The Forms of Informal Empire

"The history of the informal British empire as recounted by Jessie Reeder is an exciting narration of the intense, complex and original work of persuasion – and self-persuasion – vis-à-vis the possibility that Latin America could be both free and dependent, a persuasion which involved all the main actors, albeit in different ways."

"Sharply written, lucidly argued, and intellectually confident, The Forms of Informal Empire will help us to resituate the British world and its cultural forms in their full, properly global framework. Reeder's study will push the field of British studies to continue opening up to larger and more consequential comparatist frameworks."

"The Forms of Informal Empire makes an informed and convincing case that narratives bear a special burden among the social practices that constituted the British Empire's interface with independent Latin America. This is a feat of great compass and the result is impressively comparative, bringing Romantic poetry, Victorian realism, imperial adventure, and transnational autobiography into conversation with nineteenth-century liberalism, twentieth-century decolonial history, and twenty-first-century formalism."

"Compelling in its use of a multilingual archive, The Forms of Informal Empire offers an argument that is as deft as it is far-reaching. Reeder makes a signal contribution to nineteenth-century studies, studies of empire, transatlanticism, and hemispheric studies—a bravura performance!"

"Reeder's powerfully lucid study of the contradictory ways in which informal empire in Latin America took conceptual form is an important contribution not only to nineteenth-century empire studies but also to our understanding of how similar forms of dominance are thought and practiced today."

"Jessie Reeder's innovative book enriches our understanding of the British empire. With its original archive and attention to the historical novel, a literary form especially attuned to the ideological ideas of progress and the family, The Forms of Informal Empire convincingly shows us how nineteenth-century novels were vexed over the idea that contemporary British values of economic development and liberation were inseparable from domination."