Michael P. Costeloe

Bio: Michael P. Costeloe is an academic researcher from University of Bristol. The author has contributed to research in topics: Independence & Presidency. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 26 publications receiving 120 citations.

William Bullock and the Mexican Connection

Abstract: William Bullock was one of the first British travelers to visit Mexico after independence in 1821. Accompanied by his son, he spent six months there in 1823, and, on his return to Britain, he published an account of his experiences. He also staged in 1824 the first exhibition in Britain of Mexican artifacts and natural fauna. A year later, he liquidated all his business interests and took his family back to Mexico, where he hoped to make a fortune in silver mining. This article examines Bullock9s Mexican ventures in London and in Mexico. It also provides much new biographical data on Bullock himself and on his family connections with Mexico that continued throughout the nineteenth century. William Bullock fue uno de los primeros viajeros britaanicos en visitar Meexico despuees de la independencia en 1821. Acompannado de su hijo, pasoo seis meses allii en 1823, y al regresar a la Gran Bretanna, publicoo una croonica de sus experiencias. Tambieen presentoo en 1824 la primera exhibicioon en Inglaterra de artefactos y fauna natural de Meexico. Un anno despuees, liquidoo todos sus intereses comerciales y se llevoo a su familia a Meexico donde eel esperaba hacer una fortuna en la mineriia de plata. Este artiiculo examina las empresas de Bullock en Londres y en Meexico. Tambieen proporciona muchos nuevos datos biograaficos de Bullock mismo y de sus conexiones familiares con Meexico que siguieron a lo largo del siglo diecinueve.

A Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth Century Mexico: '15 de julio de 1840'

Abstract: El presente trabajo es un analisis del pronunciamiento de Valentin Gomez Farias y Jose Urrea, ocurrido del 15 al 27 de julio de 1840. Pone de relieve su significado politico, la organizacion y logistica de los rebeldes, asi como las perspectivas y reacciones contemporaneas.

Spain and the Latin American Wars of Independence: The Free Trade Controversy, 1810-1820

Abstract: S PAIN S response to the revolution of its American provinces was determined by a single, consistent policy: recognition of independence would not be granted. Starting from that fundamental position, however, which never varied and before 1820 was rarely even questioned in public, successive Spanish governments explored every conceivable avenue open to them in the hope of finding the means of pacifying America and effecting its reunification with the mother country. Numerous ways of achieving this objective were put forward and many were tried. These included conciliation talks with leading insurgents; offers of amnesties, pardons, and bribes; industrial and agricultural reforms; the creation of empires headed by Spanish princes; and the widespread use of military force. Among these and other options suggested, the most controversial solution, fervently promoted as the best means of pacifying America and equally fervently opposed by those who argued that it would bring about the ruination of the peninsula, was the granting of international free trade to the American provinces. This article seeks to trace the course of the free trade controversy, which was at the center of Spain's American policy for much of the decade between 1810 and 1820 and which affords considerable insight into the vested interest groups and motives of those who influenced Spain's response to the independence movements. Spain's traditional trading monopoly with its American empire had been the subject of extensive debate and change, particularly during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Cadiz, Barcelona, Malaga, Santander, and other city-ports in the peninsula and in America that had benefited from the liberalization of the commercial system enacted main-

Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America's Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present

Abstract: Weaving the Past offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary history of Latin America's indigenous women. While the book concentrates on native women in Mesoamerica and the Andes, it covers indigenous people in other parts of South and Central America, including lowland peoples in and beyond Brazil, and Afro-indigenous peoples, such as the Garifuna, of Central America. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, it argues that change, not continuity, has been the norm for indigenous peoples whose resilience in the face of complex and long-term patterns of cultural change is due in no small part to the roles, actions, and agency of women. The book provides broad coverage of gender roles in native Latin America over many centuries, drawing upon a range of evidence from archaeology, anthropology, religion, and politics. Primary and secondary sources include chronicles, codices, newspaper articles, and monographic work on specific regions. Arguing that Latin America's indigenous women were the critical force behind the more important events and processes of Latin America's history, Kellogg interweaves the region's history of family, sexual, and labor history with the origins of women's power in prehispanic, colonial, and modern South and Central America. Shying away from interpretations that treat women as house bound and passive, the book instead emphasizes women's long history of performing labor, being politically active, and contributing to, even supporting, family and community well-being.

