THREE BOOKS ON LATIN AMERICA
Barnes, Harry Elmer
Three Books On Latin America REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY OF ANGLO-AMERICA, by C. Langdon White and Edwin J. Foscue. Prentice-Hall. $4.75. THE BATTLE FOR BUENOS AIRES, by Sax Bradford. Harcourt, Brace....
...It is an invaluable introduction to the resources and natural features of the United States and Canada, and to the mode of their exploitation by human agents...
...Prof...
...Bradford has written a timely book on Buenos Aires as the battleground of diplomacy and propaganda...
...The United States, benevolently but with some presumption, brings its good-neighbor philosophy to bear...
...Nazi propaganda is persistent and ever-present...
...Reviewed by Harry Elmer Barnes THE BOOK by Prof...
...2.50...
...It first presents the general physical basis of America north of Mexico, outlining the physiographic regions and describing the natural resources...
...Here the State Department must share the blame, at least indirectly, since it gave implied approval to these loans and made investors feel that the government regarded them as sound and reliable...
...British imperialism is there to safeguard its investment...
...It treats it historically, showing how it operated through successive periods and stages: the rise of the Monroe Doctrine, the era of Manifest Destiny, the post-Civil War age, the origins of imperialism and dollar diplomacy following the Spanish-American war, the retreat from imperialism, the rise of non-intervention, the introduction of the good-neighbor policy, and finally, the pressure brought to bear by the United States to bring Latin America into the war on the side of the United Nations...
...Our economic and financial penetration was mainly in the hands of bankers and merchants...
...Indeed he calls it a myth, holding that the government did little to press for investment opportunities and trading advantages...
...It is a fine piece of bookmaking and the illustrations are numerous, well chosen, and highly illuminating...
...In other words, his book is a study of the Argentine in the current maelstrom of competing pressures...
...Bemis' attitude toward our imperialism may be correct for South America, but there is plenty of evidence that economic imperialism was not a myth in Central America and the West Indies...
...It is as important for the social scientist as for the professional geographer...
...On the whole, Prof...
...The entrance of the human element into the picture is then treated through the description of the settlement of the area and its exploitation by mankind...
...THE LATIN AMERICAN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES, by Samuel Flagg Bemis...
...4.50...
...White and Foscue is an excellent example of social geography according to the new pattern of organizing and presenting geographical material...
...The author minimizes the economic imperialism of the United States...
...Bemis gives us a reliable, conventional, academic survey of the Latin American diplomacy of"the United States...
...But he does not minimize the extent of the activities of the latter and shows that their conduct was frequently scandalous, especially notorious being the floating of dubious Latin American loans and the selling of these bonds to the gullible American public...
...All in all, the book is an excellent case study of diplomatic intrigue and propaganda pressures as they concentrate and are thrown into high relief by the exigencies of wartime...
...The authors then take up the main regions of North America from the Rio Grande to Alaska and Hudson's Bay, showing the inter-relation between geography, economic life, and the social pattern...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 51
