluralities, the assumption of centre and periphery has been hard to dislodge. Moreover, many new works continue to offer the British and French cases as archetypes of modern colonialism and/or the centrality of Africa and the Indian Ocean as the main theatres of empire. The recent inclusion of Germany among the big imperial players has done little else to broaden the comparative reach of colonial history. Despite research that has complicated the chronologies of European expansion in the modern period, the overriding importance of the late 19 th -century 'Age of Imperialism' is still taken for granted.