Structuring the notion of 'ancient civilisation' through displays: semantic research on early to mid-nineteenth centuryBritish and American exhibitions of Mesoamerican cultures

Abstract: This research focuses on studying the representation of the notion of ‘ancient civilisation’ in displays produced in Britain and the United States during the early to mid-nineteenth century, a period that some consider the beginning of scientific archaeology. The study is based on new theoretical ground, the Semantic Structural Model, which proposes that the function of an exhibition is the loading and unloading of an intelligible ‘system of ideas’, a process that allows the transaction of complex notions between the producer of the exhibit and its viewers. Based on semantic research, this investigation seeks to evaluate how the notion of ‘ancient civilisation’ was structured, articulated and transmitted through exhibition practices. To fulfil this aim, I first examine the way in which ideas about ‘ancientness’ and ‘cultural complexity’ were formulated in Western literature before the last third of the 1800s. This results in a basic conceptual structure about the notion of ‘ancient civilisation’, which is then analysed in relation to the representations formulated by eight displays on Mesoamerican objects, monuments, and people that date from the 1820s to 1870s, all which have been poorly studied up until now. This work is an original approximation of the history of Mesoamerican archaeology that concludes that early to mid-nineteenth century British and American exhibits structured some aspects of the notion of ‘ancient civilisation’ for the representation of Pre-Columbian cultures by articulating a language code composed of a set of conceptual traits. It also shows that the representation of the notion of ‘ancient civilisation’ through Mesoamerican exhibits was a complex, problematic and changing phenomenon. On one hand, it involved the use of visual, textual, spatial, object-based and performative display technologies and, on the other, the ideas articulated by the displays developed together with the theoretical, conceptual, informational, and socio-political transformations of the era.

The terms of trade and the rise of Argentina in the long nineteenth century

Abstract: Argentina’s early twentieth century is commonly portrayed as a ‘golden age’ in which it became ‘one of the richest countries in the world’. Here, however, this optimistic vision is challenged by placing Argentina within a new metanarrative of global divergence during the long nineteenth century. A massive terms-of-trade boom – the extent of which has not previously been appreciated – had profoundly uneven impacts across the periphery. Where land was abundant, frontiers could expand, leading to dramatic extensive (that is, aggregate) growth. An expanding frontier then had a safety-valve effect on labour markets, so capitalists responded to high wages by mechanising production, which raised labour productivity and, consequently, per capita incomes. In the land-scarce periphery, by contrast, deindustrialisation led to increasing quantities of labour receiving diminishing returns by being applied to limited land resources. Similarly, Argentina’s own century-long terms-of-trade boom allowed the Littoral to prosper but made the more densely populated interior stagnate. The presence of the poor interior then prevented the country from developing the kind of white-egalitarian democracy that had allowed the prosperous European offshoots to make the transition to rapid intensive (that is, per capita) growth. Most importantly, Argentina’s political backwardness ensured that landownership remained concentrated, which muted the safety-valve effect of the expanding frontier, so capitalists did not make the same investments in laboursaving technologies. The new metanarrative of global divergence thus leads to a far more pessimistic revision of Argentina at the beginning of the twentieth century – a revision that is verified through a comparative assessment of its living standards that shows them to have been considerably below the levels of Northern Europe and the European offshoots. Argentina’s ‘golden age’ is therefore a myth.

Accesorios de moda femenina: género, modernidad e identidad nacional en el siglo XIX ibérico y latinoamericano

Abstract: Women’s Fashion Accessories examines the textual and visual representation of accessories in Iberian and Latin American cultural contexts ranging from the 1830s to the early 1900s. Drawing from gender studies, social anthropology, and cultural theory, I demonstrate how items of dress produced a symbolic arena in which cultural meanings and values were transformed and reshaped at both national and transnational levels. During this period, accessories reveal entire networks of negotiations and strategies that often involved significant issues of gender, race, class, and national identity on both sides of the Atlantic. Fashion objects were also metaphorical items in which the meaning of “modernity” in a peripheral context was negotiated, as well as a mechanism to debate the political and cultural approaches that would “modernize” Spain and postcolonial Latin America. This dissertation focuses on three essential pillars: 1) nationalism and the birth of Spanish-American nation-states, 2) the dissemination of journalistic and literary culture, and 3) the emergence of a fashion industry linked to consumption and economic growth. Of principal importance, middle-class women became active participants in the economy and expressed themselves through the consumption of certain fashionable items. I analyze these phenomena in Spain and Latin America, as well as their complex entry into modernity, by tracing the transnational circulation of accessories. Drawing from an interdisciplinary theoretical approach that connects a variety of disciplines in the humanities, my dissertation expands on recent debates in fashion studies, particularly those concerning clothing’s role in the construction of modernity and reconfiguration of nineteenth-century gender and social roles. In the first chapter, I discuss how accessories designed in Paris helped articulate the evolving idea of “modernity” and reinforced its artistic expression. The second chapter covers Spanish mantillas and Argentine peinetones, both of which were employed to identify and polarize the ideological gap between political groups. In subsequent chapters, I consider accessories of Asian origins––Spanish mantones de Manila and Mexican rebozos––in relation to issues of national identity, race, and social class. Finally, I analyze the role of corsets within the changing position of femininity and female participation in the public sphere.